Bibliographia Iranica

A predominantly bibliographic blog for Iranian Studies

Tag: Achaemenid Empire

  • Achaemenid court logistics between royal capitals of Susa and Persepolis

    Achaemenid court logistics between royal capitals of Susa and Persepolis

    Salaris, Davide. 2025. ‘Royal’ road, ‘royal’ needs: a GIS-based approach to Achaemenid court logistics between royal capitals of Susa and Persepolis. Antiquity. Published online 2025:1-8.

    This article redefines the concept of the Achaemenid ‘Royal’ Road using GIS-based route modelling to reconstruct possible roads between Susa and Persepolis. By integrating logistical and environmental parameters, it shows how royal mobility required a specialised infrastructure—distinct from ancillary roads—tailored to the operational scale of the Achaemenid court.

  • The Achaemenid Dynastic Myth and Jewish Scribes in the Late Persian Period

    The Achaemenid Dynastic Myth and Jewish Scribes in the Late Persian Period

    Leuchter, Mark A. 2025. An Empire Far and Wide: The Achaemenid Dynastic Myth and Jewish Scribes in the Late Persian Period. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    This book offers a new approach to evidence to examine Persian imperial ideology and surveys literary products of ancient Jewish scribes to analyze the influence of Persian imperialism on the development of Yehudite scribal ideology and presents an argument for the existence of Judaism in the Persian period.

  • The Assyrian Provincial Seal of Surkh Dom-i Luri, a pattern for Darius I’s Seal

    Alibaigi, Sajjad. 2025. A Clue to a Puzzle: The Assyrian Provincial Seal of Surkh Dom-i Luri, a pattern for Darius I’s Seal. Arta 2025.004.

    This short article examines the iconographic origins of the famous seal of Darius I, for which an Egyptian provenance has been proposed and now in the British Museum (BM 89132). Although the influence of the glyptic art of the first millennium BC on Achaemenid seal-carving is well evident, scholars have paid less attention to this influence on the cylinder seal of Darius I. Among the Assyrian seals and impressions of the second and first millennia BC, there are important examples that are iconographically similar to the seal of Darius, but the provincial seal of Surkh Dom provides the most clues to the connection between the seal of Darius and the Assyrian style seals. This seal, which was found from the excavations of the Surkh Dom shrine, is more similar to Darius’ seal than any other. It seems that the Assyrian provincial style of Surkh Dom-i Luri seal should also be added to the long list of influences of Neo-Assyrian art on Achaemenid and considered as a pattern for the seal of Darius I.

  • East and West (vol. 64)

    East and West (vol. 64)

    The latest volume of East and West contains several interesting articles, some of which deal with aspects of ancient Iran.

    • M. Minardi, A. Bekbauliev: Report on the First Campaign of Excavations of 2023 at Bazar-kala, with Additional Considerations on the Urbanism of Ancient Chorasmia
    • S. Tusa, M. Vidale, I. Caldana, E. Lant, Faizur Rahman, L.M. Olivieri: A “Bactrian Lady” and Other Terracotta Figurines from Aligrama, Swat
    • S. Aliyari Babolghani: A Short Note on the So-called Conjugation IIm in Achaemenid Elamite
    • M.C. Benvenuto: Notes on the Bactrian Personal Name Σανδο
    • E. Filippone: Paratactic and Hypotactic Strategies in the Discourse Organization of the Multilingual Achaemenid Texts
    • F. Pompeo: Who are They Rebelling against? The Constructions of hamiçiya- bav- in the Achaemenid Royal Texts
    • A.V. Rossi: Rüdiger Schmitt and Achaemenid Iran
  • Deciphering Arachosian Tribute at Persepolis

    Deciphering Arachosian Tribute at Persepolis

    Barnea, Gad. 2025. Deciphering Arachosian tribute at Persepolis: Orthopraxy and regulated gifts in the Achaemenid Empire. Religions 16(8): 965.

    Inscribed trays, plates, mortars, and pestles made of beautiful green chert bearing formulaic administrative textual formulae were found during excavations at the Persepolis Treasury in the 1930s. These implements and the enigmatic formulae inscribed upon them present scholars with a complex and unique challenge whose correct interpretation holds important implications for the study of Achaemenid history, imperial administration, and relations between ancient Arachosia (roughly modern-day Afghanistan) and the centers of power, as well as—as I argue in this article—for the symbiosis between administration and cult in antiquity. They continue to be hotly debated ever since their inauspicious initial publication by Bowman in 1970, yet they have thus far remained obscure. By comparing these finds with material and textual data from across the Achaemenid empire and early Parthian sources, this article offers a new comprehensive study of these objects. My analysis suggests that these objects are to be considered as a more systematized and tightly controlled Arachosian form of “informal taxation”—namely, regulated gifts—which are comparable to similar imperial donations found in the Treasury at Persepolis. Specifically, they take part in an “economy of fealty” demonstrating loyalty to king and empire through the adherence to the era’s Mazdean ritual orthopraxy.

