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.
Contributions:
Religions and culture of Ancient Iran:
Philippe Gignoux: Sasan ou le dieu protecteur
Martin Schwartz: Sesen: a durable East Mediterranean god in Iran
Gherardo Gnoli: Further considerations on a Manichaean dating of Zoroaster
James R. Russel: A Manichaean apostolic mission to Armenia?
Iris Colditz: Notes on the problem of punishment and conservation in Manichaeism
Rika Gyselen: Un vêtement masculin «archaïsant» dans la glyptique sassanide
Malek Iradj Mochiri: Les monnaies de Kavad I à double effigie
A. D. H. Bivar: Reassessing Mirdrakvandi: Mithraic echoes in the 20th century
Texts and languages:
Antonio Panaino: A daevic speech
Nicholas Sims-Williams: Further notes on the Bactrian inscription of Rabatak, with an Appendix on the names of Kujula Kadphises and Vima Taktu in Chinese
R. E. Emmerick: Khotanese „ei“
Prods Oktor Skjærvø: Royalty in early Iranian literature
Philip Huyse: Kerdır and the first Sasanians
Werner Sundermann: On a Middle Persian legal term and its forgotten origin
Enrico Morano: My kingdom is not of this world: revisiting the great Parthian crucifixion hymn
Christiane Reck: Work in progress: a catalogue of the Middle Iranian manuscripts in Sogdian script of the Berlin Turfan collection
Carlo G. Cereti: Zoroastrian manuscripts in Italy: past and present
Ludwig Paul: The position of Zazaki among West Iranian languages
The series Beiträge zur Iranistik was founded in the 1960s by Georges Redard and subsequently edited by Nicholas Sims-Williams from 1997 to 2020; the present series editor is Agnes Korn.
The series publishes works on the languages of the Iranian branch of Indo-European. The focus is on linguistics, including grammars, dictionaries, text editions, philology as well as diachronic and synchronic studies of linguistic topics. Neighbouring fields such as literature, archaeology and anthropology are likewise represented. The languages of the series are English, German and French. The Beiträge zur Iranistik are represented in libraries internationally and are widely used standard works of Iranian studies.
