Persepolis Fortification Archive

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Persepolis tablet.

The Persepolis Fortification Archive, also known as Persepolis Fortification Tablets (PFT, PF), is a collection of cuneiform administrative tablets from the Iranian site of Persepolis dating to 509-494 BC, during the reign of Darius I. They were unearthed from two chambers of the Persepolis Fortification by the archaeological expedition of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, directed by Ernst Herzfeld, between 1933 and 1934. The collection has been on loan from Iran to the Oriental Institute since they were excavated. As of 2006, 2/3 of the collection has been translated and returned to Iran.

1 Description and content
2 Seizure for compensation
3 Further reading
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Description and content

The archive is composed of 30,000 clay tablets (whole or fragmentary), of which 7000 are intelligible and 2100 have been edited and translated by Richard Hallock (1969, 1978). Most of them are written in in a dialect of Elamite only rare people can understand today, but there are texts in Aramaic and Akkadian too. They are mostly records of palace supplies.

A similar group, the Persepolis Treasury Tablets, was found a couple of years later.

[edit] Seizure for compensation

In 2006, the part of the collection still in USA became a center of legal suit when survivors of 1997 suicide bombings in Jerusalem by Hamas filed a suit against Iran because Hamas has links to the country. The collection was proposed as part of the seizure of Iranian assets in the USA. Proceeds from any sale, likely to be in the tens of million dollars, would go to compensate victims of bombings in Jerusalem. Iran and the University of Chicago have appealed the decision, and UNESCO considers the court decision "illegal".^[1]

[edit] Further reading

Hallock, R. (1969): Persepolis Fortification Tablets, Oriental Institute Publications v. 92.
Hallock, R. (1978): "Selected Fortification Texts", in CDAF 18, pp. 109-36.
Stolper, M. (1984): "The Neo-Babylonian Text from the Persepolis Fortification," Journal of Near Eastern Studies 43, pp. 299-310.
Garrison, M; & Cool Root, M (2001): Seals on the Persepolis Fortification Tablets, Volume 1. Images of Heroic Encounter, Oriental Institute Publications, v 11

[edit] References

Dandamaev, M.: "Persepolis Elamite Tablets", in Encyclopaedia Iranica.
Embattled Tablets (Archaeology magazine September/October 2006)
Garrison, M; & Cool Root, M (2001): Seals of the Persepolis Fortification Tablets, vol. I, parte I.
Lewis, D.M. (1990): "Persepolis Fortification Texts", in H. Sancisi-Weerdenburg & A. Kuhrt Achaemenid History IV: Centre and Periphery, Proceedings of the Groningen 1986 Achaemenid History Workshop, pp. 2-6, Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten.