Whither the Achaemenid Empire? Towards a New Connected History of Afro-Eurasia in Antiquity

2022 Biennial Ehsan Yarshater Lecture Series: 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 of a (proto-)globalized world, and the driving force behind many cultural developments, whose manifold repercussions we may observe from Gibraltar to the Taklamakan Desert, from the Aegean and Scythian lands to the sub-Saharan worlds, and from the Bay of Bengal to eastern Africa. Our sources, both written and archaeological, are but a faint palimpsest bearing witness to the grandeur of the Achaemenid civilization, and its impress on the antique world.

The present Yarshater Lectures are an attempt at deducing, from among the many ideological layers still cluttering our (narrative) sources, including the many biases, old and new, that still guide modern scholarship, the unique identity, sense of purpose, and political awareness that distinguished the Achaemenids, eventually enabling them to forge a capacious vision of the world. In these lectures, the Achaemenid Persian World Empire will be presented as a political formation that not only profoundly impacted its immediate and more distant surroundings, but also served as an imperial model that most lastingly transformed its posterity.

Lecture 2: Whither the Achaemenid Empire? Towards a New Connected History of Afro-Eurasia in Antiquity

In this lecture, the history of the Achaemenid Empire as a powerful engine of transregional connectivity, affecting all of Afro-Eurasia, is explored. Of import is not only the Empire’s capacity to boost dynamic developments, which may be qualified as an early example of globalization, but also its ability to sustain cultural individuation processes and tolerate autonomous political formations.