Bibliographia Iranica

A predominantly bibliographic blog for Iranian Studies

Category: Books

  • The Multimedia Yasna

    The interactive film of the Performance of the High Zoroastrian Ceremony of Yasna

    Open Access to the full film of the performance of the most solemn Zoroastrian ceremony the standard Yasna with the dedicatory of Mīnō Nāwar (the version edited by Geldner), the film is prepared in the frame of the multi-disciplinary Multimedia Yasna project (MuYa), based at SOAS, University of London and funded by the European Research Council (ERC) with an Advanced Investigator Grant (2016-2022), which had as its focus the Yasna – the core ritual of the Zoroastrian religion:

    Interactive film

    “You can watch the film at different speeds by moving the dot on the speed line below the Chapter and Stanza & Subsection tabs. The recording of this film was made in November 2017 at the Dadar Athornan Institute in Mumbai. The two priests, who performed the ceremony are the late Ervad Asphandiarji Dadachanji and Ervad Adil Bhesania.”

    The Multimedia Yasna (MUYA)

    The Multimedia Yasna (MUYA) examines the performance and written transmission of the core ritual of the Zoroastrian tradition, the Yasna, whose oldest parts date from the second millennium BCE. Composed in an ancient Iranian language, Avestan, the texts were transmitted orally and not written down until the fifth or sixth century CE. The oral tradition continues to be central to the religion, and the daily Yasna ceremony, the most important of all the rituals, is recited from memory by Zoroastrian priests. The interpretation of the Yasna has long been hampered by out-dated editions and translations of the text and until now there has been no documentation and study of the performance of the full ritual. The project MUYA examines both the oral and written traditions. It has filmed a performance of the Yasna ritual and created a critical edition of the recitation text examining the Yasna both as a performance and as a text attested in manuscripts. The two approaches have been integrated to answer questions about the meaning and function of the Yasna in a historical perspective.

    Combining models and methodologies from digital humanities, philology and linguistics, the project has produced a subtitled, interactive film of the Yasna ritual, an online platform of transcribed manuscripts, editorial tools, digital transcriptions of manuscripts and digital editions with a text-critical apparatus, and with print editions, translations and commentaries of the Yasna. Information which was formerly restricted to students of Iranian philology and practising Zoroastrians has now become accessible to a world-wide audience through digital humanities. The project, based at SOAS, University of London and funded by the European Research Council, ran from October 2016 to September 2022. It was headed by Professor Almut Hintze and included an international team of researchers in the UK, Germany, India and Iran.

  • In the Shadow of Empire

    Barmash, Pamela & Mark W. Hamilton (eds.). 2021. In the shadow of empire: Israel and Judah in the long sixth century BCE. Atlanta: SBL Press.

    The essays in this volume revisit issues of exile and occupation during the sixth century BCE through texts, iconography, and material culture. Unlike previous studies that focused narrowly on the Babylonian exile of the Judahite elites, this volume widens the geographical and temporal scope to include the Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian Empires. Contributors Pamela Barmash, Ryan P. Bonfiglio, Caralie Cooke, Lisbeth S. Fried, Martien A. Halvorson-Taylor, Mark W. Hamilton, Matt Waters, and Ian D. Wilson lay a firm foundation for future work on the long sixth century.

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  • Festschrift for Mahmoud Jaafari-Dehaghi

    Shayeste Doust, Amin (ed.). 2022. Dādestān ī Dēnīg. Festschrift for Mahmoud Jaafari-Dehaghi. Teheran: Farhang Moaser.

    Table of contents:

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  • Towards a Morphosyntax of Old Persian Cases

    Benvenuto, Maria Carmela & Flavia Pompeo. 2020. Towards a morphosyntax of Old Persian cases : The genitive (Indogermanische Textlinguistik, Poetik und Stilistik 3). Hamburg: Baar-Verlag.

