The Parchments of Avroman (or Awraman) are three

parchment Parchment is a writing material made from specially prepared untanned skins of animals—primarily sheep, calves, and goats. It has been used as a writing medium for over two millennia. Vellum is a finer quality parchment made from the skins o ...

documents, found in 1909 in a cave in the

Hawraman Avroman or Hawraman, ( ku, هه‌ورامان, translit=Hewraman, fa, اورامان) is a mountainous region located within the provinces of Kurdistan and Kermanshah in western Iran and in north-eastern Kurdistan Region in Iraq. The main part o ...

region of Iranian

Kurdistan Kurdistan ( ku, کوردستان ,Kurdistan ; lit. "land of the Kurds") or Greater Kurdistan is a roughly defined geo-cultural territory in Western Asia wherein the Kurds form a prominent majority population and the Kurdish culture, languages ...

. They were found in Tang-i Var, Kuh-e Salan Mountain, near the village of Shahr Hawraman. The documents were found in a sealed jar by a villager, and then sent to London in October 1913. The documents date from 88/87 BC to 33 AD, with two written in

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

and one in Parthian. They document the sale of a vineyard and other land, and include the names of Pātaspak, son of Tīrēn and Awīl, son of Baænīn. They were translated by

philologist Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as th ...

Ellis H. Minns and published in the ''Journal of Hellenic Studies''.

References

1st-century manuscripts 1st-century BC manuscripts Archaeological discoveries in Iran 1909 in Iran Parthian language Greek manuscripts {{Archaeology-stub