Again on the So-Called Temple of the Fratarakās, Persepolis: An Image-Shrine From the Early Hellenistic Age

The author, who has been investigating the post-Achaemenid period in the region of Fars since 2002, illustrates his important archival “rediscovery” of Ernst Herzfeld’s sketchbook containing observations on what he calls “Frātadāra Temple,” which is preserved in Washington (USA), available online since 2019 thanks to a project by the Smithsonian Institution. This sketchbook partially makes up for the lack of an excavation report on this site, which Herzfeld never published, to clarify a fundamental point, namely the exact location of the five Greek inscriptions, which also remained practically unpublished until 2012, except for their brief mention in Herzfeld’s overviews. Since the author’s previous publication in French on the monument had not a wide audience in Iran, he also re-proposes with particular interest for Iranian readers his interpretations of what he considers to be one of the best documented temples for statues of the pre-Sasanian Iranian world and completes them with a discussion of the implications of this new information.