Olivia Ramble wird für ihre Dissertationsschrift Historiography and Palaeography of Sasanian Middle Persian Inscriptions ausgezeichnet.
The research developed in Olivia Ramble's doctoral dissertation investigates writing practices in early Sasanian Iran as reflected in the small corpus of Sasanian inscriptions. It examines the rock-cut texts in their physical, historical and textual environment and studies salient features of their palaeography. It contributes to Sasanian studies in particular, and to ancient Iranian studies more generally, in three main ways. First, it traces (Chapters 1–4) the understudied history of research surrounding the decipherment of the Middle Persian script(s) – the monumental and cursive MP scripts were for a long time considered to represent two distinct languages. This critical overview defines the contribution of Sasanian epigraphy to the broader historiographical debates concerning the study of Late Antiquity. Then, it offers (Chapters 5-7) the first extensive critical study of the evolution of the Aramaic script into Middle Persian, exploring the circumstances in which the Middle Persian writing system arose. Through the palaeographic analysis of the earliest pre-Sasanian and Sasanian Middle Persian written vestiges, it highlights the existence of a lively scribal tradition that was local to Persis in the Seleucid and Parthian periods. This tradition presents a wealth of cursive and stylistic innovations (such as ligatures) that are generally regarded as characteristic of much later Middle Persian manuscripts. The last chapter investigates a possible model for the study of Sasanian inscriptions which takes into account the references made in these monumental texts to (now lost) manuscript documents, as well as to key features of their natural and built environment. It brings into sharp focus the often overlooked legal, administrative and religious functions of Sasanian rock-cut texts; it also pays particular attention to the inscriptions' interaction with their environment and the role of monumental epigraphy in marking – and creating – places of significance. As such, it engages with works in the fields of anthropology of writing and pragmatic linguistics, marking a break with the more traditional philologically oriented study of Iranian epigraphy.
Following her BA in Classics (Oxford University, Wadham College), Olivia Ramble completed a two-year Masters in Ancient Iranian Studies at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (EPHE, 2017, with honours).
Olivia was awarded a full-time contract to conduct her doctoral research (EPHE/Leiden University), working under the supervision of Professors Philip Huyse and Albert de Jong, and the co-supervision of Dr. Samra Azarnouche. Her doctoral dissertation, “Historiography and Palaeography of Sasanian Middle Persian Inscriptions”, was awarded cum laude in June 2024.
Olivia was appointed Bahari Fellow in Sasanian Studies at Oxford University (Wolfson College/AMES) with a post-doctoral project (2024–2027) entitled “Writing in Iranian late antiquity: scribes and scribal practice in Sasanian Iran”.