The exploits of the Persian kings are famous, but who has heard of Irdabama, a formidable landowner who controlled a huge workforce and ran her own wine and grain business? This book is the first to examine the economic and political importance of women in the first Persian empire (559-331 BC). Governed by Achaemenid kings and their satraps, this vast realm stretched from Asia Minor to India. Ancient Greek writers on Persian history give us a glimpse of the influential role played by some individual women at these courts, but these are sporadic and hardly reliable accounts of a few colourful femme fatales in the royal family, designed to show up the scandalous machinations of barbarian women gaining political control and causing the decline and effeminacy of the Persian kings. This book is the first to demonstrate the true importance of not only royal but non-royal women in Persia, with the benefit of contemporary Persian and Babylonian sources. By approaching the subject from a Near Eastern perspective, and thoroughly re-examining the Greek sources, the author brings to life a rich and much more detailed picture of the role of women in ancient Persia.
یکی از سوالاتی که احتمالا برای هر تاریخخوانی پیش اومده اینه که نقش زنان در طول تاریخ چی بوده؟ در حکومتهای مختلف چه جایگاهی داشتند و حدود اختیاراتشون در طبقات مختلف اجتماعی چطور تغییر میکرده. این سوالات به ویژه در جهان امروز و موقع بحث دربارهٔ حقوق زنان بسیار مهم میشن. البته هرگز نباید ساختارها و ارزشهای جوامع تاریخی رو با جامعهٔ امروز مقایسه کرد اما خواندن و دانستن اونها به ما کمک میکنه تا دید بهتری نسبت به سیر تاریخی انسان داشته باشیم. این کتاب هم، همونطور که از نامش پیداست، به بحث زنان در دورهٔ خاصی از تاریخ در جغرافیایی خاص پرداخته: زنان هخامنشی. کتاب بسیار کامله؛ از زنان اشراف و بانوان درباری، القاب اونها، اختیارات، نقش و جایگاهشون در ادارهٔ کشور و خانواده تا زنان روستایی. پس از خواندن این کتاب بیتردید نه تنها پاسخ بسیاری از پرسشهاتون دربارهٔ زنان هخامنشی رو پیدا میکنید که دیدی تازه از جهان سیاسی و اجتماعی هخامنشیان هم به دست میارید. خواندنش رو به هرکسی که به تاریخ اجتماعی و بحث زنان در تاریخ علاقهمنده پیشنهاد میکنم.
یک ستاره هم کم شد چون نمیدونم چرا نام پروشاتی/ پروشات/ پروشاتو رو بعضی جاها پریسا(؟!) نوشته بود. هیچ ربطی به هم ندارند!
This is a fabulous book about an obscure subject: women in Ancient Persia. I can only admire all the research that Maria Brosius did for her doctoral thesis. Then to take that material and turn it into a reader friendly historical treatise, while treating these women with dignity and respect. She makes them come to life and made my job much easier when I wrote my historical novel, Esther's Song, about the biblical Queen Esther, King Xerxes, and the royal harem.
a good amount of valuable stuff in there re: achaemenid royal women's economic transactions and some info on female hierarchy with specific elamite terms for them.
surprised this didn't have a word on harem in here, though. like. how is this possible. how did it happen that the most extensive study of women did not include the single most female-concentrated place in the entire court. definitely recommend checking out lloyd llewellyn-jones for that.