Iranian Color Terms in Aramaic Documents from Ancient Bactria

Even though the foreign transmission of Old Persian lexemes has been examined quite extensively, some terms regarding colors have been neglected and deserve further investigation. This paper examines certain Iranian color terms in Achaemenid Aramaic documents from Ancient Bactria included in Naveh and Shaked’s 2012 publication. Color terms are generally attested in texts marked by the letter C that regard the storage and distribution of goods and commodities as well as their quantity. Apart from the Aramaic counterpart of well attested Old Persian words such as kapaṷtaka- (k-p-u-t-k-) ‘grey/blu’ and kāsakana- (k-a-s-k-i-n) ‘green/blue, lapis-lazuli colored’, these documents contain the ‘first attestation’ of two Iranian color terms, ‘black’ and <’rgwn> ‘purple’, a fact that merits further investigation.