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Achaemenid Workshop

AchWorks 3: Towards a Literary History of the Achaemenid Empire

Columbia University, New York
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An International Workshop Convened by:
John Ma & Marc Van De Mieroop, Columbia University
M. Rahim Shayegan, UCLA

Co-sponsored by:
The Pourdavoud Institute
The Yarshater Center

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About the Event

Towards a Literary History of the Achaemenid Empire, the third Achaemenid Workshop, seeks to investigate the various literatures of the Achaemenid Empire, their impact on the empire, and the empire’s impact on them. What does it mean to produce and consume literature in a multi-cultural world-empire—indeed in the first such entity? To answer this question, one must discern the outlines of a literary history of the Achaemenid Empire.

Primarily, it is imperative to gain a thorough understanding of the landscape of local literate cultures within the geographical ambit of the Achaemenid Empire. Examples of these cultures include Hebrew sacred literature, Demotic tales, Akkadian antiquarianism and scientific writing, and Aramaic hymns and wisdom literature; a capacious definition of “Achaemenid literatures” might also include royal discourse (in Old Persian but translated into local vernaculars), as well as texts produced in the Greek world, starting with Herodotus.

Just to survey all of these literary phenomena for the two centuries 550–330 BCE is a challenging prospect. How should one survey and read all of these literary phenomena for the two centuries 550–330 BCE as a unified corpus of literature representative of the empire? We must examine local literatures not only as reactive to, but also as reflective of the Achaemenid Empire. There are studies of these literary cultures within the empire for different regions, but to gather all of the regional viewpoints under an overarching problématique is a new and exciting endeavor.

About Achaemenid Workshops

The Achaemenid Workshops (AchWorks) are a series of international conferences that endeavor to revisit, reassess, and reformulate (the state of) Achaemenid scholarship.

AchWorks Overview

Event Videos

(In)Visible Aramaic Documents and the Achaemenid Empire

Catherine Bonesho, University of California, Los Angeles

Early Hittite Literature and the Emergence of the Annalistic Style

Anthony Yates, University of California, Los Angeles

Herodotus on Achaemenid Respect for Foreign Religious Authority

Simone Oppen, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities

Intellectual Production by Egyptian Elites at Hibis Temple: From Menkheperre Thutmose to Darius

Hong Yu Chen, University of California, Los Angeles

Literary History of Achaemenid Babylonia

Caroline Waerzeggers, Leiden University

Reactions to the Achaemenid Empire in the Contemporaneous Literature of the Hebrew Bible

Konrad Schmid, University of Zurich

Rethinking P. Rylands Dem. 9 in the Scribal and Literary Culture of Saïte and Achaemenid Egypt

Marina Escolano Poveda, University of Liverpool

Royal Inscriptions as Literature: From Elam to Pārsa, and thence to the Empire

Gian Pietro Basello, University of Naples

The Difficulties in “Building” an Empire: Imperial Tensions in the Literature of the Hebrew Bible during the Achaemenid Period

Seth Bledsoe, Radboud University, Nijmegen

The Great King and His Audiences

M. Rahim Shayegan, University of California, Los Angeles

The Impact of the Achaemenid Empire on Greek Local Narratives: An Overview

Dominique Lenfant, University of Strasbourg

Troy: Achaemenid Stories and Perspectives

Johannes Haubold, Princeton University

We Don’t Talk about Persia (in Late Babylonian Literature)

Céline Debourse, Harvard University

When Persians Became Assyrians: Aramaic Literature during the Achaemenid Empire

Tawny Holm, Pennsylvania State University

Tags
Achaemenid Workshop

Humanities

In-Person

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