The Puzzling Papyrus: New Perspectives on Papyrus Amherst 63 In this workshop, two of the world’s leading experts on Papyrus Amherst 63, Professors Tawny Holm and Karel van der Toorn, will reflect on recent scholarship on the Aramaic texts of this papyrus written in Demotic Egyptian script during the Persian Period. Since the decipherment of...

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...

The origin of the Manichaean religion stands at the intersection of multiple cultural worlds: Iranian, Semitic, & Greco-Roman. Its literary and artistic remains enrich our understanding of those cultures and the exchange that went on among them in late antiquity. The scholars assembled for this workshop offer the latest insights obtained from the painstaking work of extracting...

The origin of the Manichaean religion stands at the intersection of multiple cultural worlds: Iranian, Semitic, & Greco-Roman. Its literary and artistic remains enrich our understanding of those cultures and the exchange that went on among them in late antiquity. The scholars assembled for this workshop offer the latest insights obtained from the painstaking work of extracting...

Udjahorresnet’s Egypt: The Crossroads of Conquest and Identity under Achaemenid Rule The concept for this workshop was inspired by the open access volume, Udjahorresnet and His World (JAEI 26, 2020), which contextualizes the life of Udjahorresnet, an elite politician and chief physician of Egypt’s 26th and 27th Dynasties in the 6th century BCE.  His career...