This module aims to provide students with knowledge of the rich and varied material culture of the empires of ancient Iran.  Beyond the history of the Iranian world this module will delve into the objects and ‘things’ that reflect that world, the idea being that the social life and structure of a society can be accessed through the study of the ‘stuff’ people owned, ate, created, wore, worshipped and lived in. Such themes will form the basis for this module. 

The module will span the entire ancient Iranian world from the Elamite and Achaemenid periods through to the Sasanian Empire and its transformation into the early Islamic world.  The material cultures of the ancient Iranian empires will provide an important lens through which we can read the history, culture and social contexts of antiquity beyond the confines of the Classical world.  These material objects range widely from vast palaces to complex military fortifications, from the technologies and innovations connected to agriculture and transportation to luxury goods and clothing and objects of religious worship and daily life.  The topics covered will range thematically from the horse in the nomadic world of early Iran, through the elaborate courts of the Achaemenid palaces, the Hellenistic period’s use of Classical imagery, the Parthians’ use of the bow, to aspects of daily life in newly laid out Sasanian cities.  It is through the material world that we will understand and interpret the populations, power and culture of the ancient Iranians. The objects of the powerful Iranian empires had a wide geographic range from the Mediterranean Sea to eastern Asia and an equally long-lasting impact on the cultures of the east and west.  

The module will provide both in-depth and practical knowledge of the material culture of ancient Iran in order to provide a picture of the way the empires and the economies of Persia worked and what ideas connected people across vast geographic expanses. Theories of material culture and studies of ‘the object’ will be used to support the course materials.

• Demonstrates an understanding of the large body of evidence the material culture of ancient Iran;

• Demonstrate an understanding of how the study of material culture has advanced in recent scholarship;

• Demonstrate an understanding of the Iranian world in the context of antiquity and the ancient Near East, as well as the theoretical implications for the study of ancient objects of empire

• Demonstrate an ability to use critically a variety of different methodologies and theoretical approaches to this body of material gained thorough interaction with scholarship and primary materials; including aspects of gender, sexuality, power, ritual, dress, nutrition and technology

• Demonstrate a familiarity with an array of material evidence and the applications of that evidence;

• Demonstrate bibliographical research skills to enable students to find independently additional information relating to the study of ancient Iran

10 two-hour teaching sessions; 1 revision session and guided study online.

The teaching sessions offer a combination of traditional lecturing, class discussions, student presentations and other formative exercises. The lectures are a useful starting point for further discussion and exercises taking place during the teaching sessions. This provides an opportunity for students to analyse and discuss key issues and topics in the module, and to get feedback on their ideas from the tutor and their peers. Materials for study and suggestions for preparatory reading will be circulated prior to the sessions.

Independent study enables students to familiarise themselves with the primary source material and current approaches and debates on the subject.

Coursework feedback tutorial provides students with an opportunity to get feedback and guidance on all aspects of their written work.

• analysis of different forms of historical evidence, including literary texts, inscriptions, and material evidence, along with maps and plans
• observation and visual analysis
• assimilating and synthesising complex information and ideas
• critical thinking skills, including evaluating evidence, assessing arguments, and challenging assumptions
• constructing and defending arguments based on evidence
• clear, accurate and effective communication of ideas and arguments in writing and in debate
• employing basic skills and conventions in the presentation and use of literary and material evidence
• contributing to group discussions
• using IT resources effectively
• independent working and time management
• bibliographic and referencing skills

The module will be assessed through a 2000-word essay (50%), a group object study and presentation (25%), a field trip report on the British Museum Collection

The essay will require knowledge and critical deployment of evidence and critical understanding of modern scholarship to answer questions and construct arguments relating to the material culture of the Empires of Ancient Iran.

THE OPPORTUNITY FOR REASSESSMENT IN THIS MODULE:

Students who fail the module will normally be expected to resit the failed component(s) in the summer resit period.

The course will explore themes such as:

• The pre-Iranian Elamites and their objects (Luristan bronze and the horse)
• Penelope at Persepolis
• Gender in the Achaemenid world: is the Lapis Lazuli head a male or female?
• Achaemenid clothing 
• Food and feasting
• Hellenistic Persia: Hercules at Bisitun; Antiochus I cylinder; Politae tablets of Babylon
• The Sami prince of Parthia
• Circular cities – urban planning and symbolic structures
• A Zoroastrian fire temple
• Dancing girls and goddesses: The Anahita plate
• Christian Persians: Looking at a Nestorian Church
• The Gorgan Wall and the frontiers of Empire
• Economy and Empire: a Sasanian pot in Japan
• Hunting and kingship
• Ctesiphon across the Ages

Allen, L. 2005 The Persian Empire. London

Appadurae, A. (ed.), 1986, The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, New York

Axworthy, M., 2008, Iran: Empire of the Mind, Penguin

Boardman, J. 2000, Persia and the West. An Archaeological Investigation of the Genesis of Achaemenid Art. London.

