« Ctesiphon » is an acronym for « Corpus of TExts and Sources about Iran : For a History of the OrieNt in the 6th century ». It was developed within the French National Research Agency (ANR) Corpus project 2013-2015, and the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) through the “Mondes iranien et indien” research unit (UMR 7528). Ctesiphon is the first transdisciplinary database on the reign of Khusro I (531-579), King of Persia.
Reconstructing the reign of Khusro I: new material opening up new perspectives
The challenge of this transdisciplinary programme was to bring together new data on the reign of Khusro I, King of Persia, one of the most brilliant reigns during the Sasanian dynasty. Hitherto unpublished or hard-to-access archaeological and literary sources have been gathered together for the first time, establishing connections through comparative perspectives. No scholarly initiative had addressed this issue previously. Through the coordination of a multidisciplinary team of specialists, the project set out to make six different corpora accessible in an interactive database to meet research needs. The aim is to update and deepen our knowledge of the period in order to develop a new history of it. In addition, another main objective was to safeguard a sigillographical heritage comprising almost 1,000 seals. Supported by study days and an international symposium, our work to advance research was successful in creating the first open-access online database bringing together new material, this innovative tool will be instrumental in updating research and disseminating knowledge.