David Stronach and British Archaeology in the Middle East

Maras, Sabrina. 2026. David Stronach and British Archaeology in the Middle East. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Drawn from interviews conducted between 2007 and 2020, this account of the life of renowned archaeologist and former director of the British Institute of Persian Studies, David Brian Stronach, reveals a lost period in international archaeology within Iran, when BIPS was founded and acted as a unique intellectual hub for archaeologists, expats, scholars and foreigners…

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Ancient West & East 24

The new volume of Ancient West & East (2025) is out and it contains several relevant studies pertaining to ancient Iran: Julian DEGEN: Argead Macedonia in the Western Borderland of the Achaemenid Empire Roberto DAN: The Hişet Fortress in (V)ostan/Gevaş An Urartian, Orontid, Arsacid and Mediaeval Site on the Southern Shore of Lake Van Arvin MAGHSOUDLOU: A Palace Built into a Mountain Exploring the Modes of Audience Interaction and Reception at the Great Ayvan of Taq-e Bustan in Late Antiquity

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Proto-Elamite

Kelley, Kathryn. 2026. Proto-Elamite. Writing and Society in Early Iran. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Proto-Elamite is one of the world's earliest scripts and it remains only very partly deciphered. Excavations have uncovered c. 1,700 clay tablets from Iran, dating c. 3300–2900 BCE. The tablets use a complex system involving hundreds of symbols to count commodities, people, and institutions. Despite holding a privileged place in the history of writing, the study of proto-Elamite falls outside modern disciplinary boundaries and has received very limited scholarly attention since its discovery over a century ago.

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Archäologische Mitteilungen aus Iran und Turan (AMIT): Vol. 50

Archäologische Mitteilungen aus Iran und Turan (AMIT): Vol. 50, 2018 , ed. by German Archaeological Institute (DAI), Tehran Branch of the Eurasia Department, is now pubished. Table of Contents: Articles: Morteza Zamani Dadaneh, Sirvan Mohammadi Ghasrian and Steve Renette: Late Neolithic to Early Chalcolithic Settlements on the Marivan Plain of western Iran Elena Rova, Davit Kvavadze, Flavia Amato, Elisabetta Boaretto, Giovanni Boschian, Giovanni Siracusano and Laura Tonetto: Tsiteli Gorebi 5, a New Early Chalcolithic Site in Eastern Georgia, Results of the 2018-2019 Excavations by the “Georgian-Italian Lagodekhi Archaeological Project”

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Two articles by Mohamad Bayani

Bayani, Mohamad. 2025. Creating is cutting: A conceptual metaphor in Avestan and Pahlavi texts. Bulletin of SOAS 88(2). 243–265. This paper investigates the development of the creation theme in Zoroastrian sources through the lens of the conceptual metaphor “creation is cutting”. It analyses three terms: Avestan taš- and ϑβǝrǝs-, and Middle Persian brēhēnīdan. Each term is examined in non-metaphorical, non-creational metaphorical, and creational metaphorical contexts.

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Insights into the First Kushan Ruler’s Enigmatic Tetradrachms

Taasob, Razieh. 2026. Reassessing the Lifespan of the Heraios Coinage: Insights into the First Kushan Ruler’s Enigmatic Tetradrachms. In: Merle Eisenberg, Lee Mordechai & David Yoon (eds.), Coins and Money in the Middle Ages Studies in Honor of Alan Stahl (Numismatic Studies 50), 123-141. New York: The American Numismatic Society. The attribution and chronology of Heraios coinage, often linked to the early Kushan ruler Kujula Kadphises, have long been points of scholarly debate.

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Greek Persians, Persian Greeks, or: When a king dreams

Ruffing, Kai. 2026. Griechische Perser, Persische Griechen, oder: Wenn ein König träumt. In: R. Breitwieser, A. Hofeneder, R. Matuszewski (eds.), Im Garten der Klio. Festschrift für Monika Frass (Philippika 193), 240-255. Wiesbaden :Harrassowitz.

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Another Look at the Word-Final Syllable in Old Persian

Repanšek, Luka. 2026. Another Look at the Word-Final Syllable in Old Persian. Indo-Iranian Journal 69: 257-287. The article offers a long-overdue reconciliatory reassessment of the much-discussed Old Persian cuneiform sequences ⟨‑Ca-a⟩, ⟨‑Ca/i-i-ya⟩, and ⟨‑Ca/u-u-va⟩ in word-final position, and of their phonetic and phonographic interpretation. It argues that the view according to which ⟨‑Ca-a⟩ cannot represent final vowel lengthening rests on assumptions that cannot be independently substantiated from the orthographic evidence.

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Psalm 45 and the Achaemenid View of the Ideal King

Amar, Itzhak. 2026. Psalm 45 and the Achaemenid View of the Ideal King. Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society 38: 1-18.

