TURKOLOJI

ACHAEMENID ELAMITE TEXT by KING XERXES

(Chapter 21, Case 4)

"God (Ahuramazda) Created... the Heaven..."

The Royal Achaemenid Elamite (and the Achaemenid Aramaic) were the official languages of the Achaemenid royalty of the Persian Empire. According to Prof. Ghirshman, "Out of several thousand tablets found in the archives at Persepolis, not one was written in Persian, very few in Aramaic, and most in Elamite" (GhirIR 164).

The opening words of the The Royal Elamite text below (one of the 23 cases we have analyzed), transcribed by Herbert H. Paper from its original cuneiform symbols, and deciphered by us in Turkish, is almost identical to the opening words of the Genesis: "In the beginning God created the heaven...":

^dna-ap ir-šá-ir-ra ^dura-maš-da ak-ka ^hmu-ru-un hi be-iš-da ak-ka ^dki-ik hu-ib-be be-iš-da ak-ka ^vruhMEš-ir-ra-ir be-iš-da ak-ka ši-ya-ti-iš be-iš-da ^vruhMEš-ra-na akka ^vik-še-ir-iš-šá ^vsunki-ir hu-ut-taš-da

This Elamite text (1) can be transliterated as:

an-im er-sar-ra (Dingir) Urı-Mazda aka muruun hi beizdı aka ki-ki hube beizdı aka ruhMEŠ-er-ri beizdı aka ziyati iş beizdı ruhMEŠ-eri-na aka Ikzeirişá sunk-ir utıtdı.

or:

an-im er-sar-ı (Tingri) Urı-Mazda o-ki meraan-ı bezedi, o-ki kök-i hep bezedi, o-ki urıLAR-e-ri bezedi, o-ki ziyade-eş bezedi urıLAR-eri-ne, o-ki Hızır-Şahı) sunuk-er otı(r)tdı.

This obviously Turkish sentence translates, in the order of the Elamite syntax, as:

"The (hero-) lord of gods, (god) Ahuramazda, who the pastures created (designed), who the heaven wholly created (adorned), who the man-heroes (lit., hero-man of the males) cre-ated (designed), who much mates created (designed) for His man-heroes, (and) who made Xerxes sit (as) king-hero on the throne."

which in smoother English becomes:

"The (hero-) lord of gods, Ahuramazda, who created the pastures, who created the heaven, who created the man/men and (then) many mates for His man/men, (and) who made Xerxes king-hero."

or possibly, with the last ak-ka transliterated as agga/aga "lord":

"The (hero-) lord of gods, Ahuramazda, who created the pastures, who created the heaven, who created the man/men, who (then) created many wives; (and) for His men, (He) made lord (ak-ka) Xerxes king-hero" (2).

Here are some of the more important words in the sentence:

muruun > mera-an "pastures," with Arabic loanword mer'a "pasture," and Persian plural suffix -an. The word mer'a is still a Turkish word.

be-iš-: < Turk. beze- "to adore, to decorate, to design," which is still a living Turkish word. Full word be-iš-da, written as pe-iš-ta by Oriental İnstitute, University of Chicago (3), and translated as "created" with pe- ("to create") as the verb which is shown more accurately as piš-/biš- by Paper. The whole correct phrase is the Turkish beze-di "adored, designed" which involves a meaning more than just creation, rather, "a beautiful design, a beautiful creation." Below, is a religious piece of Turkish poetry written more than eighteen centuries after the Achaemenids by Yunus Emre of Anatolia, one of the world's greatest mystic poets:

Göklere haber oldı yir gök şâdılık toldı / Eydürler Ahmed geldi beze-ndi sekiz uçmak (4)

"Message was heard from the heavens, joy filled the earth and the heaven / They cried:

`Ahmed (the Prophet) came, the eight heavens became adorned.'"

