The present paper analyses two versions that appear in the 22nd chapter of an intercalated text of the Zoroastrian Long Liturgy, the Widēwdād: a longer version in the Iranian manuscripts and a shorter in the Indian ones. It is shown that we stand before two different real versions in the ritual praxis of this ceremony, though it is difficult to evaluate the date in which each version appeared or whether one version could arise from the other after the beginning of the written transmission. Other passages of the Widēwdād containing similar problems are analysed in a brief appendix.
Humbach, Helmut & Klaus Faiss. 2016. Avestica. (Münchener Studien Zur Sprachwissenschaft. Beiheft NF 25). Dettelbach: Verlag J.H. Röll.
This volume presents a collection of academic papers (mostly have been presented in the context of academic conferences) on different aspects of the Avestan and Zoroastrian studies, based on a very detailed philological and linguistic examination of various texts and concepts and in all its phonological, morphological, syntactical, semantic, and etymological aspects.
Table of Contents
Preface 7
Publications Helmut Humbach
Herz – Feuer – Seele. Bekehrung im vorgeschichtlichen Iran
The Avestan world with particular reference to the Mihr Yašt (Yt. 10,14-15)
The verb abāz-handāxtan is used in Dēnkard IV. Different definitions of the verb caused two divergent interpretations of the history of the Zoroastrians scriptures during Sasanian era. This article does not attempt to provide a third category of meaning, but tries to suggest a kind of modification to the traditionally accepted meaning of ‘to collate’. The new proposed meaning is derived from New Persian texts, which include similar usage of the verb and were written not much later than Middle Persian ones. The suggested meaning is ‘to (re-)measure’.
Danti, M. D. and M. Cifarelli. 2016. “Assyrianizing Contexts at Hasanlu Tepe IVb?: Materiality and Identity in Northwest Iran,” In J. MacGinnis, D. Wicke & T. Greenfield (eds.), The Provincial Archaeology of the Assyrian Empire. (Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research), 357-370, The Provincial Archaeology of the Assyrian Empire.
In this paper, the author briefly surveys and reappraises some of the evidence for Neo-Assyrian contact at the Iron II (1050–800 BC) settlement of Hasanlu Tepe in the southern Lake Urmia Basin, located east of Assyria in the western Zagros Mountains of Iran
Mehrotra, Sri Ram & Dinyar Patel (eds.). 2016. Dadabhai Naoroji. Oxford University Press.
Dadabhai Naoroji (1825-1917), popularly known as the ‘Grand Old Man of India, was a Parsi intellectual, educator, and early Indian political thinker. The first Indian to publicly demand ‘Swaraj’ for India from the Congress platform in 1906, he was thrice president of the Indian National Congress and the first Indian to be elected to the British House of Commons. This volume brings together for the first time a substantial collection of private papers, including handwritten notes and personal letters, of Dadabhai Naoroji from the National Archives of India. Divided into twenty-two sections, the volume chronicles Naoroji’s interactions with political leaders, scholars, friends, and acquaintances from A.O. Hume, one of the founders of the Indian National Congress, to the well-known historian R.C. Dutt to Gopal Krishna Gokhale, the famous Indian political leader whom Naoroji mentored. The volume includes a detailed Introduction which sets the context for Dadabhai Naoroji’s life and work.
The first edition of this book was published in 1985 in Russian. It was translated into English in 1989. The second Russian edition of this classic work deals with the political history of the Achaemenid Empire in a chronological manner. The volume draws on the main primary sources and secondary literature in its attempt to offer a comprehensive discussion of the political history of the Achaemenid Empire, which arose in the sixth century BC and lasted more than two centuries. The book’s English translation received eight reviews, including Briant’s critical article, which Dandamaev discusses in the preface. The author has updated his book, considering the reviews and the scholarship that have been published in the past two decades.
Inscriptions discovered since 1980 and fresh epigraph research have revealed much about the Archaeminid period in the Levant (533-332 BCE). André Lemaire concentrates on three areas where new data has shed light on the societies living in the largest empire that the world had known to that date.
Phoenicia played a vital political and economic role in the empire because Persian kings had to rely on the Phoenician navy in their wars against Greece and Egypt in the Eastern Mediterranean. Newly discovered inscriptions from Byblos, Sidon and Tyre, as well as the results of research into coins, have illuminated the chronology, history and extent of the Phoenician kingdoms, as well as their influence in Palestine.
New inscriptions have added to our knowledge of the Judean Diaspora in Babylonia, Egypt and Cyprus. The main indirect information about the Exiles previously available to us was in the book of Ezekiel. Now, epigraphic data has revealed not only many names of Exiles but how and where they lived and more about their relationship with Jerusalem.
The third region described is the Persian provinces of Samaria, Judaea and Idumaea, especially during the 4th century BCE. The publication of various, mainly Aramaic, contemporary inscriptions on papyri, ostraca, seals, seal-impressions and coins, sheds new light on the daily life and religion of these provinces. The insciptions help us to understand something of the chronology, society and culture of these three different provinces as well as several Biblical texts in their historical and economic contexts.
With over 90 inscriptions illustrated and fully transcribed, this book provides new insight into a period that has proved difficult to study.
