A slap in the face of Iranian Studies

Objection by the International community of Iranian Studies to the selection of a scholar of Greco-Arabic, to the Pourdavoud Chair in pre-modern Persia at Princeton University.

A letter and petition by professor Ehsan Yarshater

Pourdavoud Chair in pre-modern Persia at Princeton

To be delivered to Christopher L. Eisgruber, President, Princeton University, David P. Dobkin, Dean of the Faculty, Princeton University, Mrs. Sharmin Mossavar-Rahmani, and Marc Beissinger, Professor of Politics; Chair of the Search Committee for the Pourdavoud Chair in Pre-Modern Persia, Princeton University

President Christopher L. Eisgruber
Office of the President
1 Nassau Hall Princeton University
Princeton, NJ 08544

December 3, 2013

Dear President Eisgruber,

The community of scholars in Iranian Studies was delighted when Mr. and Mrs. Mossavar-Rahmani endowed a chair for Iranian Studies at Princeton University. Their delight was increased by thechair being named after Ebrahim Pourdavoud, a great Iranian scholar who pioneered Zoroastrian Studies in that country and translated the entire Avesta, the holy book of the Zoroastrians, into Persian, while providing ample commentaries for it. He was an outstanding patriot dedicated to reviving the ancient heritage of Iran.

The hope of scholars of Iranian Studies had been that the chair’s naming would be indicative of its focusing on the pre-Islamic culture and history of Iran, when Iranians gave rise to the Zoroastrian religion, and three major dynasties, namely, the Achaemenian, the Parthian, and the Sasanian, emerged. The study of this period has been recently weakened by the demise of several scholars who were regretfully not replaced in the same field. It was thus greatly hoped that the chair named after Pourdavoud, who personified the Iranian pre-Islamic history and culture more than anyone else, would help restore the balance, and the Pourdavoud Chair would be held by a scholar specializing in ancient Iran.

The scholar who has been suggested by the Selection Committee, good scholar as he may be, has been trained in Greco-Arabic and the great majority of his publications concern these two fields rather than Iranian languages and culture. To allow a chair named after Pourdavoud, who spent all his life teaching and writing about Zoroastrianism and the pre-Islamic culture of Iran, to be held by someone whose formal academic training has been in Arabic, Syriac, and Greek, and who by and large is unknown in the field, is considered a slap in the face of Iranian Studies, the community at large, and the memory of Pourdavoud.

We hope that a careful consideration of the purpose of the Chair and its name would persuade the Selection Committee to make a choice that would not contradict the aims of the endowed position, weaken the field of Iranian Studies, and discredit the legacy of Ebrahim Pourdavoud.

I have spoken to several colleagues in the field of Iranian Studies and I may report that they all agree with me. Some of them will be writing to you, others will be endorsing this letter.

With kind regards,

Ehsan Yarshater

Director, Center for Iranian Studies, Columbia University;
Hagop Kevorkian Professor Emeritus of Iranian Studies;
Editor, Encyclopaedia Iranica;
Editor, A History of Persian Literature
Center for Iranian Studies
Columbia University in the City of New York
450 Riverside Drive, No. 4
New York, N.Y. 10027-6821
Tel: (212) 851–9161
Fax: (212) 749–9524
E-mail: ey4@columbia.edu

Cc: Mr. and Mrs. Mossavar-Rahmani;
Professor David P. Dobkin, Dean of the Faculty.

Click here to sign/view the petition.

In early December (2013), the Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of Intangible Heritage, holding its 8th session met and inscribed 11 elements on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

The Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity serves to raise awareness of intangible heritage and provide recognition to communities’ traditions and know-how that reflect their cultural diversity (unesco.org). The List does not attribute or recognize any standard of excellence or exclusivity.

