Caspians
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Caspians" (Greek kaspioi, Aramaic kspy) is a Greek ethnonym applied by Strabo[1] to ancient people dwelling along the southwestern shore of the Caspian Sea, to which they would have given their name.[2] The name is not attested in Old Iranian,[3] nor can it be identified with material culture at any archaeological site in that region.
The Caspians have generally been regarded as a pre-Indo-European people; they have been identified by Ernst Herzfeld with the Kassites,[4] who spoke a language without an identified relationship to any other known tongue and whose origins have long been the subject of debate.
However onomastic evidence bearing on this point has been newly discovered. Aramaic papyri from Egypt have been published by P. Grelot,[5] in which several of the Caspian names are mentioned, and identified under the gentilic כספי kaspai, are in part, etymologically Iranian. The Caspians of the Egyptian papyri must therefore be considered either an Iranian people or strongly under Iranian cultural influence.[3]
In Persian mythology, the Caspian area is the realm of the Devas, intelligent but evil creatures who are killed by Persian heroes such as Rustam. The Shahnameh, or Persian book of kings, states that these Devas from the Caspian area were the ones who taught the early Persians the arts of agriculture, mathematics, writing and astronomy. Iranian artists show the Devas as hairy with sharp teeth and horns, but wearing colourful, beautifully designed kilts.
[edit] References
- ^ Strabo (11.2.15) gives a lost work of Eratosthenes as his source.
- ^ For a Greek ethnonym of the Aegean Sea, however, see the mythic Aegeus.
- ^ a b Rüdiger Schmitt in Encyclopedia Iranica, s.v. "Caspians"
- ^ Herzfeld, The Persian Empire, (Wiesbaden) 1968:195-99, noted by Rüdiger.
- ^ Grelot, “Notes d'onomastique sur les textes araméens d'Egypte,” Semitica 21, 1971, esp. pp. 101-17, noted by Rüdiger.
{Shahnameh of Ferdowsi}
