Safaee, Yazdan. 2016. Darius III: The Last Great King. Tehran: Hamisheh.
In comparison to his Macedonian antagonist, Darius III has attracted less attention. The present work is an analysis of the events leading to his reign.The author also deals with problems Darius was facing before Alexander’s attacks, and then the battles between the two armies which led to the end of the Empire.
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Howe, Time & Sabine Müller (eds.). 2016. Folly and Violence in the Court of Alexander the Great and his Successors?. Bochum & Freiburg: Projekt verlag.
The ancient Greco-Roman sources on the history of Alexander III and the Successors contain numerous episodes on diverse forms of Macedonian violence. Viewed from a mocking, moralistic perspective, the Macedonians served as a distorted mirror in which Greeks and Romans asserted their identities. The theme of Macedonian violence was also present in Greek comedy. This volume explores four case studies aiming at the deconstruction of these Greco-Roman topoi. The articles examine images of the Macedonians, Alexander, and Demetrius Poliorcetes analyzing the dimensions and expressions of Greco-Roman bias and its socio-political background.
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Panaino, Antonio. 2016. Zoroastrismo: storia, temi, attualità. Brescia: Morcelliana.
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.
Falk, Harry (ed.). 2015. Kushan histories. Literary sources and selected papers from a symposium at Berlin, December 5 to 7, 2013 (Monographien zur indischen Archäologie, Kunst und Philologie 23). Bremen: Hempen Verlag.
Harry Falks “Kushan Histories“ discusses new research concerning the Kushan dynasty and is based on a Symposium held from December 5-7th, 2013 in Berlin.
The first part of the book introduces the literary sources. After naming the primary sources and translations a wide range of texts presented chronologically gives an overview of the Kushan history in its totality.
In the second part of “Kushan Histories” five papers deal with different religious, military and cultural aspects of the Kushan dynasty: How were the expansion of Buddhism and the dynasty linked to each other and which role did Zoroastrianism play among the Kushans? How can new geographical perspectives prove the former existence of a military camp of the Kushans north of the Bactra oasis? Which historical data regarding Kanishka’s conquest of India can be drawn from a Bactrian inscription and what did the female deity Nana mean to the Kushans?
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Khatchadourian, Lori. 2016. Imperial Matter: Ancient Persia and the Archaeology of Empires. Oakland: University of California Press.
What is the role of the material world in shaping the tensions and paradoxes of imperial sovereignty? Scholars have long shed light on the complex processes of conquest, extraction, and colonialism under imperial rule. But imperialism has usually been cast as an exclusively human drama, one in which the world of matter does not play an active role. Lori Khatchadourian argues instead that things—from everyday objects to monumental buildings—profoundly shape social and political life under empire. Out of the archaeology of ancient Persia and the South Caucasus, Imperial Matter advances powerful new analytical approaches to the study of imperialism writ large and should be read by scholars working on empire across the humanities and social sciences.
A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos.
About the Autor LORI KHATCHADOURIAN is Assistant Professor of Archaeology in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Cornell University.
König, Götz. 2016. Yašt 3. Der avestische Text und seine mittel- und neupersische Übersetzungen. Einleitung, Text, Kommentar. (Estudios Iranios Y Turanios. Supplementa 1). Girona: Sociedad de estudios iranios y turanios (SEIT).The third Yašt (“hymn”) in the collection of the 21 (22) YAv Yašts is dedicated to (the deity, prayer and the divine correspondence of the fire) Aša Vahišta “Best Order”. The text formulates an (eschatologically significant) ritual context and a magical (= medical) charm. Due to the ritual and medical importance of Yt 3, various translations into Middle and New Persian can be found. They provide insights into the interpretation of the text by the later Zoroastrians.Ardwahišt Yašt is the third in the series of Avestan hymns addressed to individual divinities. It is devoted to one of the greatest of the Zoroastrian Aməša Spəntas, Aša Vahišta. The Ardwahišt Yašt is itself accordingly recited in rituals to cure the sick.
See the table of contents here.
Gholami, Saloumeh & Armita Farahmand. 2016. Zoroastrian Dari (Behdini) in Kerman. (Estudios Iranios Y Turanios. Supplementa Didactica 1). Girona: Sociedad de estudios iranios y turanios (SEIT).
Dari (also known as Behdīnī, Gavrī, or Gavrūnī), the topic of the present book is a critically endangered Iranian language. The study of Zoroastrian Dari is of particular importance for Iranian dialectology and comparative linguistics. This language is used in a parallel way to the Persian language of the Muslim population, and one can observe strong influence from Persian, especially in the domain of the lexicon. But Dari also differs from Persian, having special characteristics common to the languages of the North-West Iranian group. Sharing of both North-West and South-West features draws our attention to the fact that the immigrants to Yazd and Kerman originally came from different regions of Iran. The primary aim of this book is to teach Kermani Dari as a living language. This book offers basic materials for those who are interested in learning Dari. The focus is not only on grammar but also includes sections on learning vocabulary, listening to original documented materials, and also writing and understanding texts. The book consists of seven chapters.
See the table of contents here.
Saloumeh Gholami is a scholar of Iranian linguistics at the Institute of Empirical Linguistics at the Goethe University of Frankfurt, Germany.
Armita Farahmand is a member of the Zoroastrian community in Kerman and a scholar of Zoroastrianism.
Foltz, Richard. 2016. Richard Frye and the history of the Tajiks (Ancient Iran Series 4).
This series is published by the Jordan Center for Persian Studies, University of California, Irvine.
Daryaee, Touraj & Khodadad Rezakhani. 2016. From Oxus to Euphrates: The world of late antique Iran (Ancient Iran Series 1). H & S Media.
For a long time, Sasanian studies were mainly cultivated by linguists and historians of religion, and the only standard work on the history of the Sasanian Empire was Arthur Christensen’s L’Iran sous les Sassanides (Copenhagen 1936; second revised and expanded edition 1944). Only in recent years, Christensen’s authority was challenged: Several new syntheses eventually allowed Late antique scholars to better understand the history and the structure of the great rival of the Roman Empire. However, we still lacked a handy, student-friendly introduction to Sasanians studies. Now, Daryaee and Rezakhani provide us with this very welcome booklet, which I highly recommend to students, to an educated audience, but also to Classical scholars (it’s never too late). Giusta Traina, Sorbonne University