About: | Robert Rollinger |
Position: | Board of Directors |
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In many respects, the border regions of the Achaemenid Persian empire exhibit similar dynamics to many other border areas, but also some characteristic features (cf. Rollinger 2021; Radner et al., forthcoming). They can and have been studied in particular in the Greek world of Western Asia Minor and the Aegean. However, the impact of the Achaemenid 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 influence 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 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 Sasanians 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 onwards, Ancient Near Eastern royal ideologies claimed to rule the whole world. 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 by the In Herodotus’ days, the Greeks picked up this perception and placed it in new contexts as a geographical concept of the world without ideological connotations. In many parts of Herodotus’ Histories, the transformation process from an Achaemenid-Ancient Near Eastern world view to a Greek one is recognisable, 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.