sunki [sunuk]: The cuneiform sunki `king' can be easily read sun-k or sun-uk in which we have a basic Turkish syntax: a verb sun- "to grant; to attract, to draw towards (himself)," and the suffix -ık/-uk/-k which forms nouns and adjectives. Thus, sun-uk "one that grants (land and privileges): (a) granting man" or "one that attracts and draws (men) towards (himself)," thus "leader (of men); lord; king." The older Elamite form sunkik or sunkuk (PapRAE 2.3.3) correlates much better with Turk. sung-uk, where the verb sun- is pronounced with the guttural Turkish `ng' instead of `n.' We have also shown that the Achaemenid Elamite word sunuk appears in the ancient Elamite name of Inshushinak [< Turk. Inçü-sunuk (M. Turk. Yinçü-sunuk) "pearl granter; pearl-like king"], ancient Elamite national god, chief god of Susa (Larousse), the name becoming a surname of many Elamite kings. It also appears as Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian sanga/sangu/sungu [sunug] `temple head, high priest, spiritual leader; king' (KraHBAS 7; SaBA; SagBA); as snk [sunuk], in an early 4th-century B.C. Lycian inscription (Chapter 12); and as snq [sunuq] in an Old Syriac inscription referred to Parthian King Vologeses III (DrijOSI, Text 63/1-2)].

hu-uttaš-da: The final verb, written as hu-ut-taš-ta by Oriental İnstitute, University of Chicago, and normally translated as "made" by Paper, becomes in our translation, with š = t, Turk. otu(r)t-dı which is the causative of the verb otur- "to sit (on the throne)." Thus the Elamite root verb hu-ut-taš- or otuš- becomes otu(r)t- "to cause to sit; to put (on the throne)." The verbal suffix -da/-dı/-tı is the Turkish third person past tense.

It must be remembered that cuneiform signs are not read correctly especially when an unknown language is in question. Sumerologist Prof. Kramer is aware of that when he admits that "Sumerian is still not fully understood and that in time some of the translations will be modified and improved." (KraHBAS, Chap. 15). And he adds: "Hincks discovered (while deciphering) the all important feature of Baby-lonian writing, `polyphony,' that is, one and the same sign could stand for more than one sound or `value'" (KraSUM 16). Herbert H. Paper himself agrees with Prof. Kramer on the phonology of the Elamite inscriptions as he writes: "I must finally mention that the phonological system here described should not be assumed to be completely equivalent to the actual phonemic system of the spoken language, nor should precise phonetic identifications of these reconstructed phonemes be attempted" (PapRAE, Introd., p. 3). As if to clarify this statement, I have discovered, for example, that the phoneme š found in the cuneiform signs can stand for phonemes s, ş(sh), and z (as in zone). Thus, in the Elamite and other languages using the cuneiform system of writing it is vitally important that the cuneiform characters are transliterated into correct sounds. We have discussed this problem in detail in our book, mostly in Chapters 17, 18, 21), and seen that such errors in estimating or finding these true sounds happened almost at every transliterated word. A most significant case that I came across in these transliterations was the case of the phoneme š, already referred to above, which is generally shown to represent the sound sh or s. Both in our (Royal) Elamite and in the Hurrian transliterations, the phoneme š seems also to correspond to the phoneme t in Hurrian word aš-šu-šan-ni "horse attendant" and in the Elamite word Si-iš-ša-an-takma or Si-šaan-takma [Gk. Tritantaechmes (5)]. With replacement of t for š, these words become at-tu-tan-ni, lit., "the holder of the horse," and Sii-taan-takma or Isi-tan-tokma, lit., "from god born (man)," all having Turkish syntax. Especially the second word is fully supported by its Greek form where Tri-tan-taechme < Turk. Tarı-dan-tochma "from god born," definitely shows that the cuneiform š must be t. The words tarı/tanrı and isi are synonyms, both meaning "god, lord, master."

