The 9th Ratanbai Katrak Lectures on Zoroastrianism
Delivered by Prof. Dr. Alberto Cantera (Freie Universität Berlin) 101 years after the inauguration of the Ratanbai Katrak Lecturership at the University of Oxford Convened by Prof. Yuhan S-D Vevaina for the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies.
‘With which Yasna shall I worship you (kana θβąm yasna yazāne)? Zoroastrian Rituals in the Antique and Late Antique Iranian world’
These lectures will stream on Zoom: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/81728008051
Join on Zoom
Lecture 1: Manuscripts and Rituals: The Written Transmission of the Zoroastrian Rituals
Thursday 11 May 2023, 12:30 PM Eastern | 9:30 AM Pacific
Lecture 2: The Questioned Antiquity of the Zoroastrian Rituals: Their Reception in Western Academia
Thursday 18 May 2023, 12:30 PM Eastern | 9:30 AM Pacific
Lecture 3: The Ritual System: Modularity and Productivity
Thursday 25 May 2023, 12:30 PM Eastern | 9:30 AM Pacific
The above lectures can also be attended in person from 5:30 PM BST (British Summer Time) on all three days at Wolfson College, Linton Road, Oxford, OX2 6UD
Three more lectures are scheduled for Autumn 2023 Contact: yuhan.vevaina@ames.ox.ac.uk
About Prof. Dr. Alberto Cantera
Prof. Dr. Alberto Cantera is the Director of the Institute for Iranian Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin. The focus of his work is on Zoroastrian textuality from Antiquity until the modern age, especially the Avestan texts, their reception in Late Antiquity, and their use in Zoroastrian rituals. He is responsible for transforming our collective understanding of the Avestan texts by emphasising their ritual character and is engaged in the monumental task of describing and understanding the history of Zoroastrian ritual practices. Since 2008 he has been the Director of the Avestan Digital Archive, the largest collection of Avestan manuscripts published online. Furthermore, he is the
principal investigator of a long-term project preparing a new edition of all the Avestan texts used in the Zoroastrian rituals: Corpus Avesticum Berolinense. He is also one of the principal investigators of another long-term project in collaboration with the universities of Bochum and Cologne: The Digital Corpus and the Dictionary of Middle Persian. His published books include: Studien zur Pahlavi-Übersetzung des Avesta (Wiesbaden, 2004); Vers une édition de la liturgie longue zoroastrienne: pensées et travaux préliminaires (Leuven, 2014); and Introduction à l’avestique recent (Girona, 2019) together with Céline Redard; He is currently preparing a project on the Pahlavi nērangs or ritual instructions in the Iranian liturgical manuscripts.
