The Faculty of Linguistics at the Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies is compiling an atlas of ancient Persian inscriptions in a bilingual website, according to director of the project, Katayoun Fekripour.
The ‘Atlas of Old Iranian Inscriptions’, as a national project, is aimed at collecting information on movable and immovable inscriptions from across the provinces, Mehr News reported.
The priority of the project is the inscriptions in ancient Persian, Parthian Pahlavi or Ashkani Pahlavi and Middle Persian ethnolect, the prestige dialect of the Sassanid empire. Later on, non-Iranian inscriptions, Elamite and Akkadian inscriptions in Iran and Iranian inscriptions outside the country will be added to the project, Fekripour said.
The atlas has eight categories of immovable inscriptions, movable tablets, seals, seal impressions, coins, brick inscriptions, inscribed potteries and earthen inscriptions.
In addition to rock inscriptions, lists of inscribed artifacts in provincial museums are prepared during field surveys. The artifacts include coins, seals and writings on hides and potteries. Each inscription is then catalogued with information including archaeological data, transliteration, transcription and translation. The atlas website will feature all the catalogued data, Fekripour said.
So far, coins from the city of Zahedan in Sistan-Balouchestan Province, inscriptions of Ganjnameh in Hamedan Province, inscriptions of Khoosf in South Khorasan Province and inscriptions of Persepolis from Fars Province have been added to the website.
Next stage of the project includes Middle Persian rock inscriptions from the provinces of Fars, Kermanshah, Ardebil, Kohgilouyeh-Boyerahmad and Khorasan Razavi. The atlas website will be updated soon. Address of the site is www.iranepigraphy.ir.
