Download or read book Intangible Spirits and Graven Images The Iconography of Deities in the Pre Islamic Iranian World written by Michael Shenkar and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2014-09-08 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the the Roman and Tania Ghirshman Prize 2015 by the French Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. This prize was established in 1973 by the donation made by Roman Ghirshman, one of the prominent French archaeologists of Pre-Islamic Iran. It is awarded annually for a publication in the field of Pre-Islamic Iranian Studies. In Intangible Spirits and Graven Images, Michael Shenkar investigates the perception of ancient Iranian deities and their representation in the Iranian cults. This ground-breaking study traces the evolution of the images of these deities, analyses the origin of their iconography, and evaluates their significance. Shenkar also explores the perception of anthropomorphism and aniconism in ancient Iranian religious imagery, with reference to the material evidence and the written sources, and reassesses the value of the Avestan and Middle Persian texts that are traditionally employed to illuminate Iranian religious imagery. In doing so, this book provides important new insights into the religion and culture of ancient Iran prior to the Islamic conquest.
Download or read book The Iranian Expanse written by Matthew P. Canepa and published by University of California Press. This book was released on 2020-11-01 with total page 510 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Iranian Expanse explores how kings in Persia and the ancient Iranian world utilized the built and natural environment to form and contest Iranian cultural memory, royal identity, and sacred cosmologies. Investigating over a thousand years of history, from the Achaemenid period to the arrival of Islam, The Iranian Expanse argues that Iranian identities were built and shaped not by royal discourse alone, but by strategic changes to Western Asia’s cities, sanctuaries, palaces, and landscapes. The Iranian Expanse critically examines the construction of a new Iranian royal identity and empire, which subsumed and subordinated all previous traditions, including those of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Anatolia. It then delves into the startling innovations that emerged after Alexander under the Seleucids, Arsacids, Kushans, Sasanians, and the Perso-Macedonian dynasties of Anatolia and the Caucasus, a previously understudied and misunderstood period. Matthew P. Canepa elucidates the many ruptures and renovations that produced a new royal culture that deeply influenced not only early Islam, but also the wider Persianate world of the Il-Khans, Safavids, Timurids, Ottomans, and Mughals.
Download or read book IRANIAN COMPLEXITIES A STUDY IN ACHAEMENID AVESTAN AND SASANIAN CONTROVERSIES written by Abolala Soudavar and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2018-09-10 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The monotheistic ideology that Darius imposed on the nascent Achaemenid state resulted in a religious revolution with far reaching effects, as it reverberated on two different levels. At the top level, the imposition of an omnipotent abstract god, Ahura Mazda, created a sharp reaction that led to the general massacre of the opposition termed as Magophonia by Herodotus. Several centuries of doctrinal development led to Zoroastrianism, a religion marked by the art of compromise and virulent rhetoric. While the Zoroastrian influence on Abrahamic religions has mainly been investigated in respect to borrowed concepts such as Paradise or Day of Judgment, its influence on the art of compromise and rhetoric has been neglected. So has been the influence of its underground opposition, organized as brotherhood. The underground opposition affected early Christianity, while the Iranian clergy influenced the Judaic priesthood. Together, they ended up affecting Islam
Download or read book Sasanian Persia written by Touraj Daryaee and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-06-29 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Of profound importance in late antiquity, the Sasanian Empire is virtually unknown today, except as a counterpoint to the Roman Empire. In this highly readable history, Touraj Daryaee fills a significant gap in our knowledge of world history. He examines the Sasanians' complex and colourful narrative and demonstrates their unique significance, not only for development of Iranian civilization but also for Roman and Islamic history. The Sasanians were the last of the ancient Persian dynasties and are best known as the pre-eminent practitioners of the Zoroastrian religion. Founded by Ardashir l in 224 CE, the Sasanian Empire was the dominant force in the Middle East for several centuries until its last king, Yazdgerd lll, was defeated by the Muslim Arabs in the seventh century. In this concise yet comprehensive book, Touraj Daryaee provides an unrivalled account of Sasanian Persia. Drawing on extensive new sources, he paints a vivid portrait of Sasanian life and unravels the divergent strands that contributed to the making of this great empire. This new edition includes updated economic and political histories as well as several inscriptions that have been found in recent years.
Download or read book Archaeology of Iran in the Historical Period written by Kamal-Aldin Niknami and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-05-22 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of twenty-eight essays presents an up-to-date survey of pre-Islamic Iran, from the earliest dynasty of Illam to the end of Sasanian empire, encompassing a rich diversity of peoples and cultures. Historically, Iran served as a bridge between the earlier Near Eastern cultures and the later classical world of the Mediterranean, and had a profound influence on political, military, economic, and cultural aspects of the ancient world. Written by international scholars and drawing mainly on the field of practical archaeology, which traditionally has shared little in the way of theories and methods, the book provides crucial pieces to the puzzle of the national identity of Iranian cultures from a historical perspective. Revealing the wealth and splendor of ancient Iranian society – its rich archaeological data and sophisticated artistic craftsmanship – most of which has never before been presented outside of Iran, this beautifully illustrated book presents a range of studies addressing specific aspects of Iranian archaeology to show why the artistic masterpieces of ancient Iranians rank among the finest ever produced. Together, the authors analyze how archaeology can inform us about our cultural past, and what remains to still be discovered in this important region.
