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Pourdavoud Center Lecture Series: Nikolaus Overtoom

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...

Pourdavoud Center Lecture Series: Carlo G. Cereti

Narseh’s Diadem: Religion, Royalty, and Power under the Early Sasanians This talk focuses on the Sasanian king Narseh (293-302 CE), who celebrated his accession to the throne through the bilingual inscription (Middle Persian and Parthian) and commemorative monument built in Paikuli, the site currently studied by the archaeological mission of Sapienza-University of Rome: The Italian...

Pourdavoud Center Workshop: Current Trends in Manichaeism Studies Day 1

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...

Pourdavoud Center Workshop: Current Trends in Manichaeism Studies Day 2

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...

UCLA Archaeological Gazetteer of Iran Launch

The UCLA Pourdavoud Center is pleased to announce the public launch of our new major research project, the UCLA Archaeological Gazetteer of Iran. This project is a free-access, web-based encyclopedia of archaeological sites, places, and monuments in the greater Iranian World. The Pourdavoud Center envisions the Gazetteer to become a major vehicle for archaeological research...

Pourdavoud Center Workshop: Udjahorresnet’s Egypt

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...

Pourdavoud Center Lecture Series: Almut Hintze

The Yasna Ritual in Performance Up to the present day Zoroastrian priests perform a millennia old ritual, the Yasna, in which the recitation of ancient Avestan texts accompanies the performance of ritual actions. Using new visual source material of images and film clips, this lecture discusses the performance of the Yasna and its significance for...

Pourdavoud Center Fall Welcome Event

Please join us for a digital fall reception to celebrate the continued success of the Pourdavoud Center for the Study of the Iranian World. In the company of Dr. Anahita Naficy Lovelace and Mr. Jim Lovelace, the Center’s benefactors, David Schaberg, Dean of Humanities, M. Rahim Shayegan, the Center’s director, our staff, academic affiliates, colleagues, students,...

Pourdavoud Center Lecture Series: Bruno Jacobs and Robert Rollinger

The Achaemenid Persian Empire: A Two-Volume Companion Often called the first world empire, the Achaemenid Empire is rooted in older Near Eastern traditions. A Companion to the Achaemenid Persian Empire offers a perspective in which the history of the empire is embedded in the preceding and subsequent epochs. In this way, the traditions that shaped...

Pourdavoud Center Lecture Series: James Howard-Johnston

Official Sources and the Reconstruction of History: The Case of the Last Great War of Antiquity The last and longest war of classical antiquity was fought in the early 7th century, opening in 603 when Persian armies launched coordinated attacks across the Roman frontier. For twenty-five years, the conflict raged on an unprecedented scale, and...