Arash Zeini

Tag: Achaemenid

  • Rise of the Sasanian Empire

    I don’t know The Collector, having only recently been alerted to it by Google, but their article entitled Rise of the Sasanian Empire: The Persians (205-310 CE) looks interesting. I have not had a chance to read the article in detail, but it looks generally good and offers photos to illustrate the art and archaeology of the empire.

    The site brings you ‘Daily Articles on Ancient History, Philosophy, Art & Artists by Leading Authors. Trusted by Scholars, Classrooms & Enthusiasts’. They have articles on the Achaemenid kings, Cyrus The Great, the Parthians , Zoroastrianism and even on The “Communists” of Ancient Iran: Mazdak and the Khurramites.

  • 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

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  • Persian kingship and architecture

    I haven’t seen the ToC of this book, but know that Matthew Canepa has a chapter here, entitled Dynastic sanctuaries and the transformation of Iranian kingship between Alexander and Islam, focusing on the ‘Middle Iranian’ period. It is an excellent article and will hopefully be available soon.

    Babaie, Sussan & Talinn Grigor (eds.). 2015. Persian kingship and architecture: Strategies of power in Iran from the Achaemenids to the Pahlavis. I.B.Tauris.

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  • Achaemenid administrative tablets

    Stolper, Matthew & Michael Fisher. 2015. Achaemenid administrative tablets 3: Fragments from Old Kandahar, Afghanistan. ARTA: Achaemenid Research on Texts and Archaeology 1. 1–27.

  • The Babylonian version of the Achaemenid inscriptions

    Daneshmand, Parsa. 2015. New phraseology and literary style in the Babylonian version of the Achaemenid inscriptions. In Alfonso Archi (ed.), Tradition and innovation in the Ancient Near East: Proceedings of the 57th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale at Rome 4–8 July 2011. Indiana: Eisenbrauns.

  • A cultural history of Aramaic

    Gzella, Holger. 2015. A cultural history of Aramaic: From the beginnings to the advent of Islam. Leiden/Boston: Brill.

    Aramaic is a constant thread running through the various civilizations of the Near East, ancient and modern, from 1000 BCE to the present, and has been the language of small principalities, world empires, and a fair share of the Jewish-Christian tradition. Holger Gzella describes its cultural and linguistic history as a continuous evolution from its beginnings to the advent of Islam. For the first time the individual phases of the language, their socio-historical underpinnings, and the textual sources are discussed comprehensively in light of the latest linguistic and historical research and with ample attention to scribal traditions, multilingualism, and language as a marker of cultural self-awareness. Many new observations on Aramaic are thereby integrated into a coherent historical framework

  • Darius in the shadow of Alexander

    Jane Marie Todd’s translation of Briant’s 2003 Darius dans l’ombre d’Alexandre has just been published:

    Briant, Pierre. 2015. Darius in the Shadow of Alexander. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    The last of Cyrus the Great’s dynastic inheritors and the legendary enemy of Alexander the Great, Darius III ruled over a Persian Empire that stretched from the Mediterranean to the Indus River. Yet, despite being the most powerful king of his time, Darius remains an obscure figure. […] While Darius seems doomed to be a footnote in the chronicle of Alexander’s conquests, in one respect it is Darius who has the last laugh. For after Darius’s defeat in 331 BCE, Alexander is described by historians as becoming ever more like his vanquished opponent: a Darius-like sybarite prone to unmanly excess.

    Jan P. Stronk, University of Amsterdam, reviewed the original for the Bryn Mawr Classical Review (BMCR). Other reviews include:

    • Brosius, M.2006. Review of Pierre Briant: Darius dans l’ombre d’Alexandre. Gnomon 78(5). 426–430.
    • Stoneman, R. 2006. Darius III and Alexander: Darius dans l’ombre d’Alexandre by P. Briant. The Classical Review 56(2). 415–417.
    • معماران کاشی، مهرداد. ۱۳۸۴. نقد و بررسی کتاب: داریوش در سایه اسکندر. بخارا ۴۶. ۳۵۸–۳۶۴.

  • Imagining Xerxes

    Bridges, Emma. 2014. Imagining Xerxes: Ancient perspectives on a Persian king. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

    Imagining Xerxes is a transhistorical analysis that explores the richness and variety of Xerxes’ afterlives within the ancient literary tradition. It examines the earliest representations of the king, in Aeschylus’ tragic play Persians and Herodotus’ historiographical account of the Persian Wars, before tracing the ways in which the image of Xerxes was revisited and adapted in later Greek and Latin texts. The author also looks beyond the Hellenocentric viewpoint to consider the construction of Xerxes’ image in the Persian epigraphic record and the alternative perspectives on the king found in the Jewish written tradition.