Download or read book ARAM 26 Black White Paperback written by ARAM SOCIETY and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2016-06-20 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume comprises the proceedings of the 2014 Conferences on Zoroastrianism in the Levant and the Amorites, held at Oxford, Oriental Institute.
Download or read book Figurines written by Jaś Elsner and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-22 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Figurines are objects of handling. As touchable objects, they engage the viewer in different ways from flat art, whether relief sculpture or painting. Unlike the voyeuristic relationship of viewing a neatly framed pictorial narrative as if from the outside, the viewer as handler is always potentially and without protection within the narrative of figurines. As such, they have potential for a potent, even animated, agency in relation to those who use them. This volume concerns figurines as archaeologically-attested materials from literate cultures with surviving documents that have no direct links of contiguity, appropriation, or influence in relation to each other. It is an attempt to put the category of the figurine on the table as a key conceptual and material problematic in the art history of antiquity. It does so through comparative juxtaposition of close-focused chapters drawn from deep art-historical engagement with specific ancient cultures - Chinese, pre-Columbian Mesoamerican, and Greco-Roman. It encourages comparative conversation across the disciplines that constitute the art history of the ancient world through finding categories and models of discourse that may offer fertile ground for comparison and antithesis. It extends the rich and astute literature on prehistoric figurines into understanding the figurine in historical contexts, where literary texts and documents, inscriptions, or surviving terminologies can be adduced alongside material culture. At stake are issues of figuration and anthropomorphism, miniaturization and portability, one-off production and replication, and substitution and scale at the interface of archaeology and art history.
Download or read book Armenia between Byzantium and the Orient written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-12-09 with total page 736 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume commemorating the late Armenian scholar Karen Yuzbashyan comprises studies of mediaeval Armenian culture, including the reception of biblical and parabiblical texts, theological literature, liturgy, hagiography, manuscript studies, Church history and secular history, and Christian art and material culture. Special attention is paid to early Christian and late Jewish texts and traditions preserved in documents written in Armenian. Several contributions focus on the interactions of Armenia with other cultures both within and outside the Byzantine Commonwealth: Greek, Georgian, Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopic, and Iranian. Select contributions may serve as initial reference works for their respective topics (the catalogue of Armenian khachkars in the diaspora and the list of Armenian Catholicoi in Tzovk’).
Download or read book Babylonian Jews and Sasanian Imperialism in Late Antiquity written by Simcha Gross and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2024-03-31 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers a radically new account of Babylonian Jewish and rabbinic engagement and negotiation with Sasanian rule.
Download or read book Persian Art written by Kadoi Yuka Kadoi and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2019-07-31 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this illustrated book, nine contributors explore multifaceted aspects of art, architecture and material culture of the Persian cultural realm, encompassing West Asia, Anatolia, Central Asia, South Asia, East Asia and Europe. Each chapter examines the historical, religious or scientific role of visual culture in the shaping, influencing and transforming of distinctive 'Persian' aesthetics across the various historical periods, ranging from pre-Islamic, medieval and early modern Islamic to modern times.
Download or read book The History and Culture of Iran and Central Asia written by D. G. Tor and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2022-04-15 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines the major cultural, religious, political, and urban changes that took place in the Iranian world of Inner and Central Asia in the transition from the pre-Islamic to the Islamic periods. One of the major civilizations of the first millennium was that of the Iranian linguistic and cultural world, which stretched from today’s Iraq to what is now the Xinjiang Autonomous Region of China. No other region of the world underwent such radical transformation, which fundamentally altered the course of world history, as this area did during the centuries of transition from the pre-Islamic to the Islamic period. This transformation included the religious victory of Islam over Buddhism, Nestorian Christianity, and the other religions of the area; the military and political wresting of Inner Asia from the Chinese to the Islamic sphere of primary cultural influence; and the shifting of Central Asia from a culturally and demographically Iranian civilization to a Turkic one. This book contains essays by many of the preeminent scholars working in the fields of archeology, history, linguistics, and literature of both the pre-Islamic and the Islamic-era Iranian world, shedding light on some of the most significant aspects of the major changes that this important portion of the Asian continent underwent during this tumultuous era in its history. This collection of cutting-edge research will be read by scholars of Middle Eastern, Central Asian, Iranian, and Islamic studies and archaeology. Contributors: D. G. Tor, Frantz Grenet, Nicholas Sims-Williams, Etsuko Kageyama, Yutaka Yoshida, Michael Shenkar, Minoru Inaba, Rocco Rante, Arezou Azad, Sören Stark, Louise Marlow, Gabrielle van den Berg, and Dilnoza Duturaeva.
