Tag: Achaemenid

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Books

Jerusalem in the Achaemenid Period

Kim, Jieun. 2016. Jerusalem in the Achaemenid period. Peter Lang AG, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften.

This is the first book to explore the importance of agriculture in relation to the restoration of the Jerusalem temple in the Book of Haggai during the Achaemenid period. Scholars discussing the rebuilding of the temple have mainly focused on the political and social context. Additionally,the missions of Ezra and Nehemiah have been used as a basis for analysing the economy of postexilic Judah. This has, however, understated the wider socio-economic significance of the temple by disregarding the agricultural capacity of Judah.
The Book of Haggai is primarily concerned with agriculture and the temple. This analysis of Haggai includes an examination of the temple’s reconstruction from a historical and economic point of view, with agriculture playing a central role. Archaeological records are examined and show that prized commodities such as olives and grapes were produced in and around Jerusalem in large quantities and exported all over theancient Near East.
This book is intended to shed new light on the value of agriculture for the people of Judah and the whole imperial economy. It also presents a new interpretation of the Book of Haggai and a new perspective on the temple economy in Jerusalem.
Jieun Kim finished her second PhD at the School of Divinity,  University of Edinburgh in November 2013. After receiving her first  PhD from Yonsei University, she taught for several years in Seoul as a lecturer and an assistant professor. She is currently an independent scholar and her next research project will focus on land ownership in the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah.
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Journal

Zoroastrianism in the Levant

Abouzayd, Shafiq (ed.). 2014. Zoroastrianism in the Levant: Proceedings of conferences held in 2010 & 2012. ARAM 26(1).

Table of contents:

Patricia Crone: “Pre-existence in Iran: “Zoroastrians, ex-Christians Mu‘tazilites, and Jews on the human acquisition of bodies”

Oktor Skjærvø & Yaakov Elman: “Concepts of pollution in late Sasanian Iran. Does pollution need stairs, and dose it fill space?”

Maria Macuch: “The case against Mār Abā, the Catholicos, in the light of Sasanian law”

Sara Kuehn: “The dragon fighter: The influence of Zoroastrian ideas on Judaeo-Christian and Islamic iconography”

Geoffrey Herman: “Like a slave before his master: A Persian gesture of deference in Sasanian, Jewish, and Christian sources”

Michał Gawlikowski: “Zoroastrian echoes in the Mithraeum at Hawarte, Syria”

Vicente Dobroruka: “Zoroastrian apocalyptic and Hellenistic political propaganda”

Dan D.Y. Shapira: “Pahlavi Fire, Bundahishn 18”

Matteo Compareti: “The representation of Zoroastrian divinities in late Sasanian art and their description according to Avestan literature”

Bahman Moradian: “The day of Mihr, the month of Mihr and the ceremony of Mihrized in Yazd”

Ezio Albrile: “Hypnotica Iranica: Zoroastrian ecstasy in the West”

Andrew D. Magnusson: “On the origins of the prophet Muhammad’s charter to the family of Salman Al-Farisi”

Predrag Bukovec: “The soul’s judgement in Mandaeism: Iranian influences on Mandaean afterlife”

Daphna Arbel: “On human’s elevation, hubris, and fall from glory. Traditions of Yima/Jamshid and Enochmetatron – an indirect cultural dialogue?”

Vicente Dobroruka: “The order of metals in Daniel 2 and in Persian apocalyptic”

Myriam Wissa: “Pre-Islamic topos in Dhu’l-Nūn Al-Misrī’s teaching: A re-assessment of the Egyptian roots of the knowledge of the name of god and their interaction with Zoroastrianism in the Achaemenid period ”

David H. Sick: “The choice of Xerxes: A Zoroastrian interpretation of Herodotus 7.12-18”

