Categories
Articles

Achaemenid Grants of Cities and Lands to Greeks

Kholod, Maxim. 2018. Achaemenid Grants of Cities and Lands to Greeks: The Case of Mentor and Memnon of RhodesGreek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 58, 177-197.

The first grant probably consisted of Ilium, Cebren, and Scepsis and vicinity, while the second was either in the same part of the Troad or in the coastal region between Adramyttium and the Caicus.

Source of the abstract: GRBS.

Categories
Books

War and peace in the Iranian world

Jullien, Florence (ed.). 2018. Guerre et paix dans le monde iranien: revisiter les lieux de rencontre (Cahiers de Studia Iranica, 62). Peeters.

Ce volume est le fruit du programme de recherche «Guerre et paix en monde iranien. Revisiter les lieux de rencontre» (2015-2017) de l’Unité Mixte de Recherche “Mondes iranien et indien” et de conférences données dans le cadre d’un atelier lors du deuxième congrès du Groupement d’Intérêt Scientifique “Moyen-Orient et Mondes musulmans” (juillet 2017).

Table of contents:

  • Wouter F. M. HENKELMAN: Precarious gifts: Achaemenid estates and domains in times of war and peace
  • Christelle JULLIEN: La piété du Perse “barbare”. Modélisations chrétiennes en milieu sassanide
  • Maria SZUPPE: Les “Nôtres” et les “Autres” dans la conquête qezelbāsh du Khorāsān : propagande et Realpolitik dans l’État safavide naissant
  • Rika GYSELEN: Une cohésion culturelle par l’image ? Le concept air-terre-eau chez les artistes sassanides
  • Johnny CHEUNG: Maintenir la paix religieuse entre les membres musulmans et yézidis des tribus kurdes
  • Florence HELLOT-BELLIER: Violence et solidarités en Azerbaïdjan iranien avant et pendant la première guerre mondiale
  • Anne-Sophie VIVIER-MURESAN: Sanctuaires “partagés” : lieux de tensions ou de rencontres ?
  • Florence JULLIEN: Des chrétiens engagés pour la paix entre la Perse et Byzance. L’ambassade du catholicos Īšōʿyahb de Gdala
  • Denis V. VOLKOV: War and Peace in the Other and the Self: Iran through the eyes of Russian spies. The case of Konstantin Smirnov (1877-1938) and Leonid Shebarshin (1935-2012)
  • Jean-Pierre DIGARD: Meurtre, répression et réparation en milieu tribal iranien (Bakhtyâri, 1973-1974)
Categories
Articles Books

Aristotle and Avicenna on the habitability of the Southern Hemisphere

de Blois, François. 2018. Aristotle and Avicenna on the habitability of the Southern Hemisphere. In Sabine Schmidtke (ed.), Near and Middle Eastern Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, 1935-2018, 188-193. Piscataway: Gorgias Press.

The history of Near and Middle Eastern Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study dates back to 1935, and it is the one area of scholarship that has been continuously represented at the Institute ever since. The volume opens with a historical sketch of the study of the Near and Middle East at the Institute. The second part of the volume consists of essays and short studies by IAS scholars, past and present, covering fields such as the ancient Near East and early Islamic history, the Bible and the Qurʾān, Islamic intellectual history within and beyond denominational history, Arabic and other Semitic languages and literatures, Islamic religious and legal practices, law and society, the Islamic West, the Ottoman world, Iranian studies, the modern Middle East, and Islam in the West.

Categories
Books

Designs on the Past: How Hollywood Created the Ancient World

Llewellyn-Jones, Lloyd. 2018. Designs on the past: How Hollywood created the ancient world. Edinburgh University Press.

In the period 1916-1966, during its so-called Golden Age, Hollywood developed a passion for the ancient world and produced many epic movie blockbusters. The studios used every device they could find to wow audiences with the spectacle of antiquity.

In this unique study, Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones shows how Hollywood carefully and skilfully created the popular modern perception of the ancient world. He analyses how producers, art directors, costumiers, publicity agents, movie stars, and inevitably, ‘a cast of thousands’ literally designed and crafted the ancient world from scratch.

This lively book offers a technical as well as a theoretical guide to a much-neglected area of film studies and reception studies that will appeal to anyone working in these disciplines.

Categories
Journal

ANABASIS. STUDIA CLASSICA ET ORIENTALIA Volume 8 (2017)

Volume eight of “Anabasis“, edited by Marek Jan Olbrycht is out now. Several papers and reviews of this issue are related to ancient Iran:

Categories
Articles

A (New) Old Iranian Etymology for Biblical Aramaic אֲדַרְגָּזַר‬‎

Noonan, Benjamin J.  2018. A (new) Old Iranian etymology for Biblical Aramaic אֲדַרְגָּזַר‬‎. Aramaic Studies 16(1): 10 – 19.

