Connecting art and Zoroastrianism in Sasanian studies

Wood, Rachel ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5047-1009 2020. Connecting art and Zoroastrianism in Sasanian studies. Elsner, Jas, ed. Empires of Faith in Late Antiquity: Histories of Art and Religion from India to Ireland, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 223-259. (10.1017/9781108564465.011)

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Abstract

A stark divide lingers between the themes and problems addressed by art historians and those explored in historical accounts of Zoroastrianism under the Sasanian Persian Empire (224–651). Although shaped by numerous intertwined investments and catalysts over the centuries, the divergence in the attentions of the two fields crystallized during imperial and anti-imperial movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, active both within Iran and without. Art has been framed as irrelevant for the history of Zoroastrianism, demonstrating the absence and avoidance of religious themes; at the other end of the scale, art has been seen as, containing innate sacred significance in its composition. Certain narratives central to the development of Sasanian studies - of continuity, exceptionalism, and eurocentricism, in particular - have shaped approaches to how iconography and art can be incorporated into discussions of Sasanian religion. Convergent interests have promoted the continuity of iconography’s sacred meanings from earlier in antiquity through the Sasanian period to the modern day, diminishing the contemporary contribution and context, and see the visual evidence as demonstrating the distinctiveness and exceptionalism of Zoroastrianism from other religions, and of Iranian culture from others.

Item Type:	Book Section
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	History, Archaeology and Religion
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
ISBN:	9781108460941
Last Modified:	21 Oct 2024 09:52
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/172627

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