Mary Boyce
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Nora Elizabeth Mary Boyce (2 August 1920 - 4 April 2006) was the world's leading doyenne of Zoroastrian studies and Iranology.
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[edit] Early years
Mary Boyce was born on August 2nd, 1920 in Darjeeling, India where her parents were vacationing to escape the heat of the plains during the summer. Her father, William H. Boyce, was a Judge at Calcutta high-court, then an institution of the British imperial government. Her mother Nora (née Gardiner) was grand-daughter of the historian Samuel Rawson Gardiner.
Mary received her elementary education at Wimbledon High School in south-west London. Later and until the age of 18 she attended Cheltenham Ladies College in the Cotswalds. At the University of Cambridge (Newnham College), she studied English, archaelogy and anthropology, graduating with a double first.
[edit] Academic career
In 1944, Mary Boyce joined the faculty of the Royal Holloway College, London University, where she taught Anglo-Saxon literature and archaeology until 1946. Simultaneously she continued her studies, this time in Persian languages, at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS, also at London University). There she met her future mentor, Professor Walter Henning, under whose tutelage she began to study Manichaeism.
In 1947, Boyce was appointed lecturer of Iranian Studies at SOAS. Five years later, in 1952, she was awarded a doctorate in Oriental Studies from the University of Cambridge. She was promoted as a Reader (1958-61) and was awarded the university's professorship in Iranian studies following Walter Henning's transfer to the University of California at Berkeley.
Boyce remained professor at SOAS until her retirement in 1982, continuing as Professor Emerita and a professorial research associate until her death in 2006. Mary Boyce's scholarship was highly respected, gaining her an international reputation and fellowship at numerous academic societies and institutions. Her speciality remained the religions of speakers of Eastern Iranian languages, in particular Manichaeism and Zoroastrianism.
[edit] Publications
In 1966, Boyce spent a research year among orthodox Zoroastrians of the 24 villages of Yazd, Iran. The results of her research there were formative to her understanding of Zoroastrianism and she discovered that much of the previously established scholarship on the ancient faith was terribly misguided. In 1975, Boyce presented the results of her research at her Ratanbai Katrak lecture series at Oxford University. In the same year she published the first volume of her magnum opus, The History of Zoroastrianism, which appeared in the monograph series Handbuch der Orientalistik (Leiden:Brill, 1975). Her Ratanbai Katrak lecture series were published in 1977 as A Persian Stronghold of Zoroastrianism.
In 1979, Boyce published Zoroastrians: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices, which not only summarized her previous publications (in particular volume 1 of History), but anthologized the role of Zoroastrianism during subsequent eras as well. This was followed by volume 2 of History of Zoroastrianism in 1982 (also as a part of the Orientalistik monograph series), and volume 3 in 1991 which she co-authored with Frantz Grenet. In 1992, she published Zoroastrianism: Its Antiquity and Constant Vigour as part of the Fourth Columbia series on Iranian Studies.
Select Publications:
- The Manichaean hymn-cycles in Parthian, 1954
- Zoroastrianism, Its Antiquity and Constant Vigour, Fourth Columbia series on Iranian Studies, 1992
- "The religion of Cyrus the Great", in A. Kuhrt and H. Sancisi-Weerdenburg Achaemenid History III: Mothod and Theory, Leiden, 1988.
- Zoroastrianism: A Shadowy but Powerful Presence in the Judaeo-Christian World, London, 1987
- Zoroastrians: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices, Routledge, London, 1979; corrected repr. 1984; repr. with new foreword 2001.
- A History of Zoroastrianism, 3 vols. 1975, 1982, 1991, vol. 3 with Frantz Grenet. Vol. 4 forthcoming. Vols. 5-7 under the editorship of Albert de Jong.
- A Persian Stronghold of Zoroastrianism, 1977; repr. 1989
- The Letter of Tansar, ed. and tr. 1968
