- Date added
-
Oct. 27, 2021, 5:04 a.m.
- Description
- This lines up nicely with Arrian's "barbaric writing." The Persian empire was a huge place, spanning dozens of ethnic groups and languages, but communication across that vast domain was standardized in Aramaic - a language that had emerged from the Arab-Syrian desert at the end of the Bronze Age and spread throughout the region before becoming a language of commerce under the Assyrian Empire. By the time the Persians took over, Aramaic was already the lingua franca for trade in the western half of their Empire and they simply adopted it. Official letters from Persian satraps to the garrisons even within a province that didn't speak aramaic in day to day life, like Egypt, were written in Aramaic. When a royal proclamation like the Behistun Inscription was disseminated to the wider Empire, it was translated into Aramaic. When there was no local writing system to keep records in, as in Bactria, scribes were trained in Aramaic.
