The latest issue of The Silk Road features a number of articles relevant to Iranian Studies. The full journal and individual articles can be accessed online:
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Selected Features of Bactrian Grammar
Gholami, Saloumeh. 2014. Selected Features of Bactrian Grammar (Gottinger Orientforschungen, III. Reihe: Iranica 12). Harrassowitz Verlag.
Bactrian, the only Iranian language written in the Greek alphabet, was spoken in ancient Bactria in northern Afghanistan. It is an intermediary Middle Iranian language, possessing the characters of both Eastern and Western Iranian groups, and thus playing a very important role in the dialectology of Iranian Languages.
Saloumeh Gholami’s study deals with various relatively unknown phonological, morphological and syntactical features of Bactrian and includes the following topics: historical phonology of Bactrian; the syntactical position of different kinds of nouns and their relationship in a sentence; the different types of pronouns and their syntactical properties; the function and syntactical position of prepositions and postpositions; adverbs and their formation; proximate and remote deixis adverbs as well as their different syntactic positions; various kinds of conjunctions and their functions; selected aspects of the verb; word order in clauses with transitive or intransitive verbs, and an investigation of double object constructions; as well as the different types of compounds.
For more information see the ToC of this volume.
Shokri-Foumeshi, Mohammad. 2015. Mani’s Living Gospel and the Ewangelyōnīg Hymns. Edition, Reconstruction and Commentary with a Codicological and Textological Approach Based on Manichaean Turfan Fragments in the Berlin Collection. (Religions and Denominations 155). Qom: The University of Religions and Denominations.This doctoral thesis with the title “Mani’s Living Gospel and the Ewangelyōnīg Hymns: Edition, Reconstruction and Commentary with a Codicological and Textological Approach Based on Manichaean Turfan Fragments in the Berlin Collection” deals with the fragments of Mani’s Living Gospel and the Ewangelyōnīg hymns (The hymn of the Gospel) discovered in the Turfan Oasis in the early 20th century, preserved in the Berlin Turfan Collection. 25 fragments have been studied in this work. Some of these fragments have already been published by other scholars, but only the work presented here aims at finalizing the work begun by others, as I was able to identify new fragments and with their help, was able to complete the fragments available. The combination of the new fragment M5439 with the previously published M17, the former completing the latter, proved to be one of the most important examples for my research on the Middle Persian version of Mani’s Gospel. I was able to reconstruct and conclusively join two of the already published fragments of the Ewangelyōnīg hymns with the help of two new fragments. I have also attempted in the scope of this work, to present an identification of several other fragments that were probably part of Mani’s Gospel. To accomplish this, I have analyzed all the Gnostic-Christian and Iranian sources in depth, and contrasted them with the Manichaean documents, both Iranian and non-Iranian. Thus I was able to present new suggestions and was likewise able to prove or disprove prior assumptions made by others about Mani’s Gospel. To ensure a deeper understanding of the Gospel and the Ewangelyōnīg hymns, I have added a few explanatory chapters and paragraphs to this dissertation that mainly deal with the inner and outer structure of the Gospel and serve, as I hope, in establishing a comprehensive relation between the Gospel and the Ewangelyōnīg hymns. Further research on the Manichaean sources, e.g. the Greek version of the Gospel and the Coptic Synaxeis on the one hand, and the Greek anti-Manichaean sources and accounts by Muslim writers on the other hand, served to deepen our understanding of the content of the Gospel greatly. By incorporating a study of these sources into this dissertation, I was able to close some of those gaps that impeded our understanding of the Gospel. Some important questions pertaining to the alphabetic structure of the chapters of the Gospel and the abecedarian order of the Parthian (Ewangelyōnīg) hymns, I was able to answer in this work. For some hapax legomena I was able to present a reasonable etymology in this dissertation. This doctoral thesis was not only designed to enlarge our understanding of the Turfan texts by presenting the new texts and reconstructions, moreover the new proposed codicological and textological approaches applied to the texts may serve to facilitate or at least simplify further research in this field.
For more information read the author’s introduction to this volume.
A PDF of this Volume is free accesable for download here.
