Friday, March 10, 2023

A tribe Parnaki is attested in Iron Age Assyrian texts (Esarhadon period) in North East of modern Iraq.

 A tribe Parnaki is attested in Iron Age Assyrian texts (Esarhadon period) in North East of modern Iraq. This tribal name is remarkable because the name P'arnak (Փառնակ) is present in the Khorenatsi's list of patriarchs. It can be found also in toponyms. Kusti-Parnes in Artsakh and P'arnac' in Sasun region. Also Parnatun. It's not granted that all this terms derive from the same origin. Nevertheless it's another example when we see that terms that appear in Khorenatsi are not simply random names. Or names that appear after Achaemenid empire.

There is no much doubt that Pharnacids in Phrygian satrapy or probably Pharnaces in Pontic kingdom derive their name from Achaemenid influence. But this tribe's example also shows that some of this terms were already present in the vicinity of historic Armenia before Persian rule. It's even possible that some offshoots of this Parnaki tribe became rulers in Achaemenid period.
The name P'arnak is usually derived from the Iranian word farnah meaning glory. It's remarkable that the closest form is the Ossetian and the reconstructed Scythian *farna. In Armenian the Iranian [f] was rendered as p' փ։
I crushed the wicked Parnaki, who live in the land Tīl-Aššurri, which is called Pittānu in the language of the people of the land Meḫrānu.

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