Bibliographia Iranica

A predominantly bibliographic blog for Iranian Studies

  • La Gâthâ Ahunauuaitī dans l’attente de l’aube

    Kellens, Jean. 2014.  La Gâthâ Ahunauuaitī dans l’attente de l’aube. Journal Asiatique 302 (2), 259–302.

     

  • Scythian messages for Darius the Great

    Delpech, François. 2015. Objets sacrées et armes parlantes: Le message des Scythes à Darius entre le mythe d’origine et l’historiographie. Journal Asiatique 303 (1),  25–46.

  • Mehrgān at Persepolis

    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.

  • A Newly Discovered Iron Age Site at Sarrez

    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.

  • Insurgency and terrorism in the Ancient Mediterranean

    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).

  • Achaemenid pottery from Dahan-e Gholaman

    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.

  • Sogdian Art and Archaelogy in China

    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.

     About the Author:
    Patrick Wertmann (PhD 2013) .is a specialist in East Asian art history and now working in the Sino-German cooperation project “Silk Road Fashion” of the Beijing Branch Office, Eurasia Department, German Archaeological Institute.

  • A tribute to Éric Pirart

    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.

  • Arts of the Hellenized East

    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.

  • The Seleucids and Iran

    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)*

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