Letters
and notes, dating back to 2002—2003,
of the late Moscow
historian, a specialist in comparative historical linguistics S.V. Kullanda are published. They contain preliminary results
of his study on the Roman period Iranian onomastics
in Tanais, mainly of the 2nd century CE.
S.V. Kullanda’s main assumptions can be summarized
as follows: (1) calculations of the percentages of Greek and Iranian names,
with Sarmatian and non-Sarmatian
ones among the latter, made by some scholars, are not entirely reliable
because they are based on erroneous criteria, while there are phonetic
criteria for separating Scythian names from Sarmatian
ones, or “early” Sarmatian names from much “later”
ones; (2) a large number of Sarmatian
names only appears in the epigraphy of Tanais from
the middle of the 2nd century CE, while the famous inscription of
155 CE provides us with a slightly higher share of Sarmatian
names than it was previously thought; (3) Sarmatian
names are found in the inscriptions of the first half of the 2nd
century CE, and, therefore, onomastic data do not
allow us to assert that the late Sarmatian
destruction of the city, revealed by archaeologists, occurred before 155 CE;
(4) at Tanais, traces of two dialects of the Sarmatian language are registered, one of which, the one
spoken probably by the representatives of the Middle Sarmatian
Culture, is phonetically close to the later Ossetian
language. Commenting on the linguistic observations by S.V. Kullanda, the author of this paper concludes that they
confirmed or, in any case, do not contradict the archaeological data (Тanais, the Sarmatian Cultures of the steppe, the Alan Culture of the
Caucasus). It is hoped that both historians and specialists in Iranian
linguistics will become interested in the problems posed by S.V. Kullanda on the material of the Iranian onomastics of Tanais, and will offer ways and options for their solution.
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