Sasanian Persia, which succeeded the Parthians, was one of the great powers of late antiquity and the most significant power in the Near East, together with the Roman Empire. This book undertakes a thorough investigation of the diverse range of written, numismatic, and archaeological sources in order to reassess Sasanian political ideology and its sources and influences in the ideologies of the Achaemenid Persian Empire, Babylonian scholarship and prophecy, and Hellenistic Greek thought. It sheds fresh light on the political complexities of early Arsacid and Sasanian history, especially the situation in Babylon and Elymais, and on the Roman propaganda which penetrated, shaped, and determined Roman attitudes towards Sasanian Persia.

The edited volume Cyrus the Great: Life and Lore re-contextualizes Cyrus's foundational act and epoch in light of recent scholarship, while examining his later reception in antiquity and beyond. Among the many themes addressed in the volume are: the complex dossier of Elamo-Persian acculturation; the Mesopotamian antecedents of Cyrus's edict and religious policy; Cyrus's Baupolitik at Pasargadae, and the idiosyncratic genesis of Persian imperial art; the Babylonian exile, the Bible, and the First Return; Cyrus's exalted but conflicted image in the later Greco-Roman world; his reception and programmatic function in genealogical constructs of the Hellenistic and Arsacid periods; and finally Cyrus's conspicuous and enigmatic evanescence in the Sasanian and Muslim traditions. The sum of these wide-ranging contributions assembled in one volume, as well as a new critical edition and English translation of the Cyrus Cylinder, allow for a more adequate evaluation of Cyrus's impact on his own age, as well as his imprint on posterity.

Sasanian Persia, which succeeded the Parthians, was one of the great powers of late antiquity and the most significant power in the Near East, together with the Roman Empire. This book undertakes a thorough investigation of the diverse range of written, numismatic, and archaeological sources in order to reassess Sasanian political ideology and its sources and influences in the ideologies of the Achaemenid Persian Empire, Babylonian scholarship and prophecy, and Hellenistic Greek thought. It sheds fresh light on the political complexities of early Arsacid and Sasanian history, especially the situation in Babylon and Elymais, and on the Roman propaganda which penetrated, shaped, and determined Roman attitudes towards Sasanian Persia.

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'etat. 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.

Scholars of rabbinics and Iranists are increasingly turning to the orbit of Iranian civilization in order to explore the extent to which the Babylonian Talmud was exposed to the theological and liturgical discourse of the Zoroastrian religion, as well as Sasanian legal practices. Here possibly for the first time, scholars within these fields are brought together in concert to examine the interaction between Jewish and Iranian cultures in terms of legal exegesis, literature, and religious thought. The implications of this groundbreaking effort are vastly significant for Jewish and Iranian Studies. With contributions by: Yaakov Elman, David Goodblatt, Geoffrey Herman, Richard Kalmin, Maria Macuch, Jason Sion Mokhtarian, Shai Secunda, Shaul Shaked, Prods Oktor SkjAervo, Yuhan Sohrab-Dinshaw Vevaina