Bahadori, Ali. 2015. Persepolitan ceremonies: The case of Mehrgān. Ancient West & East 14. 51–71.
The celebration of the Mehrgān at Persepolis is a hypothesis that has never been discussed in detail. The present paper explores evidence for the presence of the Mithra cult at the Achaemenid court and, consequently, for celebration of the Mehrgān at Persepolis.
Melirad, Sheler & Abbas Razmpoush. 2015. A newly discovered Iron Age site at Sarrez, Iranian Kurdistan. Ancient Near Eastern Studies 52. 207–216.
Sarrez is an ancient site in Kurdistan Province, Iran, near the present-day country town of Kamyaran. This site was discovered accidentally during dam construction activities. It has yielded some metal artefacts, potsherds and bones that are comparable to Iron Age III instances. The collection in its entirety is discussed in this article. One of the main objects from Sarrez is a decorated beaker with a scene on its wall that is comparable in many ways to examples of Neo-Assyrian art. The purpose of this paper is to publish and date the metal objects of the Sarrez collection based on this bronze beaker, which is one the few beakers from western Iran which has been found in a secure context.
Howe, Timothy & Lee Brice (eds.). 2016. Brill’s companion to insurgency and terrorism in the ancient Mediterranean (Brill’s Companions in Classical Studies). Brill.
In Brill’s Companion to Insurgency and Terrorism in the Ancient Mediterranean, Tim Howe and Lee Brice challenge the view that these forms of conflict are specifically modern phenomena by offering an historical perspective that exposes readers to the ways insurgency movements and terror tactics were common elements of conflict in antiquity. Assembling original research on insurgency and terrorism in various regions including, the Ancient Near East, Greece, Central Asia, Persia, Egypt, Judea, and the Roman Empire, they provide a deep historical context for understanding these terms, demonstrate the usefulness of insurgency and terrorism as concepts for analysing ancient Mediterranean behavior, and point the way toward future research.
About the authors:
Lee L. Brice, Ph.D. (2003), UNC-Chapel Hill, is Professor of History at Western Illinois University. He has published volumes and articles/chapters on the military history of the ancient world and is series editor of Warfare in the Ancient Mediterranean World (Brill).
Timothy Howe studied History, Classical and Archaeology at The Pennsylvania State University. PhD. 2000. He has been at St. Olaf College since 2003, where he is currently Associate Professor of History & Ancient Studies. Since 2013 he has excavated at the Hellenistic/Roman site of Antiochia ad Cragum in Southern Turkey, where he is currently Associate Field Director. Main interests include Greek and Roman agriculture and warfare, Mediterranean archaeology and Alexander the Great. He has written two monographs (Pastoral Politics: Animals, Agriculture and Society in Ancient Greece, Regina 2008 and All Things Alexander the Great, Greenwood 2016).
Zehbari, Zohreh, Reza Mehr Afarin & Seyyed Rasul Musavi Haji. 2015. Studies on the structural characteristics of Achaemenid pottery from Dahan-e Gholaman. Ancient Near Eastern Studies 52. 217–259.
The Achaemenid site of Dahan-E Gholaman lies 44 km southeast of Zabol, eastern Iran. Recovered archaeological records and evidence, including residential, public, and administrative-religious structures, indicate pre-planned and intense urbanisation. Unfortunately, the pottery from Dahan-E Gholaman has not been paid the attention it is due, even though pottery from the site has been studied. The studies show that innovation and demands on the pottery industry created local types of beakers, jars, jugs, and bowls and so on. Research on the pottery characteristics shows that the potters of this site were skilled in controlling the kiln temperature and were able to produce high quality wares, while various forms were commonly in use at the site.
Wertmann, Patrick. 2015. Sogdians in China. Archaeological and art historical analyses of tombs and texts from the 3rd to the 10th century AD. Deutschen Archäologischen Institut, Eurasien-Abteilung, Außenstelle Peking. (Archaeology in China and East Asia 5). Philipp von Zabern.
Sogdians, originating from present-day Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, dominated one of history’s greatest trade empires, extending from Constantinople to Korea between the 6th and 8th centuries AD. They established settlements in China and were granted positions of the highest rank at the imperial court. In recent years, richly equipped tombs attributed to members of the Sogdian diaspora were discovered in north and west China. The burial objects and inscriptions in these tombs offer surprising insights into the lives of these Central Asians. Patrick Wertmann followed the routes of the Sogdian traders and documented for his dissertation their traces in 54 museums and collections in eight countries, particularly in China. This fifth volume of the series Archaeology in China and East Asia offers the most comprehensive overview of Sogdian artefacts thus far assembled, with numerous colour photographs by the author.