Download or read book Anahita written by Manya Saadi-nejad and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-01-14 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anahita was the most important goddess of pre-Islamic Iran. From her roots as an ancient Indo-European water deity her status was unrivalled by any other Iranian goddess throughout the course of three successive Iranian empires over a period of a thousand years. The first scholarly book on Anahita, this study reconstructs the Indo-European water goddess through a comparison of Celtic, Slavic, Armenian and Indo-Iranian myths and rituals. Anahita's constantly-evolving description and functions are then traced through the written and iconographic records of Iranian societies from the Achaemenid period onwards, including but not limited to the Zoroastrian texts and the inscriptions and artistic representations of the great pre-Islamic Iranian empires. The study concludes by tracing survival of the goddess in Islamic Iran, as seen in new Persian literature and popular rituals. Manya Saadi-nejad demonstrates the close relationship between Iranian mythology and that of other Indo-European peoples, and the significant cultural continuities from Iran's pre-Islamic period into the Islamic present.
Download or read book Memory and Identity in the Syriac Cave of Treasures written by Sergey Minov and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-12-07 with total page 423 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Memory and Identity in the Syriac Cave of Treasures, Sergey Minov analyses the role played by the pseudepigraphic work known as the Cave of Treasures in the formation of cultural memory and collective identity among Syriac Christians of Iran during Late Antiquity.
Download or read book The Heirs of Theodore written by Seth M. Stadel and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-08-07 with total page 490 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Heirs of Theodore Seth M. Stadel examines Aḥob of Qatar, a late 6th-century East Syriac biblical commentator, and his surviving Old Testament exegetical works. He further investigates what can be deduced of Aḥob’s influence on the later East Syriac exegetical tradition, and he details the originality of Aḥob’s exegesis, especially in comparison with earlier and contemporary Greek and Syriac sources. By presenting the first annotated edition, English translation, and study of Aḥob’s extant Old Testament exegetical works, Stadel is able to show that Aḥob represents a distinct voice within the East Syriac exegetical tradition.
Download or read book The Zoroastrian Flame written by Sarah Stewart and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-02-16 with total page 643 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For many centuries, from the birth of the religion late in the second millennium BC to its influence on the Achaemenids and later adoption in the third century AD as the state religion of the Sasanian Empire, it enjoyed imperial patronage and profoundly shaped the culture of antiquity. The Magi of the New Testament most probably were Zoroastrian priests from the Iranian world, while the enigmatic figure of Zarathushtra (or Zoroaster) himself has exerted continual fascination in the West, influencing creative artists as diverse as Voltaire, Nietzsche, Mozart and Yeats. This authoritative volume brings together internationally recognised scholars to explore Zoroastrianism in all its rich complexity. Examining key themes such as history and modernity, tradition and scripture, art and architecture and minority status and religious identity, it places the modern Zoroastrians of Iran, and the Parsis of India, in their proper contexts. The book extends and complements the coverage of its companion volume, The Everlasting Flame.
Download or read book Ancient Historiography on War and Empire written by Timothy Howe and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2016-11-30 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the ancient Greek-speaking world, writing about the past meant balancing the reporting of facts with shaping and guiding the political interests and behaviours of the present. Ancient Historiography on War and Empire shows the ways in which the literary genre of writing history developed to guide empires through their wars. Taking key events from the Achaemenid Persian, Athenian, Macedonian and Roman ‘empires’, the 17 essays collected here analyse the way events and the accounts of those events interact. Subjects include: how Greek historians assign nearly divine honours to the Persian King; the role of the tomb cult of Cyrus the Founder in historical narratives of conquest and empire from Herodotus to the Alexander historians; warfare and financial innovation in the age of Philip II and his son, Alexander the Great; the murders of Philip II, his last and seventh wife Kleopatra, and her guardian, Attalos; Alexander the Great’s combat use of eagle symbolism and divination; Plutarch’s juxtaposition of character in the Alexander-Caesar pairing as a commentary on political legitimacy and military prowess, and Roman Imperial historians using historical examples of good and bad rule to make meaningful challenges to current Roman authority. In some cases, the balance shifts more towards the ‘literary’ and in others more towards the ‘historical’, but what all of the essays have in common is both a critical attention to the genre and context of history-writing in the ancient world and its focus on war and empire.
Download or read book Studies on the History and Culture Along the Continental Silk Road written by Xiao Li and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-09-10 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents outstanding articles addressing various aspects related to the ancient Silk Road, in particular the cultural, political, and economic interactions that took place among the civilizations and cultures on the Eurasian continent. In addition, the articles help to reveal the hallmark features of cultural communication in Inner Asia in different historical periods. The book develops a new approach to studying the civilizations of the Silk Road, promotes interdisciplinary and multi-dimensional research, sets a new direction for Chinese ancient classics and western sinology, and presents the latest discoveries, including both archaeological finds and historical documents.