Cameron, A., (ed.), 2013, Late Antiquity on the Eve of Islam, Formation of the Classical Islamic World vol. 1, Ashgate Variorum, Farnham

Canepa, M., 2009, The Two Eyes of the Earth: Art and Ritual of Kingship between Rome and Sasanian Iran, University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London

Curtis, J., (ed.), Mesopotamia and Iran in the Parthian and Sasanian Periods: Rejection and Revival c. 238BC-AD 642, The British Museum Press, London

Curtis, J. &  Tallis, N., (eds.) 2005, Forgotten Empire. The World of Ancient Persia. London.

Curtis, V.S and Stewart, S. (eds.), 2008, The Sasanian Era: The Idea of Iran III, I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd., London and New York

Daryaee, T., 2009, Sasanian Persia: The Rise and Fall of An Empire, I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, London and New York

Daryaee, T., Mousavi, A. and Rezakhani, K. (eds.) 2014, Excavating an Empire. Achaemenid Persia in the Longue Durée. Costa Mesa.

Dignas, B. and Winter, E., 2007, Rome and Persia in Late Antiquity, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

Dodgeon, M., and Lieu, S. (eds.), 1991, The Roman Eastern Frontier and the Persian Wars, Part 1 (AD 226-363): A Documentary History, Routledge, London

Greatrex G. and Lieu, S., 2002, The Roman Eastern Frontier and the Persian Wars, Part 2 (AD 363-630): A Narrative Sourcebook, Routledge, London

Gyselen, R., 2010, ‘Romans and Sasanians in the Third Century. Propaganda warfare and ambiguous imagery’, in H. Börm and J. Wiesehöfer (eds.), Commutatio and Contentio: Studies in the Late Roman, Sasanian, and Early Islamic Near East.  In Memory of Zeev Rubin, Reihe Geschichte Band 3, Wellem Verlag, Düsseldorf, pp. 71-87

Hoyland, R., 2012, ‘Early Islam as a Late Antique Religion’ in S. Johnson (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 1053-1077

Kuhrt, A. 2007, The Persian Empire. A Corpus of Sources from the Achaemenid Period. London.

Llewellyn-Jones, L. 2013. King and Court in Ancient Persia, 559-331 BCE. Edinburgh.

Mousavi, A. 1992.  ‘Parsa, a Stronghold for Darius: A Preliminary Study of the Defense System of Persepolis’. East and West 42. 203-26.

-2002. ‘Persepolis in Retrospect: Histories of Discovery and Archaeological Exploration at the Ruins of Ancient Parseh’. Ars Orientalis 32. 209-25.

-2012. Persepolis. Discovery and Afterlife of a World Wonder. Berlin.

Payne, R., 2015, ‘The Reinvention of Iran: The Sasanian Empire and the Huns’, in M. Maas (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Attila, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, pp. 282-299

Root, M.C. 1979, The King and Kingship in Achaemenid Art: Essays on the Creation of an Iconography of Empire. Leiden.

Yarshater, E. (ed.), 1997, The Cambridge History of Iran Vol. 3, The Seleucid, Parthian and Sasanian Periods, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

Online Resources:

Encyclopaedia Iranica (http://www.iranicaonline.org/)

Sasanika: Late Antique Iran Project (http://www.sasanika.org/)

Further Reading

Alizadeh, K., 2014, ‘Borderland Projects of Sasanian Empire: Intersection of Domestic and Foreign Policies’, Journal of Ancient History vol. 2.2, 93-115

Alram, M., Blet-LeMarquand, M., and Skærvø, P.O., 2007, ‘Shapur, King of Iranians and Non-Iranians’, R. Gyselen (ed.), Des Indo-Grecs aux Sassanides, Res Orientales 17, Bures-sur-Yvette: Groupe pour L’Étude de la Civilisation du Moyen-Orient, pp. 11-40

Bernheimer, T and Silverstein, A., 2012 (eds.), Late Antiquity: Eastern Perspectives, Gibb Memorial Trust, published in the UK by Short Run Press, Exeter

Bohrer, F.N. 2003, Orientalism and Visual Culture. Imagining Mesopotamia in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Cambridge.