The titles of the newly inscribed elements below (in order of inscription) lead to web pages with information, pictures and videos:

• Traditional craftsmanship of the Mongol Ger and its associated customs—Mongolia

• Knowledge, skills and rituals related to the annual renewal of the Q’eswachaka bridge—Peru

• Kimjang, making and sharing kimchi in the Republic of Korea

• Men’s group Colindat, Christmas-time ritual-Romania-Republic of Moldova

• Xooy, a divination ceremony among the Serer of Senegal

• Music of Terchová—Slovakia

• Feast of the Holy Forty Martyrs in Štip—Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia

• Turkish coffee culture and tradition—Turkey

• Petrykivka decorative painting as a phenomenon of the Ukrainian ornamental folk art—Ukraine

• La Parranda de San Pedro de Guarenas y Guatire—Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of)

• Art of Đờn ca tài tử music and song in southern Viet Nam

British archeologists led by University of Southampton have recently found evidence that sheds light on how Portus was destroyed. Portus, was by all historical records and accounts a port unlike any other. The port could host 350 ships at a time and kept the ravenous capital of the Roman Empire supplied with grain, wine, oil, slaves and luxuries from around the world.

The archeologists also believe that they have unravelled the mystery of how the site’s luxurious palace and huge warehouse vanished almost overnight, leaving no trace of the port’s scale and wealth as Guardian Newspaper reported. It was previously believed that the port and the beautiful palace had been burnt down by invading barbarians or Ostrogoths. However, the new picture drawn by the archeologists show that as the empire declined, Portus was systematically demolished in the 6th century by the Byzantines – the eastern emperors who fought the invading Ostrogoths to regain control of Rome. In addition, the archeologists discovered that the magnificent, three-story palace was in fact flattened and the 50ft walls were destroyed methodically. It is believed that by the 6th century, the Byzantines felt the port could be a threat as it was vulnerable to being occupied by the Ostrogoths, so they took the decision to destroy it themselves.

Portus was very important to the Roman Empire and new findings further emphasize the grandeur of what the port. The archeologists found the 60-room imperial palace covering nine acres. It was fronted by a long colonnade and boasted a first floor courtyard with a pool fed by a cistern below. The remains of an amphitheatre and an enormous, 260-yard long warehouse have also been discovered.<

Built by the emperor Trajan in the second century, Portus included a mile-wide main basin that has now silted up, and an inner, hexagonal basin that still exists as a lake in woodland at the end of the runway of Rome’s Fiumicino airport – it’s perfect hexagonal shape is clearly visible from above.

The Byzantine Empire was the predominantly Greek-speaking continuation of the Roman Empire during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Its capital city was Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul), originally known as Byzantium. Initially the eastern half of the Roman Empire (often called the Eastern Roman Empire in this context), it survived the 5th century fragmentation and collapse of the Western Roman Empire and continued to thrive, existing for an additional thousand years until it fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 (Wikipedia).

photo credit: Dr. Ya‘akov Vardi/Courtesy Israel Antiquities Authority.

Archeologists have found rare prehistoric sites including a 10,000-year old house, and a 6,000-year old temple. The findings were unearthed in Eshtaol, located about 17 miles west of Jerusalem, ahead of widening a highway.  The building, almost all of which was found as reported by CNN, seems to have undergone renovations and repairs and represents a time when humans first began living in permanent settlements rather than migrating regularly in search of food. The team also found a cluster of abandoned flint and limestone axes nearby. The archeologists also discovered the remains of a temple built in the second half of the fifth millennium B.C., including a 4-foot-high stone column weighing several hundred kilograms.

The archeologists believe that these new findings show a very informative and broad picture of formation of early human civilization centers where thousands of years ago people first started domesticating animals and plants.  The findings also provide evidence of how rural societies made the transition to urban societies in the early Bronze Age, about 5,000 years ago.

NBC reports that throughout Israel, construction projects often lead to new archaeological discoveries. For example, during recent expansions of Highway 1, the main road connecting Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, excavators discovered 9,500-year-old animal figurines, a carving of a phallus from the Stone Age and a ritual building from the First Temple era.

Eshtaolis in central Israel, and located about 27 kilometers from Jerusalem.

