--- Piotr Gasiorowski <
gpiotr@...> wrote:
> On 2007-10-18 13:48, george knysh wrote:
>
> > Somehow I can't imagine Darius or Xerxes thinking
> along these lines.
>
> They didn't have to if they just inherited an
> ethnonym given to the
> ancestors of the Persians in a peripheral
> prehistoric homeland. If they
> indeed lived close to northern Mesopotamia at the
> time they were
> mentioned by the Assyrians, that would have made
> them "borderside Iranians".
****GK: I'll think this through. I was a little
confused by your reference to the Ukrainians, since in
Ukrainian (possibly unlike Polish or Russian)
"Ukraine" doesn't primarily mean "borderland". The
primary (inherited) sense is "country", "province"
(like "going to the country" in English perhaps),
meaning "the area or territory around a center".
Attested for the first time in the Kyivan Chronicle
s.a. 1187, where "Ukraine" was the whole territory of
the Kyivan principality minus the capital city itself.
The mention was made possible because of a political
deal between two dynasts who had divided the land in
this way. "Ukraine" also had secondary senses in Old
(and New) Ukrainian."Borderland" was n.4, appearing
for the first time time s.a.1282 where these
"Ukrainians" happened to be ... Poles(:=))===
But coming back to the Persians. One learns something
new every day (unless I once knew this and forgot,
entirely possible when one clutters up one's mind with
countless "facts").Indeed, there seems to have been a
"land of Parsua" or "Parsuash" south of Urartu and of
the Manneans, repeatedly "conquered" and/or vassalized
by the Assyrians from ca. 834 BCE if not earlier up to
(at least) the time of Essarhaddon. But their
immediate neighbours don't seem to have been Iranians
(unless I've missed something). Do you think that
these were "our" Persians,and that they subsequently
migrated? And what is your take on Francesco's
interesting "rib theory"? ****
>
> Piotr
>
>
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