Boyce, M., 1979, Zoroastrians: Their religious beliefs and practices, Routledge, London

Briant, P. 2002. From Cyrus to Alexander. A History of the Persian Empire. Winona Lake.

Brubacker, L., 2004, ‘Sex, Lies and Textuality: the Secret History of Prokopios and the Rhetoric of gender in sixth-century Byzantium’ in L. Brubaker and J. Smith (eds.) Gender in the Early Medieval World: East and West, 300-900, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, pp. 83-101

Cameron, A., 1984, Procopius and the Sixth Century, Duckworth, London

Cameron, A., (ed.), 1995, The Byzantine and early Islamic Near East vol.3: States, resources and armies, Darwin Press, Princeton

Cameron A. and Conrad, L. (eds.), 1992, The Byzantine and early Islamic Near East: papers of the first Workshop on late antiquity and early Islam vol.1: Problems in the literary source material, Darwin Press, Princeton

Crawford, P., 2013, The war of the three gods: Romans, Persians and the rise of Islam, Barnsley : Pen & Sword Military

Cribb, J., and Herrmann, G. (eds.), 2007, After Alexander: Central Asia before Islam, Oxford University Press, Oxford

Curtis, V.S., Hillenbrand, R and Rogers, J. (eds.), 1998, The art and archaeology of ancient Persia: new light on the Parthian and Sasanian Empires, I.B. Tauris, London

Curtis, V.S., Pendleton, E., Alram, M and Daryaee, T. (eds.), 2016, The Parthian and early Sasanian empires: adaptation and expansion: proceedings of a conference held in Vienna, 14-16 June 2012, BIPS Archaeological Monography Series 5, Oxbow Books, Oxford

Daryaee, T.,  ‘From Terror to Tactical Usage: Elephants in the Partho-Sasanian Period’, The Parthian and Early Sasanian Empires: Adaptation and Expansion, eds. V. Sarkhosh Curtis et. al., Oxford, 2016, pp. 36-41

de Jong, A., 2004, ‘Sub specie Maiestatis: Reflections on Sasanian Court Rituals’, in M. Stausberg (ed.), Zoroastrian Ritual in Context, Brill, Leiden, pp. 345-366

Foster, B. and Foster K.P., 2009, Civilizations of Ancient Iraq, Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford

Garthwaite, G., 2005, The Persians, Blackwell Publishing, Oxford

Gnoli, G., 1989, The Idea of Iran: An Essay on Its Origin, Serie Orientale Roma 62, Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, Rome

Greatrex, G., 2014, ‘Perceptions of Procopius in Recent Scholarship’, Histos, 8, pp. 76-121

Gyselen, R., 2001, The Four Generals of the Sasanian Empire. Some Sigillographic Evidence, Rome.

Gyselen, R., 2009, ‘Primary Sources and Historiography on the Sasanian Empire’ Studia Iranica 38, 163-190

Harper, P.O., Aruz, J. & Tallon, F., (eds.) 1992, The Royal City of Susa. Ancient Near Eastern Treasures in the Louvre. New York.

Howard-Johnston, J., 2012, ‘The Late Sasanian Army’ in Bernheimer and Silverstein (eds.), pp. 87-127

Howard-Johnston, J., 2010, ‘The Sasanian Strategic Dilemma’, in H. Börm and J. Wiesehöfer (eds.), Commutatio and Contentio: Studies in the Late Roman, Sasanian, and Early Islamic Near East.  In Memory of Zeev Rubin, Reihe Geschichte Band 3, Wellem Verlag, Düsseldorf, pp. 37-70

Hoyland R., 1997, Seeing Islam as Others Saw It: A Survey of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian Writings on Early Islam, Darwin Press, Princeton

Huyse, P., 2008, ‘Late Sasanian Society between Orality and Literacy’, in V.S. Curtis and S. Stewart (eds.), The Sasanian Era: The Idea of Iran III, I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd., London and New York, pp. 140-155

King, G., and Cameron, A. (eds.), 1994, The Byzantine and early Islamic Near East, vol.2: Land use and settlement patterns, Darwin Press, Princeton

Lee, A., 2013, ‘The eastern frontier in late antiquity: Roman warfare with Sasanian Persia’ in B. Campbell and L. Tritle (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Warfare in the Classical World, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 

Matheson, S.A. 1972. Persia: An Archaeological Guide. London.