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Books

Stylistics of Old Persian Royal Inscriptions

Schmitt, Rüdiger. 2016. Stilistik der altpersischen Inschriften. Versuch einer Annäherung. (Veröffentlichungen Zur Iranistik 79). Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (ÖAW).
The present study makes the first attempt to compile in a systematic manner the figures of speech and other stylistic phenomena attested in the corpus of the Old Persian royal inscriptions. For those texts are different from simple prose in that they show clear traces of a stylization that similarly to using certain words and word forms lend them characteristic features of an artificial language. The phenomena to be treated in that context are presented in transcription according to the author’s text edition (Die altpersischen Inschriften der Achaimeniden, 2009) in form of a list without classifying them according to criteria of sound or those of grammar, lexicon, and syntax. References to comparable phenomena in the related languages (not least also in Avestan) are given only quite rarely in order not to distract the reader’s attention from the Old Persian data. The comparison with Avestan or within the ancient Indo-Iranian languages, i. e. in form of “Comparative Stylistics of Indo-Iranian”, has to be planned only after having finished collecting the evidence of the individual languages in full. Suggesting such a study is one of the intentions of the present book.
Rüdiger Schmitt, from 1979 to his retirement in 2004 Professor of Comparative Indo-European Philology and Indo-Iranian Studies at Saarland University in Saarbrücken; born in Würzburg on June 1, 1939; studies from 1958 to 1965 in Würzburg, Erlangen and Saarbrücken, particularly with Manfred Mayrhofer; after publications on Indo-European poetical language, on the Greek and Armenian languages specialized on the ancient Iranian languages, Old Persian epigraphy and, above all, Iranian personal names.
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Books

History and Culture of the Ancient Near East

DiwanBinder, Carsten, Henning Börm & Andreas Luther (eds.). 2016. Diwan. Untersuchungen zu Geschichte und Kultur des Nahen Ostens und des östlichen Mittelmeerraumes im Altertum. Festschrift für Josef Wiesehöfer zum 65. Geburtstag. Duisburg: Wellem Verlag.

This volume presents a collection of 32 articles contributed by historians, numismatists and scholar of Ancient Near East history and historiography in celebration of Josef Wiesehöfer 65th birthday.

Table of Contents:
Continue reading “History and Culture of the Ancient Near East”
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Events

The Achaemenids and the Imperial Signature

The Achaemenids and the Imperial Signature: Persepolis – Arachosia – Bactria

A lecture by Wouter Henkelman

 

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Books

Dimensions of Yahwism in the Persian Period

Granerod, Gard. 2016. Dimensions of Yahwism in the Persian Period: Studies in the Religion and Society of the Judaean Community at Elephantine . Walter De Gruyter.

The book argues that the Aramaic documents from Elephantine dating to the Achaemenid period offer not only important glimpses of Judaean religion in the Persian period but that the religion of the Judaeans in Elephantine is among the best historically verifiable cases of Persian period Yahwism. The documents have the potential of functioning as an archive that can revise the canonised image of the Judaean religion in the Persian period.

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Events

OPCA 2016: Conference in Assyriology

The Oxford Postgraduate Conference in Assyriology (OPCA) 2016 will take place on April 15th-16th at Wolfson College, Oxford. It will be the fifth annual OPCA. A number of presentations relate to Iranian Studies.

The programme and abstracts are available here.

Source: OPCA 2016 Programme | Oxford Postgraduate Conference in Assyriology

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Articles

Painted plaster and glazed brick fragments from Pasargadae and Persepolis

Aloiz, Emily, Janet G. Douglas & Alexander Nagel. 2016. Painted plaster and glazed brick fragments from Achaemenid Pasargadae and Persepolis, Iran. Heritage Science (4) 3.

A PDF file of the paper is available online.

Continue reading “Painted plaster and glazed brick fragments from Pasargadae and Persepolis”
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Articles

Mehrgān at Persepolis

Bahadori, Ali. 2015.  Persepolitan ceremonies: The case of Mehrgān. Ancient West & East 14. 51–71.

The celebration of the Mehrgān at Persepolis is a hypothesis that has never been discussed in detail. The present paper explores evidence for the presence of the Mithra cult at the Achaemenid court and, consequently, for celebration of the Mehrgān at Persepolis.

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Articles

Achaemenid pottery from Dahan-e Gholaman

Zehbari, Zohreh, Reza Mehr Afarin & Seyyed Rasul Musavi Haji. 2015. Studies on the structural characteristics of Achaemenid pottery from Dahan-e Gholaman. Ancient Near Eastern Studies 52. 217–259.

The Achaemenid site of Dahan-E Gholaman lies 44 km southeast of Zabol, eastern Iran. Recovered archaeological records and evidence, including residential, public, and administrative-religious structures, indicate pre-planned and intense urbanisation. Unfortunately, the pottery from Dahan-E Gholaman has not been paid the attention it is due, even though pottery from the site has been studied. The studies show that innovation and demands on the pottery industry created local types of beakers, jars, jugs, and bowls and so on. Research on the pottery characteristics shows that the potters of this site were skilled in controlling the kiln temperature and were able to produce high quality wares, while various forms were commonly in use at the site.