Tag: Art History

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Books

Iranian Studies in Honour of Éva M. Jeremiás

Szántó, Iván (ed.). 2015. From Aṣl to Zā’id: Essays in honour of Éva M. Jeremiás (Acta et Studia XIII). Pilis-csaba: The Avicenna Institute of Middle Eastern Studies.
Cove­ring a wide range of subjects within the general field of Iranian studies, this collec­tion of essays consists of contri­bu­tions by twenty scho­lars. Most arti­cles concen­t­rate on Persian lingu­istics.
A number of further essays discuss Persian lite­ra­ture, histo­rio­graphy; reli­gion, science ; and art. The volume contains nume­rous illu­s­t­ra­tions, mostly in colour, and it includes a compre­hen­sive biblio­graphy of Éva M. Jere­miás up to 2015.
Table of Contents:
  • C. EDMUND BOSWORTH: The poet ‘Asjadī and early Ghaznavid history
  • MÁRIA GÓSY: Similarities and differences in the early acquisition of grammar by Persian and Hungarian children
  • ELA FILIPPONE: The so-called Old Persian ‘potential construction’ (being Text production strategies and translation strategies in the Achaemenid documentation, III)
  • BERT G. FRAGNER: Orientalismus in Abenteuererzählungen aus der frühen Sowjetunion
  • CARINA JAHANI: Complex predicates and the issue of transitivity: The case of Southern Balochi
  • ANNA KRASNOWOLSKA: The Sarmatian myth and Poland’s nineteenth-century Orientalism
  • PAUL LUFT: Authenticity and identity of Qājār poetry on stone and paper
  • MARIA MACUCH: Precision orientated legal language in the Sasanian law of inheritance
  • ÁGNES NÉMETH: How do young Iranians speak?
  • PAOLA ORSATTI: Spoken features in classical Persian texts: subordinate conditional clauses without a conjunction
  • ANTONIO CLEMENTE DOMENICO PANAINO: Jesus’ trimorphisms and tetramorphisms in the meeting with the Magi
  • ADRIANO V. ROSSI: Diglossia in Persian
  • CHRISTINE VAN RUYMBEKE: Sir William Jones and the Anwār-i Suhaylī. Containing a fortuitous but nevertheless essential note on the Orient Pearls
  • ‘ALI ASHRAF SADEGHI: Rare forms of personal endings in some Classical Persian texts
  • NICHOLAS AND URSULA SIMS-WILLIAMS: Rustam and his zīn-i palang
  • IVÁN SZÁNTÓ: Bahāʼ al-Dīn al-‘Amilī and the visual arts
  • KATALIN TORMA: Georgius Gentius and the early reception of the Gulistān in Hungary
  • ZIVA VESEL: Les figures astrologiques dans les traités persans
  • SIBYLLE WENTKER: A visit of the Shah. Vienna and the false Rūznāma of Nāṣir al-Dīn Shah

About the Editor:

Iván Szántó (PhD 2009) is a scholar of Art History with special focus on Iranian Art and staff member of  The Institute of Iranian studies at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW).

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Books

Ancient Near Eastern Art

This slightly older publication has just come to my attention:

Kawami, Trudy & John Olbrantz (eds.). 2013. Source: Breath of heaven, breath of earth. Distributed by University of Washington Press for Hallie Ford Museum.

Breath of Heaven, Breath of Earth: Ancient Near Eastern Art from American Collections encompasses the geographic regions of Mesopotamia, Syria and the Levant, and Anatolia and Iran, and explores several broad themes found in the art of the ancient Near East: gods and goddesses, men and women, and both real and supernatural animals. These art objects reveal a wealth of information about the people and cultures that produced them: their mythology, religious beliefs, concept of kingship, social structure, and daily life.

About the authors:

Trudy Kawami is director of research at the Arthur M. Sackler Foundation in New York.

John Olbrantz is the Maribeth Collins Director of the Hallie Ford Museum of Art at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon.

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Books

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.
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Books

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.

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Books

Mani’s pictures

Gulácsi, Zsuzsanna. 2015. Mani’s pictures: The didactic images of the Manichaeans from Sasanian Mesopotamia to Uygur Central Asia and Tang-Ming China (Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 90). Brill.

