Download or read book Aspects of History and Epic in Ancient Iran written by M. Rahim Shayegan and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the Ancient Near East's most important inscriptions is the Bisotun inscription of the Achaemenid king Darius I (6th century BCE), which reports on a suspicious fratricide and coup. Shayegan shows how the Bisotun's narrative influenced the Iranian epic, epigraphic, and historiographical traditions into the Sasanian and early Islamic periods.