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Mobility and Archaeogenetics in Central Asia

Baumer, Christoph, Mirko Novák & Susanne Rutishauser (eds.). 2026. Mobility and Archaeogenetics in Central Asia. People – Goods – Ideas. 3rd International Conference on Central Asian Archaeology in Bern, 11th–13th January 2024 (Schriften zur vorderasiatischen Archäologie 24). Wiesbaden: Harrossowitz. Central Asia is a huge region characterized by a rich variety of ecologies, climates, geographical environments, social systems, languages and cultures. Within this region multiple cultural exchanges took place.

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Central Asia as Focus of Trade, Cultural Exchange and Knowledge Transmission

Baumer, Christoph, Mirko Novák & Susanne Rutishauser (eds.). 2026. Cultures in Contact: Central Asia as Focus of Trade, Cultural Exchange and Knowledge Transmission (Schriften zur vorderasiatischen Archäologie 19). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Central Asia is a vast region separating and at the same time connecting the civilizations of the Near East, East Asia and the Indian subcontinent with each other and with the neighboring nomadic cultures.

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Sasanian Silver Coins from Atbatan Necropolis Near Demirchi (Shamakhi District, Azerbaijan)

Huseynov, Rustam N. & Akif A. Guliyev. 2026. Sasanian Silver Coins from Atbatan Necropolis Near Demirchi (Shamakhi District, Azerbaijan). Azerbaijan Journal of Archaeology and Anthropology 2 (1): 99-105. This article presents a small group of Sasanian silver drachms discovered during archaeological excavations at Atbatan necropolis near the village of Demirchi in the Shamakhi region of Azerbaijan. The coins were recovered from burial contexts in association with human skeletal remains and accompanying grave goods, providing important archaeological evidence for the circulation of late Sasanian silver coinage in the Shirvan area.

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Pepper, Peach, Paradise

Paul, Ludwig. Pfeffer, Pfirsich, Paradies: Kleines Lexikon deutscher Wörter persischer Herkunft. München: C.H.Beck. Wie ist der Algorithmus aus dem Persischen ins Deutsche gelangt? Warum bezeichnet Diwan sowohl ein Sofa als auch eine Gedichtsammlung? Und was hat unser Schal mit einem indischen Sari zu tun oder die Tulpe mit dem Turban? Ludwig Paul erklärt in rund 140 kurzweiligen Artikeln, wie Wörter aus dem Persischen ins Deutsche gewandert sind.

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Recovering a Sasanian Royal Book in Early Islam

Zubani, Alessia. 2026. Recovering a Sasanian Royal Book in Early Islam: The Kitāb Ṣuwar mulūk Banī Sāsān and Its Arabic Transmission. Essays in Long Late Antiquity 1 (1): 73-95. This paper explores the recovery and translation of a Sasanian royal book during the early Islamic period, focusing on the Umayyad and early Abbasid eras. It examines the missing Kitāb Ṣuwar mulūk Banī Sāsān (“Book of the Portraits of the Sasanian Kings”), a work that depicted portraits of all Sasanian rulers, their reigns, and deeds.

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Lowland Susiana in the Fourth Millennium BCE

Abbas Alizadeh, with contributions by Hossein Davoudi, Kevin Lidour, Marjan Mashkour, Valentin Radu, Mohammad Reza Rokni, Noshad Rokni, and Shiva Sheikhi. 2026. Lowland Susiana in the Fourth Millennium BCE: Excavations at KS-04, KS-59, and KS-108 (ISACP 2). Chicago: Chicago University Press. During two seasons in 2004–2006, the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures excavated three major prehistoric population centers in northern Susiana, in the modern-day province of Khuzestan, Iran: KS-04 (Chogha Do Sar), KS-59 (Abu Fanduweh), and KS-108 (Beladieh).

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The Sasanians in Context: Art, History, and Archaeology

Catanzariti, Antonietta & Touraj Daryaee (eds.). 2026. The Sasanians in Context: Art, History, and Archaeology. Washington, D.C.: SmithsonianScholarly Press. Between the third and seventh centuries CE, the Sasanian Empire became one of the most dominant powers in the ancient world—extending geographically from West to Central Asia—and was the last major power in the region before the Arab conquest in the seventh century.

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The Letters of Mani

Gardner, Iain. 2026. The Letters of Mani. A Lost Scripture of the Late Antique World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Includes new English translations of all the available texts concerning Mani's Letters Utilizes the latest research to recover all that can be known about one of the scriptures of Manichaeism A holistic and interdisciplinary approach Features much new or little-known material

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A Palace Built into a Mountain

Maghsoudlou, Arvin. 2025. A Palace Built into a Mountain: Exploring the Modes of Audience Interaction and Reception at the Great Ayvan of Taq-e Bustan in Late Antiquity. Ancient West & East 24: 43-67. This study revisits the structure, imagery and scale of the Great Ayvan of Taq-e Bustan, employing a phenomenological approach to explore how it interacted with its potential Late Antique audiences.

