Abstract
This article is an attempt to solve some problems embraced in the inscription š·r·y*v·u·š on the “Bochumer Bronzedolch” published in Archaeologische Mitteilungen aus Iran, Bd. 22. The present writer interpreted š·r·y as Aramaic šare ‘opening, providing’, from which the whole epigraph may be interpreted as ‘(sword [*snaθya] providing good luck’ or ‘(may this sword) provide good luck!’ But another problem remains, it seems, to be solved as to (1) whether šare was read as the spelling shows, like be-raz-rnaniya (Xerxes' Inscription Persepolis h), or (2) it was turned to its perhaps Old Persian equivalent *višaya-. Of the two entries, the latter seems preferable, because, on the one hand, šare is polysyllabic unlike b (be, bi, …), and on the other, meparaš, lit. ‘discriminatively’ (cf. the Elephantine Papyri ed. by Cowley, No. 17, 1. 3), signifies in Ezra 4: 18 ‘by turning Aramaic original to its Old Persian equivalent’.