Despite the many advances that have taken place in our understanding of the Hebrew Bible’s Old Iranian terminology, the donor terms of several words have remained elusive. Among them is Biblical Aramaic ‮אֲדַרְגָּזַר‬‎ (Dan. 3:2–3). Proposed Old Iranian etymologies for this word suffer from various phonological and semantic difficulties, rendering them unlikely. This paper proposes that Biblical Aramaic ‮אֲדַרְגָּזַר‬‎ is best derived from *ādrangāžara- ‘announcer of financial obligation’, a compound of *ādranga- ‘financial obligation’ and *āžara- ‘announcer’. A derivation from Old Iranian *ādrangāžara- adequately explains the form of Biblical Aramaic ‮אֲדַרְגָּזַר‬‎. Furthermore, this etymology also suits the context well in that ‮אֲדַרְגָּזַר‬‎ occurs just prior to ‮גְּדָבַר‬‎ ‘treasurer’ and therefore falls logically within the progression from political administration to finances to law evident in the lists of Nebuchadnezzar’s officials (Dan. 3:2–3).

Categories
Articles

Archaeological traces of the Achaemenid palaces of Hamadan

Boucharlat, Rémy. 2018. Les traces archéologiques des palais achéménides de HamadanArta 2018.002.

Several tens of incomplete column bases and fragments of column drums and stone capitals testify to the existence of several hypostyle halls on the Hamadan site. The majority of the pieces presented here, often little known, come from Tépé Hegmateneh in the north-east of the modern city center. However, the important excavations on this hill did not reveal any level of Achaemenid times. The buildings of this period must then be sought elsewhere, perhaps on the other nearby hill, Tépé Mosalla.

Categories
Books

Endangered Iranian Languages

Gholami, Saloumeh (ed.). 2018. Endangered Iranian Languages. Reichert Verlag.

This edited volume brings together work by theoretical linguists and field linguists who share a strong commitment to the scientific documentation and investigation of endangered Iranian languages. Five chapters of this volume represent the contributors’ findings on endangered Iranian languages and dialects found both inside Iran as well as in other countries. Their work deals with a variety of topics, ranging from documentation methods to aspects of philology, morphology, phonology, syntax, and dialectology.

Table of contents:

  • Editor’s Preface
  • Mohammad Dabir-Moghadam: Non-Canonical Subject Construction in Endangered Iranian Languages: Further Investigation into the Debates on the Genesis of Ergativity
  • Donald Stilo: Dikin Marāei Tati of Alamut: an undocumented conservative Tati language
  • Brigitte Werner: Forms and Meanings of the Ezafe in Zazaki
  • Jaroslava Obrtelova & Ralhon Sohibnazarbekova: Steps being taken to reverse language shift in the Wakhi language in Tajikistan
  • Saloumeh Gholami: Pronomial clitics in Zoroastrian Dari (Behdīnī) of Kerman

 

Saloumeh Gholami, born 1979, is an Iranologist, author, and research fellow at the Institute of Empirical Linguistics at the Goethe University of Frankfurt. She is the founder of ISEIL (International Symposium on Endangered Iranian Languages) and the leader of various international projects on preservation and documentation of endangered cultural heritage.
Categories
Articles

Dependent Labor and Status in the Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid Periods

Kleber, Kristin. 2018. Dependent Labor and Status in the Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid Periods. In Agnès Garcia-Ventura (ed.), What’s in a name? Terminology related to work force and job categories in the ancient Near East, 441-465, Münster: Ugarit-Verlag.

The article gives an overview of terms for workers, servile dependents and juridical statuses in Babylonia in the first millennium BC with a focus on the Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid periods (ca. 620 – 330 BC).

Categories
Articles

Gender, Personal Adornment, and Costly Signaling in the Iron Age Burials of Hasanlu, Iran

Cifarelli, Megan. 2018. Gender, Personal Adornment, and Costly Signaling in the Iron Age Burials of Hasanlu, Iran. In Saana Svärd and Agnes Garcia-Ventura (eds.), Studying Gender in the Ancient Near East. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns.

This article explores the role played by personal ornaments in the performance of gender, and in the construction and differentiation of gendered identities, in the early Iron Age (Period IVb) burials at Hasanlu, a site in Northwestern Iran. A small site situated beyond the limits of the Assyrian Empire and in the path of the advancing Urartian kingdom, Hasanlu was caught in, and ultimately lost to, the currents of regional conflicts by around 800 BCE. While certainly subjected to the actions of these larger scale entities, material and visual culture of Hasanlu cannot be understood through the application of the same theoretical and methodological approaches that illuminate the artistic and cultural production of hegemonic states.
A careful analysis of the entire cemetery shows that, compared to earlier burials at the site, the artifacts and ornaments in burials dating between an earlier destruction (ca. 1050 BCE) and the catastrophic destruction (ca. 800 BCE) evidence heightened gender differentiation, an influx of artifact types from regions to the north, and the introduction of military equipment and militaristic ornaments to a range of distinct, elite burial assemblages. These new elements can be interpreted as representing an ideological shift towards militarization at the site, but I will argue that the nature of these objects and the contexts in which they are found demand a methodological approach that looks more closely at the interplay between human choices and cultural norms, in the period leading up to Hasanlu’s catastrophic destruction. The shifts in the material culture evidenced in the Period IVb burials are the record of local, dynamic, and gender specific attempts to negotiate status and identity at the site, in an era of internal unease.