ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses what precedes can help one to better understand the gnoseological network in which one should place Achaemenid studies at the turn of World War II. Ilya Gershevitch formulated his vision of the relationship between Elamite and Old Persian in the practice of the Achaemenid chancellery. Gershevitch's ideas about the functioning of the Achaemenid chancellery entailed a series of consequences, the first of which related to the main historic question from which he had started, that is, the date of the introduction of Old Persian writing. Notwithstanding the fact that Gershevitch was one of the scholars more interested in the interactions between Elamite-speaking and Irano-speaking peoples in Achaemenid Iran, his interests never went beyond a technical linguistic approach. A series of articles by Pierre de Miroschedji (1982; 1985; 1990) lay the foundations for the denial of the formation of a Persian identity as a linear development from an alleged Indo-Iranian phase to the Achaemenid ideology.
