The recorded lectures from the First Achaemenid Workshop, Identity, Alterity, and the Imperial Impress in the Achaemenid World, hosted at UCLA on April 12–14, 2023

Dear Friends of the Pourdavoud Center for the Study of the Iranian World,   We are pleased to share with you the recorded lectures from the First Achaemenid Workshop, Identity, Alterity, and the Imperial Impress in the Achaemenid World, hosted at UCLA on April 12–14, 2023.

The symposium included invited speakers whose research pertain to the history, structures, and impact of the Achaemenid empire. The overarching themes covered by the workshop are: current trends in Achaemenid scholarship; new horizons in art and archaeology; Achaemenid reception, and the notions of identity, alterity, and the imperial impress in Achaemenid Elam and Persis, Anatolia, the Caucasus, and Egypt.

The first workshop introduced a new series of symposia, dubbed Achaemenid Workshops (AchWorks), which, building on the strength of Achaemenid studies in the past decades, seek to revisit and reassess the state of Achaemenid scholarship over the coming years with a dozen workshops hosted at leading institutions of ancient studies around the globe. Coordinated by the Pourdavoud Center in conjunction with AchWorks’ Organizing Board, the workshops aspire to become an intellectual hub for Achaemenid studies, while also affording an institutional framework to foster future generations of scholars working on the Achaemenid world. The Second Achaemenid Workshop will be hosted by the University of Innsbruck and co-sponsored by the Pourdavoud Center in Obergurgul, Austria on July 3–7, 2023. The Center shall record this workshop, with lecture videos to be include in our Online Video Library later in the summer.

Day 1: April 12, 2023

Josef Wiesehöfer (University of Kiel) The State of Achaemenid Studies

Julian Degen (University of Trier) The Achaemenids and the Desert

Rolf Strootman (University of Utrecht) Globalization and the Iranian Longue Durée: Empire and Warfare under the Achaemenids, Argeads, and Seleukids, c. 550–150 BCE

Jake Nabel (Pennsylvania State University) Fake Bowing, From the Achaemenids to the Sasanians

Touraj Daryaee (University of California, Irvine) Persepolis: The Persistence of Achaemenid Memory?

Lindsay Allen (King’s College London) Embedded Alterity: Material Hybridity As an Achaemenid Strategy

Ali Mousavi (University of California, Los Angeles) The Archaeology of Achaemenid Iran: A Glance at Recent Developments and Studies

Day 2: April 13, 2023

Daniel Potts (New York University) Elam and Persis

Matt Waters (University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire) Still Sorting the Mail: The Assyrian Imperial Impress in Elam and Parsumaš

John O. Hyland (Christopher Newport University) Remembering Croesus, Serving Darius: Local Elites and Imperial Administration in Early Achaemenid Sardis

Hilmar Klinkott (University of Kiel) The Development of Local Identity as Imperial Integration Process in Achaemenid Asia Minor: The Examples of Caria and Lycia

Jeffrey Spier (J. Paul Getty Museum) Identity and Pictorial Representation in Achaemenid Lycia

Lâtife Summerer (Arkin University of Creative Arts and Design) Tomb Paintings of Achaemenid Anatolia between East and West

Florian Knauß (Staatliche Antikensammlungen und Glyptothek München) Persian Strongholds in the North

Day 3: April 14, 2023

John W. I. Lee (University of California, Santa Barbara) Intimate Relationships, Family, and Identity in the Achaemenid Empire

Charles Howley (University of California, Los Angeles) “The Foreigners Value Eunuchs More Than Perfect Men”: Gender Alterity and Its Political, Social, and Religious Implications in Achaemenid Court Culture