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From Pella to Gandhara From Pella to Gandhara Hybridisation and Identity in the Art and Architecture of the Hellenistic East Edited by Anna Kouremenos, Sujatha Chandrasekaran and Roberto Rossi with a foreword by Sir John Boardman. BAR International Series 2221 2011 Published by Archaeopress Publishers of British Archaeological Reports Gordon House 276 Banbury Road Oxford OX2 7ED England [email protected] www.archaeopress.com BAR S2221 From Pella to Gandhara: Hybridisation and Identity in the Art and Architecture of the Hellenistic East © Archaeopress and the individual authors 2011 ISBN 978 1 4073 0779 4 Cover image: ‘Cybele Plate’ (silver and gold, d. 25 cm, c. 3rd B.C.) from Ai Khanum, the Temple with Indented Niches. Afghanistan National Museum, Kabul. Mus. No: 04.42.7. After F. Hiebert and P. Cambon (eds.), Afghanistan, Hidden Treasures from National Museum, Kabul, cover image/Pl. 11. Washington. (ISBN 978-1-4262-0295-7). Printed in England by Blenheim Colour Ltd All BAR titles are available from: Hadrian Books Ltd 122 Banbury Road Oxford OX2 7BP England www.hadrianbooks.co.uk The current BAR catalogue with details of all titles in print, prices and means of payment is available free from Hadrian Books or may be downloaded from www.archaeopress.com TEMPLE ARCHITECTURE IN THE IRANIAN WORLD IN THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD* Michael Shenkar Hebrew University of Jerusalem The period following the Macedonian conquest of the The Avesta and the Rig Veda do not mention any temples Achaemenid Empire is traditionally considered one of the or cultic structures.5 According to these sources, the ‘dark ages’ in the history of ancient Iran.1 Very little is ancient Indo-Iranians practiced their religion under the known about Iranian religions and cult practices during open sky. However, besides open air terraces, the time when Alexander’s successors ruled most of the archaeological excavations have revealed that a second Iranian world.2 We possess no Iranian written sources type of cultic structure, ‘closed temples’, existed in the from this period and there are only a few brief mentions Iranian world before the Macedonian conquest.6 It is in Classical authors regarding Iranian religion or places instructive, that even during the reign of the Achaemenid of worship, leaving us with incomplete and inconsistent kings, who united most of the Iranian world under their evidence.3 Some indications (Herodotus, Histories 1.131- authority, no single architectural temple canon was 132) date from the period before the Macedonian developed and it seems that cultic structures reflected a conquest, while others (Plutarch, De hide et Osiride 46- variety of heterogeneous local cults, which existed among 47; Strabo, Geography 15.3.13-15) are from the later the Iranians. The Achaemenid kings probably worshipped period and refer mostly to Western Iran. The historians of under the open sky, since no closed temples have been Alexander’s campaigns do not compensate for this found in their royal capitals of Western Iran.7 On the deficiency.4 other hand, a number of buildings that had cultic and sacral significance were excavated in the Iranian world.8 I would like to thank Professors Joseph Patrich, Institute of Archaeo- In general, it should be noted that many more temples logy, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Shaul Shaked, Department of were uncovered in Eastern than in Western Iran. Comparative Religion and Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Frantz Grenet, École pratique des hautes études, Hannah M. Cotton, Department of Classics, Hebrew Fire was, and still is, one of the common components and University of Jerusalem Dr. Claude Rapin, École Supérieur, centre d’Archéologie, and Dr. Julia Rubanovich, Department of Islamic and supplementary elements of cultic activities in many Middle Eastern Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, for their diverse cultures around the world. In Iranian cults, fire comments and invaluable help in improving this paper. and ashes had a major place and probably also a special 1 The term Iran as well as the Iranian world/region as used in this paper sacral significance, so prominent that the place of reaches beyond the borders of the modern Islamic Republic and refers to the region from the Hindu-Kush mountains in the East to the Zagros worship of modern Zoroastrians is usually called ridge in the West and from Transoxania in the North to the Persian Gulf ātaškada, (‘house of fire’) where the ever-burning fire is in the South, which in the 1st millennium BCE and the 1st millennium kept.9 Indeed, when one thinks about Iranian places of CE was inhabited by Iranian-speaking tribes and possessed common worship, the term ‘fire-temple’ is the one immediately cultural and religious ancestry. 