"Aspects of History and Epic in Ancient Iran" focuses on the content of one of the most important inscriptions of the Ancient Near East: the Bisotun inscription of the Achaemenid king Darius I (6th century bce), which in essence reports on a suspicious fratricide and subsequent coup d etat. Moreover, the study shows how the inscription s narrative would decisively influence the Iranian epic, epigraphic, and historiographical traditions well into the Sasanian and early Islamic periods.

Intriguingly, our assessment of the impact of the Bisotun narrative on later literary traditions in...