Aspects of History and Epic in Ancient Iran focuses on the
content of one of the most important inscriptions of the Ancient Near
East: the Bisotun inscription of the Achaemenid king Darius I (6th
century BCE), which in essence reports on a suspicious fratricide and
subsequent coup d’état. Moreover, the study shows how the inscription’s
narrative would decisively influence the Iranian epic, epigraphic, and
historiographical traditions well into the Sasanian and early Islamic
periods.
Intriguingly, our assessment of the impact of the Bisotun narrative
on later literary traditions—in particular, the inscription of the
Sasanian king Narseh at Paikuli (3rd–4th centuries CE)—necessarily
relies on the reception of the oral rendition of the Bisotun story
captured by Greek historians. As Rahim Shayegan argues, this oral
tradition had an immeasurable impact upon the historiographical writings
and epic compositions of later Iranian empires. It would have otherwise
remained unknown to modern scholars, had it not been partially
preserved and recorded by Hellanicus of Lesbos, Herodotus, Ctesias, and
other Greek authors. The elucidation of Bisotun’s thematic composition
therefore not only allows us to solve an ancient murder but also to
reevaluate pre-Thucydidean Greek historiography as one of the most
important repositories of Iranian epic themes.
The AWOL Index: The bibliographic data presented herein has been programmatically extracted from the content of AWOL - The Ancient World Online (ISSN 2156-2253) and formatted in accordance with a structured data model.
AWOL is a project of Charles E. Jones, Tombros Librarian for Classics and Humanities at the Pattee Library, Penn State University
AWOL began with a series of entries under the heading AWOL on the Ancient World Bloggers Group Blog. I moved it to its own space here beginning in 2009.
The primary focus of the project is notice and comment on open access material relating to the ancient world, but I will also include other kinds of networked information as it comes available.
The ancient world is conceived here as it is at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University, my academic home at the time AWOL was launched. That is, from the Pillars of Hercules to the Pacific, from the beginnings of human habitation to the late antique / early Islamic period.
AWOL is the successor to Abzu, a guide to networked open access data relevant to the study and public presentation of the Ancient Near East and the Ancient Mediterranean world, founded at the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago in 1994. Together they represent the longest sustained effort to map the development of open digital scholarship in any discipline.
The Center for Hellenic Studies is pleased to announce the online publication of Aspects of History and Epic in Ancient Iran: From Gaumāta to Wahnām, by M. Rahim Shayegan, on the CHS website. The work is available for purchase in print via Harvard University Press.
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