Orientalism, Postcolonialism, and the Achaemenid Empire: Meditations on Bruce Lincoln's Religion, Empire, and Torture

Abstract

In his recent study of religion and imperialism in the Achaemenid Persian Empire, Bruce Lincoln depicts the Achaemenids as savage and decadent in order to make a point about contemporary American foreign policy. This paper challenges Lincoln's vision of the empire by examining the severe methodological flaws that underlie it, especially his untested assumptions about the nature of Achaemenid religion and his uncritical use of Greek sources for the practice of torture. These flaws contribute to the reification of an orientalist stereotype of the Persians that scholars of the Achaemenid Empire have long worked to overcome, and that is itself at odds with Lincoln's decidedly postcolonial aims. This paper also considers the roles played by orientalism and postcolonialism in Achaemenid historiography with a view towards understanding how they can and do inform the study of the empire.

Towards a post-imperial and Global IR?: Revisiting Khatami’s Dialogue among Civilisations

“…The othering of Iran or Persia in some Ancient Greek texts is well documented. 53 Furthermore, certain events, such as the military conflict between the Ancient Greeks and the Persians between 490 and 479 BCE, have been repeatedly interpreted as the 'triumph of western ideals of freedom and self-determination over slavish submission to repressive forces of oriental despotism' . 54 At the turn of the 17th century, European travellers and merchants associated 'Persians' with 'despotism' and 'decadence' and no longer the 'noble Persians' of Herodotus.…”

Ancient Knowledge Networks

“…The remnants of this Persika have been edited most recently by Lenfant (Ctesias 2004), while Tuplin (2004) has considered its scholarly and medical content in considerable detail. A useful reassessment of Persika's reliability as a historical source has been made by Colburn (2011), who concludes that 'regardless of ancient or modern opinions of Ctesias' merits as a historian, it is clear that his work cannot be read literally as a straightforward historical account that faithfully reproduces the events … and personalities of the Achaemenid court in the early fourth century' (Colburn 2011: 92). While cautioning us that 'all epitomes … are likely to remove the most interesting things' from their originals (Tuplin 2004: 306), the latter shows that Ctesias' intellectual world is entirely Hippocratic, both in its philosophical approach and in the disease entities and medical personnel that populate it.…”