Bibliographia Iranica

A predominantly bibliographic blog for Iranian Studies

Category: Articles

  • A Portuguese edition of the Behistun Inscription (Old Persian text)

    Treuk Medeiros de Araujo, Matheus. 2023. A inscrição de Behistun (c. 520 a.C.): tradução do texto Persa Antigo para o Português, introdução crítica e comentários. Revista de História 182, 1-35.

    The monumental Achaemenid inscription at mount Behistun (Bisitun), in the Iranian province of Kermanshah (western Iran), reports the official version of Darius’ accession to power in Ancient Persia. Written in three languages and scripts (Old Persian, Elamite, and Akkadian), this invaluable historical document was vital to the decipherment of the cuneiform script in the 19th century. It also enabled the reconstruction of the Achaemenid Empire’s history, previously known to us mainly through the accounts of Greek and biblical sources. Due to the importance and uniqueness of the Behistun Inscription, we propose the translation of the Old Persian text directly to the Portuguese language, providing wider access to the document for specialized and non-specialized audiences. Historical commentaries approaching the most important debates associated with the inscription also follow the text.

  • On the office of hu-dēnān pēšōbāy

    Rezania, Kianoosh. 2023. On the concept of leadership and the office of Leader of the Zoroastrians (hu-dēnān pēšōbāy) in Abbasid Zoroastrianism. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. 1–36.

    Like many other religions, Zoroastrianism frequently restructured its priestly organization during its long history, largely because of the environmental changes to which it was exposed. A major shift in status – from being the state religion in the Sasanian Empire to holding only a minor position in the early Islamic period – challenged the Zoroastrian hierarchy of authority. The Abbasid state provided Zoroastrianism with an opportunity to initiate a new office, which was called hu-dēnān pēšōbāy “Leader of the Zoroastrians”. This article is the first to deal with this office in detail and scrutinizes the concept of leadership (pēšōbāyīh) in Sasanian and Abbasid Zoroastrianism. It sheds some light on the priestly structure of Zoroastrianism in this period and investigates the position of the office within the overall religious organization. It re-examines, moreover, evidence for the officiating Zoroastrian theologians in this office at the Abbasid court in Baghdad. Finally, it searches for the parallels between this office and that of the East-Syrian catholicos and the Jewish exilarch.

    Abstract from FirstView

  • “Daiva Inscription” of Xerxes

    Yakubovich, Ilya S. 2023. “Daiva Inscription” of Xerxes: Historical account, ideological statement, or propaganda. Journal of Ancient History 83(1). 5–26.

    The so-called “Daiva inscription” of Xerxes found at Persepolis addresses the activity of this Achaemenid Persian king in two lands, one of which is said to have been in commotion, while the other is alleged to have been characterized by unacceptable religious practices. Xerxes stresses his involvement in the restoration of order in both countries but does not mention their names. Egypt, Babylon, Greece and Bactria were all adduced as candidates by twentieth century scholars, while the recent mainstream of scholarship tends to interpret the same accounts as abstract ideological statements without an anchor in time or space. The new approach advocated in this paper assumes that Xerxes resorted to historical narratives only in order to provide his own apologetic version of embarrassing events. In particular, his self-professed involvement in the destruction of the cults of evil gods is to be interpreted as a twisted account of the destruction of the Acropolis of Athens by the Persian army in 480 BC. In the wake of the disastrous war against the Greeks, Xerxes strove to present it as a successful special operation against the Greek deities.

  • New Ancient Iranian Names from Early Phanagoria

    Balakhvantsev, Archil S. & and Natalia V. Zavoykina. 2022. New Ancient Iranian Names from Early Phanagoria. Ancient West & East (21), 247-254.

    Graffito of Aratris

    This paper presents the publication of two new owners’ graffiti discovered in Phanagoria in 2015. The first one, Ἀράτριος ἡ κύλιξ (the kylix of Aratris), dates back to the end of the first quarter of the 5th century BC. The name Aratris demonstrates obvious parallels to the ethnic name Aratrii mentioned in The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (Peripl. M. Rubr.). The second graffito is Ἀρπάτρις (Arpatris). It dates back to the end of the 6th-first third of the 5th century BC. It is possible to suggest that it is a composite name of Scythian origin and it should be translated as ‘the Keeper of Fire’.

  • The Goddess on Lion at Hasanlu

    Letteria Grazia Fassari & Raffaella Frascarelli. 2022. Embodying the Past: The Case of the Goddess on Lion at Hasanlu. In: Katrien de Graef et al. (eds.), The Mummy Under the Bed . Essays on Gender and Methodology in the Ancient Near East, 253-287. Münster: Zaphon.

    Rooted within the Central Asian iconography of the sacred from the 3rd millennium BCE until the arrival of Islam, also related to the mixed pantheons that combine Central Asian, Iranian, Buddhist, Hindu and Chinese divinities, the image of the goddess riding a lion in the Hasanlu bowl offers the chance to investigate its origin. Posture, attire, lion, divine emblems mark her belonging to a cultural horizon that seems to allude to the nomadic peoples of the Eurasian steppe. The Iranian, Assyrian, Syro-Hurrite, Elamite, Hurro-Urartian, Transcaucasian influences make Hasanlu a privileged observatory to analyze the regulatory apparatus affecting gender hierarchies. Eluding the boundaries imposed by the binary vision, the nomadic lifestyle seems to free the body in favor of fluid strategies necessary to deal with harsh natural conditions. Indeed, some iconographic details of the Hasanlu bowl might reveal a social dimension related to an unconventional gender performativity caused by the mobilization of cultural resources that identified nomadism. Furthermore, the presence of the riding goddess at Hasanlu suggests scrutinizing the cyclical infiltration of nomadic cultures within Anatolia and Mesopotamia. Exploring gender, questioning its epistemic boundaries, enquiring how gender stereotypes have crystallized over time, this paper proposes an inception towards a different history whose traces may have been lost in the unwitting binarism of expertise.

