The Armazi–Serapita inscription, discovered at Armazi near ancient Mtskheta in Georgia and generally dated to the 2nd century CE, is a bilingual funerary inscription written in Greek and the Armazi script, a distinctive Aramaic-derived writing system used in ancient Iberia. The non-Greek version employs numerous Aramaeograms and heterograms, meaning that many of the written Aramaic forms may have functioned as logographic representations of words pronounced in an Iranian language.

The Iranian linguistic identity underlying the Armazi text has long been debated. W. B. Henning observed that its heterographic system does not correspond neatly to either known Parthian or Middle Persian and suggested that the language might represent “Atropatenian Median” (atropatenisches Medisch), an otherwise poorly attested western Middle Iranian language associated with Media Atropatene. The inscription also contains explicitly Iranian elements, including personal names, the title bidaxš, and Iranian vocabulary and grammatical features.

The reconstruction presented here therefore treats the Armazi text provisionally as Middle Median / Atropatenian Median and attempts to recover the Iranian words that may have stood behind its Aramaic heterograms. Parthian and Middle Persian are used as comparative controls, while specifically northwestern and proposed Median developments are preferred where appropriate. Forms such as žan, paryōž, nēw, hužihr, hāwsār, až, and sard are selected on the basis of western Middle Iranian comparison, while uncertain reconstructions such as *mānpat are marked accordingly.

Az Sērapīt, duxt ī Zēwāx ī kasādar,
bidaxš ī Parsmān šāh,
žan ī Yōdmangān ī paryōž,
ud was arwast kird,
mānpat ī Xšēfarnūg šāh,
puhr ī Agrip,
mānpat ī Parsmān šāh.

Wāy, wāy!
Kū parn-uš nē hanjaft;
ud ōwōn nēw ud hužihr būd,
ōwōn kū kēž hāwsār nē būd
až hužihrīft;
ud pad sard wist ud ēw murd.

One sun, four branches.

Thirteen centuries, on the record.

Kurmanji, cut in stone.

A lament, on leather.

Follow the fire.

An alphabet, revived.

The lessons' own examples

Hear it, spoken.

Every book, on one shelf.

Links in the posts

The older tongues.