In a paper published by the Antiquity Journal (on November 25^th, 2013) archaeologists reported uncovering the “earliest ever Buddhist shrine” while digging at Buddha’s birthplace. The archeologists led by a team from Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre and Durham University unearthed a 6th Century BC timber structure buried within the Maya Devi Temple at Lumbini in Nepal. The shrine appears to have housed a tree. Buddhist tradition records that Queen Maya Devi gave birth to the Buddha while grasping the branch of a tree within the Lumbini Garden.

Every year thousands of Buddhists make a holy pilgrimage to Lumbini – long identified as the birthplace of Siddhartha Gautama, who became the Buddha. Yet despite many books and texts chronicling his life and teachings, it is still uncertain when Buddha lived. Several estimates for his birth dates his life back to 623 BC, but many scholars believed before 390 BC to be a more realistic time frame. Until now, the earliest evidence of Buddhist structures at Lumbini dated no earlier than the 3rd Century BC, in the era of the emperor Asoka.

Archeologists uncovered a wooden structure with a central void which had no roof. Brick temples built later above the timber were also arranged around this central space. To date the buildings, fragments of charcoal and grains of sand were tested using a combination of carbon-dating and optically stimulated luminescence techniques.

“Recent UNESCO-sponsored work at the major Buddhist centre of Lumbini in Nepal has sought to overcome these limitations, providing direct archaeological evidence of the nature of an early Buddhist shrine and a secure chronology. The excavations revealed a sequence of early structures preceding the major rebuilding by Asoka during the third century BC. The sequence of durable brick architecture supplanting non-durable timber was foreseen by British prehistorian Stuart Piggott when he was stationed in India over 70 years ago. Lumbini provides a rare and valuable insight into the structure and character of the earliest Buddhist shrines.” – The team stated in their report.

The discovery which was supported by the National Geographic Society could aid conservation efforts at the site which has been neglected despite its UNESCO World Heritage status and the recent efforts that have brought more attention to Lumbini.

Late last month, (October 2013) during the most recent excavations in an archaeological site in the center of Lima, Peru’s busy and lively capital city, archeologists found the newest pre-Incan Discovery. They found an undisturbed Wari tomb containing two corpses wrapped in ceremonial fabric, which is estimated to be more than 1,000 years old. The Pucllana archaeological site in Lima contained the bodies of an adult and an infant, along with nearly 10 intact artifacts.
The archeologists believe that the adult was likely a master weaver, and the infant, was probably killed and buried in the tomb as an offering in the adult’s honor.
The Wari civilization was active in an area that now contains Lima from approximately 600 to 1000 AD, some 500 years before the Inca Empire emerged. Seventy Wari tombs have been unearthed at the Pucllana site, which is nestled in a residential neighborhood in central Lima

What do the clay balls from Mesopotamia reveal?  The researchers believe that they might have found an answer. They have discovered clues to a lost code that was used for record-keeping about 200 years before writing was invented.  In fact, the researchers believe that the clay balls may represent the world’s very first data storage system according to Professor Christopher Woods of the University of Chicago.  At a lecture at the Royal Ontario Museum and an interview with LiveScience, Woods further explained the new findings about the clay balls

The researchers used high-resolution CT scans and 3D modeling to look inside more than 20 clay balls or “envelopes” – as researchers call them – that were excavated at the site of Choga Mish, in western Iran, in the late 1960s. They were created about 5,500 years ago at a time when early cities were flourishing in Mesopotamia. 

The balls were sealed and contain tokens in a variety of geometric shapes and varying sizes from golf ball-size to baseball-size. Researchers believe that the tokens which come in 14 different shapes, including spheres, pyramids, ovoids, lenses and cones, could have represented whole words, and that these shapes would have conveyed numbers connected to a variety of metrological systems used in counting different types of commodities. One ovoid, for instance, might mean a certain unit, say 10, which was used while counting a certain type of commodity.