  • The big and beautiful women of Asia

    A slightly older but important article by Llewellyn-Jones dealing with the imagery of Achaemenid period seals and gemstones:

    Llewellyn-Jones, Lloyd. 2010. The big and beautiful women of Asia: Ethnic conceptions of ideal beauty in Achaemenid period seals and gemstones. In Hales, Shelley & Tamar Hodos (eds.), Material culture and social identities in the ancient world. Cambridge: CUP.

    Read the article here.

  • Identity, independence & interdependence

    A Workshop in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh
    Monday 26 May 2014, 10 am to 5 pm
    Sydney Smith Lecture Theatre, Doorway 1, Old Medical School

    Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones will talk about The rhetoric of empire in ancient Iran: ‘Better together’.

  • Xerxes’ cabinet of curiosities

    Xerxes’ cabinet of curiosities: Exotic animals and royal authority in Achaemenid Iran

    Speaker: Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones (University of Edinburgh)
    Where: The British Institute of Persian Studies, London
    When: 18 June 2014

    Poster at the BIPS.

  • Communication in the Achaemenid Empire

    The second international Summer School on Communication in the Achaemenid Empire: Achaemenid Elamite, Bisotun and the Persepolis Archive will be taking place at the Center for the Great Islamic Encyclopedia on 12–21 May 2014.

    1. 4 days on Bisotun (1 day repetition of grammar, 3 days reading)
    2. 4 days Persepolis Fortification Archive and Achaemenid culture
    Every day 15–18 by Wouter Henkelman

    3. 3 days Old Persian Inscription of Bisotun
    13–15 by M. Jaafari-Dehaghi

    Application deadline is May 5, 2014. For more Information please contact: Dr Jaafari-Dehaghi.

  • Public lecture I

    Persepolis1. Mythical kings, empire and multiculturalism: The case of the Achaemenids

    The Achaemenids (550–330 BCE) ruled over a vast and multicultural empire, encompassing numerous indigenous and conquered traditions. How did these various groups co-exist in the administration of the empire and influence Achaemenid ideals of kingship? This lecture will explore relevant Zoroastrian topoi and examine their afterlife in the Achaemenid era.

    Speaker: Arash Zeini
    Where: University of St Andrews, School of Classics, Swallowgate, S11.
    When: 30 April 2014, 17:30.

  • King and court

    Llewellyn-Jones, Lloyd. 2013. King and court in ancient Persia 559 to 331 BCE. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

    Abstract:

    The first Persian Empire (559-331 BCE) was the biggest land empire the world had seen, and seated at the heart of its vast dominions, in the south of modern-day Iran, was the person of the Great King. Immortalized in Greek literature as despotic tyrants, a new vision of Persian monarchy is emerging from Iranian, and other, sources (literary, visual, and archaeological), which show the Kings in a very different light. Inscriptions of Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes, and their heirs present an image of Persian rulers as liberators, peace-makers, valiant warriors, righteous god-fearing judges, and law-makers.

    Around them the Kings established lavish and sophisticated courts, the centres of political decision-making and cultural achievements in which the image of monarchy was endorsed and advanced by an almost theatrical display of grandeur and power.

    This book explores the representation of Persian monarchy and the court of the Achaemenid Great Kings from the point of view of the ancient Iranians themselves and through the sometimes distorted prism of Classical authors.

  • Empire, authority, and autonomy

    Dusinberre, Elspeth. 2013. Empire, authority, and autonomy in Achaemenid Anatolia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Abstract:

    The Achaemenid Persian Empire (550–330 BCE) was a vast and complex sociopolitical structure that encompassed much of modern-day Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Israel, Egypt, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan and included two dozen distinct peoples who spoke different languages, worshipped different deities, lived in different environments and had widely differing social customs. This book offers a radical new approach to understanding the Achaemenid Persian Empire and imperialism more generally. Through a wide array of textual, visual and archaeological material, Elspeth R. M. Dusinberre shows how the rulers of the empire constructed a system flexible enough to provide for the needs of different peoples within the confines of a single imperial authority and highlights the variability in response. This book examines the dynamic tensions between authority and autonomy across the empire, providing a valuable new way of considering imperial structure and development.