The chapter discusses the ways in which various Greek writers en-gaged with the complexities of the Persian Empire, especially Herodotus, Xenophon, Aristotle, and some fourth-century writers (fragmentary) of Persika. It examines the tension between Greek hostility towards Persia and the conventional stereotypes, and their need to understand more about the Empire in a new form of ethnography. New insights into the Persian Empire (and new evidence) encourage returning to the Greek writers afresh and examining them from different angles: the chapter argues that amidst the clichés, there was also a seriousness and urgency in the fourth century about trying to understand the Persian Empire and its monarchy.
Giovanni B. Lanfranchi / Simonetta Ponchia / Robert Rollinger: Introduction
Antonio Daniele: Saluto dell’Accademia Galileiana di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti in Padova
I Key Note Lectures
Paolo Matthiae: The Destruction of Cultural Heritage in Syria and Iraq and the Perspective of a Rebirth
Marc Van De Mieroop: Making Peace in the Ancient Near East
Kurt A. Raaflaub: Making and Experiencing Peace in the Ancient World
II Ancient Near East and Egypt
Manfred Bietak: The Antagonism between Animosity and Peace-making in Ancient Egypt: Between Ideology and Practical Foreign Policy: An Extended Synopsis
Seth Richardson: Raiders, Neighbours, and Night-time: “Hybrid Peace” in Babylonia
Stefano de Martino: Making Peace in the Hittite Kingdom
Salvatore Gaspa: Making Peace in the Ancient Near East of the First Millennium BCE: The Case of the Assyrian Empire
Martti Nissinen: Peace and Peacemaking in the Hebrew Bible
Ann C. Gunter: Commemorating the End of Conflict in the Ancient Near East: Material Perspectives
Matthew Waters: Peace in Pieces: Making Peace in Elam
Josef Wiesehöfer: Peace and Views of Peace in Achaemenid Iran
III The Mediterranean Worlds and Beyond
Christoph Schäfer: Making Peace in the Hellenistic World
Wolfgang Spickermann: Problems of Making Peace in the Roman Republic: The Case of Appius Claudius Caecus and King Pyrrhus
Sven Günther: Frames of Making Peace and Treaties in the Roman Empire
Umberto Roberto: Making Peace with the Goths and the Burial of Athanaric in Constantinople (January 381): A Note on Jordanes, Getica 28, 142–145
Johannes Preiser-Kapeller: Many Eyes of the World? Making Peace between Byzantium and Other Empires, 600–1200 CE
The second volume (2021) of Journal of Iran National Museum is published. Whereas the previous volume was published in Persian, its current issue contains paper in English. This is an open-access journal.
Table of contents:
Sarah Piram: André Godard’s Archives at the Louvre Museum and Their Significance for the Study of the National Museum of Iran
Sepehr Zarei: Quartz Usage as a Raw Material and Its Influences on the Strategy of Lithic Technology: Thibault’s Survey Assemblage at the Northern Littoral of Strait of Hormuz 1977; Collection of Iran National Museum
Laura Manca; Marjan Mashkour; Sanaz Beizaee Doost; Roya Khazaeli: The technical knowledge of Early Neolithic Iranian Societies. The bone industries of Tappeh Sang-e Chakhmaq and Tepe Abdul Hosein, Iran National Museum
Steve Renette; Omolbanin Ghafoori; Sirvan Mohammadi Ghasrian: The Mahidasht Survey Project (1975-78) Revisited: Initial report of new collaborative efforts to catalogue and publish legacy data at the National Museum of Iran
Judith Thomalsky: Foliate lithic points from the Bronze Age of NE Iran, A techno-typological analysis
Omid Oudbashi; Mathias Mehofer; Sepehr Bahadori; Javad Tayyari: Technical Studies on Two Copper-Based Objects from the Bronze Age of Iran
Ali Zalaghi; Sepideh Maziar; Bayram Aghalari; Marjan Mashkour; Mozhgan Jayez: Kohne Tepesi: A Kura-Araxes and Parthian settlement in the Araxes River Basin, Northwest Iran
Sara Khalifeh Soltani: Antemortem Health Indicators And Burial Status: A Summary of Thesis Research of the Tepe Hasanlu Bronze- Seleuco-Parthian Period Burials, Iran.
Yasmina Wicks: Two Elderly Funerary Figurines and Related Models from Susa: A Case Study in Engaging with the Legacy Records of Roland de Mecquenem
Javier Álvarez-Mon: Between Picasso and Piradi On tour with Saltimbanques and Musicians from ancient Iran (c. 600 Bc)
Bruno Genito; Lucia Cerullo: Aspects of “Median” and Neo-Elamite Archaeology. New Considerations on Some Aržan, Jubaji, and Kalmakarra’s Metal Findings
Zahra Alinezhad: A Plated Seleucid-type Coin in National Museum of Iran
Gunvor Lindstroem: The Portrait of a Hellenistic Ruler and Other Bronze Sculptures from Kal-e Chendar/Shami. Results of the 2015 and 2016 studies in the National Museum of Iran
Cyrus Nasrollahzadeh: *Sadārap [Sadāraf/b] of *P/Frēnag”, Ardaxšēr ī Papagān’s brother or his son, Another inscription of *Sadārap [Sadāraf] on Silver Plate in National Museum of Iran.
