Ancient Persia from 550 BC to 650 AD.

• Author: Waters, Matt
• Position: Book Review

By JOSEF WIESEHOFER, translated by Azizeh Azodi. London: I. B. TAURIS, 2001. Pp. xiv + 332, illus. $19.95 (paper).

This volume is an unrevised paperback of the original cloth version published in 1996 by the same publisher. The 1996 cloth incarnation was a translation of the author's Das antike Persien von 550 v. Chr. bis 650 n. Chr (Zurich: Artemis & Winkler, 1993). It is an important and well-illustrated contribution to the study of ancient Persia before the Muslim conquest.

The book contains a preface, introduction, four parts (comprising a total of eleven chapters), conclusion, and a postscript. It also contains substantial "Bibliographical Essays," divided by chapter and section, in place of traditional footnote documentation and bibliography (pp. 251-309), which includes a short bibliographic postscript for the paperback edition; a chronological table (pp. 310-15); and a list of Iranian kings and their dates, divided by dynasty from Cyrus the Great to Yazdgird III (pp. 316-20). A general index rounds out the work. Parts one through four comprise the bulk of the book, arranged by historical period: the Achaemenid (part one), the Macedonian interlude (part two), Parthian (part three), and Sasanian (part four). Part two is by far the shortest of these sections (twelve pages), but it rightfully warrants a separate "part" as a distinctive interlude in Iran's history.

In the preface Wiesehofer distinguishes the terms "Persia" and "Iran" and their uses in this study (p. xi; in this summary review, they are used synonymously). The book's purpose is a systematic analysis of the methodology and intricacies of ancient Iranian history and how recent discoveries have impacted it. It is aimed at a general audience, but the specialist will read it to great benefit. Wiesehofer fulfills his aims of avoiding European and Western categorizations in his analysis and of focusing on Iranian traditions and concepts from an Iranian perspective (pp. xii-xiii).

Wiesehofer's attention in the narrative text is on "everyday life": discussions of organization of labor, gender and family relations (where the evidence allows any substantive treatment), the army, and religious and administrative systems. Wiesehofer's treatment puts to rest many common misconceptions of ancient Iranian history. For example, he debunks the unfeasible (but still prevalent) view of a weak and declining empire under the successors of Darius I (522-486 B.C.) and offers a compelling...