Ancient and Middle Iranian Studies" edited by Maria Macuch, Dieter Weber, and Desmond Durkin-Meisterernst is the first part of the "Proceedings of the 6th European Conference of Iranian Studies" organized by the Societas Iranologica Europaea held in Vienna on the 18th-22nd of September 2007. It includes twenty-two papers on Ancient and Middle Iranian topics presented at the Conference, covering different linguistic areas such as Avestan, Old and Middle Persian, Sogdian and Bactrian. Within the linguistic context, the articles deal with archeological and historical aspects of south-western and north-eastern Iran, religious and legal topics as well as anthroponymic evidence from various periods.

The 3rd European Conference of Iranian Studies, at which more than 130 papers were presented, was held in Cambridge in 1995. A selection of the best contributions will be published in two volumes, of which the second will be concerned with Iranian culture in the Islamic period. This first volume, which is illustrated with 17 plates, contains 18 important and thought-provoking papers - 15 in English and 3 in French - on Old and Middle Iranian. The papers, grouped thematically under the headings "Religions and Culture of ancient Iran" and "Texts and languages", cover a diversity of themes relating to Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism and Mithraism; Sasanian history, glyptic and numismatics; and Iranian philology, linguistics, and dialectology.

An enquiry into secular and religious Old Tibetan documents from Central Asia and Tibet. The material is critically examined from different perspectives, focussing on classical disciplines (history, linguistics, lexicography, philology, codicology and diplomacy).

Of the great ancient civilizations, that of Persia is the least known and the most enigmatic. This book explores the formation of the first Persian Empire under the Achaemenid Persians. It brings together a multi-disciplinary view of ancient Iran in the first millennium BC and concentrates on the art, archaeology, history and religion of a geographical area far beyond the present borders of modern Iran in the period beginning just before the formation of the Persian empire in the middle of the 6th century up to its collapse following conquest by Alexander the Great in the late 4th century BC. Eminent scholars here give a critical approach to some of the traditional interpretations and discuss topics which help the reader towards a better understanding of the formation of the Persian empire. This is the first volume in the "Idea of Iran" series which will be a four-volume collection encompassing the history of that country.

Persian literature is the jewel in the crown of Persian culture. It has profoundly influenced the literatures of Ottoman Turkey, Muslim India and Turkic Central Asia and been a source of inspiration for Goethe, Emerson, Matthew Arnold and Jorge Luis Borges among others. Yet Persian literature has never received the attention it truly deserves."A History of Persian Literature" answers this need and offers a new, comprehensive and detailed history of its subject. This 18-volume, authoritative survey reflects the stature and significance of Persian literature as the single most important accomplishment of the Iranian experience.The main object of this companion volume is to provide an overview of the most important extant literary sources in Old and Middle Iranian languages - the languages of the Achaemenid, Parthian and Sasanian periods culminating in the rich resource of Pahlavi Persian which fed so directly into the language of the later great Persian poets. It will be an indispensable source for the literary traditions of pre-Islamic Iran and an invaluable guide to the subject.

In Transcending Patterns: Silk Road Cultural and Artistic Interactions through Central Asian Textiles, Mariachiara Gasparini investigates the origin and effects of a textile-mediated visual culture that developed at the heart of the Silk Road between the seventh and fourteenth centuries. Through the analysis of the Turfan Textile Collection in the Museum of Asian Art in Berlin and more than a thousand textiles held in collections worldwide, Gasparini discloses and reconstructs the rich cultural entanglements along the Silk Road, between the coming of Islam and the rise of the Mongol Empire, from the Tarim to Mediterranean Basin. Exploring in detail the iconographic transfer between different agents and different media from Central Asian caves to South Italian churches, the author depicts and describes the movement and exchange of portable objects such as sculpture, wall painting, and silk fragments across the Asian continent and across the ages. Gasparini’s history offers critical perspectives that extend far beyond an outmoded notion of “Silk Road studies.” Her cross-media work shows readers how certain material cultures are connected not only by the physical routes they take but also because of the meanings and interpretations these objects engage in various places. Transcending Patterns is at once art history, material and visual cultural history, Asian studies, conservatory studies, and linguistics.