Ali Aghaei; Michael Josef Marx: Carbon Dating of Seven Parchment Qurʾān Manuscripts and One Syriac Bible of the National Museum of Iran
The exceptional place women held in Manichaeism, in everyday life or myth, is the object of this book. Relying on firsthand Manichaean texts in several languages and on polemical sources, as well as on iconography, the various papers analyze aspects of women’s social engagement by spreading Mani’s doctrine, working to support the community, or corresponding with other Manichaean groups. Topics such as women’s relation to the body and elect or hearer status are also investigated. The major role played by female entities in the myth is enlightened through occidental and oriental texts and paintings discovered in Central Asia and China.
The Battle of Marathon changed the course of history in ancient Greece. To many, the impossible seemed to have been achieved – the mighty Persian Empire halted in its advance. What happened that day, why was the battle fought, and how did people make sense of it? This bold new history of the battle examines how the conflict unfolded and the ideas attached to it in antiquity and beyond. Many thought the battle offered lessons in how people should behave, with heroism to be emulated and faults to be avoided. While the battle itself was fought in one day, the battle for the idea of Marathon has lasted ever since. After immersing you in the battle, this work will help you to explore how the ancient Athenians used the battle in their relations between themselves and others, and how the battle continued to be used to express ideas about gods, empire, and morality in the age of Alexander and his successors, at Rome and in Greece under the Roman Empire, and in the ages after antiquity, even in our own era, in which Marathon plays a remarkable role in sport, film, and children’s literature with each retelling a re-imagining of the battle and its meaning. A clash of weapons, gods, and principles, this is Marathon as you’ve never seen it before!
Table of Contents Introduction
Athenians at a Turning Point
The Greek World
Persia
Revolt in Ionia
The Plain of Marathon
The Fight
Surviving Marathon
Events after Marathon
Memories of Marathon in Fifth-Century Art and Literature
The Hunt for Ancient Israel celebrates the contribution of Diana V. Edelman to the field of biblical studies and celebrates her personally as researcher, teacher, mentor, colleague, and mastermind of new research paths and groups. It salutes her unconventional, constant thinking and rethinking outside the box, and her challenging of established consensuses. This volume includes essays addressing biblical themes and texts, archaeological fieldwork, historical method, social memory and reception history.
This volume highlights and advances new developments in the study of Edom and Idumea in eighteen essays written by researchers from different disciplines (history, archaeology, Assyriology, epigraphy, memory studies, and Hebrew Bible studies). The topics examined include the emergence of Idumea, the evolution of Edomite/Idumean identity, the impact of the Arabian trade on the region, comparative and regional studies of Idumea and Judah, studies of specific sites, artifacts, epigraphic and literary sources, and a section on literary and ideological constructions and memories of “Edom” reflected in the Hebrew Bible. This volume is a “go-to” for all who are interested in the current state of research about Edom and Idumea.
The interactive film of the Performance of the High Zoroastrian Ceremony of Yasna
Open Access to the full film of the performance of the most solemn Zoroastrian ceremony the standard Yasna with the dedicatory of Mīnō Nāwar (the version edited by Geldner), the film is prepared in the frame of the multi-disciplinary Multimedia Yasna project (MuYa), based at SOAS, University of London and funded by the European Research Council (ERC) with an Advanced Investigator Grant (2016-2022), which had as its focus the Yasna – the core ritual of the Zoroastrian religion:
“You can watch the film at different speeds by moving the dot on the speed line below the Chapter and Stanza & Subsection tabs. The recording of this film was made in November 2017 at the Dadar Athornan Institute in Mumbai. The two priests, who performed the ceremony are the late Ervad Asphandiarji Dadachanji and Ervad Adil Bhesania.”
The Multimedia Yasna (MUYA)
The Multimedia Yasna (MUYA) examines the performance and written transmission of the core ritual of the Zoroastrian tradition, the Yasna, whose oldest parts date from the second millennium BCE. Composed in an ancient Iranian language, Avestan, the texts were transmitted orally and not written down until the fifth or sixth century CE. The oral tradition continues to be central to the religion, and the daily Yasna ceremony, the most important of all the rituals, is recited from memory by Zoroastrian priests. The interpretation of the Yasna has long been hampered by out-dated editions and translations of the text and until now there has been no documentation and study of the performance of the full ritual. The project MUYA examines both the oral and written traditions. It has filmed a performance of the Yasna ritual and created a critical edition of the recitation text examining the Yasna both as a performance and as a text attested in manuscripts. The two approaches have been integrated to answer questions about the meaning and function of the Yasna in a historical perspective.
Combining models and methodologies from digital humanities, philology and linguistics, the project has produced a subtitled, interactive film of the Yasna ritual, an online platform of transcribed manuscripts, editorial tools, digital transcriptions of manuscripts and digital editions with a text-critical apparatus, and with print editions, translations and commentaries of the Yasna. Information which was formerly restricted to students of Iranian philology and practising Zoroastrians has now become accessible to a world-wide audience through digital humanities. The project, based at SOAS, University of London and funded by the European Research Council, ran from October 2016 to September 2022. It was headed by Professor Almut Hintze and included an international team of researchers in the UK, Germany, India and Iran.
Barmash, Pamela & Mark W. Hamilton (eds.). 2021. In the shadow of empire: Israel and Judah in the long sixth century BCE. Atlanta: SBL Press.
The essays in this volume revisit issues of exile and occupation during the sixth century BCE through texts, iconography, and material culture. Unlike previous studies that focused narrowly on the Babylonian exile of the Judahite elites, this volume widens the geographical and temporal scope to include the Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian Empires. Contributors Pamela Barmash, Ryan P. Bonfiglio, Caralie Cooke, Lisbeth S. Fried, Martien A. Halvorson-Taylor, Mark W. Hamilton, Matt Waters, and Ian D. Wilson lay a firm foundation for future work on the long sixth century.