  • Women in Cultic Functions in Late Achaemenid and Hellenistic Babylon

    Debourse, Céline. 2025. Women in Cultic Functions in Late Achaemenid and Hellenistic Babylon. In: Shawna Dolansky & Sarah Shectman (eds.), The Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion, Gender, and Sexuality in the Ancient Near East, 147-157. London: Bloomsbury.

    This chapter explores the roles of women in cultic functions in Late Achaemenid and Hellenistic Babylon, focusing on cuneiform evidence from temple contexts. These sources reveal their increasing involvement in sacred rituals and temple administration. Through analysis of titles, the study highlights both continuity and innovation in female religious roles.

  • District Twelve

    District Twelve

    Ferrario, Marco. 2025. District Twelve. Northeastern Central Asia From Cyrus to Antiochos: Local Histories of a World Empire (Ancient Iran Series, 19). Leiden: Brill.

    This book offers, at the same time, an imperial history of a region (Northeastern Central Asia under the Achaemenids) and the regional history of an Empire (how the Persians adapted their strategies of governmentality to a geographically challenging, ethnically diverse, and politically impervious space). Bringing together evidence from literary texts, archaeology, and ethnohistory, it crafts a new narrative of Central Asian history in which local actors in and outside the imperial territory are given as much, if not (at times) more agency than the King of Kings and his satraps in heralding Central Asia’s first Age of Empires.

  • Hunara

    Hunara: Journal of Ancient Iranian Arts and History, published by Casa Editrice Persiani in Bologna, Italy, is a peer-reviewed, Open Access journal, publishing scholarly articles under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

    Here is the ToC of the latest issue (3/1):

    • Patryk Skupniewicz: The Scene of Bear Hunt on the Sasanian Silver Plate from the Wyvern Collection. On Segmented Image-Building in Sasanian Art
    • Hovhannes Khorikyan: Cyrus the Great in Armenian Sources and Armenia
    • Maia Kapanadze: Characteristics of Georgian-Iranian Relations during the Achaemenid Period
    • Iulon Gagoshidze; David Gagoshidze: Persian-Achaemenid Bell-Shaped Column Bases from the South Caucasus: New Evidence
    • Jeremy Goldberg: A Kurigalzu II Reading of VS 24.91 and Early Middle Elamite History

  • Miscellanea Epigraphica Susiana II

    Fattori, Marco. 2025. Miscellanea Epigraphica Susiana II: Addenda et corrigenda. Arta 2025.002.

    In this article I propose some corrections and additions to my previous contribution Miscellanea Epigraphica Susiana, made possible by the recent publication of a book dealing, among other things, with the same inscriptions (DSe, DSi, A2Se). In particular, I provide: a complete restoration of the final portion of the Elamite version of DSe highlighting some textual parallels found in the Meso-Elamite, Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian epigraphic tradition; an etymological discussion on the newly discovered OP word kabnu– “ruined, dilapidated”; and some improvements in the reading and interpretation of a new fragment of the Elamite version of A2Se.

  • Myth and History in Ancient Persia

    Myth and History in Ancient Persia

    Shaghaghi Zarghamee, Reza. 2025. Myth and History in Ancient Persia: The Achaemenids in the Iranian Tradition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

    This book fills an important gap in Achaemenid studies by using traditional Iranian narratives, such as those found in the famous Shahnameh, or ‘Book of Kings’, of Ferdowsi, to analyse the Greco-Roman accounts of Median and Persian royalty. The study shows that the classical authors derived their accounts from Iranian traditions, grounded in age-old myths and legends. This analysis serves many purposes. It refines the extent to which the classical sources may be used in historical reconstructions and sheds new light on the literary methods of authors, such as Herodotus, Ctesias, and Xenophon. Finally, the book offers insights into one of the thorniest enigmas in Iranian historiography, the apparent disappearance of Illustrious rulers like Cyrus II, Darius I, and Xerxes I from native historical traditions. Standing at the crossroads of Iranian studies and Classics, this book is an indispensable source for scholars of ancient Iran, Greek historiography, and the Shahnameh.

    (more…)