Biennial Ehsan Yarshater Lecture Series – An Afro-Eurasian “Hyperpower” and Its Ancient Near Eastern Roots (First Millennium BCE)
314 Royce HallThe 2022 Biennial Ehsan Yarshater Lecture Series Featuring Professor Robert Rollinger (University of Innsbruck) The Achaemenid Persian World Empire The series of lectures offers a novel and fresh perspective on one of the largest and most successful empires in world history, namely, the Achaemenid Persian World Empire (sixth to fourth century BCE), the central...
Biennial Ehsan Yarshater Lecture Series – Whither the Achaemenid Empire? Towards a New Connected History of Afro-Eurasia in Antiquity
314 Royce HallThe 2022 Biennial Ehsan Yarshater Lecture Series Featuring Professor Robert Rollinger (University of Innsbruck) The Achaemenid Persian World Empire The series of lectures offers a novel and fresh perspective on one of the largest and most successful empires in world history, namely, the Achaemenid Persian World Empire (sixth to fourth century BCE), the central power...
From the Jewish Antiquities to the Zena Ayhud: Alexander the Great in the Hebrew, Arabic, and Ethiopic Versions of Sefer Yosippon
365 Kaplan HallOne of the numerous medieval accounts about Alexander the Great appears in Sefer Yosippon, a Hebrew adaptation of the works of Josephus produced in Italy in the tenth century. The anonymous author of the text slightly amends Josephus’s account of Alexander’s visit to Jerusalem, which appears in Book 11 of the Jewish Antiquities. The subsequent...
Biennial Ehsan Yarshater Lecture Series – Space and Universality: The Long Life of the Achaemenid Mental Map in Antiquity and Beyond (Sixth Century BCE – Sixth Century CE)
314 Royce HallThe 2022 Biennial Ehsan Yarshater Lecture Series Featuring Professor Robert Rollinger (University of Innsbruck) The Achaemenid Persian World Empire The series of lectures offers a novel and fresh perspective on one of the largest and most successful empires in world history, namely, the Achaemenid Persian World Empire (sixth to fourth century BCE), the central power...
Priestess, Queen, Goddess: The Divine Feminine in Nile Valley Societies
365 Kaplan HallThe prominence of powerful goddesses, the reverence awarded to the queen mothers of Kush, and a series of sole-ruling queens (one of whom led her army in battle against the invading Romans), highlight the unusually high status of women in these ancient African societies along the Nile and serve as a fitting focus for the...
Biennial Ehsan Yarshater Lecture Series – Empire and Borderlands at Interplay: A Structural Approach (First Millennium BCE – First Millennium CE)
314 Royce HallThe 2022 Biennial Ehsan Yarshater Lecture Series Featuring Professor Robert Rollinger (University of Innsbruck) The Achaemenid Persian World Empire The series of lectures offers a novel and fresh perspective on one of the largest and most successful empires in world history, namely, the Achaemenid Persian World Empire (sixth to fourth century BCE), the central power...
Iran Unglazed: Local, National, and Global Histories of Persian Tilework
Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at 11:00am Pacific Time via Zoom Registration Required This talk examines the many ways in which Persian tilework has been packaged and interpreted between the field, museum, and photograph. At stake is a balancing act between prevailing narratives of world heritage and local and national histories, as well as the reconciliation...
‘Aqām al-ḥajj Fulān’: The Leaders of Abbasid Pilgrimage in the Early Islamic Annalistic Tradition
365 Kaplan HallThe caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd (d. 193/809) allegedly led the ḥajj nine times over the course of his twenty-three-year reign, in 188/804 he was also the last ʿAbbāsid caliph to lead the pilgrimage rites. The pilgrimage served as a means of legitimation as well as a place of succession and nomination, with Hārūn and his wife...
Bilingual Lecture Series: Fatemeh Shams
تنش شعر و قدرت در ایران ِ پس از انقلاب The Tension Between Poetry and Power in Post-Revolutionary Iran شعر و شاعران چه نقشی در پیروزی انقلاب ۵۷ و به مسند نشاندن حاکمان جمهوری اسلامی داشتند؟ چرا حاکمان جمهوری اسلامی به شعر اهمیت میدهند؟ شاعران حکومتی چه کسانی هستند و چگونه به عرصه شعر بعد...
Gilgamesh and the Translation of Philological Crises
Kaplan Hall 365This year, the Babylonian epic Gilgamesh celebrates the 150th anniversary of its modern rediscovery in 1872: since then, the epic has swept like a Flood through the literary world, and it continues to be celebrated as the oldest entry in the literary canon. In this talk, Sophus Helle offers an introduction to the epic and...