Old Persian cuneiform

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Old Persian Cuneiform
Old Persian cuneiform syllabary (left), and the DNa inscription (part II, right) of Darius the Great (circa 490 BC), in the newly created script.
Script type
Semisyllabary
Time period
525 BC – 330 BC
Directionleft-to-right Edit this on Wikidata
LanguagesOld Persian
Related scripts
Parent systems
none;
  • Old Persian Cuneiform
ISO 15924
ISO 15924Xpeo, 030 Edit this on Wikidata, ​Old Persian
Unicode
Unicode alias
Old Persian
Unicode range
U+103A0–U+103D5

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 This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

Old Persian cuneiform is a semi-alphabetic cuneiform script that was the primary script for Old Persian. Texts written in this cuneiform have been found in Iran (Persepolis, Susa, Hamadan, Kharg Island), Armenia, Romania (Gherla),[1][2][3] Turkey (Van Fortress), and along the Suez Canal.[4] They were mostly inscriptions from the time period of Darius I, such as the DNa inscription, as well as his son, Xerxes I.[5] Later kings down to Artaxerxes III used more recent forms of the language classified as "pre-Middle Persian".[4]

History[]

Old Persian cuneiform is loosely inspired by the Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform; however, only one glyph is directly derived from it - l(a) (