Bibliographia Iranica

A predominantly bibliographic blog for Iranian Studies

Tag: Achaemenid Empire

  • Sovereignty in Iran

    Sovereignty in Iran

    Holliday, Shabnam J. (ed.). 2026. Sovereignty in Iran: Challenges to Eurocentrism from Ancient Iran to the Islamic Republic. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

    This book is a multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary collaborative project examining sovereignties as a plural concept through the case of Iran. In so doing it challenges Eurocentric assumptions in the Humanities and Social Sciences and covers sovereignty from ancient Iran to the Islamic Republic including the Woman, Life, Freedom protests.

    Part One explores sovereignty in ancient Iran by looking at the Elamites through a theoretical lens, the Achaemenids, and the Parthians and Sasanians. Part Two explores how territory relates to sovereignty alongside other dynamics in the Safavid, Second World War, Pahlavi and Islamic Republic periods. Part Three then focuses on competing and co-existing sovereignties in the southern Persian Gulf at the beginning of the twentieth century in Kurdistan and its relationships with Iranian governments during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, as well as in the Woman, Life, Freedom protests. A non-Eurocentric framework requires the reader to think about co-existing and competing sovereignties with an ‘Area Studies’ lens. This approach moves beyond periodised understandings of history and not only contributes to better understanding Eurocentrism but also enables a greater appreciation of contexts, complexities and agencies.

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  • The Chronological Boundaries of the Persepolis Fortification Archive

    Stolper, Matthew W. 2025. The Chronological Boundaries of the Persepolis Fortification Archive. In Petra Goedegebuure & Joost Hazenbos (eds.), Ḫattannaš: A Festschrift in Honor of Theo van den Hout, 387-415. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

    The Festschrift offered to Theo van den Hout contains several important and stimulating studies. The entire volume is available in open access via the hyperlink above. Among its contributions, an article by Matthew Stolper is particularly noteworthy, as it addresses a subject at the very core of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. The study presents an edition of several texts from the Persepolis Fortification Archive which, despite their fragmentary condition, shed new light on the chronological boundaries of the Archive.

  • The Idea of “India” and “Gandāra” in the Earliest Iranian and Greek Sources

    King, Rhyne & Alice Collett. 2026. The Idea of “India” and “Gandāra” in the Earliest Iranian and Greek Sources. Journal of the American Society for Premodern Asia 146 (2): 241-262.

    Hinduš, the Old Persian name for a region of the Achaemenid Persian Empire (550–330 BCE), ultimately underlies the English word India. The history of the word Hinduš and its cognates has attracted considerable research, yet the precise referent of Hinduš in its Achaemenid context remains imperfectly understood. Achaemenid sources often group Hinduš together with the neighboring region of Gandāra, and analyzing the two regions together is key to understanding them. In this article we reassess the earliest appearances of Hinduš, Gandāra, and their cognates in the Iranian and Greek sources. We first demonstrate that Achaemenid knowledge of South Asia was vague, and although imperial administrators broadly located Hinduš in the lower Indus and Gandāra in the upper Indus, they did not use these toponyms entirely consistently. Next, we turn to the Classical Greek sources. The Greeks recognized Gandāra as a far eastern region of the Achaemenid Empire, but they expanded the idea of Hinduš, as Indikḗ, into a fantastical land on the edge of the world.

  • On Achaemenid-era metalworkers based on the Persepolis tablets

    Zehbari, Zohreh. 2025. The men who wrought the metals: On Achaemenid-era metalworkers based on the Persepolis tablets. Iran, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/05786967.2025.2551493

    While varied attempts have been made to study Achaemenid metal artefacts, we still know little about the craftsmen who wrought the metals. Metalworkers manufactured various products for different social classes and for different contexts, and must have played a notable role in the society of the Achaemenid period. The present paper aims to address the various textual and archaeological evidence attesting metallurgical specialisations, and to collect information regarding goldsmiths, silversmiths, blacksmiths, and bronze/coppersmiths who worked and travelled within the Persian empire, tracing different aspects of their activities and lives such as their status, wage, gender, and ethnicity. In addition, some previously unknown facts about the smiths’ condition will be presented according to the available documents and relevant comparisons with the neighbouring regions.

  • Another clay tag with Achaemenid Seal Impressions

    Treuk, Matheus. Another clay tag with Achaemenid seal impressions in the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology of the University of São Paulo, Brazil (MAE/USP). Arta 2026.001.

