Strootman Rolf, Versluys Miguel John (eds.) Persianism in Antiquity

Franz Steiner Verlag, 2017. — 556 p. — (Oriens et Occidens 25).The socio-political and cultural memory of the Achaemenid (Persian) Empire played a very important role in Antiquity and later ages. This book is the first to systematically chart these multiform ideas and associations over time and to define them in relation to one another, as Persianism. Hellenistic kings, Parthian monarchs, Romans and Sasanians: they all made a lot of meaning through the evolving concept of "Persia", as the twenty-one papers in this rich volume illustrate at length. Persianism underlies the notion of an East-West dichotomy that still pervades modern political rhetoric. In Antiquity and beyond, however, it also functioned in rather different ways, sometimes even as an alternative to Hellenism.Rolf Strootman graduated in ancient history and archaeology at the University of Leiden. In 2007 he received his PhD for a study of court culture in the Hellenistic period. He is currently a lecturer at the History Department of the University of Utrecht. His research and teaching focus on empire, monarchical ritual and cultural encounters in the Near East, Iran and Central Asia, and on modern western perceptions of the Middle East.Miguel John Versluys is Associate Professor of Classical and Mediterranean Archaeology at the University of Leiden. In 2010, he obtained a Vidi grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research to build his own research group, Cultural Innovation in a Globalising Society: Egypt in the Roman World. In 2011, he was a guest professor at Université de Toulouse II, Le Mirail. In 2013, he received the Zenobia Essay Prize. His main research interest is cultural interaction in the Hellenistic and Roman Mediterranean. He has published many articles in international journals and is the author of several books, including Egyptian Gods in the Hellenistic and Roman Mediterranean: Image and Reality between Local and Global (2012).