Categorie aramaiche e categorie iraniche nella logografia partica (con un excursus sulla polemica Altheim-Henning)

This article investigates the enigmatic transition from the Aramaic script and lingua franca of the late Achaemenid period (4th century B.C.) to Middle Iranian heterography. The focus of the study is, specifically, the Paleo-Parthian script (2nd century BC – 2nd century CE), which was used by the Arsacid rulers prior to the rise of the Sassanids in Iran. After describing how this heterography worked, the article discusses the most widely accepted theories regarding its origins (Lentz, Toll, Skjærvø), which are then subjected to rigorous critical analysis. We then put forward a new hypothesis regarding the origin of logograms; we assume that a deliberate comparison between nominal and verbal categories in Aramaic was not directly involved in the creation of logograms by the scribes. Rather, the logograms were the result of a gradual extraction from specific pragmatic contexts linked to the redaction of documents in the chancelleries of the King of Kings and satraps during the Achaemenid era. The work is accompanied by an excursus on the fierce, two-decade-long controversy between Franz Altheim and Walter B. Henning regarding the origins of heterography in Iran.