Persian (Iranian) Traditionvessel
Jam-e Jam
- Revealing the whole world
- Finding what is hidden
The world-revealing cup of Persian legend, in which the seven regions of the world could be seen; in the Shahnameh Kay Khosrow uses it to find the captive hero Bizhan, and later poets named it the cup of Jamshid.
About Jam-e Jam
Kay Khosrow's cup
In the Shahnameh story of Bizhan and Manizheh, the young hero Bizhan is imprisoned by the Turanian king Afrasiyab in a pit covered with a great stone. When his father Giv despairs of finding him, King Kay Khosrow waits for Nowruz, takes up his world-revealing cup, and looks into it, seeing the seven regions of the world and the movements of the heavens, until he finds Bizhan in the pit in Turan. Rostam is then sent to rescue him.
Jamshid's cup
In later Persian poetry the cup is regularly called the jam-e jam or jam-e Jamshid, the cup of Jamshid, the legendary king whose name (Jam) also means 'cup' in Persian by coincidence of sound; the attribution to Jamshid is not Ferdowsi's. For Hafez and the mystical poets, the world-seeing cup becomes a symbol of the heart that reflects the divine, or of wine that reveals truth.
Not an object
The cup belongs to legend and poetry; no historical vessel is associated with it.
Origin
A royal cup of Kay Khosrow in the Shahnameh; its attribution to Jamshid (Jam) appears in later Persian literature.
Sources and further reading
Source notes
These references are recorded in the catalog. Their passage wording and translation have not been checked, so quotations are not displayed here.
- Ferdowsi, Shahnameh, 'Bizhan and Manizheh', reign of Kay Khosrow (paraphrase)
About this entry
By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.