    Presented here is a clay tag bearing Achaemenid seal impressions, preserved at the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology of the University of São Paulo, Brazil, and identified by registration number 0816 4-00235. The tag originally formed part of the so-called ‘Banco Santos’ or ‘CidCollection’. It clearly belongs to the dossier of 42 items previously published by Henkelman, Jones, and Stolper (ARTA 2004.001), as well as two additional items more recently published by Ignacio Márquez Rowe (ARTA 2025.001). The MAE clay tag was first published by the Brazilian Assyriologist Katia Maria Paim Pozzer in a 2004 catalogue accompanying a Brazilian exhibition of the CidCollection.

  • Diodoros of Sicily: Bibliotheke Historike

    Diodoros of Sicily: Bibliotheke Historike

    Harding, Phillip (ed.). 2026. Diodoros of Sicily: Bibliotheke Historike: Translation, with introduction and notes. Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Diodoros of Sicily (c.90–c.30 BC) spent thirty years producing an encyclopedic compendium of world history from its mythical beginnings to his own day. His is the only surviving, connected account of Greek affairs from 480/79 to 302/1. The books translated in this volume offer the best account of the career of Philip II of Macedon, his conquest of Greece and his assassination, as well as the earliest extant history of the career of Alexander the Great. Book 16 is also the main source for the Persian re-conquest of Egypt by Artaxerxes III (Okhos), the seizure of Delphi by the Phokians in the Third Sacred War, and Athens’ defeat by a coalition of her allies in the Social War. The translation is supported by extensive notes, and the Introduction examines Diodoros’ moral and educational purpose in writing, the plan of his work, his sources, and his qualities as a historian.

  • Coinages in the Achaemenid Empire

    Coinages in the Achaemenid Empire

    Rutter, Keith. 2026. Coinages in the Achaemenid Empire. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

    Brings together the evidence for coin production and use over the whole Achaemenid Empire

    • Demonstrates how the actual production of coins was a phenomenon mostly confined to the western satrapies of the empire
    • Unlike other studies of ancient coinage which focus on its spread westward into Greek lands after its invention in Asia Minor, this book looks east, to communities and kingdoms where the dominant culture was often not Greek
    • Treats coins as part of the wider context of exchange and resource allocation in the empire

    The Achaemenid Empire was huge and the material available for studying it is disparate. The coinages produced in the empire offer distinctive perspectives and provide insights into crucial questions about how the empire was organised and administered. The numismatic evidence is particularly important due to its first hand, contemporary nature: it speaks to us directly, not through the prism of later accounts.

    Keith Rutter, an international specialist in numismatics, provides us with the first comprehensive account of the great variety of coinages produced in the Achaemenid Empire. He shows us how the iconography found on coins poses new questions on artistic influences, details of administration and religious beliefs. This highly illustrated book is the starting point for anyone who wants to understand the topic.

  • Land tenure and fiscal practices in the Aramaic corpus of Idumea

    Shahryari, Mitchka L.M.J. 2026. Land tenure and fiscal practices in the Aramaic corpus of Idumea: Bow-Fields and horse estates. BASOR 395: 179-194.

    The Idumean corpus of Aramaic ostraca sheds light on the structured administrative and fiscal system in the region. This publication raised the possibility of the presence of the terms qaštu (“bow-fields”) and, albeit conjecturally, “horse-estates,” which would offer the first concrete evidence of these land-management practices within the fiscal framework of the Idumean region. These findings resonate with other key terms already mentioned by scholars, such as iškaru and references to tax collectors, which underscore the Persian institutional system of taxation, labor organization, workforce allocation, and resource management. The fiscal vocabulary and classifications of landholding revealed in these texts display parallels with Babylonian, Persepolitan, and Egyptian models, while simultaneously reflecting local adaptations. The ostraca thus demonstrate that Idumea was an integrated part of a hybrid imperial structure that linked local agricultural communities to the broader Persian administration.

  • Ancient Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia (vol. 31)

    The volume 31 of the journal Ancient Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia contains several contributions that engage directly with an Iranian context.

  • Ancient Jewish Memories of Achaemenid Persia

    Joachimsen, Kristin & Jason S. Mokhtarian (eds.). 2025. Ancient Jewish Memories of Achaemenid Persia (The Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 25).

    Several contributions in the special issue of The Journal of Hebrew Scriptures, titled Ancient Jewish Memories of Achaemenid Persia, engage directly with the Persian context. The volume is available in open access.