Nielsen, I. 1999, Hellenistic Palaces. Aarhus.

• 2001, ed. The Royal Palace Institution in the First Millennium BC. Regional development and cultural interchange between East and West. Aarhus

Payne, R., 2014 (ed.), The Archaeology of Sasanian Politics, Journal of Ancient History vol. 2.2, de Gruyter, Boston

Potts, D.T. 1999. The Archaeology of Elam. Formation and Transformation of an Ancient Iranian State. Cambridge.

- 2008. ‘The Persepolis Fortification Texts and the Royal Road: Another Look at the Fahliyan Area’ in P. Briant, W. Henkleman, W. & M. Stolper (eds),  L’archive des Fortifications de Persépolis. Paris. 275-302.

-2010. ‘Monarchy, Factionalism and Warlordism: Reflections on Neo-Elamite Courts’ in B. Jacobs & R. Rollinger, eds., Der Achämenidenhof/The Achaemenid Court. Stuttgart. 107-37.

- 2011. ‘The Elamites’ in T. Daryaee (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Iranian History. Oxford. 37-56.

Potts, D.T. (ed.), 2013, The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Iran, Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York

Pourshariati, P., 2008, Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire: The Sasanian-Parthian Confederacy and the Arab Conquest of Iran, I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd., London and New York

Roaf, M., 1998, ‘Persepolitan Echoes in Sasanian Architecture: Did the Sasanians attempt to re-create the Achaemenid Empire’ in V.S. Curtis, R. Hillenbrand and J.M. Rogers (eds.), The Art and Archaeology of Ancient Persia: New Light of the Parthian and Sasanian Empires, The British Institute of Persian Studies with I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, London and New York, pp. 1-7

Sauer, E., et.al., 2013, Persia’s Imperial Power in Late Antiquity, The Great Wall of Gorgan and Frontier Landscapes of Sasanian Iran, Oxbow Books, Oxford

Schmidt, E.F. 1957, Persepolis / Vol.2, Contents of the treasury and other discoveries. Chicago.

Schmidt, E.F. 1970, Persepolis. Vol.3, The royal tombs and other monuments. Chicago.

Shayegan, M.R., 2011, Arsacids and Sasanians: political ideology in post-Hellenistic and late antique Persia, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

Smith, K., 2016, Constantine and the Captive Christians of Persia: martyrdom and religious identity in Late Antiquity, University of California Press, Oakland, California

Stronach, D. 1978. Parsagade. Oxford.

-1997a. ‘Darius as Parsagadae: a neglected source for the history of early Persia’. Topoi, Supplement 1. 351-63.

-1997b. ‘Anshan and Persia: Early Achaemenid History, Art and Architecture on the Iranian Plateau’ in J. Curtis (ed.), Mesopotamia and Iran in the Persian Period: Conquest and Imperialism 539-331 BC. London. 35-53.

- 2011. ‘Court Dress and Riding Dress at Persepolis: New Approaches to Old Questions’ in J. Álvarez-Mon & M.B. Garrison (eds.), Elam and Persia. Winona Lake. 475-87.

Walker, A., 2012, The Emperor and the World: exotic elements and imaging of middle Byzantine imperial power: 9^th -13^th centuries CE, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

Wiesehöfer, J., 1996, Ancient Persia from 550 BC to 650 AD, I.B. Tauris, London and New York

Wiesehöfer, J., 2007, ‘King, court and royal representation in the Sasanian Empire’, in A. Spawforth (ed.), The Court and Court Society in Ancient Monarchies, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, pp. 58-81

Wiesehöfer, J., 2010, ‘King and Kingship in the Sasanian Empire’, in G. Lanfranchi and R. Rollinger (eds.), Concepts of Kingship in Antiquity, S.A.R.G.O.N. Editrice e Libreria, Padova, pp. 135-152

Whitby, M., 1994, ‘The Persian King at War’ in E. Dabrowa (ed.) The Roman and Byzantine Army in the East, Uniwersytet Jagiellonski, Kraków, pp. 227-263

Whitby, M., 2002, Rome at War, AD 293-696, Osprey, Oxford

Wood, P. (ed.), 2013, History and Identity in the Late Antique Near East, Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York

See the module handout for the full reading list.