It is important to point out that researchers have long believed that these clay balls were used to record economic transactions and that the tokens represent numbers and metrical units. This interpretation is also based on an analysis of a 3,300-year-old clay ball found at a site in Mesopotamia named Nuzi that had 49 pebbles and a cuneiform text containing a contract commanding a shepherd to care for 49 sheep and goats.

Professor Woods also commented that through the different token shapes, people in prehistoric times could have actually communicated numbers and units in a way similar to how the first scribes did 200 years later when writing was invented.

As the world has been watching the devastation in terms of human loss and destruction of cities, coast lines and nature in the Philippines over the last few days, once again we at WCHV are reminded of the importance of addressing climate change. Climate Change results in more extreme and unpredictable weather across the world.  The World Wildlife Fund (http://www.wwf.org.za/what_we_do/climate_change/) states that “Climate change is the biggest threat to nature and humanity in the 21st century. It’s nearly impossible to overstate the threat of climate change. Greenhouse gas emissions are rising more rapidly than predicted and the world is warming more quickly in response. Global warming will have catastrophic effects such as accelerating sea level rise, droughts, floods, storms and heat waves. These will impact everyone, including some of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people, disrupting food production, and threatening vitally important species, habitats and ecosystems.”   We could not have said it better.  We at WCHV have continued to report on the impact of wars and conflicts on the destruction and loss of the World National and Natural Heritage around the world as well as the impact of natural disasters, climate change and drastic environmental changes on such loss.  We will continue to do this every week, report on the meetings and will bring you the announcements on the related conferences.
 
 
2013 climate change conference in Warsaw
This month the international community focusing on climate change meets in Warsaw, Poland and it is believed that these UN climate talks could lay foundation for a more unified global pact even though, no major decisions are expected at the conference. The meeting and the progress is a key marker for what the world can reach in form of a deal in 2015.  Especially since the 2009 summit in Copenhagen< ended in discord and major disagreements.For more information visit:  http://unfccc.int/meetings/warsaw_nov_2013/meeting/7649.php

It has been reported to WCHV that several items believed to be over hundreds of years old and considered to be valuable Persian national heritage artifacts were seen at a wedding party in Yazd Province, in Iran and was being used as a chair.  WCHV has been told that these items and more similar artifacts were discovered about four years ago in the Yazd  Province, and were cataloged, listed on the national heritage list of the country and were then supposed to be transferred a museum later.  However, last year, the associate director of the Iranian National Heritage Sites organization reported that those items had been destroyed by unknown individuals, until recently when others have reported seeing some of the same items at a wedding party and another at a conference.

The items found four years ago reported to have included over fifty two artifacts, some made of rocks, with native paintings depicting scenes of hunting of mountain goats and tigers.

A rare exhibition is currently on display now through January 5, 2014 at the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.  Mesopotamia: Inventing Our World showcases hundreds of artifacts illustrating the achievements of these ancient empires. Highlights include a rare surviving Assyrian sculpture depicting King Ashurnasirpal II, and a terracotta relief of a striding lion that once adorned the palace of Babylon’s Nebuchadnezzar II, who famously conquered Jerusalem, destroyed the Temple and exiled the Jews to Babylon.

Mesopotamia, included the great ancient empires of Sumer, Assyria and Babylon. Encompassing present-day Iraq, northeast Syria, western Iran and southeast Turkey. The objects in the exhibition come from the British Museum’s rich collection as well as from the Royal Ontario Museum, the University of Chicago Oriental Institute Museum, the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and the Detroit Institute of Arts.

Also included are presentations of archaeological excavations conducted in the region in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The visitor will also experience audio-visual installments and a 3D fly-through of Babylon, highlighting the Tower of Babel and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

It has widely been reported in the media that following the American invasion in Iraq, looters and smugglers stole major pieces and artifacts from the Iraq National Museum, creating a major loss to the county’s wealth of national heritage. Many architectural remains have also been greatly damaged from war and devastation and artifacts of tremendous national value have been destroyed.

For more information visit Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
www.rom.on.ca