News: Persepolis Relief Fragment in Montreal Stolen

It has been recovered. An odd story reporting its recovery in Edmonton (From FEBRUARY 25, 2014)


News is emerging today (15 February 2012) of the theft in October 2011, from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, of two pieces, one of them a "Persian low relief of the head of a guard, dating from the fifth century BC. It is made of sandstone, and estimated to be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars".  According to the Montreal Gazette: "The Persian piece – donated to the MMFA by Cleveland Morgan in 1950..."

Two valuable artifacts stolen from Montreal museum

joshua knelman

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

Published Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2012 6:32PM EST

Last updated Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2012 11:14AM EST

 Video of a suspect has been released

Uploaded by themontrealgazette on Feb 14, 2012

Surveillance video of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts from Oct. 26, 2011 shows a suspect in the museum that police and the museum believe may have stolen two archaeological sculptures, a Persian bas relief and a Roman head of a man that are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. British-based AXA Art, which is insuring the objects, hopes the public will recognize the individual and call police. The company is offering substantial rewards for the return of the objects and for the arrest of the suspect.

The insurance company, misidentifying the object as "Assyrian" is offering a reward

Assyrian low relief Sandstone

02.2012

Theft at Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

AXA ART OFFERING SUBSTANTIAL REWARD FOR SAFE RECOVERY OF RARE ARTIFACTS

An Assyrian low relief and a marble head dating from the Roman Empire, both rare and valuable, have been mysteriously stolen from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA).  AXA ART is offering a substantial reward, subject to specific conditions, for information leading to the safe recovery of the items, which were stolen in October.  Additional rewards are also offered of up to CAN$10,000 for anyone able to identify either of the two individuals caught on CCTV.  Please see below for the full press release and detailed images.

AXA ART Press release

Assyrian low relief Sandstone

A marble head dating from the Roman Empire

Go to the chronicle of news on Persepolis.

See also the chronicle of news on the Persepolis Fortification Archive.

Persepolis in Pleiades http://pleiades.stoa.org/places/922695

Archaeologies of Text: Archaeology, Technology, and Ethics

 

Archaeologies of Text: Archaeology, Technology, and Ethics [Paperback]

Matthew T. Rutz (Editor); Morag Kersel (Editors)

Details

Scholars working in a number of disciplines – archaeologists, classicists, epigraphers, papyrologists, Assyriologists, Egyptologists, Mayanists, philologists, and ancient historians of all stripes – routinely engage with ancient textual sources that are either material remains from the archaeological record or historical products of other connections between the ancient world and our own.

Examining the archaeology-text nexus from multiple perspectives, contributors to this volume discuss current theoretical and practical problems that have grown out of their work at the boundary of the division between archaeology and the study of early inscriptions. In 12 representative case-studies drawn from research in Asia, Africa, the Mediterranean, and Mesoamerica, scholars use various lenses to critically examine the interface between archaeology and the study of ancient texts, rethink the fragmentation of their various specialized disciplines, and illustrate the best in current approaches to contextual analysis.

The collection of essays also highlights recent trends in the development of documentation and dissemination technologies, engages with the ethical and intellectual quandaries presented by ancient inscriptions that lack archaeological context, and sets out to find profitable future directions for interdisciplinary research.

Table of Contents

1. Morag M. Kersel and Matthew T. Rutz / Introduction

2. Matthew W. Stolper / Case in Point: The Persepolis Fortification Archive

3. Nicholas P. Carter / Space, Time, and Texts: A Landscape Approach to the Classic Maya Hieroglyphic Record

4. Scott Bucking / Now You See it, Now You Don’t: The Dynamics of Archaeological and Epigraphic Landscapes from Coptic Egypt

5. Timothy P. Harrison / Articulating Neo-Assyrian Imperialism at Tell Tayinat

6. Matthew T. Rutz / The Archaeology of Mesopotamian Extispicy: Modeling Divination in the Old Babylonian Period

7. Adam Smith / The Ernest K. Smith Collection of Shang Divination Inscriptions at Columbia University and the Evidence for Scribal Training at Anyang

8. Eleanor Robson / Tracing Networks of Cuneiform Scholarship with Oracc, GKAB, and Google Earth

9. Lisa Anderson and Heidi Wendt / Ancient Relationships, Modern Intellectual Horizons: The Practical Challenges and Possibilities of Encoding Greek and Latin Inscriptions

10. Christopher A. Rollston / Forging History: From Antiquity to the Modern Period

11. Neil J. Brodie and Morag M. Kersel / WikiLeaks, Texts, and Archaeology: The Case of the Schøyen Incantation Bowls

12. Patty Gerstenblith / Do Restrictions on Publication of Undocumented Texts Promote Legitimacy?

13. John F. Cherry / Publishing Undocumented Texts: Editorial Perspectives

Persepolis Fortification Archive Project in the Oriental Institute's 2013-2014 Annual Report

See now here.