    To date, there has been no comprehensive study specifically devoted to the syntax or morphosyntax of Old Persian cases. The authors of the present work have decided to remedy this with a study regarding an Old Persian case that from various viewpoints is not only the most complex, but also the most interesting: the genitive. Progressing from traditional approaches, the authors analyze the Old Persian genitive adopting both semasiological and onomasiological methods. Through a semasiological approach, emphasis is placed on case functions as well as on the constructions in which the genitive case is implied and the various meanings that they convey. Through an onomasiological approach, a given semantic/functional domain, such as ditransitive constructions and expressions of possession, is investigated, and the relevant alternating constructions are analyzed.

    Thanks to this integrated methodology, the new monograph in the Indo-European Text Linguistics, Poetics and Stylistics series will be of great interest to specialists in Old Iranian philology and comparative-historical Indo-European linguistics as well as to scholars working in the fields of general linguistics (morphosyntax) and linguistic typology.

    To see the ToC, click here.

  • Persians: The Age of the Great Kings

    Llewellyn-Jones, Lloyd. 2022. Persians: The age of the great kings. New York: Basic Books.

    The Achaemenid Persian kings ruled over the largest empire of antiquity, stretching from Libya to the steppes of Asia and from Ethiopia to Pakistan. From the palace-city of Persepolis, Cyrus the Great, Darius, Xerxes, and their heirs reigned supreme for centuries until the conquests of Alexander of Macedon brought the empire to a swift and unexpected end in the late 330s BCE.

    In Persians, historian Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones tells the epic story of this dynasty and the world it ruled. Drawing on Iranian inscriptions, cuneiform tablets, art, and archaeology, he shows how the Achaemenid Persian Empire was the world’s first superpower—one built, despite its imperial ambition, on cooperation and tolerance. This is the definitive history of the Achaemenid dynasty and its legacies in modern-day Iran, a book that completely reshapes our understanding of the ancient world.

  • Lycia and Persia in the Xanthos stele

    Hyland, John. 2021. Between Amorges and Tissaphernes: Lycia and Persia in the Xanthos stele. In Annick Payne, Šárka Velhartická & Jorit Wintjes (eds.), Beyond all boundaries: Anatolia in the first millennium BC (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 295), 257–278. Leuven: Peeters Publishers.

    The Xanthos stele, a multilingual Lycian dynastic monument of the late 5th century BCE, testifies to the importance of diplomatic interaction between Xanthos’ rulers and Achaemenid Persian administrators in western Anatolia. Yet the stele’s Persian references are unevenly and selectively distributed between its Lycian and Lycian B inscriptions, and entirely absent from its Greek epigram. Amorges, a satrap’s son turned rebel, appears briefly in the Lycian and Lycian B texts, but scholars debate whether they present him as friend or foe of Xanthos; in contrast, the final section of the Lycian text celebrates the famous satrap Tissaphernes as an ally of Xanthos, but the Lycian B omits him entirely. This paper analyzes the stele’s Persian content and proposes that its designers added the material on Tissaphernes in a late stage of composition, trying to exploit his patronage in the context of local dynastic politics.

    Abstract

    The whole book is open access and can be downloaded from the link of the book title above.

  • King of the World

    Waters, Matt. 2022. King of the world: The life of Cyrus the Great. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    The Persian Empire was the world’s first hyperpower, with territory stretching from Central Asia to Northeastern Africa and from Southeastern Europe to the Indus Valley. It was the dominant geopolitical force from the later sixth century to its conquest by Alexander in the 330s BCE. Much of the empire’s territory was conquered by its founder, Cyrus the Great, who reigned from 559-530 BCE. Cyrus became a legend in his own lifetime, and his career inspired keen interest from Persia’s unruly neighbors to the west, the ancient Greeks. The idealized portrait of Cyrus by the Greek Xenophon had a profound impact on ancient, medieval, and early modern debates about rulership.

