This volume contains the text of the five Ehsan and Latifeh Yarshater Distinguished Lectures on Iranian Studies, organized by the Unité Mixte de Recherche 7528 “Mondes iranien et indien”, and delivered in 2018 at the Collègue de France in Paris.
It presents a reflection on the nature of narration in classical Persian literature, its role as a central cultural reference system, and the connection that narrative production may maintain with the different fields of knowledge that govern the human experience of the world. Taking a tale of the Alexander legend as a case study, the volume is structured in five chapters, with five main themes: first, the main tools and values of Persian narration; the link of story-telling with Persian moral reflection; the absorption of scientific notions into the fabric of tales; their gradual assumption of symbolic and mystical values; and finally the circulation of tales in popular literary domains alongside various forms of folk knowledge.
With Peter Groves & John Haldon 12 November 2024, at 5pm & on Zoom Levine Auditorium, Trinity College, University of Oxford
The transitions of the title are those in the life and intellectual development of one of the leading historians of late antiquity and Byzantium. Averil Cameron recounts her working-class origins in North Staffordshire and how she came to read Classics at Oxford and start her research at Glasgow University before moving to London and teaching at King’s College London. Later she was the head of Keble College Oxford at a time of change in the University and its colleges. She played a leading role in projects and organisations even as the flow of books and articles continued, in an array of publications that have been fundamental in shaping the disciplines of late antiquity and Byzantine studies in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Iranian Studies, the subject matter of this bibliographic blog, is not an easily defined field. It seems to me that we often mean the study of Zoroastrianism or ancient Iran, when we post about Iranian Studies. But even if we limit the scope of our work to what we might intellectually call the study of pre-Islamic Iran—due to the historical break in the transmission of Iranian religions—a workable definition still eludes us, as a vast number of pre-Islamic Iranian texts and concepts are only known to us through their Islamic garb. It becomes even more complex to define the field of our activities when we include neighbouring fields. I am painfully aware that it becomes still more complicated, if we consider publications that fall slightly outside of the academic genre. However, my approach was from the start a pragmatic one, as I wanted to be able to continue our work for as long as we could and without too much pressure. I know that we often miss publications by our colleagues from neighbouring disciplines; so, here I want to address one shortcoming that is close to my own interests and heart: two memoirs by eminent scholars of the other late antiquity (bold and provocative claim). One by the well-known Peter Brown (Princeton University), whom I have not had the pleasure to meet, and one by the equally well-known and wonderful Averil Cameron (University of Oxford), whom I have.
The end of the ancient world was long regarded by historians as a time of decadence, decline, and fall. In his career-long engagement with this era, the widely acclaimed and pathbreaking historian Peter Brown has shown, however, that the “neglected half-millennium” now known as late antiquity was in fact crucial to the development of modern Europe and the Middle East. In Journeys of the Mind, Brown recounts his life and work, describing his efforts to recapture the spirit of an age. As he and other scholars opened up the history of the classical world in its last centuries to the wider world of Eurasia and northern Africa, they discovered previously overlooked areas of religious and cultural creativity as well as foundational institution-building. A respect for diversity and outreach to the non-European world, relatively recent concerns in other fields, have been a matter of course for decades among the leading scholars of late antiquity.
The transitions of the title are those in the life and intellectual development of one of the leading historians of late antiquity and Byzantium. Averil Cameron recounts her working-class origins in North Staffordshire and how she came to read Classics at Oxford and start her research at Glasgow University before moving to London and teaching at King’s College London. Later she was the head of Keble College Oxford at a time of change in the University and its colleges. She played a leading role in projects and organisations even as the flow of books and articles continued, in an array of publications that have been fundamental in shaping the disciplines of late antiquity and Byzantine studies in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
The Achaemenid period (550–330 BCE) is rightly seen as one of the most formative periods in Judaism. It is the period in which large portions of the Bible were edited and redacted and others were authored—yet no dedicated interdisciplinary study has been undertaken to present a consistent picture of this decisive time period. This book is dedicated to the study of the touchpoints between Yahwistic communities throughout the Achaemenid empire and the Iranian attributes of the empire that ruled over them for about two centuries. Its approach is fundamentally interdisciplinary. It brings together scholars of Achaemenid history, literature and religion, Iranian linguistics, historians of the Ancient Near East, archeologists, biblical scholars and Semiticists. The goal is to better understand the interchange of ideas, expressions and concepts as well as the experience of historical events between Yahwists and the empire that ruled over them for over two centuries. The book will open up a holisitic perspective on this important era to scholars of a wide variety of fields in the study of Judaism in the Ancient Near East.
The commemorative publication Deciphering the Illegible is dedicated to Dieter Weber, one of the most important scholars in the field of Iranian Studies, who is best known for his work on deciphering original documents in the extremely ambiguous Pahlavi cursive script, which was long considered ‘illegible’. In addition to an appreciation of his research and a bibliography of his publications, the volume contains twenty-eight contributions by renowned experts, reflecting the broad spectrum of the dedicatee’s academic interests and research work. The articles cover a wide range of topics and offer many new insights and original perspectives on religious, linguistic and historical problems, including several editions of previously unpublished texts.