Achemenet Project teams up with Oriental Institute to study ancient Persia

Achemenet Project teams up with Oriental Institute to study ancient Persia
July 16, 2014

Through a partnership with the Achemenet Project in Paris, France, the Oriental Institute will provide online access to new images and documentation of the most significant parts of its Achaemenid period (550-330 BC) object collections. The objects, many of which come from the Oriental Institute’s 1930s excavations at Persepolis, Iran, include seals and sealings, reliefs and sculpture, amulets, tableware, and ornaments. This is the primary goal of the Oriental Institute’s participation in the Achemenet Project, made possible through a grant from the Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute and matching support from the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

Persian.ology

Persian.ology: gate-keepers of (clay) dinosaur bones, the story of the discovery and recovery of the Persepolis (Parsa) administrative archives (Persepolis Fortification Archive and Persepolis Treasury Archive) in the early 1930s. (114 pages, about 62M)
By A. J. Cave, April 2014

persian.ology : gate-keepers of (clay) dinosaur bones is an informal look at the Persian Achaemenid Administrative Archives recovered from Pârsa (Persepolis), Iran, in 1930s

parts are taken from the books:

an idol-worshiper’s Guide to god-stan: a Trilogy in 7 Parts (2012)
Cyrus 0.9: Highlander (2013)
“the Road to Persiana”, persian.ology Magazine (2013)

Published in honor of the celebration of the lifelong achievements of Dr. Matthew Stolper, head of the PFA Project, Monday, 28 April 2014, at the Oriental Institute.

The smaller version (without couple of repeated sections on archives and administrative languages, about 11M) is posted here, and here.

 

See Also:

Open Access Publications on Persepolis from the Oriental Institute

Persepolis in Pleiades http://pleiades.stoa.org/places/922695

Cultural Heritage Lawyer Rick St. Hillaire reports on the Gettleman decision

Cultural Heritage Lawyer Rick St. Hillaire reports the Gettleman decision

"The Law Cited by Plaintiffs Does Not Offer the Remedy They Seek" - Rubin v. Iran

Thursday, April 3, 2014

"The court recognizes the tragic circumstances that gave rise to the instant action, but finds that the law cited by plaintiffs does not offer the remedy they seek." With these words, Judge Robert Gettleman ended the Northern District of Illinois case of Jenny Rubin, et al. v. Islamic Republic of Iran, et al. v. The University of Chicago and The Field Museum of Natural History.

The case involves American victims of a Hamas suicide bombing in Jerusalem in 1997. A federal judge in Washington, DC in 2003 awarded the plaintiffs a $71.5 million default judgment against Iran, holding that country to be responsible for the attack. One way the plaintiffs have sought to collect the judgment is to acquire ancient Iranian artifacts at prominent American Museums, including Chicago's Oriental Institute (OI) and The Field Museum, through attachment. [Read the rest]

See  the chronicle of news on the Persepolis Fortification Archive

See also the chronicle of news on Persepolis

Persepolis in Pleiades http://pleiades.stoa.org/places/922695

Persepolis in Pleiades http://pleiades.stoa.org/places/922695

News: Judge: Persian artifacts can't be used to pay survivors of attack

Judge: Persian artifacts can't be used to pay survivors of attack
 By Michelle Manchir Tribune reporter

12:55 p.m. CDT, March 28, 2014

Collections assistant Sarah Coleman works with ancient Persian artifacts at the Field Museum in 2006. (Charles Osgood, Chicago Tribune / February 9, 2006)

The University of Chicago and The Field Museum won’t have to turn over ancient Persian artifacts in their possession to help resolve a legal settlement owed to survivors of a terrorist attack, a federal judge has ruled.

In a long-running court battle, nine American victims of the 1997 attack in Jerusalem sued Iran, where the artifacts were excavated, for being a financial supporter of Hamas, the Palestinian extremist group.

The victims won a multimillion-dollar court judgment.

To collect on that, attorneys for the plaintiffs have been trying to gain control of Iranian assets in the United States, including artifacts the Chicago museum has had for decades, according to the ruling.

In Thursday’s decision, U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman held that the plaintiffs’ argument was flawed because there was no evidence that Iran has asserted ownership over the collections.

“The court recognizes the tragic circumstances that gave rise to the instant action, but finds the law cited by the plaintiffs does not offer the remedy they seek,” Gettleman said in the decision.

Keepers of the Chicago collections said the pieces were priceless and welcomed the court’s ruling.

“These ancient artifacts...have unique historical and cultural value,” said Gil Stein, director of the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute in a statement. The university “will continue our efforts to preserve and protect this cultural heritage,” he said.

David Strachman, an attorney for the victims who brought the lawsuit, said his clients were particularly upset that the U.S. State Department “takes the side of Iran in these cases.”

