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Новооткрытые среднеперсидские надписи амаргара Дариуша в Дербенте
Until recently, 32 Middle Persian inscriptions documenting the construction of the Derbent defensive complex and dating from the very end of the 560s. AD were known. Now the corpus of the Middle Persian inscriptions of Derbent has been replenished with three more inscriptions - No. 33, 34 and 35, opened by the authors in 2016, 2021 and 2022, respectively. Inscription No. 33 is located between towers No. 18 and No. 19 of the northern city defensive wall in the central part of the curtain. It has poor preservation. But, nevertheless, its text is restored from the preserved fragments of letters and by analogy with other inscriptions similar in content. The inscription is three-line, vertical. Reconstructible text: [Da]r[iuš ī] Ā[durbādagān] ām[ārgar]. Inscription No. 34 is located between towers No. 14 and No. 15 of the northern wall. The inscription is vertical, three-line, separate letters and parts of letters are preserved, and its text is reconstructed according to the surviving letters and analogies with other inscriptions. Its text reads: Dari[u]š ī [Ādurbādag]ān ām[ā]rgar. Inscription No. 35 is located on tower No. 36 of the north wall. The inscription is also vertical, three-line, and has satisfactory preservation and similar content.
The inscriptions are composed on behalf of āmārgar – a high official, chief financier and tax inspector of the vast Adurbadagan area, which during the reign of shahanshah Khosrow I Anushirvan (531-579) included not only Adurbadagan proper, but all the Caucasian possessions of Sasanian Iran up to Derbent. The newly discovered inscriptions belong to the group 1, subgroup b of the Middle Persian inscriptions of Derbent, which represents the inscriptions of āmārgar Dariush. Now 20 (out of 35) inscriptions compiled on his behalf are already known, and all of them are carved on the northern wall of the city, where a total of 25 inscriptions are located.