The book has 347 pages with 116 full-page plates and 15 tables.
The second issue of the Estudios Iranios y Turanios, which was launched last year by the Sociedad de Estudios Iranios y Turanios, has been published. This issue of the journal, entitled Homenaje a Éric Pirart en su 65º aniversario, collects a number of philological discussions in honour of Éric Pirart’s 65th birthday.
The ToC is here.
Carter, Martha, Prudence Harper & Pieter Meyers (eds.). 2015. Arts of the Hellenized East: Precious metalwork and gems of the pre-Islamic era. Thames & Hudson.
The al-Sabah Collection, Kuwait, houses one of the world’s most spectacular collections of ancient silver vessels and other objects made of precious metals. Dating from the centuries following Alexander the Great’s conquest of Iran and Bactria in the middle of the 4th century BCE up to the advent of the Islamic era, the beautiful bowls, drinking vessels, platters and other objects in this catalogue suggest that some of the best Hellenistic silverwork was not made in the Greek heartlands, but in this eastern outpost of the Seleucid empire. Martha L. Carter connects these far-flung regions from northern Greece to the Hindu Kush, tracing the common cultural threads that link their diverse geography and people. The last part of the catalogue, by Prudence O. Harper, deals with an important group of Sasanian silver vessels and gems, and some other rarities produced in the succeeding centuries for Hunnish and Turkic patrons. The catalogue is accompanied by an essay on the technology of ancient silver production by Pieter Meyers, who has performed a number of scientific tests on the objects, including a new metallurgical analysis that may help to identify their geographical origins.
Plischke, Sonja. 2014. Die Seleukiden und Iran: die seleukidische Herrschaftspolitik in den östlichen Satrapien. (Classica et Orientalia 9). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.This revised doctoral thesis surveys the eastern provinces of the Seleucid Empire. Much work has been done in the last decades, especially on the documents from Babylon, which allows for certain periods a much more certain chronology than was possible earlier. Plischke makes good use of this material and provides in general a sound survey of the sources and the voluminous secondary literature on the Seleucid kingdom, although her main focus is on Iran. She begins with a survey of recent research and follows it up with a rather long-winded listing of the literary, epigraphic and numismatic sources, which offers nothing new and could have been more sharply focussed – does a reader of this highly complex work really need to be told that Polybios is “generally regarded as reliable” or that Livy wrote his History of Rome in the Augustan period? The preliminary chapter also offers a cursory account of well-known events from Kyros II until the death of Roxane and Alexander IV. This makes a reader wonder whether the book is intended for a professional or a general readership. (R. Malcolm Errington, BMCR)*
Panaino, Antonio. 2015. The vision of Ahura Mazdā’s poet. Notes on Y. 31,5. In M.C. Pelevin (ed.), «НА ПАСТБИЩЕ МЫСЛИ БЛАГОЙ» Сборник статей к юбилею И. М. Стеблин-Каменского [Collection of articles for the anniversary of Steblin-Kamensky], 47–62. St. Petersburg: Контраст.
Y.31,5 is a very intriguing O.Av. stanza, which presents some interesting problems centered on the pivotal role of ərəšiš “seer, inspired poet”, corresponding to Ved. r̥ṣi-, whose insight should be connected not only with the Manah who was Vohu, but also with the inner manah- of Ahura Mazdā himself by means of a word-game played around the stem manah- evoked in its compositional form (mə̄ṇ°). The “better” (vahiiō) rule assigned by the Gods to the poet and priest (Zoroaster) opens his eyes offering the Av. ərəši– a new power of discrimination and comprehension of the world (probably both in the ritual dimension and in reality) so that he might actually impress in his own mind what does not exist and what is really existent. In this respect the text by means of the direct opposition between two subjunctives (yā nōit̰ vā aŋhat̰ aŋhaitī vā) of the root ah (very interestingly, one with a secondary ending, the latter with a primary one), shows how the idea of “existence” and “inexistence” — in this very case deeper than that of “being” or not “being” — was fittingly formulated already in the earliest Mazdean framework.
Schiltz, Véronique (ed.). 2015. De Samarcande à Istanbul: étapes orientales. (Hommages à Pierre Chuvin 2). Paris: CNRS Éditions.