Greater Glory: Darius I and Divinity in Achaemenid Royal IdeologyA lecture by Matthew Waters (University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire)
Organised by the Pourdavoud Center
For more information, click on the photo above or follow this link.
Wasmuth, Melanie. 2017. Ägypto-persische Herrscher- und Herrschaftspräsentation in der Achämenidenzeit. Franz Steiner Verlag.
Iconographic and textual treatments are at the centre of Achaemenid studies which identify the Persian Great King as sovereign of Egypt. Melanie Wasmuth declares there are fundamental and wide-spreading sources in Egypt that one possibly could advantage to investigate Persian rulership over Egypt.
At least for Darius I, considering the sources, one can see, a ruler could play four different roles: as a Persian Great King, as an Egyptian pharaoh, as an Egyptian god and as Egypto-Persian ruler. Notably, the combination of two absolute concept of Persian Great King and Egyptian pharaoh into one notion, Egypto-Persian ruler, sheds the lights on strategies of the presentation of dominion and cross-cultural construction of identity. In Persis, the focus is primarily on the representation of the claim to global power as a Persian Great King. However, an Egypto-Persian kingship is propagated in the Achaemenid empire at least since Xerxes and explicitly in the context of the reintegration of Egypt by Artaxerxes III.
There is also an appendix written by Wouter Henkelman entitled “Egyptians in the Persepolis Archives”, available on his page on academia.edu.
Abstract by Yazdan Safaee, based on the German original.
The Legacy of the Ancient Kings. Ctesiphon and the Persian Sources of Islamic Art15.11.2016 to 02.04.2017
Pergamonmuseum
How did Islamic cultures and Islamic art arise? Where do their roots lie? Like the Islamic religion itself, Islamic art also built on its predecessors in the Middle East. Focussing on Ctesiphon, a vast landscape of ruins south of Baghdad, this exhibition is devoted to the Persian legacy inherited by Islam.
Dominated by the monumental vaulted hall of the royal palace, the Taq-e Kesra, the city today is an emblem of the grandeur and downfall of the mighty Sassanid empire, a great power in ancient Persia about which little is known today. For centuries it competed with Rome and Byzantium. In the 7th century CE, however, the conquests by the Arab armies fundamentally changed the political balance of power. Culturally, too, a transformation took place – “Islamic art” was born. But had everything really changed?
Waerzeggers, Caroline. 2015. Babylonian Kingship in the Persian Period: Performance and Reception. In J. Stökl & C. Waerzeggers (eds.), Exile and Return: The Babylonian Context, 181-222. Berlin: De Gruyter.
The Persian conquest of Babylon set in motion a chain of events that eventually led to the partial return of Judah’s exilic community and to the rebuilding of the temple of Jerusalem. Despite Cyrus’ prominent role in the biblical narrative about these events – and despite the historical reality of Yehud’s place within the Persian Empire – the Hebrew Bible constructs the context of the return as a kingless arena which required a profound reworking and re-interpretation of the traditional alignments between the Davidic king and Yahweh.¹ In this paper, I will contextualize these reflections by asking how Babylonian audiences responded to their loss of indigenous kingship following the Persian conquest – for, even though the institution of ‘King of Babylon’ with its rituals and symbols survived into the Persian period, there is evidence of profound change during the Empire’s two hundred years of existence. After an introduction, the first part of this paper deals with contemporary responses to Persian rule in Babylonia; the second part moves on to a discussion of the reception of Persian period kingship by later generations of Babylonians.
Truschke, Audrey. 2014. Review of Afzar Moin: The millennial sovereign: Sacred kingship and sainthood in Islam. New York: Columbia University Press. International Journal of Middle East Studies 46. 809–842.
The Millennial Sovereign recovers a shared world of sacred kingship that pervaded India, Iran, and Central Asia in early modernity. A. Azfar Moin argues that a Timurid-based social dispensation produced a particular type of sovereignty in which a ruler promoted his political claims largely through embodied spiritual practices.
Read the review here.
I found the work of Brisch inspiring and guiding, when I was researching the theme of ‘Iranian kingship’ in St Andrews.
Brisch, Nicole. 2013. Of gods and kings. Religion Compass 7(2). 37–46.
Read the article here.
I want to express my gratitude to all who came to St Andrews for the workshop. Your presence, the excellent contributions and the stimulating discussions all made the workshop a wonderful success. Thank you.As we have seen, St Andrews is the right place for this type of workshop, and the Institute of Iranian Studies has proven this a number of times. Let’s hope we can keep up this work and turn it into a tradition. Of course, none of this would have been possible without the support of the Sattaripour Foundation, BIPS, School of History and School of Classics.This interdisciplinary workshop, organised by the Institute of Iranian Studies (University of St Andrews), seeks to investigate and re-examine intersections between religious ideology and sovereignty in pre-Islamic Iran.
Date: June 12–13, 2014
Convener: Arash Zeini
Sponsors: BIPS, IIS, SoH and SAIMS
For more information, see the workshop’s website.
3. The return of the Avesta
It has been argued that the adoption of the Zoroastrian religious world view by the Sasanians was instrumental in maintaining the nobility’s loyalty to the goals of the empire. Most arguments in favour of this view, however, derive from examinations of source material dating from the early Islamic era. This lecture will revisit the pertinent arguments and further discuss previously unexplored textual material.
Speaker: Arash Zeini
Where: University of St Andrews, School of Classics, Swallowgate, S11.
When: 14 May 2014, 17:30
2. The Sasanian Empire and religious authority: The case of Zoroastrianism
As one of the major political and economic powers in the region, the Sasanian Empire (224–651 CE) elevated Zoroastrianism to the dominant religious and cultural force within its polity, bringing to the foreground the question of the interaction between religion and sovereignty in the Sasanian era. By providing an historical overview this lecture highlights the dynamics between political and religious authority during the Sasanian era.
Speaker: Arash Zeini
Where: University of St Andrews, School of Classics, Swallowgate, S11.
When: 07 May 2014, 17:30