For Whom Spoke Zaraϑuštra?
Religion as Politics in Achaemenid Persia and the pre-Islamic Īrānicate World

Call for Papers

GOSH Project Inaugural International Workshop

April 8, 2027 | History Department, University College, London (UK)

A few years back, these people would have refrained, with superstitious horror and dread, from the infringement of a single Taboo ceremony, and never approached their morais or temples except with feelings of mingled terror and veneration. They now entertain sentiments as strong the other way, and despise the very idols which they till lately had adored. . . It may be fairly questioned whether a similar change might not be brought about, by the operation of similar causes, in other Pagan countries,– namely, a despotic monarch’s will! How feeble must be the tie where the ceremonial and not the doctrine constitutes the essential point of religious obligation!

• Mathison, G. F. 1825. Narrative of a Visit to Brazil, Chile, Peru, and the Sandwich Isles, During the Years
  1821 and 1822. London, 430-431

Everything about Zoroaster (including his dates, which vary, according to different authorities, from the middle of the second millennium to the middle of the first), Zoroastrianism (including the contents and dating of Zoroastrian scriptures), and the degree to which and the way in which Zoroastrianism was institutionalized in Achaemenid Persia, is in dispute due to enormous problems with very limited sources. For this reason, I will regretfully omit Zoroastrianism from my discussion of axial cases in this chapter. We are left in the uncomfortable position of recognizing a significant Persian impact on three of the four well- documented axial cases, while Persia itself remains largely a historical cipher.

• Bellah, R. N. 2011. Religion in Human Evolution. From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age. Cambridge (MA),

Organizer: Department of History, University College London

Supervision: Dr. Marco Ferrario, MSCA Post-Doctoral Fellow (GOSH Project), UCL | Contacts:goshprojectconferences@gmail.com, m.ferrario@ucl.ac.uk

Conference Theme

The religion of the Achaemenid kings and its role in shaping (certain aspects of) imperial politics and the very features of its ideology have been the subject of intense debate over several decades, particularly so with respect to the kings’ alleged ‘Zoroastrianism’, as suggested most glaringly by Ahuramazdā’s ubiquitous presence in the royal inscriptions. More recently, significant progress has been made in the study of the Persepolis Fortification Archive, thus allowing for a better
appreciation of the Ēlāmite background of the heartland’s religious landscape and the complexity of its pantheon. At the same time, comparative insights from the Assyrian and Babylonian Empires and a more refined perspective sensitive to the longue durée of Mesopotamia’s imperial experience contributed to bringing to the fore the crucial role of earlier Near Eastern Empires (including, to an extent, Egypt as well) in shaping a distinctive Achaemenid ‘state theology’ as a foundational
aspect of Persian kingship. Somewhat surprisingly, these scholarly trends have remained largely ignored among anthropologists and global historians of religion: despite a remarkable rekindling in scholarly interests on the politics of religion and (divine) kingship, in fact, with few exceptions, Achaemenid Persia (and the Īrānian world at large) has mostly remained out of the conversation, despite the considerable amount of primary evidence available and the pivotal importance, from a world-historical perspective, of the Empire in shaping ideals, practices, and discourses of kingship across Afro-Eurasia. At the same time, Achaemenid studies have shown little awareness of current debates on (and theories of) kingship and its religious foundations, as most recently expounded in seminal works such as On Kings (Graeber and Sahlins 2017) or Unearthly Powers (Strathern 2019).
This has resulted, on the one hand, in a theoretical dead-end of sorts, most visible in the challenges scholars face in defining the nature (or the ontology) of Achaemenid kings; on the other hand, in the thorough sidestepping of the question, particularly when it comes to the role, or the very definition, of ‘Zoroastrianism’ as part of the Achaemenid toolkit of kingship. To move forward
from this impasse, this workshop invites scholars from Īrānian and Near Eastern studies, religion historians, and anthropologists to look anew at the question of Achaemenid religion as a driver of political action and kingship-making by approaching the topic through the prism of Strathern’s categories of ‘immanentism’ and ‘transcendentalism’. In particular, it is one of the conference’s
core goals to explore whether, and where, ‘Zoroastrianis’ may fit along the spectrum and how this may affect current understandings of Achaemenid kingship from a comparative, world-historical perspective.

Suggested Topics

The conference welcomes contributions that engage with the religious landscape of Achaemenid Persia and the broader Īrānicate world in the 1
Millennium BCE, and with the entanglement between religion and politics from philological, historical, anthropological, artistic, and theological perspectives, among others. Possible topics for discussion may include (but are not limited to):

• Religious strategies of political legitimation under the Achaemenids
• The theology of the Avestā and its possible impact (or not) on the self-fashioning of Achaemenid kingship
• Ēlāmo-Īrānian(-Mesopotamian-Egyptian…) acculturation processes from a religious point of view
• Forms of apocalyptic thinking and the construction of kingship
• Kingship and the divine in comparative perspective
• ‘Zoroastrianism’ and political theology: monotheism, polytheism, or something else?
• Religion as a drive for political change
• Kingship as a religious institution

Submission Guidelines

Individual and Panel Presentation Format

Abstract submissions must be anonymized and should not exceed 400 words. All submissions will undergo blind peer review. Submissions must be sent in both Word and PDF formats. A separate file should include the following information:
• Full name(s)
• Institutional affiliation(s)
• Email address(es)
• ORCID iD(s)
• Keynote Speech(es): 40 minutes, followed by 20 minutes of discussion
• Individual Presentations: 20 minutes, followed by 10 minutes of discussion
• To stimulate discussion and facilitate cross-referencing and mutual engagement between contributions, relevant material for the theoretical background shall be circulated among the selected participants for them to engage with in the papers. Pre-conference circulation of contributions’ drafts is also recommended to ease discussion during the conference.

Working Language: English

Publication

Considering its innovative methodological approach and the topic’s relevance for several fields across ancient history and the humanities at large, a publication of the workshop’s proceedings is envisioned and will proceed as swiftly as possible. Participants are invited to express interest in publishing their contributions upon acceptance to facilitate the volume’s planning. After undergoing peer review, selected papers will be published either with UCL Press or another major publishing house. Details will follow in due course.

General Information

Conference Email Address: goshprojectconferences@gmail.com

Conference Venue: Department of History, University College London, 23-26 Gordon Sq, London WC1H 0AG, United Kingdom.

Important Dates
• Abstract Submission Deadline: November 15 , 2026
• Notification of Acceptance: November 30 th, 2027
• Pre-Circulation of Theoretical Background Paper(s): December 10 th, 2027
• Pre-Circulation of Paper Drafts: February 20 th, 2027