Table of Contents:
Chapter One. Introduction
- Aim
- Material and Content of the Living Gospel and Ewangelyōnīg
- Hymns
- Outline of the Study
- History of Prior Research
Chapter Two. Mani and his Gospel
- The Living Gospel and Manichaeism
- Position of the Gospel among the Canonical Writings
- Names and Epithets
- Composition Date
- Chapter Order of the Living Gospel
Chapter Three. Living Gospel and Doubtful Fragments
- Mani and the New Testament
- Sayings of Jesus in Tatian’s Διà τεσσάρων and the Nag Hammadi
- Codices
- Double-edged Sword: Similarities and Differences
- Possible Quotations of the Living Gospel in other Sources: An
- Overview
- The Paraclete as a Main Point of Issue in the Living Gospel
- Not Near but not Far: Jesus’ Sayings and Acts
- Citations of the Living Gospel: Some Tentative Suggestions
Chapter Four. Manichaean Turfan Texts of the Living Gospel
- Overview and General Concepts
- Turfan Fragments of the Living Gospel: Critical Middle Persian
- Text and its Alternating Sogdian Version
- Text I: M 17
- Text II: M 172/I/
- Text III: M 644
- Text IV: A Newly Recognized Small Fragment: M 5439 [= T II D67]
- Text V: An as yet Unpublished Manuscript Page in Sogdian Script
- Return to the Verso Side of M 644
- Unified Middle Persian Text of the Living Gospel
- Commentary
- Content of the Living Gospel According to an Unpublished Parthian Manuscript page
Chapter Five. Living Gospel Based on the Non-Iranian Manichaean Codices: Structure and Content
- Greek Version
- First Fragment: CMC 65, 23-68, 5
- Second Fragment: CMC 68, 5-69, 8
- Third Fragment: CMC 69, 9-70, 10
- A Textological Commentary
- Coptic Synaxeis
- Chapter Titles
- Plain Text
- First Discourse (logos)
- Other Discourses
Chapter Six. The Gospel in the Non-Manichaean Heritage
- Accounts of the Greek Anti-Manichaean Writings
- Arabic and Classical New Persian Testimonia
- Testimonies
- Commentary
Chapter Seven. Ewangelyōnīg Hymns
- General Observations
- Abecedarian System in the Parthian Hymns
- Texts
- Text I
- Text II
- Text III
- Text IV
Chapter Eight. Miscellaneous Scraps: Living Gospel and Ewangelyōnīg Hymns
- Fragment I
- Fragment II
- Fragment III
- Fragment IV
- Fragment V
Chapter Nine. Content of the Living Gospel and the Ewangelyōnīg Hymns: An Overview
- Living Gospel
- Ewangelyōnīg Hymns
- Living Gospel in Context of the ‘Hymns of the Gospel’
- Chapter Ten. Glossary of Turfan Texts in this Work
- Middle Persian and Parthian
- Sogdian
Chapter Eleven. Conclusion
Mohammd Shokri-Foumeshi (PhD 2014) is a scholar of Manichaean as well as Middle Iranian studies and a lecturer at the The University of Religions and Denominations, Qom (Iran).
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Happy Holidays
We wish all our readers happy holidays and a blessed festive season!
May you be happy, no matter what, where and how you celebrate!
Maksymiuk, Katarzyna. 2015. The Parthian nobility in Xusrō I Anōšīrvān court. In Piotr Briks (ed.), Elites in the Ancient World (Szczecińskie Studia nad Starożytnością II), 189–198. Wydawnictwo Naukowe.
Sources rewritten by order of Persian rulers (Pārsīg) in 6th century diminish the role of the Parthians (Pahlav) in the official history of Iran. In Xwadāy Nāmag a method of the Parthian reign recalculation to half of its actual duration was applied. Propaganda forgery of Xusrō I (531–579) so called Nāma-ye Tansar, shows Iran before power takeover by the Sasanian dynasty as a decentralized and corrupted state but even as “heretical” one. Contrast to the weak power of the Arsacid royal house had to be kingship of Šāhānšāh Ardašīr (224–242) who centralized administration relying on the Mazdean.
This paper is aimed at showing dominant role of the Parthian nobility in Persian government system. This is also attempt to answer the question whether administrative reforms initiated by Kawād I (488–496,498–531) and continued by his son Xusrō I Anōšīrvān were directed against status of the Parthian noblemen in Iran.
Maksymiuk, Katarzyna. 2015. The Pahlav-Mehrān family faithful allies of Xusrō I Anōšīrvān. Метаморфозы истории 6, 163-179.
The article describes the role of the members of the Parthian Mehrān played from the second half of the 5th century on Sasanian courts. It must be assumed that the Sasanian kings ruled their coun-try with the help of Parthian aristocracy. The reforms of the 6th cen-tury could not be directed against the status of the Parthian noblemen in Iran, because neither Kawād nor Xusrō could carry them without the assistance of Parthian wuzurgān.