2 This situation has even led to attempts to discuss the religious situation 5 of the Hellenistic period based on the Sasanian evidence: Hjerrild 1990. The Rig Veda and the oldest parts of the Avesta (which are ascribed to See a useful survey of the period, in: Frye 1984, 137-191; Boyce and Zoroaster) are generally dated, mainly on the linguistic grounds, around nd Grenet, 1991, 3-34. the second half of the 2 millennium BCE and c. 1000 BCE 3 These fragments were collected and published by de Jong 1997 with respectively. The dating of the Avesta is, of course, bound to the extensive commentary. See also P’yankov 1997. question of ‘Zoroaster’s time’, see no. 12. 6 4 Thus, Diodorus Siculus (Bibliotheca historica 17.114.4) mentions that On temples in the Iranian world before the Hellenistic period, see: Alexander followed a Persian custom of quenching the ‘sacred fire’ Shenkar 2007. 7 after the death of Hephaistion. Curtius Rufus (Historiae Alexandri Boucharlat 2005, 281. Magni 6.7.5) reports that the plotters against Alexander took oaths in 8 See: Shenkar 2007, 175-176. On recent important discoveries of the temple that was located in Drangiana in Seistan. See Boyce and sanctuaries in eastern Iran, see Rapin 2007, 39-42. Grenet 1991, 3-17. 9 See: Boyce 1989. 117 FROM PELLA TO GANDHĀRA Fig. 1: The Iranian World in the Hellenistic Period. Drawing by Mitia Frumin invoked. However, the reality is that Avesta, our oldest the place of his doctrine in the broad context of other written source for the Iranian religion and the royal Iranian cults? What were the stages in the development inscriptions of the Achaemenian kings, do not mention and transformation of Zoroastrianism into the dominant such a term. It seems that the earliest certain evidence for religion in the Sasanian Empire and to what extent did the the existence of ‘fire-temples’ from which the ātaškada religious practices and beliefs of the Sasanian period and dar-e Mehr (‘house of Mithra’)10 of modern (recorded in Pahlavi literature) reflect those of earlier Zoroastrians directly derives, is only from the Sasanian periods? These extremely important questions for the period.11 It thus appears methodologically unsound to history of Zoroastrianism are not unanimously answered. apply this anachronistic term to Iranian temples before the rise of the Sasanian dynasty. It seems more appropriate to use the broad term ‘Iranian temples’ to refer to temples found in the Iranian world in The same caution is probably justified regarding the term the periods before the rise of the Sasanian dynasty, and to ‘Zoroastrian’ itself. Despite indefatigable scholarly suppose that they are connected to some various ‘Iranian efforts, the pre-Sasanian history of the Zoroastrian faith is cults’ whose exact nature eludes us, but of which still barely known. Of the beliefs and religious practices Zoroastrianism as it is known from the Sasanian period recorded in the Avesta, we do not know for sure what onward was obviously a part. peoples, periods and places are reflected, nor do we know when Zarathustra, the great prophet of the ancient Iranian religion, lived and preached his teaching.12 What was the WESTERN IRAN exact nature of his teachings and reforms and what was Persepolis 10 This name has been used for the fire-temple since the Islamic conquest: Boyce 1989. However see also Boyce 1993, where she claims Five temples may be attributed with relative certainty to that ‘dar-e mehr should have its origin in the Achaemenid period, the Hellenistic period: four in Eastern and one in Western despite its late attestation’. 11 On fire-temples in the Sasanian period see: Keall 1971; Boucharlat Iran (Fig. 13). The temple in Western Iran called the 13 1999b. ‘Frataraka Temple’ was excavated by Ernst Herzfeld in 12 The literature on ‘Zoroaster’s time and homeland’ is enormous. See for example: Gnoli 1980; P’yankov 1996; Gnoli 2000; Kellens 2001; 13 ‘Leader’s’ or ‘Governor’s’ temple, named after the title (frataraka) Shahbazi 2002; Stausberg 2002, 21-62; Dandamaev and Lukonin 2004, used by the dynasts of Pars during the Seleucid and Parthian period. On 320-329; Shaked 2005, 183-187. Most scholars date his activity around frataraka, see: Frye 1984, 158-162; Boyce and Grenet 1991, 110-116; the end of the 2nd ― beginning of the 1st millennium BCE and place his Wiesehöfer 1994, 101-136; Wiesehöfer 2001; Panaino 2002; homeland in Eastern Iran. Wiesehöfer 2007; Potts 2007, 272; Callieri 2007, 115-146. 118 M. SHENKAR: TEMPLE ARCHITECTURE IN THE IRANIAN WORLD IN THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD Fig. 2: Frataraka Temple and the adjacent structures (after: Stronach 1985, fig. 4) 1923 and is located some 300 meters north-west of the one square and stepped, the other a typical Achaemenian Persepolis platform (Figs. 2-3).14 torus column, probably reused from the platform destroyed by Alexander.16 Square column bases are This mud-brick edifice consisted of rooms and corridors unknown in Achaemenian architecture.17 These, and the and an ayvān (portico) with eight columns.
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