id="ulink_1da925cc-fd81-5263-82ac-b7157041d921">Elamite transcriptions of Old Iranian words make Achaemenid Elamite texts the largest single source of Old Iranian lexicon in indirect transmission. Spelling variations, especially in administrative documents, reflect phonological and dialect variation in the forms of Old Iranian spoken around the Achaemenid courts and its differences from the archaic Old Persian of the royal inscriptions (Henkelman 2011a: p. 614f. n. 105). Similar variations in royal inscriptions also reflect editorial or stylistic choices (e.g. miššadanaš [DNa] and mišbadanaš [DSe], mišbazana [DPa], representing Persian dialect *visadana, half‐Persian *vispadana, and non‐Persian vispazana, “of all kinds”; Tavernier 2007: pp. 34 and 78).
Transcriptions or translations in administrative texts sometimes provide common‐register nuances of words or phrases otherwise attested only in the high rhetorical register of royal inscriptions: e.g. miššadanaš, etc., “of all kinds,” in royal inscriptions indicating the universal scale and scope of the Achaemenid Empire, but in Fortification texts referring to varieties of poultry, grain, or flour (Henkelman 2010: p. 746f.); pirrašam, transcribing Old Persian fraša‐, “wonderful,” in royal inscriptions describing the palace at Susa (DSf, DSj, DSz) and all visible creation (DNa), but in Fortification texts, naming a kind of poultry, perhaps peacock (Stolper 2015: pp. 14–21); halpi duhema halpik, corresponding to Old Persian uvamaršiyuš amariyatā, “he died in his own death” in Bisutun describing the demise of Cambyses the king, but in a Fortification text, the passing of an ordinary administrative functionary (Stolper 2015).
Transcriptions in administrative texts represent Old Iranian social, administrative, and technical vocabulary that is often not attested directly in Old Iranian scriptures or royal inscriptions but that sometimes appears transcribed in Akkadian, Aramaic, Greek, or other languages, in texts from the Achaemenid Empire's provinces and sphere of influence: for example, Elamite kurtaš, Aramaic grd, Akkadian gardu, all representing Iranian *gṛda‐, “worker, domestic” (Tavernier 2007: p. 423f.); Elamite partetaš, Akkadian pardēsu, Greek παράδεισος, etc., representing Old Iranian *pardēda, *pardēsa, cognate with the Old Persian hapax legomenon paradaidā‐, “enclosure” (Tavernier 2007: pp. 446–447; Boucharlat 2016: pp. 62–65, with references). The dense attestations in Elamite administrative texts provide an essential term of comparison for interpreting the sparser evidence and distinct social contexts of Achaemenid presence elsewhere.
Writers of administrative texts could sometimes choose between transcribed Iranian terms and translation with Elamite synonyms (e.g. kandabara and kanzabara, Elamite transcriptions of Persian and non‐Persian dialect forms *gandabara‐ and *ganzabara, respectively, all synonymous with Elamite kapnuški‐, “treasurer”; Tavernier 2007: p. 422) or transcriptions of Iranian compound nouns and counterpart Elamite noun phrases (e.g. noun phrases with Elamite kutira corresponding to compounds with Iranian –bara, “bearer” or with Elamite huttira corresponding to Iranian –kara; Henkelman 2011a: p. 592). Elamite morphemes attached to some words of Iranian origin mark their adoption as actual loanwords (e.g. kurtašbe, “workers,” representing Iranian *gṛda‐, with an inappropriate Iranian nominal ending ‐š generalized to mark words of Iranian origin, and an Elamite plural marker –p, and, in the form kurzap, contracted on the model of Elamite verbs; Henkelman 2011a: p. 592). The writers of these documents, whether their first spoken language was Iranian or Elamite, based analogical coinages on spoken forms in both languages.