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Sovereignty in Iran

Holliday, Shabnam J. (ed.). 2026. Sovereignty in Iran: Challenges to Eurocentrism from Ancient Iran to the Islamic Republic. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. This book is a multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary collaborative project examining sovereignties as a plural concept through the case of Iran. In so doing it challenges Eurocentric assumptions in the Humanities and Social Sciences and covers sovereignty from ancient Iran to the Islamic Republic including the Woman, Life, Freedom protests.

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Text and translation of the Yasna Haptaŋhāiti

Heindio Uesugi has done it again. Under the supervisory editorship of Adam Alvah Catt, Uesugi has now published an addendum to the second part of his Old Avestan dictionary: a translation and glossed version of the Yasna Haptaŋhāiti. Uesugi, Heindio (ed.). 2026. Old Avestan dictionary. Addendum to Part II: Text and translation: Yasna Haptaŋhāiti. Tokyo: Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa.

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Books about Zoroastrianism

One of the world’s oldest living religions, and historically one of the most significant, Zoroastrianism is unfamiliar to many today. Oxford academic Arash Zeini discusses five books about this…

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Text and translation of the Yasna Haptaŋhāiti

Heindio Uesugi has done it again. Under the supervisory editorship of Adam Alvah Catt, Uesugi has now published an addendum to the second part of his Old Avestan dictionary: a translation and glossed version of the Yasna Haptaŋhāiti. Uesugi, Heindio (ed.). 2026. Old Avestan dictionary. Addendum to Part II: Text and translation: Yasna Haptaŋhāiti. Tokyo: Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa.

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Two unpublished Bactrian documents

Sims-Williams, Nicholas. 2026. Two unpublished Bactrian documents in the al-Sabah Collection, Kuwait. Bulletin of SOAS FirstView. 1–8. Bactrian, the principal written language of pre-Islamic Afghanistan, was little known until the early 1990s, when more than 150 contracts, economic documents and letters, together with a few Buddhist texts, were acquired by collectors. Most of these were published by Nicholas Sims-Williams between 2001 and 2012 in three volumes entitled Bactrian Documents from Northern Afghanistan.

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East and West (vol. 65)

The latest volume of East and West contains several interesting articles, some of which deal with aspects of (ancient) Iran. F. Grenet, F. Ory, A Preliminary Note on a Painting from Kuh-e Khwāja in the New Delhi National Museum E. Matin, Reaching the Persian Gulf from the Kur River Basin: Patterns of an Intermittent Connectivity S. Belelli, Contact Change and Dialect Convergence in the Kurdish of Khanaqin…

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Sasanians and the Silk Road

Pashootanizadeh, Azadeh. 2026. The Sasanian Silk Road: Socioeconomic structures of the Zoroastrian silk trade. TEXTILE. 1–14. This study examines the cultural economy of silk during the Sasanian period and its influence on the cultural landscape of fire temples. The prosperity of the Silk Road expanded professions and social groups associated with the silk trade, allowing the Sasanian period to be divided into two phases.

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Studia Iranica (53/1)

The first issue of Studia Iranica 53 is out. Here is the table of contents: BELELLI, Sara: Laki Nominal Morphology in Historical and Comparative Perspective BORJIAN, Habib: Southern Kurdish in the Anti-Alborz: A Case of Language Isolation PREUD'HOMME, Nicolas: The Fall of Safavid Power According to an Anonymous Manuscript from Post-Revolutionary France

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The Chronological Boundaries of the Persepolis Fortification Archive

Stolper, Matthew W. 2025. The Chronological Boundaries of the Persepolis Fortification Archive. In Petra Goedegebuure & Joost Hazenbos (eds.), Ḫattannaš: A Festschrift in Honor of Theo van den Hout, 387-415. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. The Festschrift offered to Theo van den Hout contains several important and stimulating studies. The entire volume is available in open access via the hyperlink above.

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The Idea of “India” and “Gandāra” in the Earliest Iranian and Greek Sources

King, Rhyne & Alice Collett. 2026. The Idea of “India” and “Gandāra” in the Earliest Iranian and Greek Sources. Journal of the American Society for Premodern Asia 146 (2): 241-262. Hinduš, the Old Persian name for a region of the Achaemenid Persian Empire (550–330 BCE), ultimately underlies the English word India. The history of the word Hinduš and its cognates has attracted considerable research, yet the precise referent of Hinduš in its Achaemenid context remains imperfectly understood.

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Parthica (vol. 27)

Volume 27 of the journal Parthica (2025) contains several contributions of relevance to Iranian Studies and beyond: R. DAN: An Urartian or Orontid foundation? A reassessment of the archaeological data related to the establishment of the fortified complex at Yervandashat, Armenia D. ANDREUCCI: Automated segmentation of historical archaeological photographs: A CNN-based approach applied to the Tachara palace of Persepolis G. LINDSTRÖM: The Denavar Vase: Parthian patronage, Greek aesthetics, and Roman luxury…

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