Modern Persian language or farsi, is the language of modern Iran and is also widely spoken in Afghanistan. It has its origins in the language of the Achaemenids or 'Old Persian', which was the official language of the Achaemenids and one of several Iranian languages spoken at the time. Other languages included Avestan, which was spoken in northeastern Iran and Median, or the language of the Medes, which is mentioned by the Greek historian Herodotus.

OLD PERSIAN

'Old Persian' dates back to the 6th century BC and was spoken until the 3rd century BC. It was closely related to Sanskrit and was the official langauge of the Achaemenid empire. Used mostly by the Achaemenid court and nobility, its use was localized to southwestern Persia, or Persis.

It is now belived that the Old Persian cuneiform script was invented on the instructions of the Achaemenid King, Darius I, (521 - 486BC), and is preserved on rock reliefs, on inscriptions at Pasargadae and Persepolis, on gold, silver and stone tablets, on a number of seals and calcite vases and on only a very small number of clay tablets. The longest and most widely known example of Old Persia cuneiform is Darius's inscription on the rock at Behistun. Its use was not widely adopted, Elamite and Aramaic continued to be used for everyday court and administrative purposes. Old Persian cuneiform stopped being used after the reign of Artaxerxes III (358 - 338 BC).

Knowledge of this language was completely lost until 1845 when Henry Rawlinson deciphered this syllabic type of cuneiform and found that it was not a direct descendent of earlier Sumerian and Akkadian cuneiform but a simplication of Babylonian cuneiform.

Written left to right, it consisted of thirty-six characters, thirty three syllables and three vowels (a, i, u). The syllables consist of a consonant and one of the three vowels. In addition, there are five ideograms for commonly used words: Ahuramazda, King, Country (in two forms) and Earth, as well as a single slanting wedge which is used as a word divider and numerical symbols.

DownLoad Old Persian Font

MIDDLE PERSIAN

'Middle Persian' was strongly influenced by Parthian and like 'Old Persian', spoken in southwestern Iran. Other langauges of the time included Parthian, which was spoken in the north, Khwarezmian, Sogdian and Saka which were spoken in southeast.
'Middle Persian' was used up until the 9th century AD, two centuries after the introduction of Arabic.

MODERN PERSIAN

'Modern Persian' is the most widely spoken member of the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian languages, a subfamily of the Indo-European languages. It is in many ways a continuation of 'Middle Persian', but has many influences from other Iranian languages. 'Modern Persian' uses an expanded form of Arabic writing, introducing letters like ch, p, zh, g, and changing the pronunciation of Arabic zh into "za". It includes a large selection of Arabic words.
The grammar of 'Modern Persian' is simpler than the one of 'Middle Persian' which turn was simpler than 'Old Persian'. Most of the inflectional systems are no longer used.

CUNEIFORM

The earliest writing was invented by the Sumerians in the third milleniums B.C. The pictographic or "picture writing" was not dissimilar to Egyptian hieroglyphics. Individual words were represented by over 600 symbols that resembled the object in some way .

Sumerian cuneiform developed from pictures into more abstract symbols that used wedge and hook shapes. This style of cuneiform was referred to as "ideographic", entire words or "ideograms" were protrayed.

When the Akkadians who spoke an entirely different language, adapted cuneiform writing they converted it to a 'syllabic' writing system. Individual signs represented syllables rather than entire words.

Cunieform was written on wet clay tablets using a long reed or 'stylus'. Its name is derived from two Latin words meaning "wedge-shaped".

The use of clay tablets allowed the writer to use a simple inexpensive writing tools to make quick impressions. The clay tablet could be reused or baked in a kiln to form a permanent record.

Many of the tablets found by archaeologists have only been preserved because they were baked hard in the fires that destroyed the cities. Attacking armies may have destroyed the cultures but not their archives. The writing and the business and administration dealings of many middle eastern cities have been preserved intact in the dust and their ruins. Alexander's destruction of Persepolis is a good example of this.

The Persians created their own style of cuneiform, adapting it from early cuneiform writing but greatly simplifying it until it represented something closer to an alphabet. This new form was also by the Aramaic consonantal script and consisting of a mixture of syllabic and consonantal signs.

http://www.eee.bham.ac.uk/cuneiform/ University of Birmingham

ARAMAIC

Originally the language of the Aramaeans, it became the language of Semitic peoples throughout the ancient Near East from before 1000BC and later became the common language (lingua franca) of all the Middle East.

By the 8th century B.C. it was the major language from Egypt to Asia Minor to Pakistan. It was the lanaguage of the great Semitic empires of Assyria, Syria, Chaldean, and Babylon and was used throughout Achaemenid Persia.

The returning Jews from their captivity in Babylon, established Aramaic as the vernacular of the Jewish people and is still used by them in the worship. Jesus, his disciples and contemporaries spoke and preached in Aramaic, and parts of the Old Testament and much of the rabbinical literature were written in Aramaic.

Present-day scholars claim that the Aramaic language itself passed through many stages of development:

Old Aramaic	975-700 B.C.
Standard Aramaic	700-200 B.C.
Middle Aramaic	200 B.C.-200 A.D.
Late Aramaic	200-700 A.D.

Aramaic language was the dominate language throughout the Middle East and enjoyed general use until the spread of Greek after Alexander's conquest of the Achaemenid empire in 331 B.C.

Greek traders and cultural instiutions then spread the Greek language from Egypt to China but Aramaic's use still remained amongst the Semitic peoples until it was superseded by Arabic, a sister Semitic tongue, with the Arab conquest in the 7th Century AD.