The Glittering World of Sasanian Iran

[M. Caecilius]

I concur with Sean. Fortunately, we do not have to rely on archaeological discovery of ancient papyri to study Graeco-Roman literature. Though there are tantalising fragments, what we have now survived because it was copied, largely in the monasteries, throughout the Middle Ages until the printing press could catch up the slack and make books more available again, to and beyond the scale they may have been in the Roman times. However, for the rather substantial corpus of Egyptian literature, we do rely on papyrology, but then Egypt's climate (and the tendency to use written papyri as mummy-wraps on occasion) is fairly exceptional.

Still, Stefan raises a good point in asking why the sources were not transmitted from Achemenid or Sasanian culture, with the Parthian Arsacids possibly being a culture much closer to their nomadic Saka roots to produce large, written corpus. The Achemenid works may have been lost under Alexander, although he was rather appreciative of Persian culture elsewhere, restoring the tomb of Darius the Great and adopting Persian style and traditions, possibly under the successor kingdoms. The Sasanian culture was followed by the Arab invasions, but there remained enough Iranian self-consciousness and pride not to cause a complete ban on what had gone before.

A case in point is Ferdowi's Shahname, the Persian national epos, written towards the end of the 10th century. On the other hand, it seems to me that it is also a case in point to indicate that there was a large body of sources Ferdowsi could draw on (some of them, as regards Alexander, possibly Greek, but many must have been Persian), whether they were written or oral; he did not simply invent things.

It is a pity that there are so few sources to show the Persian side of things, as opposed to looking at this culture from the usually hostile eyes of Romans and Greeks. There are a few reliefs, at Behistun for instance, which show some epigraphic habit.