Old Persian

Old Persian is one of two directly attested Old Iranian languages (the other being Avestan) and is the ancestor of Middle Persian (the language of the Sasanian Empire). Like other Old Iranian languages, it was known to its native speakers as ariya (Iranian). Old Persian is close to Avestan and both languages are highly inflected. Old Persian appears primarily in the inscriptions, clay tablets and seals of the Achaemenid era (c. 600 BCE to 300 BCE). Examples of Old Persian have been found in what is now Iran, Armenia, Bahrain, Iraq, Turkey and Egypt, with the most important attestation by far being the contents of the Behistun Inscription (dated to 522 BCE). In 2007, research into the vast Persepolis Administrative Archives at the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago unearthed Old Persian tablets, which suggest Old Persian was a written language in use for practical recording and not only for royal display. During the peak of the Persian Empire, people in Persia put down their ordinary daily activities in old Persian writing and kept up with the documentation of routine affairs.