Recorded: May 30, 2018
Event: Pourdavoud Center Lecture Series
Citation: Versluys, Miguel. "Persianism in Commagene: The Mnemohistory of the Achaemenid Empire in Hellenistic Eurasia," Pourdavoud Center Lecture Series. May 30, 2018.
by Miguel John Versluys (Leiden University)
Persianism in Commagene: The Mnemohistory of the Achaemenid Empire in Hellenistic Eurasia
The socio-political and cultural memory of the Achaemenid (Persian) Empire played a very important role already in Antiquity. Miguel John Versluys has proposed to call this phenomenon, that is, the impact of Achaemenid Persia on the antique world, Persianism. In his lecture, Versluys will elaborate on this concept (and its discontents) by discussing the famous late Hellenistic site of Nemrud Dağ in the kingdom of Commagene, which was bordered on the east by the Euphrates river.
About the Speaker
Miguel John Versluys is professor of Classical and Mediterranean archaeology at Leiden University. He obtained his Ph.D. degree from Leiden University in 2001 for a study of images of Egypt in Roman visual material culture and, in broader terms, the meaning of Aegyptiaca Romana. His research and teaching explore the cultural dynamics of the Hellenistic-Roman world (roughly 200 BC – AD 200) from the point of view of Eurasia. He investigates these dynamic processes from local, regional and global perspectives and by means of a variety of methodologies and techniques derived from the Social Sciences & Humanities as well as the Natural Sciences. Currently, Versluys is heading the NWO-funded VICI project Innovating objects. He is one of the editors of the Brill series Religions in the Graeco-Roman World.