Miguel Ángel Andrés-Toledo: Three Zoroastrian Manuscripts in Armenia
Thomas Benfey: Windādag’s Orders: Ten Unpublished Middle Persian Ostracafrom Chāl Ṭarkhān-ʿEshqābād
Adam Benkato: A Manichaean Remedy for Headaches
Alberto Cantera: The Passive Suffix -ī̆h̆– in Middle Persian
Carlo G. Cereti: From the Zamyād Yašt to the Seventh Book of the Dēnkard, Some Notes on Sistan and Zoroastrian Eschatology
Iris Colditz: How to Make Clarified Butter in Sogdian
Touraj Daryaee: The Owl in the Zoroastrian Tradition: Contribution to Iranian Bestiary I
Desmond Durkin-Meisterernst: Hübschmann and the Middle Iranian Part on Armenian Loanwords
Shervin Farridnejad and Arash Zeini: “Who Will Protect the Cattle”? On Dogs and the Sin of Meat Consumption in Zoroastrianism
Ela Filippone: A Contribution to Pahlavi Lexicography: The Case of ⟨twk(‘)⟩ and ⟨twp(‘)⟩ in the Pahlavi Corpus and their Possible Cognates in Modern Iranian Languages
Philippe Gignoux †: Sur l’argenterie sassanide, relectures et nouveautés
Rika Gyselen: Le y final et le trait final en moyen-perse: le cas des sceaux des administrations territoriales
Almut Hintze: The Pahlavi Psalter in its Historical Context
Philip Huyse: Klimawandel und die spätantike Pest im sasanidischen Reich
Götz König: Notizen zur Überlieferung und zum Gebrauch der Yašts
Pavel B. Lurje and Boris Zheleznyakov: “Let Buyruq Sangun Live Long and be Divinely Blessed” Another Sogdian Dedicatory Inscription
Maria Macuch: Trading with Infidels: A Balancing Act in Zoroastrian Legal Reasoning
Mauro Maggi: Blowing out saṃsāra in Khotan.
Jaime Martínez Porro: A Brief Note on an Avestan Quotation in the Wizī̆rgerd ī̆ Dēnī̆g
Enrico Morano: Fragments from a Sogdian Cosmogonical Manuscript in Manichaean Script.
Antonio Panaino: The ‘starred’ Frawahr and the ‘Katasterization’ of Humanity
Anna-Grethe Rischel: Studies of ‘Watermarks of Technology’ from the Turfan Collection in Berlin
Adriano V. Rossi: Minima Iranica for Dieter
Nikolaus Schindel: Zur Bronzeprägung des Ohrmazd IV.
Martin Schwartz: Mnemonica Iranica
Nicholas Sims-Williams: Further Notes on Sogdians in Khotan
Yutaka Yoshida: Training of Scribes along the Silk Road: A Case from Manichaean Sogdian
Arash Zeini: The Covenant that Binds: Ownership of Life in Late Antique Zoroastrianism
Descriptions of Ancient Persian male homoeroticism come mainly from Classical sources, which, however, seem to present divergent testimonies regarding this practice. Some authors apparently provide proof for its widespread acceptance, whereas others, particularly later authors, emphasized its prohibition. Considering the many difficulties involved in the reconstruction of Persian history through the eyes of classical Greeks and Romans, this article aims to provide a brief overview of the subject, with some clues to the question of the origin, form, and tolerance of same-sex love in Achaemenid Persia. We agree that homoerotic practices were attested and likely accepted at some level in Achaemenid Persia. However, we believe that the evidence available to us is not enough to obtain a full understanding of this phenomenon. It is also stressed that not every Greek or Roman reference to Persian male homoeroticism should be taken at face value, as some are distorted and fictitious or lack firsthand knowledge. Finally, we briefly address the image of eunuchs as sexual partners of Achaemenid kings.
These studies in honor of Robert Rollinger, a scholar who dedicated and dedicates himself to the study of the Ancient Worlds and their Afro-Eurasian entanglements, are published on the occasion of his 60th birthday. Accordingly, the three volumes bring together contributions from friends, colleagues, and students of Robert Rollinger. The themes of these some 80 articles are in line with Rollinger’s research foci. Therefore, there are articles dealing with themes from the field of classical studies and thus the ancient Mediterranean world, the Ancient Near East and Persia as well as Iran. In addition – also in line with Robert Rollinger’s academic activities and his own research interests – there are essays on the history of Austria, in particular on that of Vorarlberg, the honoree’s homeland. Old America is also given thematic consideration. Moreover, the reception of the Ancient Worlds is also addressed.
The work consists of three volumes and is divided into five sections. The first deals with the classical world and its entanglement with the Ancient Near East; the second section focusses on the Ancient Near East. The third section is dedicated to the Iranian world in its imperial longue durée, while the fourth section looks at the global as well as the local history taking into account the perspective of Global and Universal History. Finally, the fifth and last section is dedicated to the dialogue between the ancient world and the present.
