iranicaonline: The Caspians have generally been regarded as a pre-Indo-European, that is, a pre-Iranian, people and have even been identified by some scholars with the Kassites (e.g. , Herzfeld, loc. cit.). Onomastic evidence bearing on this point has now been discovered in Aramaic papyri from Egypt, in which several Caspians (Aram. kspy) are mentioned as belonging to the garrison there; their names, for example, *Bagazušta (see Grelot, pp. 101ff.), are, at least in part, unequivocally Iranian. The Caspians must therefore be considered either an Iranian people or strongly under Iranian cultural influence.
