P O R K A R
P R I V A T S T I F T U N G
The Pahlavi Papyri of the Austrian National Library –
the most import archival remnant of the Sasanian empireProject Members
Univ-Prof. Mag. Dr. Dr. phil. h.c. Robert ROLLINGER (University of Innsbruck), Project Leader
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Bernhard PALME (University of Vienna / Austrian National Library)
Hon.-Prof. Dr. Florian SCHWARZ (Austrian Academy of Sciences)
Prof. Touraj DARYAEE, PhD (University of California, Irvine)
Dr. Milad ABEDI, BSc MA (University of Innsbruck), Project Assistant
Participating Institutions
University of Innsbruck, Department of Ancient History and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Austrian National Library, Department of Papyri
Austrian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Iranian Studies
Cluster of Excellence “EurAsian Transformations”
Project Description
Middle Persian (“Pahlavi”) documents written in the difficult-to-read Middle Persian cursive have survived only in very limited numbers worldwide. The largest coherent group of Pahlavi documentary texts are the approximately 600 Middle Persian documents on papyrus and parchment of the Papyrus Collection of the Austrian National Library. They originate from Egypt and date from the narrow time window of 619–629 CE, when the land on the Nile temporarily came under the rule of the Sasanian Empire of Iran during a period of conflict between the Sasanian and Byzantine Empires.
Unlike the majority of known Middle Persian documents, which date from the early Islamic period, the Middle Persian papyrus and parchment documents from Egypt date to a period shortly before the Islamic conquests of Southwest Asia and North Africa. Their early date and historical context make them particularly important. They represent the only remnant of the complex Sasanian bureaucracy and represent a phase when the last Iranian Empire of Antiquity was politically and militarily at its apogee.
The approximately 600 Pahlavi papyri and parchments at the Austrian National Library represent the lion’s share of this outstanding archival context, which comprises only little more than 1000 documents worldwide. These important texts have not received much attention by modern scholarship due to its Eurocentric focus and the rare expertise in the Middle Persian language. Therefore, hardly five percent of the Pahlavi documents have been published until now.
It is clear that important new insights into the Sasanian rule in Egypt — and into the internal structures of the Sasanian Empire — can be expected from these Pahlavi papyri. It is equally clear that this evidence will provide an extremely important corrective to the one-sided information on the Sasanian conquest of Egypt provided by Greek and Coptic texts. The Pahlavi papyri truly have the potential to put our view of the Sasanian rule over Egypt (and beyond) on a completely new footing. Besides their unique historical significance, these documents offer many exciting aspects from the point of view of linguistics and scribal practices.
The primary goal of the project is the complete documentation of the corpus of Middle Persian documents in the Papyrus Collection of the Austrian National Library. In order to provide an overview and quick access to the extensive material, a database will be set up, comprising the key information on each item and a thumb-nail image for easy identification of the fragments. Preliminary work done on the documents early in the 20th century as well as the Papyrus Collection’s inventory of the Pahlavi texts will form the basis of the planned in-depth research. In a second step, a selection of the most important and complete documents will be published in a full scholarly edition.