Meno-Logium Bagistano-Persepolitanum

Since the diversity of the graphic and formal variants of Elamite words and names can be recognised particularly clearly in the renderings of the Old Persian month-names, the present book makes an attempt to study systematically the questions concerning the relations between the Elamite spellings and the Old Iranian original forms for that group of words. They are a practically perfect subject for such an examination owing to the frequency of the attestations and to the great number of the graphic and formal variants, not least, however, owing to the established identity of content, too. Here account must also be taken of the references of the Old Persian forms themselves, which together with the forms attested in Elamite shape must be studied in the greatest possible detail in terms of phonology and morphology, but also dialectology and etymology. Two particular results are of some interest: On the one hand several of these month-names can be understood only as being derived from the name of some festivals, while on the other hand about half of them also show reflexes of non-Persian dialectal forms, so that it must be concluded that these so-called Old Persian month-names were also known to other Iranian tribes alongside the Persians. Extensive indexes make the many formal details discussed here accessible to the reader.