This is an inscription from Naqsh-i-Rustam known as Res gestae divi Saporis. It is an inscription written in Greek, Persian and Parthian language. Shapur I defeated the romans repeatedly, so that Emperor Philip the Arab had to ask for peace and pay a huge fine, and Emperor Valerian was captured. Multilingualism was practiced in official inscriptions since very early times in middle and near eastern cultures. Important texts as the deeds of kings and Emperors or edicts, as the Rosetta Stone text, or dedications as the one to Augustus in Lepcis (in Latin and Neo-Punic), needed to reach as many people as possible and around the Mediterranean there was never only one language spoken. There are numerous examples of this phenomenon throughout history but also cases of interference between languages and scripts which led to Latin texts written in Greek or vice-versa, or to the use of one language for some parts and another for the rest of the text. We shall see more examples later.
Links
