About: | Robert Rollinger |
Position: | Board of Directors |
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The border regions of the Achaemenid-Persian empire have become a special and dynamic area of research. Methodologically combining the imperial turn with structural constituents in borderland areas on a comparative level is a promising field (cf. Rollinger 2021). Many studies particularly focus on developments in the Greek world of Western Asia Minor and the Aegean (also not necessarily taking these developments as being part of a borderland phenomenon). In any case, the impact of the Achaemenid-Persian empire on societies beyond its administrative borders remains a rather unaddressed topic. In this connection, the focus of this case study will extend from structures and political events to the intellectual impact of the empire on the world view of societies in and beyond its borderlands. This approach is built upon the idea that the dissemination of complex narratives is a characteristic of all imperial formations. These narratives made the vast multicultural spaces created by the Achaemenids accessible to societies in the imperial borderlands, and left a decisive imprint, scarcely recognized thus far. The well-documented experience in the Mediterranean borderlands of the Achaemenid-Persian empire will here be placed in the context of research on the Central Asian frontiers and on the borders to India and the Arab Peninsula. A longitudinal study on the borderlands of the Sasanian empire to the early Islamic period will complement this focus. It will also link up with research by ->F. Schwarz on Multiple Borderlands and Trans-Imperial Spaces in Iranianate Eurasia in the First Two Millennia CE.
From Neo-Assyrian times onwards, Ancient Near Eastern royal ideologies claimed to rule the whole world. In the world view of the Achaemenid-Persian empire, this world was delineated by the Libyans (Putāyā) in the West, India (Hinuduš) in the East, the Scythians (Sakā) in the North/Northeast and the Ethiopians/Nubians (Kūšā) in the South. In Herodotus’ days, the Greek intellectuals picked up this perception and placed it in new contexts as a geographical concept of the world without ideological connotations defined by empire and the claim to rule the world. In many parts of Herodotus’ Histories, the transformation process from an Achaemenid-Ancient Near Eastern world view to a Greek one is recognizable, for instance when the Persian kings set up steles at the ‘end of the world’ (4,87) and performed specific rites, which the Greeks presented as acts of hubris (7,35; 7,54). Re-reading these and other sources will expose the Ancient Near Eastern heritage behind Greek (and European) world views.