I have observed many more Elamite words which became meaningful with the transliteration of š into t. One of these is the pure Elamite word hi-še (`his name') in which Turkish a-tı "his name" is hidden, where at/ad "name, and -ı, the Turkish possessive and possessive pronominal suffix of the third person.

Thus, we have listed in our book many new values for cuneiform phonemes and signs, amongst which some important ones are: hi- = a-; še = tı; -iš-ša-/-ša- = -ta-; -iš- = -ze-; -ki = -ık/-uk; -da = -dı; kiik = kök, -iš = -şı/-şi(shi).

The major difficulty in the decipherment of the Elamite language lies in the fact that it contains, like the later Ottoman Turkish, many borrowed Persian and Arabic words. In fact, both the Persian and the Babylonian (Akkadian?) versions of the royal inscriptions contain also Turkish words as we have shown in our book. The Achaemenid scribes knew perfectly the three languages in question. For example, in the Babylonian expression, scribe uses the phrase a-šú-šá Kuraaš (PapRAE, 5.10.3, DB 13), translated as "son of Kurash/Cyrus" by Paper, is transliterated by us as aşusı kurash which means means, "his bud, his grafting (is) Kurash," with Turk. aşı "inoculation, grafting; a budding," and -sı "his (her, its)," Turkish possessive (pronominal) suffix. On the other hand, the scribe, most likely an Elamite scholar and indeed a most intriguing person, uses in the Elamite inscription a Turco-Semitic phrase, Kuraš šá-ak-ri, which we read as Kuraš zekhr-i, meaning "the bloom (flower) of Kurash," with Arab. zehr "flower, bloom," and -i, Turkish possessive suffix. In another Elamite text, he uses, for the same expression, the Sumero-Pers. DUMU Ku-ra -na (PapRAE 6.2, DB 40) [Turk. Kuraş-ın tohum-u] "the seed of Kurash," with Pers. dum/tohum "seed, semen," -u/-ı, Turkish possessive suffix of the third person, and -na/-ın, the genitive suffix. In the Persian versian of the same text, the expression is Kuraaš puça which we read as Kurash piç-i "(an) envy (offshoot) of Kurash," where Pers. piç "perplexity, envy" (> Turk. piç "illegitimate child; offshoot"), and -i, Turkish possessive suffix. In all three, Elamite, Babylonian and Persian texts, the grammatical syntax of the word for `the son of' is Turkish: a-šú-šá > a-şı-sı, šá-ak-ri > zakhr-i, dumu > tohum-u, puça > piç-i.

In another example, we have so-called Babylonian word adimuh ("while, up to, as far as") is actualy Turk. o démek "it (is) to say, so, thus, therefore," with Turk o "it; he, she," and de-mek/ti-mek "to say." However, its Elamite equivalent ku-iš (PapRAE 8.3.8) is read by us as the Arab. keza "in the same way, so, likewise."

NOTES:

(1) Translation by Paper: "A great god (is) Ahuramazda who this earth created, who that heaven created, who man created, who happiness created for (lit., of) man, who made Xerxes king" (PapRAE, 7.2.4.1, XPa1). A similar text by Darius from Naksh-i-Rustam (DN) is translated in the same manner, "who made Darius king," where the last word is written as ú-ut-tašda.

(2) We have a similar phrase in the Orkhun inscription of Bilge Kaghan: Özümün ol tengri kağan ol(t)urt-dı "That God of my own set me on the throne (as) emperor" (ErOA, Bilge Kaghan Inscription E-21).

(3) See: www-oi.uchicago.edu/OI/PROJ/ARI/ARI.html.

(4) Timurtaş, F. K., Yunus Emre Divanı, Tercüman 1001 Temel Eser, Istanbul, 1972, P. 90.

(5) PapRAE 3.10.2. According to Herodotus, Tritantaechmes was the governor of Assyria under Cyrus the Great, son of Artabanus (uncle of Xerxes), and one of the six generals of the Persian army (Herod I.192; VII.82