Format:
XXI, 554 S. :
,
Ill. ;
,
25 cm.
ISBN:
978-90-429-2525-0
Series Statement:
Acta Iranica 53
Content:
The product of twenty years' research, this is the first book to study the way religious concerns permeated Achaemenian culture, deeply influencing such varied things as categories of space, time, number, and causality; constructions of nature, humanity, and moral order; institutions of law, education, and kingship; practices of diplomacy, tribute, irrigation and gardening (including the sumptuous royal gardens designated as "paradises"). Particular attention is devoted to the role of cosmogonic myths, dualistic ethics, demonological beliefs, the ideology of royal charisma, the sense of Persia as a sacred center, and the conviction that Achaemenian rulers bore unique responsibility for restoring the world's lost perfection and realizing God's plans for creation: a task to be accomplished by reuniting the globe's tragically fragmented peoples
Note:
Includes bibliographical references and index. - I. The politics of the Persian paradise : (the Paris lectures) 1. À la recherche du paradis perdu -- 2. The King's truth -- 3. Space, motion, and climate in the Achaemenian imaginary -- 4. Il faut cultiver notre jardin : on Achaemenian horticulture and imperialism -- Appendix to chapter four : Zoroastrian mythology of plants : synoptic table -- 5. Implications of grammatical number in the mythology of vegetation -- II. Human unity and the diversity of peoples in Achaemenian myth, art, and ideology : (the Siena lectures) -- 6. Bisitun and Persepolis -- 7. Naqš-ī Rustam -- 8. The unity and diversity of peoples in later Iranian history -- 9. Sacred Kingship? -- III. Aesthetics and the demonic : (lectures, 2008-9) -- 10. Creation and other epiphanies in Achaemenian religion -- 11. The geography of creation -- 12. Representing the lie in Achaemenian Persia -- 13. Representing the lie in Mazdaean Iran -- 14. On Zoroastrian and Achaemenian demonology -- 15. Happiness regained -- IV. Greeks and Persians -- 16. Herodotus as anthropologist -- 17. On the sisterhood of Europe and Asia -- 18. Myth and diplomacy : Persian overtures to the Argives -- 19. Aeschylus's Persians and the categorical cpposition of East and West -- 20. On Persian pedagogy and Greek machismo -- V. Varia -- 21. The Wise Lord's will and the making of wonders -- 22. Cosmogonic myth and dynastic crisis -- 23. Rebellion and treatment of rebels -- 24. Happiness, law, and fear -- 25. Big and little in old Persian -- 26. Ancestors, corpses, kings, and the land -- 27. The bifurcated cosmos of Mazdaean Religion / with Clarisse Herrenschmidt) -- 28. Cosmology and hydraulics -- 29. Reflections after the fact
Language:
English
Subjects:
History
Keywords:
König
;
Religion
;
Achämeniden
;
Religion
