Iranier - Aramäer - Hebräer - Hellenen

Depending on the observer's point of view, the Persians in the pre-Christian era were regarded either as »saviors of the faith« or as »barbarians,« a barbarian in this case being someone who »performs cruel deeds.« Based on these contradictory ways of viewing the Iranian-Asian area, Carsten Colpe traces the history of this territory from the discernibility of Iranian-Aryans (around 1000 BC) to the Iranian culture under the Samanides. Within these 2000 years, he focuses on the half a millennium around the beginning of our calendar. Colpe studies the most significant overlapping religious phenomena which originated during this time - apocalypticism, mysteries, gnosis - and puts them into a larger context, thus enabling a comparison of the conditions under which they originated.