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This article presents a detailed reconsideration of the well-established and canonized theory of "Sasanian iconoclasm" postulated by Mary Boyce in 1975. The Sasanians did not develop any prohibition against anthropomorphic representations of the gods, and in the surviving Zoroastrian literature and inscriptions there is no evidence of either theological disputes over idols or of a deliberate eradication of them by the Persian kings. Sasanian cult was aniconic, but the historical and archaeological evidence clearly demonstrates that Sasanian visual culture was anything but iconoclastic. It seems that the Persian iconoclastic identity was constructed in the early Sasanian period as a response to the challenges posed by Christianity. By joining the common monotheistic discourse against idolatry, the Zoroastrian clergy adopted the conventions of the world in which they lived. Attacks against "idols" and "idolatry" should be understood in the context of internal and external polemical discourse against beliefs deemed to be erroneous by the Zoroastrian priesthood.
INTRODUCTION
44Iconoclasm" (literally "the destruction of icons") was originally a distinctly Christian term commonly applied to a number of religious and political movements, both ancient and modern, that actively and aggressively rejected visual representations of the divine. In a recent study, iconoclasm was more broadly defined as "a motivated phenomenon of annihilation of any presence or power realized by an icon through the annihilation of that icon."1 In the pre-modern world, "iconoclasm" was perhaps most famously associated with the complex debates waged over icons that took place in the Byzantine Empire in the eighth-ninth centuries c.E. However, the earliest attestation of the term "iconoclasm" itself appears to be surprisingly late, dating only to the middle of the sixteenth century.2
The iconoclastic movements that appeared in the Abrahamic religions during certain historical periods, profoundly shaping their theology and cultic practices, have been extensively studied.3 In the present article, I intend to discuss-and subsequently dismiss-the evidence for an iconoclastic movement in Zoroastrianism, one of the oldest and historically most significant revelation religions in Eurasia.
The existence of a militant, intentional iconoclasm in the Zoroastrianism of the Sasanian period was postulated by Mary Boyce in a groundbreaking article published in 1975,4 and has since been accepted almost without reservations by both Iranists and the wider scholarly community. Perhaps nothing illustrates this universal approval...