Beyond the Late Antique Paradigm: Towards a New Concept of Empire for Sasanian Iran

The integration of Sasanian Iran into late antique studies has certainly prompted the field of Altiranisik to move beyond the restrictive confines
of the discipline and embrace the interconnectedness of the ancient world. It has now doubt infused new life and methodological breath into the
reconstruction of the Sasanian past. While Sasanian history ought to participate in this festival of connectivity, its own essence, which may be evinced in the tapestry of Iranian languages, and the multitude layers of Iranian history, religions, and archaeology, seems now largely neglected in favor of broad-brush syntheses merely informed by expertise on the empire's fringes. In this presentation, a case shall be made for the singularity of the Sasanian empire, as a multi-confessional polity, bestowed with a writing system rooted in Mesopotamian
heterography, and a distinct mytho-epic vision of the past, that by continuing the legacy of the Ancient Near East, in ways more than one, is to be placed at the antipodes of the late antique world.