Anahita by Manya Saadi-nejad - 9781838601119

AnahitaA History and Reception of the Iranian Water Goddess\nAuthor(s): Manya Saadi-nejad\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, United Kingdom\nImprint: I.B. Tauris\nISBN-13: 9781838601119, 978-1838601119\nSynopsis\nAnahita was the most important goddess of pre-Islamic Iran. From her roots as an ancient Indo-European water deity her status was unrivalled by any other Iranian goddess throughout the course of three successive Iranian empires over a period of a thousand years.\n\nThe first scholarly book on Anahita, this study reconstructs the Indo-European water goddess through a comparison of Celtic, Slavic, Armenian and Indo-Iranian myths and rituals. Anahitas constantly-evolving description and functions are then traced through the written and iconographic records of Iranian societies from the Achaemenid period onwards, including but not limited to the Zoroastrian texts and the inscriptions and artistic representations of the great pre-Islamic Iranian empires. Th.