  • The Sasanian Elephant Corps Revisited

    Dmitriev, Vladimir. 2022. The Sasanian Elephant Corps Revisited: Ammianus Marcellinus on the Tactics of Persian Elephantry. Journal of Persianate Studies 15 (1), 1-13.

    According to Ammianus Marcellinus, elephants substituted, to some extent, siege towers; he describes wooden towers on the backs of the animals, armed with Persian warriors who attacked the defenders of a fortress. Certainly, elephants may have served as an element of ancient psychological warfare. But, at the same time, it appears that the Sasanians employed elephants in their battle fighting, bearing warriors who attacked their enemies with various missiles. In open-field battles, elephants, as a rule, were introduced into the battle in an offensive situation. Ammianus Marcellinus does not offer any evidence as to elephants functioning as beasts of burden or draught animals; on the contrary, he always stresses the fact that they were military animals who posed a real danger to the Romans in battle.

  • Towards a Manifesto for Middle Iranian Philology

    Zeini, Arash. 2023. Towards a manifesto for Middle Iranian philology. Berkeley Working Papers in Middle Iranian Philology 0. 1–12.

    The purpose of this manifesto is to raise broad questions about philological inquiry as a background to the purpose of this occasional journal. It reflects both on general questions of philology (Section 2) and delves into an example from the Middle Persian translations (Zand) of the Avesta in which can be seen a clash between the traditional approach in that field and the type of inquiry that I advocate here (Section 3).

  • Scribal Confusion in Aramaic Renderings of Iranian Anthroponyms

    Tavernier, Jan & Annalisa Azzoni. 2023. Scribal confusion in Aramaic renderings of Iranian anthroponyms: A preliminary study. In: Yoram Cohen et al. (eds.), Telling of Olden Kings (The IOS Annual Volume 22), 52-66. Leiden: Brill.

    The Persepolis textual material contains many Aramaic texts, the majority of which belong to the so-called Persepolis Fortification Archive (509 to 493 BCE), an administrative archive consisting of mostly Elamite texts. In this article, the authors examine some specific Aramaic spellings that occur in the Aramaic texts from Persepolis, sic: the Aramaic Persepolis Fortification texts (PFAT) and the Aramaic epigraphs accompanying the Elamite Fortification texts (PFAE). Our interest in these spellings is that they do not respect the phonology, morphology and lexicon of Aramaic. It is argued that these errors have been triggered by the Elamite phonology, morphological and lexical system and that they have been made by scribes whose mother tongue was not Aramaic, but Elamite or Old Iranian.

  • The Armies of the Teispids and Achaemenids

    Manning, Sean. 2022. The armies of the Teispids and Achaemenids: The armies of an ancient world empire. Journal of Ancient Civilizations 37(2). 147-192.

    An Attic red-figure kylix with a battle of Greeks and barbarians, c. 490–480 BC (possibly the same as Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, number 1980.11.21)

    Although ancient warfare and the Teispid-Achaemenid empire are common topics for research, no concise and up-to-date overview of Teispid and Achaemenid armies and warfare exists. The most recent syntheses were published in the period 1986–1992 when the current understanding of the empire was only beginning to form. This article combines indigenous and Greco-Roman texts, art, and artifacts to provide a short introduction to the armies and navies of the so-called Persian Empire. It focuses on the reigns of Darius I and Xerxes (522–465 BC) from which a variety of texts and artwork survive from Persis, Babylonia, and Greece. Ten main sections cover the history of research, the seemingly contradictory evidence for a uniform army and a patchwork army under Darius I and Xerxes, how the very rapid conquests of the Teispids lead to an army very different than the Roman or imperial British armies, recruitment, organization and equipment, combat mechanics, army organization, siege warfare, naval and riverine warfare, and numbers and effectiveness. Whereas the author’s recent monograph focused on methodological problems and the origin of different theories, this article offers usable answers to many difficult questions.

  • Oedipus and Jocasta on a ‘Bactrian’ Silver Bowl

    Dan, Anca & Frantz Grenet. 2022. Oedipus and Jocasta on a ‘Bactrian’ silver bowl in the Hermitage, c. 350-500. Journal Asiatique 330(1). 55-79.

    Silver bowl from Kustanai, now in Hermitage S–62; 15.5 × 5.2 cm, 4th-5th c., with scenes from Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus. After Marshak 2000: no. 31, and Ivanov, Lukonin, and Smesova 1984, fig. 39. Photo courtesy State Hermitage Museum.

    Elites of the Hunnish states, including Tokharistan (ancient Bactria) and Northwest India from the 4th century, not only appreciated Greco-Roman art, inherited or imported, but also had a good knowledge of the Hellenic mythological cycles. Among the small silver bowls called ‘Bactrian’, attributed by Boris Marshak to the period after the Sasanian withdrawal from Central Asia, the one discovered at Kustanai (Hermitage, S-62) is decorated with scenes inspired mainly by Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus. While following the text sometimes literally (e.g. by portraying Oedipus as a child of Fortune), and using a Hellenistic iconographic repertoire which had become ‘Indianized’ during the Kushan period, the artist who executed the model transposed the Sophoclean plot in five scenes, adapting it to his customers’ interests: the son’s marriage to his mother, highlighted on this vase like nowhere else in ancient art, recommends the couple as a Zoroastrian ethical model. The tragic fault now lies with the servant, who did not expose the newborn Oedipus and did not tell the truth on the parricide: the confrontation between the lying servant and the sincere, generous Jocasta, gives the key to a cathartic reading of this vase.