Cuneiform Translator
Type a word or a name and see it in Old Persian cuneiform, the wedge-stroke script of the Achaemenid kings, carved for Darius I at Behistun around 520 BC and at Persepolis, Susa and Naqsh-e Rustam. The result uses the Unicode Old Persian block, writes each consonant sign with its vowel, separates words with the divider the inscriptions used, and reads back to text approximately.
How to use the cuneiform translator
- Type a name, a word or a sentence. The Old Persian signs appear as you type, with the divider 𐏐 between words.
- Use ordinary spelling: e and i share 𐎡, o and u share 𐎢, c, k and q share 𐎣, and ch, sh, th, kh and ph each get one sign.
- To read cuneiform, switch to cuneiform to text and paste the signs. Shared sounds come back as i, u, k and v.
- Copy the result and paste it anywhere with an Old Persian font; digits and punctuation are not written.
Examples
| Cyrus | 𐎣𐎡𐎽𐎢𐎿 |
| Xerxes | 𐎧𐎡𐎼𐎧𐎡𐎿 |
| king of kings | 𐎣𐎡𐎴𐎥𐏐𐎢𐎳𐏐𐎣𐎡𐎴𐎥𐎿 |
About Old Persian cuneiform
Cuneiform is not one script but a family, and it matters which member this page writes. The oldest, Sumerian, appears in southern Iraq before 3000 BC, and Akkadian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Hittite and Elamite scribes adapted it over the next two thousand years. Those scripts have hundreds of signs, most of them standing for whole syllables or whole words, and a sign can have several readings, so a text in them cannot be produced from an alphabet chart. What this tool writes is Old Persian cuneiform, the youngest and simplest of the family. It was invented, probably under Darius I, for the royal inscriptions of the Achaemenid empire, and it survived only as long as the dynasty, from the late 6th century BC until Alexander. Its wedge-shaped strokes look like its older cousins because they were pressed and carved the same way, but its inventory is a few dozen signs and its principle is nearly alphabetic.
The great monument of the script is at Behistun, in western Iran, where around 520 BC Darius had his account of taking the throne cut into a cliff in three languages, Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian. Other inscriptions stand at Persepolis, Susa, Naqsh-e Rustam and on the Suez canal stelae, and most of them name their author with the same formula: Darius, or Xerxes, the great king, king of kings, in Old Persian xšāyaθiya xšāyaθiyānām. Decipherment began with Georg Friedrich Grotefend, who in 1802 worked out the names of the kings from the repeated title in copies of the Persepolis texts, and was finished by Henry Rawlinson, who climbed the Behistun rock in the 1830s and 1840s to copy the three versions. Because the Old Persian text was the readable one, it became the key to Babylonian and Elamite, and through them to Akkadian and Sumerian, so the small script unlocked the large ones.
Old Persian has 36 phonetic signs. Three are vowels, a 𐎠, i 𐎡 and u 𐎢. The rest are consonants that carry an inherent a, so 𐎭 is da, and a following i or u is written with the vowel sign after it. Eleven consonants have a second form used before u or i, chosen by the sound that follows: ku 𐎤, gu 𐎦, tu 𐎬, du 𐎯, nu 𐎵, mu 𐎸, ru 𐎽, ji 𐎪, di 𐎮, mi 𐎷 and vi 𐎻. Beside the phonetic signs there are eight logograms, whole words written as one sign, for king, country, earth, god and Ahuramazda, a set of numeral signs, and a word divider 𐏐, a slanted wedge placed between words. The script runs left to right. Unicode added it in version 4.1 in 2005 as the Old Persian block at U+103A0 to U+103DF, and this page displays it with Noto Sans Old Persian.
