Skip to main content

Multilingualism in the Achaemenid Empire has become a much-discussed topic in recent years. While Aramaic was long regarded as an official language of the empire, this view has been challenged by scholars, who view Aramaic as one of several languages used in the empire (see J. Tavernier, “The Use of Languages on the Various Levels of Administration in the Achaemenid Empire” [2017] 383–7). Coins issued in the fifth and fourth century B.C.E. in mints along the southwestern coast of Turkey, Phoenicia, Cyprus, Egypt and along the Black Sea Coast show a large variety of legends in various local languages, in which Aramaic plays a significant role. In the debate about multilingualism, such coins have not been considered in any detail, and this paper will look at this evidence.

 

The focus of this paper will be Tarsos, the capital of the Satrapy of Cilicia and one of the most significant mints in the Classical period, where both Greek and Aramaic are used on coins. Many of these inscriptions do refer to the name of the city or the Satrap, but a few also indicate names of deities, added in small letters next to the figures. The rather frequent use of legends on Achaemenid coins is in itself interesting, when compared to Greek coins where a city or ruler name, often abbreviated might appear, but “labelling” figures on coins is an Achaemenid phenomenon.

 

The use of two languages on a single coin (as for example on a few civic issues of Tarsos where the obverse has Aramaic, the reverse a Greek legend) poses the question who was producing these coins and for whom. The denotations of these terms are usually clear, but their connotations are less obvious and clearly dependent on cultural and religious beliefs as well as linguistic knowledge in Cilicia. Considering that this is an official center of the Achaemenid empire, are these two languages used to appeal to recipients of different ethnicity? If so, why and what might this say about their level of literacy? What about the highly Achaemenid iconography accompanied by a Greek inscription that some coins display? The paper will collect the key examples and attempt an interpretation in the wider context of multilingualism in the Achaemenid Empire.