A predominantly bibliographic blog for Iranian Studies
The ever active and innovative Jordan Center for Persian Studies of the University of California, Irvine, has announced a new book series, of which the second volume is known to us:
Rose, Jenny. 2015. From Behistun to Bamiyan: Meetings between ancient empires (Jordan Center for Persian Studies 2).
We will update this space as soon as we have further information about the series.
Geller, Markham J. (ed.). 2015. The archaeology and material culture of the Babylonian Talmud (IJS Studies in Judaica 16). Brill.
The Babylonian Talmud remains the richest source of information regarding the material culture and lifestyle of the Babylonian Jewish community, with additional data now supplied by Babylonian incantation bowls. Although archaeology has yet to excavate any Jewish sites from Babylonia, information from Parthian and Sassanian Babylonia provides relevant background information, which differs substantially from archaeological finds from the Land of Israel. One of the key questions addresses the amount of traffic and general communications between Jewish Babylonia and Israel, considering the great distances and hardships of travel involved.
Markham J. Geller, Ph.D (1974), Brandeis University, is Professor of Semitic Languages and Director of the Institute of Jewish Studies at University College London, currently on secondment to the Freie University Berlin as Professor für Wissensgeschichte. He is Principal Investigator of BabMed, an Advanced ERC Project.
Bautch, Richard J. & Gary N. Knoppers (eds.). 2015. Covenant in the Persian Period: from Genesis to Chronicles. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns.The 22 essays in this new and comprehensive study explore how notions of covenant, especially the Sinaitic covenant, flourished during the Neo-Babylonian, Persian, and early Hellenistic periods. Following the upheaval of the Davidic monarchy, the temple’s destruction, the disenfranchisement of the Jerusalem priesthood, the deportation of Judeans to other lands, the struggles of Judeans who remained in the land, and the limited returns of some Judean groups from exile, the covenant motif proved to be an increasingly influential symbol in Judean intellectual life. The contributors to this volume, drawn from many different countries including Canada, Germany, Israel, South Africa, Switzerland, and the United States, document how Judean writers working within historiographic, Levitical, prophetic, priestly, and sapiential circles creatively reworked older notions of covenant to invent a new way of understanding this idea. These writers examine how new conceptions of the covenant made between YHWH and Israel at Mt. Sinai play a significant role in the process of early Jewish identity formation. Others focus on how transformations in the Abrahamic, Davidic, and Priestly covenants responded to cultural changes within Judean society, both in the homeland and in the diaspora. Cumulatively, the studies of biblical writings, from Genesis to Chronicles, demonstrate how Jewish literature in this period developed a striking diversity of ideas related to covenantal themes.
Heckel, Waldemar, Sabine Müller & Graham Wrightson (eds.). 2015. The Many Faces of War in the Ancient World. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
This volume on different aspects of warfare and its political implications in the ancient world brings together the works of both established and younger scholars working on a historical period that stretches from the archaic period of Greece to the late Roman Empire. With its focus on cultural and social history, it presents an overview of several current issues concerning the “new” military history.
The book contains papers that can be conveniently divided into three parts. Part I is composed of three papers primarily concerned with archaic and classical Greece, though the third covers a wide range and relates the experience of the ancient Greeks to that of soldiers in the modern world – one might even argue that the comparison works in reverse. Part II comprises five papers on warfare in the age of Alexander the Great and on its reception early in the Hellenistic period. These demonstrate that the study of Alexander as a military figure is hardly a well-worn theme, but rather in its relative infancy, whether the approach is the tried and true (and wrongly disparaged) method of Quellenforschung or that of “experiencing war,” something that has recently come into fashion. Part III offers three papers on war in the time of Imperial Rome, particularly on the fringes of the Empire.
Covering a wide chronological span, Greek, Macedonian and Roman cultures and various topics, this volume shows the importance and actuality of research on the history of war and the diversity of the approaches to this task, as well as the different angles from which it can be analysed.
Table of Contents
Military Integration in Late Archaic Arkadia:
New Evidence from a Bronze Pinax (ca. 500 BC) of the Lykaion Johannes Heinrichs
Early Greek Citizen-Soldiers: Connections between the Citizens’ Social, Economic, Military, and Political Status in Archaic Polis States
Kurt A. Raaflaub
Laughter in Battle
Lawrence Tritle
Poseidippos of Pella and the Memory of Alexander’s Campaigns at the Ptolemaic Court
Sabine Müller
Introducing Ptolemy: Alexander and the Persian Gates
Timothy Howe
The Epigonoi – the Iranian phalanx of Alexander the Great
Marek Jan Olbrycht
“Shock and Awe” à la Alexander the Great
Edward M. Anson
Alexander the Great and the Fate of the Enemy: Quantifying, Qualifying, and Categorizing Atrocities
Waldemar Heckel and J. L. McLeod
Jovian and the Exodus from Nisibis: criticism and gratitude
John Vanderspoel
Soldiers and Their Families on the Late Roman Frontier in Central Jordan Alexander’s Campaign against the Autonomous Thracians
Conor Whately
A New Military Inscription from Numidia, Moesiaci Milites at Lambaesis , and Some Observations on the Phrase Desideratus in Acie
Riccardo Bertolazzi
About the Editors:
Waldemar Heckel is a Research Fellow of the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary.
