Achaemenid History Workshops (AHA)
The aim of the AHA was to bring the problematic back to the diversity of sources by opening up the question to the Assyrian and Elamite languages, as well as to archaeology.
Pierre Briant, Histoire de l'Empire Perse, Paris, 1996.
Three major thematic revolutions
These AHAs led to three major thematic revolutions:
- The role of the Medes has been reassessed, since Herodotus is the only source for the Mede Empire.
- Cyrus would be Elamite, not Persian.
- The importance of the kingdom of Elam, as attested by the Achaemenid administration written in Elamite, must be taken into account.
The religious problem
In the AHA, Achaemenid religion is neglected, with the exception of the 1987 colloquium in Liège:
La religion iranienne à l'époque achéménide. Actes du Colloque de Liège, December 11, 1987, in : Iranica Antiqua Supplément 5, ed. by Jean Kellens, Ghent, distributed by Peeters, Louvain, 1991.
This oversight was noted by Bruce Lincoln:
Bruce Lincoln, "Religion, Empire, and the Spectre of Orientalism: A Recent Controversy in Achaemenid Studies", JNES 72 no. 2, 2013, 253-265.
But the subject had been treated extensively in the 1970s, as this review of articles published on the subject shows:
Clarisse Herrenschmidt, "La religion des Achéménides: état de la question", Studia Iranica 9, Paris, 1980, 325-339.
Were the Achaemenids Zoroastrians?
Benveniste is the first to discuss the question with any precision. Insofar as he places the composition of the Gāθās in the 6th century B.C. and that of the late Avesta in the 4th-3rd centuries B.C., the Achaemenids cannot be Zoroastrians. The Achaemenids therefore professed a religion that was specific to them.
Emile Benveniste, The Persian Religion according to the Chief Greek Texts, Paris, 1929.
Nyberg uses the argument of the calendar. The calendar names the days of the month after the deities of the recent Avesta, and the progression of the days of the month roughly represents the corpus of the Yašts. As a result, the Achaemenids were familiar with the Avesta texts and were Zoroastrians. The adoption of this calendar is thought to have taken place between 505 and 440 BC.
Henrik Samuel Nyberg, Die Religion des alten Iran, Leipzig, 1938
The return to high chronology has blurred the question of Achaemenid religion, for if the Gāθās are ancient, the Achaemenids must have known them.
