Parthian Inscriptional

Parthian Inscriptional (also referred to as Arsacid Pahlavi and Pahlawānīg) is a Unicode block containing characters of the official script of the Sassanid Empire.

It is characterized as a consonant written-from-left-to-right alphabet of the semitic type. Its formation finished in the 3-2 century BC, the writing served for the Persian language up to the Arab invasion in Iran. Parthian became the basis for the Avestan phonetic alphabet, which expressed various language concepts of the cult named Zoroastrianism — an Iranian oldest religion about good and evil.

Arsacid Pahlavi is the official alphabet of the Late Assyrian and Ancient Persian chancelleries of the 6th – 4th centuries BC. It was the foundation for most of the national Iranian and Turkic writing systems: Middle Persian, Uighur, Khorezm, Sogdian, Orkhon-Yenisei, etc. The Pahlavi font was used in the Middle Persian language, where translations from the ancient Iranian language “Avesta” (the Bible of the Zoroastrians) and commentaries to it “Zend” were written in the III-IX centuries. Therefore, the Pahlavi script was also called Phazend. The name “Pahlavi” comes from the eponym of Parthavia (Parthia), a country located southeast of the Caspian Sea.