Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2022
Among the Achaemenid inscriptions, DPg has been the topic of several studies since the very beginning of cuneiform studies. The photographs prepared by the DARIOSH (Digital Achaemenid Royal Inscription Open Schema Hypertext) project at L’Orientale University of Naples shed light on some ambiguities of this specific inscription and led to the proposal of a new text edition of DPg. The purpose of this article is to follow the whole history of studies on DPg until today and then propose a new reading of the inscription and a discussion of related issues, including its unique creation formula and orthography.
Photographs used in this paper were taken by Gian Pietro Basello (“L’Orientale” University of Naples) in the framework of the DARIOSH Project directed by Adriano V. Rossi. Thanks are due to the Parseh-Pasargadae (now Parseh) Research Foundation which gave permission to take photographs and provided help in the process (a particular thank you to Hassan Rahsaz).
Special thanks are also due for the assistance of G. P. Basello and A. Rossi, who generously provided the author with the images of DPg kept in the DARIOSH data bank and gave valuable comments on the present paper. The author would like to add that without the help of C. W. Hess, the research assistant at the Institut für Altorientalistik (Freie Universität Berlin), he would not have been able to prepare the text edition. Finally, the author would like to thank Parsa Daneshmand, who gave him helpful suggestions regarding the text edition and commentaries, and Jahan Khalili who read the text carefully and made many corrections in both syntactical and technical aspects.