Achaemenid History, vol. VIII: Continuity and Change; Proceedings of the Last Achaemenid History Workshop, April 6-8, 1990--Ann Arbor, Michigan.

• Author: YOUNG, JR., T. CUYLER
• Position: Review

Achaemenid History, vol. VIII: Continuity and Change; Proceedings of the Last Achaemenid History Workshop, April 6-8, 1990--Ann Arbor, Michigan. Edited by HELEEN SANCISI-WEERDENBURG, AM[acute{E}]LIE KUHRT, and MARGARET COOL ROOT. Leiden: NEDERLANDS INSTITUUT VOOR HET NABIJE OOSTEN, 1994. Pp. xv + 442. HF1 216 (HF1 195 for subscribers to the series).

The explanation offered in the preface of this volume as to why the eighth Achaemenid History Workshop was the last of these gatherings is cogent and persuasive. It does nothing, however, to dispel our regret that such an important scholarly undertaking is for now suspended. In fifteen years someone will realize that it should be done again.

Volume VIII is as important as the seven volumes preceding it. I will not go into any detail here about the twenty-three individual contributions to this volume, most of which are of the same high quality we have come to expect of this series. The roster of contributing scholars speaks for itself: Root, Sancisi-Weerdenburg, Muscarella, Carter, Sumner, Seidl, Calmeyer, Johnson, Descat, Graf, Salles, Boucharlat, Dandamaev, Tuplin, Balcer, Windfuhr, Briant, Kuhrt and Sherwin-White (joint article), Stolper, Invernizzi, Machinist, Burstein, and Wieseh[ddot{o}]fer.

Anyone with a professional interest in the history, art history and archaeology of the Near East from roughly 900 B.C. through Seleucid times will either wish to consult or, better, to own this book, and will make his own judgments on the value (considerable) of its several parts.

The subject is introduced by a thoughtful and wide-ranging introductory essay by Margaret Cool Root discussing the issues of continuity and change up to, during, and after Achaemenid times. There follow ten articles that deal primarily with continuity from pre-Achaemenid into Achaemenid times, nine articles that deal with the Achaemenid impact on the Hellenistic Near East, and only three articles (perfectly good) that do not, it seems to me, really address the subject of the Workshop. The organizers deserve high praise for succeeding in having so many participants toe the thematic mark. The emphasis throughout is on continuity.

Root's discussion, if a bit turgid at times, is of great value. It focuses in large part on how issues of continuity and change during most of the first millennium B.C. in the Near East might be viewed differently if Western scholars could break out of their classical-Hellenistic academic traditions and...