The religious landscape at Persepolis : new glyptic data for the so-called " altars of fire "

This lesson adopts a more traditional method of studying glyptic images, bringing together groups of seals sharing a common iconography. One of the aims of this lesson is to show how glyptic data from fortification archives can contribute to discussions of iconography in Achaemenid art. The aim is to show how the glyptic data from Persepolis can bring new perspectives to iconographic questions we already know, and how they can force us to rethink the questions we have been asking and the assumptions we have been making about them.
The representation of "fire altars" in Achaemenid art is inevitably linked to discussions about religion in the Achaemenid period and the "Zoroastrian question". In this lesson, the exploration of representations of "fire altars" does not seek to offer a definitive answer as to the religious preferences of the early Achaemenids. Rather, these testimonies are part of a much larger dossier of textual and visual material, currently being compiled and synthesized. Each year sees the appearance of numerous publications on this issue, but a particularly important resource, because it deals with textual data from the fortification archives, is Wouter Henkelman's recent book, The Other Gods Who Are (Leiden 2008).
This lesson began with a brief discussion of the historiography of religion and empire, then briefly reviewed some earlier attempts to gather evidence of representations of "fire altars" for the Achaemenid period. We then examined new data from Persepolis, and concluded with some thoughts on the significance of Persepolitan glyptic material.