The founder of Manichaeism, Mani (216-274/277 CE), not only wrote down his teachings to prevent their adulteration, but also created a set of paintings—the Book of Pictures—to be used in the context of oral instruction. That pictorial handscroll and its later editions became canonical art for Mani’s followers for a millennium afterwards. This richly illustrated study systematically explores the artistic culture of religious instruction of the Manichaeans based on textual and artistic evidence. It discusses the doctrinal themes (soteriology, prophetology, theology, and cosmology) depicted in Mani’s canonical pictures. Moreover, it identifies 10th-century fragments of canonical picture books, as well as select didactic images adapted to other, non-canonical art objects (murals, hanging scrolls, mortuary banners, and illuminated liturgical manuscripts) in Uygur Central Asia and Tang-Ming China.

ToC:
 
  • Part 1 – Textual Sources on Manichaean Didactic Art
  • Introduction to Part 1
  • Primary and Secondary Records in Coptic, Syriac, Greek, and Arabic Texts (3rd–10th Centuries)
  • Primary Records in Parthian and Middle Persian Texts (3rd–9th Centuries)
  • Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Records in Uygur and Chinese Texts (8th–13th Centuries)
  • Tertiary Records in Post-Manichaean Arabic, Persian, and Chagatai Texts (11th–17th Centuries)
  • Part 2 – Physical Remains of Manichaean Didactic Art
  • Introduction to Part 2
  • Format and Preservation
  • Subject Repertoire and Iconography

Zsuzsanna Gulácsi, Ph.D. (1998, Indiana University) is a Professor of Asian Religious Art at Northern Arizona University and the author of Mediaeval Manichaean Book Art (Brill, 2005), Manichaean Art in Berlin Collections (Brepols 2001), and dozens of articles on Manichaean art.

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Events

Amélie Kuhrt to deliver the Harold Bailey Lecture 2015

The Harold Bailey Lecture 2015
Friday 11th December, 5.30pm at FAMES, Cambridge
Professor Amélie Kuhrt, FBA  – The King Speaks: The Persians and their Empire
The Achaemenid empire was created in the space of less than thirty years and dominated, with considerable success, a region stretching from Central Asia to the Aegean for around 200 years. How did the Persian kings and ruling elite visualise their immense power? How was that vision expressed? In this talk, Amélie Kuhrt, Professor Emeritus at University College London, aims to present an outline of the Persian image of their domain, concentrating on monuments and inscriptions from the royal centres and leaving aside the stories of outsiders, such as Greeks, Romans, Egyptians and Jews. 
The lecture will begin promptly at 5.30pm, followed by a reception.
Admission free. Booking not required.
Venue: Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge CB3 9DA
Enquiries: info@indiran.org
Tel. 01223 356841
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Articles

Roman ‘Soldatenkaiser’ on the Triumphal Rock Reliefs of Shāpūr I

Shavarebi, Ehsan. 2015. Roman ‘Soldatenkaiser’ on the Triumphal Rock Reliefs of Shāpūr I – A Reassessment. HISTORIA I ŚWIAT 4, 47-63.

Five rock reliefs surviving in Persis/Fārs province in southern Iran represent the victories of Shāpūr I (241–272 AD), the second Sasanian King of Kings (Šāhānšāh), over the Roman Empire. The three Roman Emperors depicted on these reliefs have traditionally been identified as Gordian III (238–244), Philip I – known as ‘the Arab’ – (244–249) and Valerian I (253–260). From the 1960s onward, new interpretations are presented. In the most recent of these, Uranius Antoninus (253/254) is recognised on three of Shāpūr’s triumphal reliefs. The present paper aims to re-examine these new hypotheses by considering numismatic materials, including a unique gold coin of Shāpūr which bears an image of the same topic accompanying a legend on its reverse.

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Books

Religion, History and Art of Ancient Iran

Farridnejad et al. Faszination Iran — Cover 2015Farridnejad, Shervin, Anke Joisten-Pruschke & Rika Gyselen (eds.). 2015. Faszination Iran. Beiträge zur Religion, Geschichte und Kunst des Alten Iran. Gedenkschrift für Klaus Schippmann. (Göttinger Orientforschungen. III. Reihe: Iranica, Neue Folge 13). Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag.

This Memorial Volume is dedicated to one of the most prolific and renowned scholars in the field of Ancient Iranian Archaeology and History, the late Professor Klaus Schippmann (1924-2010), who held the chair of “Near Eastern Archaeology with special reference to Iran” at Georg-August University of Göttingen until his retirement in 1990.