Sabine Müller is Professor of Ancient History at Marburg University.
Graham Wrightson is Assistant Professor of History at South Dakota State University. His research focuses primarily on Macedonian military history.
The following monograph does not directly relate to Iranian Studies, but promises to be an important book and will be of interest to scholars of religion and Iranian Studies for its content and methodological approach:
Michaels, Axel. 2015. Homo Ritualis: Hindu ritual and its significance for ritual theory (Oxford Ritual Studies). Oxford University Press.
Drawing on extensive textual studies and fieldwork in Nepal and India, Axel Michaels demonstrates how the characteristic structure of Hindu rituals employs the Brahmanic-Sanskritic sacrifice as a model, and how this structure is one of the distinguishing features of Hinduism more generally. Many religions tend over time to develop less ritualized or more open forms of belief, but Brahmanical Hinduism has internalized ritual behavior to the extent that it has become its most important and distinctive feature, permeating social and personal life alike. The religion can thus be seen as a particular case in the history of religions in which ritual form dominates belief and develops a sweeping autonomy of ritual behavior.
Read more here.
Axel Michaels is Director of the Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe” and Professor of Classical Indology at the South Asia Institute at the University of Heidelberg.
Gazerani, Saghi. 2015. The Sistani Cycle of Epics and Iran’s National History: On the Margins of Historiography. (Studies in Persian Cultural History 7). Brill.
A while ago we posted a link about the exhibition The Eye of the Shah: Qajar Court Photography and the Persian Past. We now draw attention to the catalogue of the exhibition, which presents nearly 200 photographs and contributions by Carmen Perez Gonzalez, Bergische Universität Wuppertal; Reza Sheikh, Independent Scholar; and Judith A. Lerner, Institute for the Study of the Ancient World.
The catalogue’s essays discuss such topics as the achievements of court photographers in the service of Naser al-Din Shah, including Reza ‘Akkasbashi, ‘Abdollah Mirza Qajar, and Dust Mohammad Khan Mo’ayyer al-Mamalek, and the volume also examines the role of photography in helping Iranians document Iran’s pre-Islamic monuments during the second half of the nineteenth century.
For more information, see the catalogue or the publisher websites.
Aliyari Babolghani, Salman. 2015. The Elamite Version of Darius the Great’s Inscription at Bisotun. Introduction, Grammar of Achaemenid Elamite, Transliteration, Persian Translation, Comparison with other Versions, Notes and Index. Tehran: Nashr-e Markaz.علییاری بابلقانی، سلمان. ۱۳۹۴. تحریر ایلامی کتیبهی داریوش بزرگ در بیستون. پیشگفتار، دستور ایلامی هخامنشی، حرفنویسی، ترجمه، مقابله با تحریرهای دیگر، یاداشت و واژهنامه. تهران. نشر مرکز.
Alīyārī Babolqāni, Salman. 1394š. Taḥrīr-e ʾīlami-ye katibe-ye dāryuš-e bozorg dar bisotūn. Tehrān: našr-e markaz.
Gheiby, Bijan. 2015. Twelve ancient treatises. Translation and Commentary. Bielefeld: Nemudar.
In Original:
غیبی، بیژن. ۲۰۱۵. دوازده متن باستانی. انتشارات نمودار: بیلفلد.
Ġeybi, Bižan. 2015. dawāzdah matn-e bāstāni. Nemudar: Bielefeld.
Daryaee, Touraj, Ali Mousavi & Khodadad Rezakhani (eds.). 2014. Excavating an Empire:Achaemenid Persia in Longue Durée. Costa Mesa California: Mazda Publisher.
Study of empires and imperial power within the context of world history is a relatively recent subject within a field which itself is quite young. With the ever present discussions on the issue of globalization and increased contact among modern nation-states, a need to understand the long term trends in human and material interaction, and the means of controlling them, is increasingly felt in academia. Empires, as large units of administration which are often posited to have had an abusive relationship with their peripheries, are deemed viable subjects of study and inquiry in the pre-modern, pre-globalized world. On the other hand, the imposed frame work of modern nation-states on historiography, and the long trend in national, and often nationalistic historiography, similarly has encouraged a study of the empires which are thought to be ancestors of modern nations, from Italy and Rome to China and the Qing Empire. Among these, the Achaemenid Empire which ruled the Near East, and occasionally parts of North Africa, for about two centuries (late sixth to late fourth century BCE) is a curious and commonly neglected case. Often fitted within the national historiography of Iran, it is nonetheless acknowledged to have had a wider impact on the region beyond the borders of the modern nation-state. (more…)