CivilWar’s Reviews > Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings > Status Update

theological motifs that Ferdowsi himself calls "obscure", like the tale of Haftvād's worm, all proves without doubt that Ferdowsi's sources, whatever they may have been, were from Zoroastrian priests: one is the sole surviving bit of Sasanian epic, the [i]Kār-Nāmag ī Ardašīr ī Pāpagān[/i], which is full of Zoroastrian themes and symbolism.

I remember when I first read the Šāhnāma I was so disappointed bc it had none of the nuance, detail or psychological depth of Homer, but then I learned Avestan & Iranian theologies, Zoroastrian & of the Scythians and co, as well as how epic transpositions works and the countless ways IE storytellers went abt it so when I returned I went "holy shit Ferdowsi is a genius actually just in a different way than Homer lmao"

anyway with the Sekandar arc done, we are out of the realm of legend (the Sekandar anime arc being only 1% history, 99% a mix of more epic transposition as everything that preceded it (sans Darius III as the hapless opponent of Alexander) + Ferdowsi's rewrite of the the Alexander Romance lmao), reaching the Parthian Period, I will brush up on Parthian history before continuing or there'd be no point

Sekandar (=Alexander The Great) is literally just a transposed Freyr (yes, from Germanic mythology), it's actually crazy how Freyr-like Ferdowsi has made him - from the Zoroastrian texts he was using as a source, the natural conclusion is that he is a transposition of Haᵘrvatāt, the structural equivalent to Freyr's place in the Germanic pantheon (it adds up because Homay = Freyja and Dārāb = Njördr too, all in order)

It's been frozen at this point for a minute lmao but also I've read the first arc of the Shahnameh anime, the Pishdadian Dynasty arc, so many fucking times by now that I can't even count it by memory anymore lmao