The volume consists of eleven papers, written by some of the foremost scholars in the field of Iranian Studies as well as some of his lifetime friends and colleagues. The articles are essentially concerned with different aspects of Ancient Iranian Art, Archaeology, History, Numismatics and Religion, reflecting the scholarly interests of Klaus Schippmann. The volume is accompanied also by parts of his unpublished private diary (1959) from his Nachlass, reflecting his ideas, visions and memories of his excavations as well as one report of his last trip to his favourable archaeological site of taḫt-e soleymān (Iran), written by his personal tour leader. The book is illustrated by numerous plates.

This volume could be of interest for scholars and students of Ancient Iranian Art, Archaeology, History, Religion and other neighbour disciplines.

Table of Contents (PDF):
  • In Memoriam Klaus Schippmann
  • Anke Joisten-Pruschke: „Ich muss irgendwie sehen, dass es für mich einen Weg gibt Archäologie zu studieren“ – Klaus Schippmanns Tagebuch einer Reise in den Vorderen Orient (1959)
  • Oric Basirov: “Proselytisation” and “Exposure of the Dead”:
    Two Christian Calumnies Commonly raised against the Sasanians
  • Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis: “Observations on some coins of Persis”
  • Touraj Daryaee: “The Xwarrah and the Sēnmurv: Zoroastrian Iconography on Seventh Century Copper Coinage“
  • Shervin Farridnejad: “Das zoroastrische mār-nāme „Schlangenbuch“. Zur zoroastrischen Volksreligion und Ophiomantik”
  • Rika Gyselen: “Some Thoughts on Sasanian mgwh-Seals”
  • Bruno Jacobs: “Zur bildlichen Repräsentation iranischer Eliten
    im achämenidenzeitlichen Kleinasien”
  • Anke Joisten-Pruschke: “Feudalismus im Sasanidenreich?”
  • Wolfram Kleiss: “Hochterrassen – Zikkurati – Stufenpyramiden”
  • Karin Mosig-Walburg: “Herrscherpropaganda der Nachfolger Shapurs I. (Ohrmazd I. – Narse) – Ein Beitrag zum Verhältnis von König und Adel im Sasanidenreich in der zweiten Hälfte des 3. Jh. n. Chr.”
  • Michael Shenkar: “Aspects of Iconography of Ahura Mazdā: Origins and Significance”
  • Dieter Weber: “Spätsasanidische Preislisten im frühislamischen Iran”
  • Hartmut Niemann: “Der Kreis schließt sich – Klaus Schippmanns letzte Reise zum ‘Takht’ “
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Books

History of the Iranian Architecture

Kleiss, Wolfram. 2015. Geschichte der Architektur Irans. (Archäologie in Iran und Turan 15). Berlin: Reimer.
“6000 years Iranian architecture”! The  history  of  the  architecture  of  Iran  is  such  a comprehensive topic, that when taking it into regard a certain restriction must be made to examples  found  within  the  present-day national  borders  as  well  as  within  the  timespan  from  the 6th century B.C. until 1979. The architectural examples  presented  here  were  always  contingent on different topographic and climatic conditions in addition to diverse cultural influences. Rock architecture and mosques – bazaars, baths and palaces, as well as modern public buildings and housing: Wolfram Kleiss characterizes in this volume the architectural history of Iran from the 4th millennium BC to the present day.
For more information:

Table of Contents, German Summary and Reading Sample

English Summary

Persian Summary

About the author:
Wolfram Kleiss is the retired first Director of the German Archaeological Institute (Tehran Branch). Numerous publications, among others on Caravanserais and dovecotes in Iran.
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Articles

Zoroastrian Embroidery

Parsi Zoroastrian Embroidery © UNESCO Parzor
Parsi Zoroastrian Embroidery © UNESCO Parzor

Cama, Shernaz. 2014. Parsi Embroidery: An Intercultural Amalgam. In Zhao Feng, Marie-Louise Nosch & Lotika Varadarajan (eds.), Global Textile Encounters, 263–274. (Ancient Textiles Series). Oxford: Oxbow Books.

From early history, textiles have woven together the tapestry of humanity. The Parsi Zoroastrians, now a tiny minority of under 65,000 individuals in India, have saved, in their cupboards and trunks, this proof of our world’s multicutural history. Cpmplex roots and routes lie behind what we call “Parsi Embroidery” today. The tradition grew  from Achaemenian Iran, travelled through the Silk Route into China and then came back with Indian and European influences, to its originators, the Parsi Zoroastrians of India.
Shernaz Cama is asociate professor at Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi University, India.