Dr. Everett Wheeler of Duke University will present his research on “Parthians in the Roman Army” for the Pourdavoud Center on January 15, 2020. Parthians in the Roman Army The open frontier along the Euphrates River between the Roman and Parthian empires by no means marked a cultural divide. From the time of Pompey on,...
Please join the Pourdavoud Center for the Study of the Iranian World for a lecture by Dr. Robert Steele. Ancient Persia in Pahlavi Politics: The Imperial Celebrations of 1971 and Cultural Policy under the Shah In October 1971, heads of state, political and cultural figures, business leaders, and journalists from around the world came to...
Please join the Pourdavoud Center for the Study of the Iranian World for a lecture by Professor Gil Stein. Achaemenids or Persians? Burials, Material Culture, and Imperial Identities in the Euphrates Valley (5th-4th centuries BCE) The Achaemenid empire was the largest empire in the world in the 5th-4th centuries BCE, encompassing numerous polities and cultural...
Achaemenid Egypt: The Archaeology of a Colonial Encounter Traditionally, Egyptologists have regarded the period of Achaemenid Persian rule (the 27th Dynasty, c. 526-404 BCE) as an unmitigated disaster for the Egyptians. This view, however, is based primarily on the perception that there is a scarcity of material from this period; in turn this scarcity is...
Sasanian Iran: A Personal View This talk will focus on topics included in Dr. Bonner’s new book, The Last Empire of Iran, a narrative history of Sasanian Persia. Throughout this lecture, Dr. Bonner will share with the audience the impetus for writing this book. The principle motivation was to portray the Sasanian state as the...
The Parsi Community of India and the Making of Modern Iran This book talk will provide an overview of Exile and the Nation: The Parsi Community of India and the Making of Modern Iran (University of Texas Press, 2020). In the aftermath of the 7th century Islamic conquest of Iran, large numbers of Zoroastrians departed...
Book Talk: Rome, Parthia, and the Politics of Peace This volume offers an informed survey of the problematic relationship between the ancient empires of Rome and Parthia from c. 96/95 BCE to 224 CE. Schlude explores the rhythms of this relationship and invites its readers to reconsider the past and our relationship with it. Some...
Reconsidering the Emergence of the Parthian State: The Crisis of the 240s-230s BCE in the Hellenistic Middle East Nikolaus Overtoom’s study of the rise of the Parthian Empire, Reign of Arrows: The Rise of the Parthian Empire in the Hellenistic Middle East, brings a new perspective to this important development in the history of the...
Narseh’s Diadem: Religion, Royalty, and Power under the Early Sasanians This talk focuses on the Sasanian king Narseh (293-302 CE), who celebrated his accession to the throne through the bilingual inscription (Middle Persian and Parthian) and commemorative monument built in Paikuli, the site currently studied by the archaeological mission of Sapienza-University of Rome: The Italian...
The Yasna Ritual in Performance Up to the present day Zoroastrian priests perform a millennia old ritual, the Yasna, in which the recitation of ancient Avestan texts accompanies the performance of ritual actions. Using new visual source material of images and film clips, this lecture discusses the performance of the Yasna and its significance for...
The Achaemenid Persian Empire: A Two-Volume Companion Often called the first world empire, the Achaemenid Empire is rooted in older Near Eastern traditions. A Companion to the Achaemenid Persian Empire offers a perspective in which the history of the empire is embedded in the preceding and subsequent epochs. In this way, the traditions that shaped...
Greek ‘Concubines’ and Achaemenid Dynastic Politics The civil war of 401 BC between Cyrus the Younger and his older brother King Artaxerxes II (r. 405/4-359/8 BC) is well known to Achaemenid historians, thanks especially to the famous account of Xenophon’s Anabasis. While the military aspects of this conflict have been much studied, this lecture focuses on the two Ionian Greek women...
From the Gorgan Wall to the Alan Gates/Dariali: The Northern Defenses of the Sasanian Empire A lecture by Eberhard W. Sauer Based on collaborative research with Jebrael Nokandeh, Hamid Omrani Rekavandi, Lana Chologauri and Davit Naskidashvili It was only in December 2005 that radiocarbon samples established beyond doubt a Sasanian-era construction date for the...
Current Trends in Avestan Studies This lecture discusses the major progress made in our understanding of the Avestan corpus/texts in the last years. Based on her recent publication co-written with Jean Kellens, L’introduction à l’Avesta, Céline Redard introduces the new vision of the Avesta, leading to the new editions currently undertaken. The important ritual aspect...
How Did the Ancient Iranians Coordinate Space? On the Old Iranian Absolute Frame of Reference For verbal expression and nonverbal cognitive processing of spatial relations between two objects, the speakers of a language use different frames of reference. (Psycho)linguistics classifies these into three main groups: intrinsic, relative, and absolute. This lecture aims to identify the...
The Birth of the Abestāg from the Spirit of Philology Scholars have often discussed Zoroastrianism as an ancient Iranian religion that reaches back thousands of years into the middle of the second millennium BCE. For a long time, the idea of monolithic continuity has dominated the scholarly discourse in the study of this religion. While...
Dislodging Disciplinary Silos at Dura-Europos Founded by the Seleucids, successively occupied by the Arsacids (Parthians) and Romans, and spectacularly conquered in a Sasanian siege, the borderland town of Dura-Europos (Syria) was home throughout its history to a fascinatingly diverse population. Since its initial excavation, the site has become justly famous thanks to unique circumstances of...
Symbols of Royal Authority? Early Sasanian Cityscapes in Southwestern Iran The early Sasanian royal city foundations of Gūr and Bīšāpūr and their respective surrounding areas were actively shaped by the new ruling dynasty with the goal of making an imprint of identity on the landscape and – especially in the initial phase – decisively...
Telling Tales: Constructing Sasanian History in the Landscape The narrative stories and physical landscapes of the Sasanian Empire run parallel to each other, intersecting in areas where historical source and physical remnant of the material culture collide. This is specifically relevant in the borderlands of the Sasanian’s vast realm, between the lands of Eran and...