Textiles in aramaic documents from ancient Bactria

Some textile terms are attested in Aramaic documents from Achaemenid Bactria, in particular in three texts belonging to the textual genre classified as ‘list supplies and labels’. This paper focuses on the Aramaic word translated as ‘brocade’ by Naveh and Shaked (2012) and by them firstly interpreted as relating to New Persian sundus ‘brocade, silk wrought with gold or silver’. A consideration of Middle Iranian and Avestan forms (Manichean Middle Persian and Maniachean Sogdian , Phlavi , Avestan sāδaiiaṇtī-) with respect to the Aramaic allows to make some etymological considerations. In particular, it is possible to exclude a connection between the Aramaic and the Iranian name for brocade with the Ancient Greek σινδών ‘fine woven cloth’, which is linked to the Akkadian form saddinu ‘tunic (of linen)’. Given a non-Semitic origin for the Aramaic and related Middle-Iranian words for brocade, a new etymological hypothesis is proposed: indeed it is possible to reconstruct an Old Iranian prototype *sandu-sa- with an u-stem formation from the Old Iranian root *sand- ‘to appear, seem (good)’, enlarged by the Old Iranian suffix -sa-, Old Indian -śa- from Indo-European *-k̂o-, which occurs mostly in the formation of adjectives that express physical characteristics. This reconstruction implies that there might have been an original association between such textile/cloth and the idea of beauty and a pleasing shape.