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Modern Uses of Pre-Islamic Iranian Heritage

This panel was compiled by the Conference Program Team from independently submitted paper proposals.

Presentations

Iranians Celebrate Nowruz in Istanbul in the Late Ottoman Empire: The Case of "Kounchkavey Dar Zartosht"
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In this study we will introduce a booklet in Persian, which was published in Istanbul in 1918. That booklet was entitled “Kounchkavey Dar Zartosht” and was intended for the Iranian community and for other Persian speakers, to guide them in celebrating their Nowruz festival. This text tells us, and also informs us in the subtitle, that there were Persian people or Iranians in those years and they were celebrating 1918’s Nowruz in Istanbul.
It is interesting that this booklet was published in the printing office of an Islamic Foundation (Matbaa-e Avkaf-e Islami) in Istanbul. On the first page, we see a charcoal image of Zoroaster. This booklet consists of around fourteen small pages and is divided in two parts. The writer Hossein Danesh gives some information about the birth and genealogy of Zoroaster/Zartosht. In the beginning the author tries to explain the mission of Zoroaster and makes a connection between Zoroaster, Nowruz and Iranians. Then he mentions the Zoroastrian holy book Avesta, especially the Gathas, and how this religion was spread in Iran. After that, he narrates the story in which Hoshang finds the Fire and people regard fire as sacred thing. The writer “Danesh” mentions also the “Sadah” fest and makes connections with Nowruz. He gives some examples from the glorious Iranian history and wants to encourage his Iranian compatriots to strive for modern development. The second part of the booklet contains a poem on Nowruz, “Dar Nowruz-e Jamshīdī”. The author makes a connection between Nowruz and Zoroaster, fire,the sun and the rebirth of nature.

The Heritage ‘NGO’: a Case Study on the Role of Grass-roots Heritage Societies in Iran and Their Perception of Cultural Heritage
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This paper examines the role of grass-roots heritage movements, also known as NGO's, in constructing a perception of cultural heritage and identity in contemporary Iran. Heritage is a specifically modern discourse and in Iran it could be traced back to the latter part of the nineteenth century. Here, as in any other context, this discourse is closely related to the development of the nation-state and the rise of various forms of state ideology such as nationalism. There is a strong institutional bond between sanctioned interpretations of heritage and state institutions as through those interpretations a sanctioned collective identity and culture are represented, propagated and proliferated. However, the official strand is but one interpretation of cultural heritage. Alternative interpretations are produced by heritage societies and grass-roots heritage activists. In Iran, such societies were provisioned for and became active since the mid-1990s. Their presence can be of particular importance in the context of Iran where there are multiple ethnic, social and political groups with various, at times conflicting relations with the centre. The situation is compounded by the presence of pre-Islamic and Islamic layers of identity in their various interpretations, which at times have been appropriated into state-level politics in the twentieth century. The NGOs have been active in promoting their goals and have at times engaged in controversies surrounding heritage. Focussing on case studies from among these societies, this paper examines some of their attitudes toward the construction Iranian identity particularly in the context of its relationship to the country's pre-Islamic heritage.

Achaemenid Inscriptions in Modern Iran
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Written in forgotten or dead languages, scripts are important keys that open doors to the fascinating world of antiquity. However, in this paper, they also help us to analyze the current political scene of Iran. Over the past several decades in Iran there has been a renewed interest in ancient Persia, particularly in the Achaemenid Dynasty (550-330 BC). From 23 Achaemenid Kings, just 9 left inscriptions. These scripts have played a crucial role In Iranian Society since the Constitutional Revolution. They have not only defined our cultural identity but also informed the political trends and geographical disputes. Engraved on rock walls or on archaeological monuments, the scripts are written in cuneiform in several languages, Old Persian, Elamite, Babylonian and so on. Until recently, the inscriptions remained obscure to Iranians, descendants of this magnificent empire, with no knowledge of ancient languages. After the Constitutional Revolution, the translation of these scripts from European languages to Persian, called in this paper "archaeological translations" to Persian, changed the dominant political tendency and led Iranian Society towards nationalism. The Pahlavi Dynasty, especially Mohammad Reza Shah, encouraged the systematic translation of these inscriptions from Ancient Persian into Modern Persian, as well as the works of European orientalists in general. This phenomenon slowed down during the Islamic Revolution (1979), but regained momentum with the radicalization of the Islamic Republic of Iran. For several years, the publishing houses have published an abundance of translations from the Achaemenid period. These ‘back-translations’ fulfill an identity and political function because they support the current nationalist and reformist movement against a regime bent on eclipsing Iran’s Pre-Islamic past. Turning to statistics extracted from National Library of IR of Iran, I try to to analyze the socio-political scene behind these translations. The underlying hypothesis of this study is that archaeological translation is inherent to the politico-cultural identity of Iranians.