Variation and Contact
In many passages of the royal inscriptions, the Elamite morphology or word order corresponds closely to the Old Persian, departing from what historical Elamite grammar would call for: e.g. u Pirtiya [Kuraš šakri] Kanbuziya igiri “I (am) Bardiya [Cyrus' son], Cambyses' brother” (DB Elamite i 29f.), corresponding to Old Persian adam Bṛdiya ami haya Kurauš puça Kambujiyahyā brātā (DB OP i 39f.); Kammadda akka makuš (DB Elamite i 48 and passim), corresponding to Old Persian Gaumāta haya maguš (DP Old Persian i 44 and passim) (Reiner 1960).
These passages have long been understood as calques that arose from an underlying editorial procedure in which a text conceived and dictated in a current form of Old Iranian was rendered both in Elamite translation and in Old Persian, with occasional changes of editorial nuance between the versions. When the Achaemenid Elamite administrative documents first came under study, they were similarly understood as texts in “translation Elamite” (Cameron 1948: p. 19), implying that the editorial procedure of the royal inscriptions was mirrored in the administrative procedure of the archive keepers. The extreme form of this view was the thesis of “alloglottography” by which the Elamite texts are mechanical representations of underlying Persian texts, dictated in Persian and read out in Persian by users who neither wrote nor spoke Elamite (Gershevitch 1979, 1987; modified by Rubio 2007: pp. 33–40). Implicit in such views was the idea that around the Achaemenid courts language was a primary and exclusive identifier, that most speakers and especially most writers of Elamite, Persian, and Aramaic belonged to distinct groups, that subject Elamites wrote documents for Persian masters.
Such views have been aptly criticized on several grounds, including these:
They are inconsistent with Achaemenid Elamite grammar, especially as attested in the administrative texts: even in sentences where calques on Iranian possessive, attributive or other constructions are present, Elamite sentence order differs from the Iranian counterpart (Yakubovich 2008: 207); apparent calques on Iranian constructions found in the royal inscriptions are productive constructions in the administrative texts; transcribed and loaned Iranian words include no verbal forms, and almost no non‐enclitic pronouns or prepositions; Elamite words are not given Iranian case‐endings, and most transcribed Iranian words do not have grammatically meaningful case‐endings; variations cannot be understood as different “translations” of similar underlying constructions
(Henkelman 2011a: pp. 588–592, 617–622).
They are inconsistent with the use of written languages at Persepolis and elsewhere, where individual scribes were literate in more than one language
(Tavernier 2017: pp. 353–355).
They are historically implausible: speakers (and writers) of Neo‐Elamite and speakers of Iranian vernaculars were in close contact, occupying the same territories, for at least several generations before the emergence of the Achaemenid Empire
(Henkelman 2011a: pp. 594–595).
Achaemenid Elamite, as these critics cogently argue, is not an encoding of Old Iranian but a development of older Elamite affected by long contact with Iranian vernaculars, leading to a partial restructuring of the grammatical system. The restructuring favored formal similarity between Elamite and Iranian expression, modifying or creating Elamite constructions that paralleled Iranian word‐order, morphology, and semantic distinctions (Yakubovich 2008: p. 207; Henkelman 2011a: pp. 588, 593, 594).
Grammatical and lexical variations indicate that most, but perhaps not all, writers of Achaemenid Elamite were native speakers of Iranian vernaculars who acquired Elamite as a second, written language and, for most, as a spoken language. Thus, the syntax of the Elamite administrative texts reflects a range of variation between extremes of preference for older Elamite grammatical constructions and for constructions that mimic Old Iranian syntax or morphology. Like the use of Elamite month names instead of transcribed Iranian month names (Hallock 1969: pp. 74–75), and use of Elamite synonyms for Iranian words, some of these choices were geographically conditioned. The Elamite options appear mostly in texts written to the northwest of Persepolis, along the route to Susa, suggesting the survival of Elamite as a native language, or at least the survival of proficiency in historical Elamite grammar and resistance to Iranian‐influenced restructuring, in the region of later Elymais and the territories of the Ouxioi (Henkelman 2011a: p. 586, 2011b: pp. 8–11).
Comparable but less wide variation