Table of Contents:
Levantine epigraphy and Phoenicia: the kingdoms of Aradus, Byblos, Sidon and Tyre during the Achaemenid period
West Semitic epigraphy and the Judean Diaspora during the Achaemenid period: Babylonia, Egypt, Cyprus
Levantine epigraphy and Samaria, Judaea and Idumaea during the Achaemenid period
About the Author:
André Lemaire (Sorbonne, Paris) has worked, first as a researcher in the French National Center for Scientific Research and later as “directeur d’études ” in the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (Sorbonne, Paris), in the field of West Semitic epigraphy, Levantine history and Hebrew Bible in the first millennium BCE, for more than forty years. He has published many new Hebrew, Aramaic and Phoenician inscriptions as well as new historical interpretations. He is especially interested in the connection between West Semitic epigraphy and the Biblical tradition and was a member of the Editorial board of Vetus Testamentum for 36 years.
An international colloquium on the history of Georgia in Late Antiquity (from the 1st century BC to the 7th century AD) organized by the Chair of Ancient History at the University of Jena.
Central to the research are the close contacts of the Iberians to the Roman Empire on one side, and to the realms of the Parthians and Sasanians on the other side. Iberia formed an interface between the great powers and was strongly influenced by both sides. Some of these influences, such as the establishment of Christianity, territorial ambitions of the great neighbors or linguistic developments, will be discussed at the conference, attended by German and internatioal scholars of the Ancient Studies and the history of Caucasian Iberia.
Programm
Tassilo Schmitt: “Argo und Argumente. Historische Perspektiven auf den und aus dem Kaukasus”
Sektion I – Iberien im Spannungsfeld der Großmächte
Frank Schleicher: “Die Chronologie der kartvelischen Könige und das Ende des iberischen Königtums”
Balbina Bäbler: “Pompeius im Kaukasus. Geographie und Topographie eines Feldzugs”
Henning Börm: “Die Grenzen des Großkönigs? Grundzüge der arsakidisch-sasanidischen Politik gegenüber Rom”
Giusto Traina: “Dynastic connections in Armenia and Iberia (I-III CE)”
Sektion II – Zur Christianisierung Iberiens
Konstantin Klein: “Ein Königssohn, zwei Rabbinen und (fast) vierzig Nonnen – die Konversion Iberiens in der lateinischen, griechischen und armenischen Überlieferung”
Josef Rist: “Nino versus Gregor. Die Christianisierung Iberiens und seine Stellung zur Reichskirche im Vergleich mit Armenien”
Stephen H. Rapp Jr.: “The Conversion of Eastern Georgia: Cross-Cultural and Pan-Regional Perspectives”
Sektion III – Zur Religiosität der Iberer (Moderator: Udo Hartmann, Jena)
Eka Tchkoidze: “Iberia between Christianity and Zoroastrianism (evidence from Georgian literary tradition)”
Cornelia B. Horn: “Die Georgier und das Heilige Land: Hagiographische, apokryphe und historische Elemente einer Beziehung”
Jan-Markus Kötter: “Bekenntnis als Mittel der Diplomatie – Die Stellung der iberischen Kirche zum Reich”
Sektion IV – Zu den Quellen
Alexander Schilling: “Die ‚Diegesis ophelimos‘ (BHG 1060) in georgischer Überlieferung: historische und historiographische Kontexte”
Bernadette Martin-Hisard: “L’Ibérie des VIe-VIIe siècles d’après des traditions religieuses géorgiennes des IXe-XIIe siècles”
Armenuhi Drost-Abgarjan: “Das Bild der Iberer in der armenischen Literatur (5.-7. Jh.)”
Johannes Niehoff-Panagiotidis: “Griechisch, Aramäisch oder was? Die historischen Voraussetzungen für die Genese der georgischen Literatursprache”
Sektion V – Archäologisches
Nodar Bakhtadze: “The Oldest Basilicas Revealed in Nekresi Former City and Assumptions on Architectural Design of the First Georgian Christian Churches”
Annegret Plontke-Lüning: “Von Dmanisi nach Bolnisi. Ein alter Pilgerweg in Niederkartli”
Thursday, July 7, 2016 at 19.00
Lepsiushaus Potsdam
A joint event organized by the Lepsiushauses Potsdam and the Theodor-Fontane-Archivs of the University Potsdam.
The Orientalist Friedrich Carl Andreas (1846-1930) is mostly known as husband of Lou Andreas-Salomé, a well-known German writer and psychoanalyst. He was born as a descendant of Armenian, Malay and German ancestors in Indonesia and grew up in Hamburg and Geneva. He studied Iranian and Oriental Studies (PhD, 1868 Erlangen) and participated as a volunteer in the Franco-German War. Between 1875 and 1881, he conducted field work in India with the Parsees and with a Prussian Research Expedition in southern Iran, where he remained for several years. His research in Europe focused on the languages and music of Ossetia and the Indo-Afghan borderlands. From 1903 to his death he was professor of western Asiatic and Iranian philology at the University of Göttingen. As a master of many living languages, Andreas specialized in the history of languages and civilizations, but his interests extended to philosophy and natural history. He excelled in reading difficult Oriental scripts, ancient or modern, and in perceiving the finest nuances of spoken languages, especially their accents. Together with his wife, a friend of Nietzsche and Freud, and Rilke, he travelled to Russia and visited Tolstoy. He was very active by the practical training of missionaries for Kurdistan and Central Asia and to the scientific analysis of texts and the religious movement of the Persian Bābīs. Working with the Manichean fragments from Turfan, he quickly isolated those texts written in Parthian (which he called the “northern dialect”) and identified another “Pahlavi dialect” as the Sogdian language.
The latest issue of DABIR has been published and is available here: 
Humbach, Helmut & Klaus Faiss. 2016. 
Mehrotra, Sri Ram & Dinyar Patel (eds.). 2016. 
Dandamaev, M. A. 2015.
