The primary concern of this book is to investigate how the ancient Iranians perceived their deities, how they represented them and what was the place of these representations in the Iranian cults. Starting from the first millennium bce, the ancient Near East was dominated by two ethno-linguistic groups, the Semites and the Iranians. While the religious world, temple architecture and the pantheon of the former have received much attention and are relatively well known, we are still far away from achieving the same degree of understanding of the latter. In sharp contrast with Mesopotamian, Syrian, Nabatean, Egyptian, Hittite and especially Canaanite and Israelite religious iconography, which have been extensively studied, 1 the iconographic repertoire of Iranian deities has not been subjected to systematic research.

The Iranian world occupied a unique position as the cultural crossroads of Eurasia. Iranian religious iconographywasanimportantandintegralcomponentofancientNearEasternculture, andwasformed in constant dialogue with both the Mespotamian and Graeco-Roman civilizations. However, it also played an important role in the formation of Hindu and Buddhist cultic imagery and in the later period came into contact with Chinese art.