    King of the World provides an authoritative and accessible account of Cyrus the Great’s life, career, and legacy. While Greek sources remain central to any narrative about Cyrus, a wealth of primary evidence is found in the ancient Near East, including documentary, archaeological, art historical, and biblical material. Matt Waters draws from all of these sources while consistently contextualizing them in order to provide a cohesive understanding of Cyrus the Great. This overview addresses issues of interpretation and reconciles limited material, while the narrative keeps Cyrus the Great’s compelling career at the forefront. Cyrus’ legacy is enormous and not fully appreciated― King of the World takes readers on a journey that reveals his powerful impact and preserves his story for future generations.

  • The Manichaean Coptic Papyri

    Richter, Siegfried (ed.). 2022. The Manichaean Coptic papyri in the Chester Beatty library: Psalm Book Part I, 1 (Corpus Fontium Manichaeorum: Series Coptica 3). Turnhout: Brepols.

    Das manichäische Psalmenbuch der Chester Beatty Library gehört zu den sieben Codices des Fundes, der sich zum größten Teil in einem sehr schlechten Zustand befand. Mit der Restaurierung in Berlin begann eine rege Editionstätigkeit, die durch den 2. Weltkrieg unterbrochen wurde. Vom Psalmenbuch wurde die besser erhaltene zweite Hälfte (PsB II) 1938 von C.R.C. Allberry publiziert. Der bis auf einige Einzelpsalmen noch unpublizierte vordere Teil des Buches (PsB I) befand sich in einem sehr viel schlechteren Erhaltungszustand und umfasste ursprünglich 396 Seiten. In dieser ersten Ausgabe werden 122 Seiten mit koptischem Text und deutscher Übersetzung dem Leser zugänglich gemacht. Die poetisch anspruchsvollen Lieder bieten einen originalen Einblick in die manichäische Religion. Neben einer Psalmgruppe, die die ältesten Sonnenhymnen des Manichäismus bewahrte, geben einige Psalmen in 22 Strophen den Inhalt vom Lebendigem Evangelium des Religionsgründers Mani wieder.

  • Dictionary of Manichaean Texts

    Sims-Williams, Nicholas & Desmond Durkin-Meisterernst. 2022. Dictionary of Manichaean texts (Corpus Fontium Manichaeorum: Subsidia 7). Volume III, 2: Texts from Central Asia and China (Texts in Sogdian and Bactrian). Turnhout: Brepols. Second, revised and enlarged edition.

    This revised and substantially enlarged edition of the Dictionary of Manichaean Texts covers the vocabulary of all Manichaean (and anti-Manichaean) texts in Sogdian and Bactrian (material published up to 2020, including short passages and even individual words which have been cited in print). Unlike the first edition, it also contains a substantial amount of material from texts which are still unpublished, especially unusual or otherwise unattested words and expressions. As before, the volume contains a full bibliography, references to discussions in the scholarly literature, and numerous corrections to previously published readings and interpretations. It is completed by an English index. Providing an up-to-date analysis of all published Manichaean material in the Eastern Middle Iranian languages, the new edition of the Dictionary will continue to be an essential tool for everyone interested in Manichaeism, Iranian languages, or Central Asian history.

  • Embedded Inscriptions in Herodotus and Thucydides

    Allgaier, Benjamin. 2022. Embedded Inscriptions in Herodotus and Thucydides (Philippika, 157). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

    The two founding works of the Western historiographical tradition, Herodotus’ Histories and Thucydides’ History, feature, among many other things, mentions and quotations of inscriptions (that is, texts written on durable materials such as stone).

    This book explores the epigraphic dimension of Herodotus’ Histories and Thucydides’ History (including potential allusions to inscriptions in general, possible instances of a tacit use of epigraphically recorded information, and explicit references to specific inscriptions) and offers a number of case studies aimed at elucidating the subtle uses to which specific embedded inscriptions are put in the works of Herodotus and Thucydides. Special attention is paid to the ways in which these inscriptions contribute to the characterisation of historical actors and to the self-fashioning of the Herodotean and Thucydidean narrator.

    The book may appeal to literary classicists, ancient historians, epigraphists, and other readers with an interest in ancient historiography and/or epigraphic culture.