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Cartographical thinking in late antiquity
Judging by the publisher’s description, Scott Johnson focuses on the Christian Roman Empire and its literary languages/sources in his latest book, Literary Territories. The volume will also be of interest to scholars of Iranian Studies taking a comparative approach to literary production in late antiquity. It sounds very promising: “The authors and texts discussed in the chapters that follow took advantage of the discourse of geography at the same time that the image of the book, the codex, became a discourse of its own for debates over knowledge and authority”. The book has been published despite the publisher’s 2016 schedule.
Johnson, Scott Fitzgerald. 2016. Literary territories: Cartographical thinking in late antiquity. Oxford University Press
Literary Territories introduces readers to a wide range of literature from 200-900 CE in which geography is a defining principle of literary art. From accounts of Holy Land pilgrimage, to Roman mapmaking, to the systematization of Ptolemy’s scientific works, Literary Territories argues that forms of literature that were conceived and produced in very different environments and for different purposes in Late Antiquity nevertheless shared an aesthetic sensibility which treated the classical “inhabited world,” the oikoumene, as a literary metaphor for the collection and organization of knowledge. This type of “cartographical thinking” stresses the world of knowledge that is encapsulated in the literary archive. The archival aesthetic coincided with an explosion of late antique travel and Christian pilgrimage which in itself suggests important unifying themes between visual and textual conceptions of space. Indeed, by the end of Late Antiquity the geographical mode appears in nearly every type of writing in multiple Christian languages (Greek, Latin, Syriac, Armenian, and others). The diffusion of cartographical thinking throughout the real-world oikoumene, now the Christian Roman Empire, was a fundamental intellectual trajectory of Late Antiquity.
About the author:
Scott Fitzgerald Johnson is a Dumbarton Oaks Teaching Fellow in Byzantine Greek at Georgetown University.
Silverman, Jason M. & Caroline Waerzeggers. 2015. Political memory in and after the Persian Empire (Ancient Near East Monographs 13). Atlanta: SBL Press.
Various disciplines that deal with Achaemenid rule offer starkly different assessments of Persian kingship. While Assyriologists treat Cyrus’s heirs as legitimate successors of the Babylonian kings, biblical scholars often speak of a kingless era; in which the priesthood took over the function of the Davidic monarch. Egyptologists see their land as uniquely independently minded despite conquests, while Hellenistic scholarship tends to evaluate the interface between Hellenism and native traditions without reference to the previous two centuries of Persian rule. This volume brings together in dialogue a broad array of scholars with the goal of seeking a broader context for assessing Persian kingship through the anthropological concept of political memory.
A PDF of the volume is available here.
Jason M. Silverman is a Post-doctoral Researcher at the University of Helsinki. He is the editor of Opening Heaven’s Floodgates: The Genesis Flood Narrative, Its Contexts and Reception (Gorgias Press) and the author of Persepolis and Jerusalem: Iranian Influence on the Apocalyptic Hermeneutic (T&T Clark).
Caroline Waerzeggers is Associate Professor at Leiden University. She is the author of Marduk-remanni: Local Networks and Imperial Politics in Achaemenid Babylonia (Peeters) and The Ezida Temple of Borsippa: Priesthood, Cult, Archives (Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten).
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Ancient Near Eastern Art
This slightly older publication has just come to my attention:
Kawami, Trudy & John Olbrantz (eds.). 2013. Source: Breath of heaven, breath of earth. Distributed by University of Washington Press for Hallie Ford Museum.
Breath of Heaven, Breath of Earth: Ancient Near Eastern Art from American Collections encompasses the geographic regions of Mesopotamia, Syria and the Levant, and Anatolia and Iran, and explores several broad themes found in the art of the ancient Near East: gods and goddesses, men and women, and both real and supernatural animals. These art objects reveal a wealth of information about the people and cultures that produced them: their mythology, religious beliefs, concept of kingship, social structure, and daily life.
About the authors:
Trudy Kawami is director of research at the Arthur M. Sackler Foundation in New York.
John Olbrantz is the Maribeth Collins Director of the Hallie Ford Museum of Art at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon.
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Persian gods and Avestan gods
Pirart, Éric. 2015. Dieux perses et dieux avestiques. Journal Asiatique 303 (1), 47–58.
If we pick up the significant differences they show, the detailed examination of the Old Persian and Avestan theonyms enables us to say that the Zoroastrian Mazdeism of the ancient Persians did not fit into the same tradition as the Avesta.