Hunara: Journal of Ancient Iranian Arts and History

Abstract The Indo-European verbal root ^*peh₂- “to protect, guard; to graze, tend (livestock)” is represented in Armenian through native developments such as ^*ph₂-tēr “father” > hayr, ^*h₃eu̯i-peh₂- “sheep-herder” > hoviw (instrumental hovu-a-w), ^*peh2-i̯e- > hayim “to look, gaze on, observe, watch”, and ^*peh₂-tro- > hawr-an “flock, sheepfold”. It is also reflected in numerous words and personal names borrowed from Iranian sources, e.g. apat “inhabited/cultivated place”, darapan “porter, doorkeeper”, hpatak “subject, vassal”, šahap “vice-roy, governor, mayor”, pa(r)hem “to guard, preserve, keep”, pahapan “keeper, guard, watchman”, etc. This article attempts to present the corpus of such words in a concise form, supplemented with etymological notes. Special attention is devoted, on the one hand, to terms for pahanord, pahapan, pahpanak, grapanak—amulets or magical protective objects—and, on the other hand, to the etymology of pay/payn, the name of a protective spirit.

Abstract The Silk Road, as the most famous trade route in the ancient world, has always attracted considerable attention from researchers. Economics and commerce are the main subjects of most research on the Silk Road. However, along this long route, not only were goods and wealth exchanged, but culture, language, and even religion among different peoples also interacted and influenced each other. In the third volume of A History of Zoroastrianism, Mary Boyce and Franz Grenet refer to the myth of Zoroaster among the priests of the Temple of Atargatis at Mabug. According to this legend, Zoroaster, with the help of a Thracian magician named Orpheus, succeeds in repelling an evil and annoying spirit that lives in the forests around Mabug. While Boyce and Grenet trace the origins of this legend to the period of Achaemenid rule in Syria, the most important document in this regard is The Apology of Pseudo-Meliton from the sixth or seventh century AD; that is, almost a thousand years after the fall of the Achaemenids. In addition, another source that can be considered the influence of Zoroastrian beliefs in Mabug is De Dea Syria by Lucian of Samosata, which was written in the second century AD, almost five hundred years after the fall of the Achaemenids. This time gap seriously challenges Boyce and Grenet’s view. On the other hand, considering that the Silk Road flourished and passed through Mabug at the time when both sources were composed, and also due to the proximity of this city to the Iranian border, the present study shows that the origin of this legend should be traced via the Silk Road.

Abstract This article presents a comprehensive reconstruction of the origin of the toponym Zangezur, based on evidence from Sasanian sigillography, Armenian toponymy, historical hydronymy, and comparative-historical linguistics. The point of departure is a Sasanian administrative bulla of the sixth century CE, in which the toponym Marz-ī Zangāvan is attested for the first time as an independent Sasanian administrative-territorial unit. This form constitutes the earliest known written attestation of the component Zang- in the South Caucasus region.
The article proposes a new interpretation of the toponym Marz-ī Zangāvan. On the basis of historical-geographical and toponymic evidence, it is argued that Zangāvan originally functioned as a hydronym—the name of the largest river of historical Zangezur, known in the Armenian tradition as the Vorotan. Historical sources attest several names for this river system (Vorotan, Vorot, Orot, Barkušat (var. Bargušad), Bazarçay (^*Basarçay), Rut, Urud, etc.), testifying to the long coexistence of diverse linguistic traditions in the naming of this waterway. Among the Iranian parallels, particular significance attaches to the hydronym Āb-e Zangāvan (also known as Rūdkhāneh-ye Čam Zangavān or Rūd-e Pīvanān) in Ilam Province, Western Iran, demonstrating that the form Zangāvan genuinely functioned in the Iranian tradition as a river name.
The second part of the study is devoted to the reconstruction of the Armenian proto-form Zang-i jor (“the gorge of sound”/“ringing gorge”) and the analysis of its subsequent Persian administrative adaptation ^*Zang-e zūr, as well as the later Turkic adaptation Zəngəzur (var. Zangazur-which is a Persian distorted or reinterpreted form!). The proposed reconstruction is the first to unite evidence from sigillography, historical hydronymy, Armenian word-formation patterns, and Persian and Turkic administrative traditions into a unified explanatory system for the origin of the toponym.

Abstract Hanashur, Sarmak, and Dohuk are villages in the Tasuj Rural District, in Dashti County, Bushehr Province. The Hanashuri, Sarmaki, and Dohuki dialects are varieties of the standard Persian language in Bushehr Province, south of Iran. This study is an etymological analysis of twenty words related to crafts spoken in the dialects in question. To conduct this research, ten speakers over fifty years of age and two young, literate speakers were interviewed. Their speech was recorded phonetically, and a linguistic corpus was developed using field and descriptive-analytical methods and desk research. These methods, combined with IPA transcription, were employed to collect and analyse the data. This study offers the etymology of twenty endangered words. Evidence shows that these varieties are from the southwestern Iranian language family and are remnants of one of the ancient Persian languages; they are related to other modern Iranian languages and dialects across the ancient, middle, and new historical periods. The vocabularies of these dialects have historically undergone phonetic changes, phonological processes (especially shift and deletion), and morphological and semantic changes. Furthermore, these dialects are more similar to Middle Persian in terms of word similarity and roots, while in terms of the absence of ergative features in their grammar, they resemble Old Persian.