This translator writes English, or any text in Latin letters, with those signs, one sound at a time. Each consonant is followed by its vowel sign, and a consonant with a u or i form takes it, so ku is 𐎤𐎢 and di is 𐎮𐎡. Old Persian had no e or o, so e and i both become 𐎡 and o and u both become 𐎢. c, k and q become 𐎣, ch is 𐎨, f and ph are 𐎳, sh is 𐏁, th is 𐎰, v and w are 𐎺, x and kh are 𐎧, and y is 𐎹 before a vowel and 𐎡 otherwise. Words are separated with the divider 𐏐. "Cyrus" becomes 𐎣𐎡𐎽𐎢𐎿, "Xerxes" 𐎧𐎡𐎼𐎧𐎡𐎿 and "king of kings" 𐎣𐎡𐎴𐎥𐏐𐎢𐎳𐏐𐎣𐎡𐎴𐎥𐎿. Digits and punctuation are dropped, since the script wrote numbers with numeral signs of its own, which the tool does not produce. Decoding runs the table backwards and is approximate: e comes back as i, o as u, c and q as k and w as v, so "Persepolis" reads back as pirsipulis and "Wendy" as vindi, while 𐎨 reads back as ch.
That is the limit to keep in mind. The page writes English spelling in Old Persian signs; it does not translate anything into Old Persian, and the inscriptions spell their own names by Old Persian sounds, not English ones. Darius is written da-a-ra-ya-va-u-ša, 𐎭𐎠𐎼𐎹𐎺𐎢𐏁, on the rock, where this tool, given the English name, writes 𐎭𐎠𐎼𐎡𐎢𐎿. The tool does not use the logograms, and it does not produce Sumerian, Akkadian or Babylonian cuneiform, which is what a museum tablet or the Epic of Gilgamesh is written in. Used with that in mind, it does what a chart of the Old Persian alphabet in a museum does, with copyable text: it shows a name, a word or a motto in the wedges of the script that Darius had cut at Behistun, and that Grotefend and Rawlinson taught the modern world to read.
Frequently asked questions
Is this Sumerian or Babylonian cuneiform?
No. It is Old Persian cuneiform, the script of the Achaemenid royal inscriptions from about 520 BC. Sumerian, Akkadian and Babylonian cuneiform use hundreds of signs standing for syllables and whole words, often with several readings each, and no letter-by-letter tool can write them. Old Persian was invented much later with 36 phonetic signs that work almost like an alphabet, which is why a name can be spelled in it from a chart. The wedges look alike; the systems are not.
Does this translate English into Old Persian?
No. It writes the English, or any Latin-spelled text, you type in Old Persian signs, sound by sound. The language of the inscriptions had its own words and grammar: king of kings is xšāyaθiya xšāyaθiyānām, and Darius is Dārayavauš, written 𐎭𐎠𐎼𐎹𐎺𐎢𐏁. Type the Old Persian word in Latin letters and the tool will write those sounds; type the English name and it writes the English spelling, which is what most people want for a card or a tattoo.
Why do e and o come out as the signs for i and u?
Because Old Persian wrote only three vowels, a, i and u, and had no signs for e or o. The tool follows the usual chart and writes e with the i sign 𐎡 and o with the u sign 𐎢, the nearest sounds the script has. The same merging happens with c, k and q, which all become 𐎣, and with v and w, which share 𐎺. When decoding, the tool cannot tell which letter was typed, and returns i, u, k and v.
What is the slanted wedge 𐏐 between words?
It is the Old Persian word divider, Unicode U+103D0. The inscriptions run the signs together without spaces and use this mark to show where one word ends and the next begins, and the tool does the same, so a phrase comes out as a continuous line of signs with a divider between words rather than a blank gap. The decoder turns each divider back into a space. If you type only one word there is no divider at all.
Why do I see empty boxes instead of wedges?
The Old Persian block was added to Unicode in 2005 and is not in every default font. This page loads Noto Sans Old Persian so the signs display here, but text you copy is only as good as the font on the reading device, and a phone or an app without an Old Persian font shows boxes or question marks. The characters are still there and paste correctly; installing a font that covers the block, such as Noto Sans Old Persian, makes them visible.
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