The Omission of the Achaemenids from Indigenous Accounts of Iranian history has puzzled many and led to the assumption that the Sasanids were unaware of the Achaemenids and did not have any historical memory of them; that, if anything, the Sasanids were heirs to the Parthians. The argument put forth is that, with some exceptions, sources from the Islamic period do not really show that the Sasanids knew about the Achaemenids. Indeed, it is correct that the Islamic sources have only a vague recollection of the Achaemenids. But does the vagueness in Islamic historiography in the ninth and the tenth centuries prove that the Sasanids (A.D. 224-651) were unaware of the Achaemenids (550- 331 B.C.) during their rule? The question of why the Achaemenids, in spite of their outstanding political and military achievements, were omitted from the national tradition during the reign of the Sasanids--who originated from the same region--has remained unanswered.

The Study of Sasanian History and Society has Received a Good share of attention in the past century. Hundreds of articles and several important books and monographs have contributed to our knowledge of the period. The most important monograph on the history of Iran from the third to the seventh century is that of Arthur Christensen. The book was written in the first half of the twentieth century, and although we have come to understand its shortcomings through advancing textual criticism and changing methodological strategies, it still remains the source referred to by all the scholars in this field. Shorter monographs, such as that of Klaus Schippmann, have added important information and a different approach, giving more attention to primary sources and material culture. Since Christensen's magnum opus, the most complete work on Sasanian Iran is The Cambridge History of Iran, which covers many aspects of Sasanian history, language, and culture.

This essay discusses the position of Sasanian Studies from its inception in the late nineteenth century, to its reinvigoration at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The work also discusses the development of the field of Sasanian history and civilization vis-à-vis the three fields of Iranian, Islamic and Late Antique Studies. It is posited that Sasanians have benefited from cross-disciplinary and new historical frameworks that go beyond the traditional field of Iranian Studies, which was never as interested in the history of the period.

This article discusses the use of food as a mode of differentiation and identification according to Zoroastrian Middle Persian and Persian texts of the late antique period. In these texts, the list of foods consumed by Arabs and Indians are juxtaposed with that of the Iranian diet, and each group is given anthropological treatment. The article contends that the Zoroastrian dietary law, based on the Middle Persian texts, provides a mode of purity and impurity vis-à-vis others. Finally, the article touches upon the idea of moderation and the consumption of wine as dealt with in some Middle Persian sources.

The following article discusses the development of ancient Iranian studies, namely the important philological, archaeological, religious, and historical discoveries in the twentieth century and how they have changed our views of ancient Iran and its impact on modern Iranian identity. The essay also previews the use and abuse of ancient Iranian studies by the state and their focus on the newly discovered Achaemenid Empire at the cost of Arsacid and Sasanian dynasties.

Board games were played in many parts of the ancient world and so it is very difficult to attribute the origin of any board game to a particular region or culture. Board games have been found in ancient Mesopotamia, the oldest from the city of Ur, but one must also mention the game of Senet in ancient Egypt. Often board games were placed in the tombs of the pharaohs and sometimes the dead are shown playing with the gods, for example one scene shows Rameses III (c. 1270 B.C.) playing with Isis to gain access to the nether world. The importance of this image lies in the depiction of the cosmological and religious significance that ancient peoples attributed to board games—they were not just games played for pleasure. Reference to board games in Persia can be found as early as the Achaemenid period, where, according to Plutarch, Artaxerxes played a board game with dice.

In the past two decades, several important studies have dealt with the impact of the Arab Muslim conquest on the Near East, but they have mostly dealt with the lands that were conquered from the Mediterranean region to Iraq. Although the book under review is not a detailed history of Arab Muslims' conquest of Iran, it attempts to fill the gap in our knowledge of the eastern area that came under their control. The work is primarily concerned with the interaction between the Zoroastrian and the Muslim community in Iran and Central Asia from the 7th to the 13th century. The book attempts to study the processes in which the Zoroastrian community, which was the dominant religious community during the Sasanian empire (224–641), gradually lost its status and hold on power, while the new Muslim community became dominant as a social and political group.