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Shapur's shooting

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

D. N. MacKenzie
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Extract

The Department of Western Asiatic Antiquities of the British Museum has in its collections an inscribed plaque (BM 136772) which is intriguing for bearing not one but one and a half inscriptions, for being almost perfectly legible, and yet for having no obvious purpose. There is no information about its provenance (the plaque was in a European private collection for some considerable time) other than that it is said to have come, indirectly, from Iran. Of this there can be little doubt, as we shall see. The plaque is of sheet silver, roughly rectangular, and measures approximately 13 · 5 cm. in width and 14 · 5 cm. in length. At some time it has been folded in half both ways, leaving a horizontal crack across the middle. Another crack runs across the bottom right-hand corner. It is possible to give these orientations because of the 21 lines of writing which, from their division, were incised in the plate after it acquired its present shape. The writing is ‘inscriptional’ Parthian. The first 14 lines bear a close copy of the corresponding version of the rock inscription of Shapur I at Ḥāǰīābād (by Persepolis), and 11. 15–21, probably by another hand, contain a repetition of the beginning of this. But this is by no means to say all.

Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 41 , Issue 3 , October 1978 , pp. 499 - 511
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1978

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References

1 Nyberg, H. S., ‘Hāǰǰīābād-inskriften’, in Øat og Vest: avhandlinger tilegnede Arthur Christensen, KØbenhavn, 1945, 62–74Google Scholar (hereafter ‘HI’). W. B. Henning suggested two minor corrections to the reading of the Parthian version, ‘Mitteliranisch’, Handbuch der Orientalistik, I, IV, Iranistik, 1, p. 43, n.Google Scholar 2. Nyberg included the texts in his Manual of Pahlavi, I, Wiesbaden 1964, 122–3Google Scholar (hereafter Mn., 1), but his final understanding of the texts can only be found scattered under several entries in the glossary, Manual, II, 1974.Google Scholar Meanwhile O. Klíma had contributed some important notes, ‘Etliche Bemerkungen zur Interpretation der Inschriften von Hāǰǰīābād’, I, Archiv Orientální, XXXVI, 1, 1968, 19–23Google Scholar; II, idem, XXXVII, 2, 1969, 194–8.

2 See my ‘Notes on the transcription of Pahlavi’, BSOAS, XXX, 1, 1967, 17–29.Google Scholar

3 Klíma, O., ‘Der Ausdruek dast nēv in der sassanidischen Inschrift von Hāǰǰīābād’, Archiv Orientální, XXXIX, 3, 1971, 260–7Google Scholar, actually quotes (p. 266) a χειρόχρηστος ‘handfertig, geübt, tüchtig mit der Hand’, but does not draw the obvious conclusion. His analysis of dast nēv as a nominal sentence, and also his separation of ṬB from a Book Pahlavi ‘Pseudo-heterogramm’ *tag, are unacceptable.

4 On the unknown word written nndknntnn, v. Klíma, , art. cit., 22 f.Google Scholar (whose own correct translation of the Pahl. Yasna 57.28 removes its relevance). Among many possible readings there is no support whatever for Nyberg's vindak ‘shot’, v. Pers. note 5 ŠDYTN above, and vitav is an impossible reading of *wtw′—such a word, say < *wi-tawa(h)-, would necessarily be written *w(y)twb′.

5 A note from me to this effect accounts for the entry ‘LḤw in Gignoux, , Glossaire, 49.Google Scholar

6 Gignoux, , Glossaire, 49Google Scholar, ‘LYN ō-n ‘à eux’ is thus doubly wrong.

7 Differing from Gropp in only two words: see notes to 5, 6.

8 Gignoux, Wrongly, Glossaire, 46, s.v., de sorte que’.Google Scholar