From Kartīr to Shahpuhr I

Abstract

In the last number of this Journal (LVII, No. 2 [April, 1940], 197-228) a complete translation of the new Kartir inscription from the Kaabah of Zoroaster with an introduction, notes, and many readings was made public. After that was in print, a translation into German, made in Persia by Dr. W. Eilers for Dr. Erich Schmidt, was laid before the writer. Similarly, a little later, a transcription of the Kartir and a tentative and incomplete translation of the trilingual Shahpuhr inscription, the latter chiefly from the Greek, all made in the same way by Dr. Eilers, have come to hand. The writer is grateful to have these, but, as in the case of the Kartir, he has made and is revising his own readings and translations without reference to Dr. Eilers' work. To publish in any large way and to criticize in public this work of Dr. Eilers, made for his own and Dr. Schmidt's private use, would be unfair. Dr. Eilers would probably want to amend much before publication. The only use which shall here be made of that work will be to give Dr. Eilers credit for any readings which seem to this writer better than his own. For the present we can note only one such case. On page 227, for Kartir's lines 15-16, this writer did not stop to consider what might be the explanation of the sixfold multiplication of rtpsak in the year. Hence, & la Henning and Eilers (Gottingen school), we note: for gas, Sprengling, "throne (altar?)"! Correct, Eilers, the six great annual festivals, for which the uninitiated reader may see Jackson-Gray, GIPh, II, 676 f. (cf. Christensen, L'Iran sous les Sassanides, pp. 164 f., cf. p. 158). This writer should have seen the connection but did not. Given a little more time he might have, but he is, above all, determined to bring out as soon as possible for use and for criticism a preliminary reading of this highly important historical material in the sense indicated by the Kartir article (pp. 201 ff. and 227 f.). With the Kartir material references to Shahpuhr KZ (ibid., p. 202) and a translation of the first four words (p. 203) have been set forth. That the Shahpuhr inscription cannot with all the data of its threefold form be made public here all at once will be perfectly intelligible to those who are conversant with such matters. In this number little more than a beginning can be made. In the first place, it must be stated that, what appeared to be the beginning of the Sasanian Middle Persian inscription, as first published in this Journal (LIII, No. 2 [January, 1937], 126-44), is not the true beginning at all. The Parthian and the Greek make it perfectly clear that exactly one more line must have preceded what was read there as line 1. With this much established it is easy to see in the photograph itself the evidence for the be-