Recorded: May 20, 2022
Event: The World of Ancient Iran and the West
Citation: Canepa, Matthew P. "Parthian Silver and the Creation and Contestation of Aristocracies in Post-Hellenistic Iran." Pourdavoud Center: The World of Ancient Iran and the West (May 20, 2022).
by Matthew Canepa (University of California, Irvine)
Matthew P. Canepa is Professor and Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Presidential Chair in Art History and Archaeology of Ancient Iran at University of California, Irvine. He is Director of UCI’s Ph.D. Program in Visual Studies and the founder and Director of UCI’s interdisciplinary Graduate Specialization in Ancient Iran and the Premodern Persianate World. Professor Canepa’s most recent book is entitled The Iranian Expanse: Transforming Royal Identity through Landscape, Architecture, and the Built Environment (550 BCE – 642 CE) (UC Press, 2020), which won the 2020 James R. Wiseman Book Award from the Archaeological Institute of America. Among current projects, he is editing a volume entitled Persian Cultures of Power and the Entanglement of the Afro-Eurasian World, which is in production with Getty Research Institute Publications.
Parthian Silver and the Creation and Contestation of Aristocracies in Post-Hellenistic Iran
This paper offers new insights into the political role of Parthian silver. It considers the role of these vessels in animating political competition among the Arsacids, Seleucids, and Greek dynasties of Bactria and Northern India. It approaches the problem through the longer Iranian tradition of feasting and redistribution and, more importantly, the contemporary geopolitical and competitive role of these objects. In addition, it will discuss a number of new technical observations and newly translated inscriptions, which shed additional light on their broader historical, political, and artistic contexts.