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Pourdavoud Lecture Series: Antigoni Zournatzi: Greek-Persian Encounters c. 550–c. 330 BCE
Wednesday, December 3, 2025
Royce Hall 306, 4:00pm
Zoom link for online attendance: https://ucla.zoom.us/j/91230760258
Greek-Persian Encounters c. 550 – c. 330 BCE: Looking Beyond Stereotypes
Ancient Greek—and particularly Athenian—bias against the Achaemenid empire has contributed significantly to the modern perception of historical relations between the Greeks and the Persians as a quintessential example of the clash of civilizations and East-West political, cultural, and ideological distinctness and conflict. This presentation considers the historical circumstances which gave rise to the negative stereotypes about the Persians reflected in ancient Greek sources. Departing from the emphasis on rivalry, it equally seeks to draw attention to written, archaeological, and iconographic testimonies that speak to a more nuanced picture of Greek responses to Persia and to intercultural phenomena that were promoted by the multifaceted interactions between the Greek and Persian worlds during the Late Archaic and Classical periods.
Antigoni Zournatzi
National Hellenic Research Foundation
Antigoni Zournatzi-Tsami is Director of Research at the Institute of Historical Research of the National Hellenic Research Foundation. Her main areas of research are the interconnections between the ancient Greek world and the ancient Near East, cross-cultural phenomena in archaic and classical Cyprus, and the Achaemenid Empire. She is currently a Guest Researcher at the Getty Villa, engaging in research that relates to the formative input, of which the encounters with the Achaemenid Persian empire played a crucial part, on the Greeks’ evolving definitions of identity and ethnicity. The ongoing project, Mapping Ancient Cultural Encounters: Greeks in Iran ca. 550 BC – ca. AD 650, which she coordinates, seeks to promote a holistic view of ancient Iranian and Greek interactions in Iran proper on the strength of an integrative inventory of different source materials and sites across historical periods.