See the text of the judgement: 

Case: 1:03-cv-09370 Document #: 669 Filed: 03/27/14

See  the chronicle of news on the Persepolis Fortification Archive

See also the chronicle of news on Persepolis

News: Archive.ology: start with (clay) dinosaur bones, spice with love

Archive.ology: start with (clay) dinosaur bones, spice with love
By A.J. Cave
03/03/14 

Dr. Matthew Stolper



Once upon a time people used something called paper for writing all sorts of things, from love letters to secret sauce formulas to stockholder reports. It was when writing was just word-winding. 

They say some hyper competitive Silicon Valley companies (there was no other known kind) even went as far as hiring detectives to sort through paper trash of their competitors to patch together highly guarded business secrets.

This paper was made of trees that grew wild in the nature-in places people of old used to call forests. There were all sorts of round trees and all kinds of flat paper.
Something called deforestation saw to the end of these green forests and paper became rare and eventually extinct.

People didn’t stop writing, they wrote even more. But instead of real paper, they started to use old software programs that nostalgically looked like pages of white paper on computer screens, but they were really nothing more than zeroes and ones, stored on primitive hard drives.

As everyone knows those clunky computers eventually became obsolete too when we started to use glasses and tablets and watches and other things to record our blinkings and doings and thinkings.

Now and then one of those ancient paper archives called Libraries that have miraculously survived shredders and recyclers are discovered here and there. Page-turning paper-lovers from all over the world immediately converge on the discovery pits to make sure these antiquated archives don’t turn into dust during excavations...

...

...In 2006 Dr. Matthew Stolper, one of handful of specialists on Elamite language in the world, cleared his plate, assembled a stellar team of scholars from a number of American and European universities, embarked on the never-ending quest for (much) needed grants, and took on the emergency task of digitization of the Achaemenid archive-known as the Persepolis Fortification Archive Project (PFAP).

And here we are. 

Under Matt Stolper’s steadfast watch and with the moral support of his faithful friend, Baxter the Beast, the initial phase of cleaning, conserving and digitizing the archive is finally reaching critical mass and the next phase of making sense of the mass of generated data is kicking in-the old sprinkling of the water of life on dead bones.

In the process, surprising new discoveries have come to light, among them finding the footprint of Udusana (Greek: Atossa), the quintessential Achaemenid royal woman (queen), who, according to the classical writers, was the eldest daughter of Cyrus the Great, the chief wife of Darius the Great, and the powerful mother of Xerxes (Persian: Xsayarsa, or Khshayarsha). Triple Crown of Persian royalty.

These Persian administrative records, roughly 30,000 or so pieces from a single archive, dating from 509 to 493 BCE (from 13th to 28th regnal years of Darius the Great, about 16 years, with some references to the 7th regnal year)-conceptually likened to the bones of a dinosaur-have led to not just an understanding of the routine imperial administrative infrastructure, but all sorts of interesting things like art, language, religion, and society of the Persian Achaemenid Empire, that was unknowable merely from the traditional biblical and classical sources.

The sort of raw data that the large cuneiform archives like the Persepolis Fortification Archive have been yielding is “Big Data”-datasets that are getting too big to process using classical computing techniques. Big Data is now being used in computer technology circles to refer to the latest advances in aggregating massive amounts of data from various sources and enabling researchers to mine and map data in amazing new ways-see what no one has seen before, ask questions no one has answered yet.

On the academic side of the coin, Big Data research will eventually exponentially expand the newly-minted field of Digital Humanities.

While virtualization and visualization of archival data from the Achaemenid royal chancelleries will not give us historical answers-at least not to what we think-it will, however, provide a richer context for understanding and interpreting the Big Data we have accidentally inherited and luckily recovered.

This Big Data is also the playground of writers like me who troll the archival treasure troves for historical backstory to turn boring administrative records into sizzling stories about the adventurous lives and scandalous love affairs of the Persian royal sons and daughters-kings and their queens who once ruled the world-the real royal games of the only throne that really mattered. Masters of Asia.

Achaemenid scholars have been spending years carefully reconstructing a clay dinosaur to restore Persians to the history of the world, and the Persian storytellers thankfully ride this paper-beast to restore the Persians to the story of the world.
Dr. Stolper, now retired as of the end of 2013, is continuing as the head of the PFA Project, crisscrossing the globe on a mission to evangelize the immense impact of the ancient archive on Persian Achaemenid history and heritage.

In recognition of his lifelong achievements and his tireless efforts in preserving and promoting the integration of knowledge from the Achaemenid Administrative Archives into mainstream classical and ancient Near Eastern (ANE) studies, there would be a celebration at the Oriental Institute tentatively scheduled for 28 April 2014.

These types of events are normally planned for the local colleagues, students and patrons of the institute. This one, however, might just turn out to be a greater gathering of the friends of the Persepolis Fortification Archive Project, die-hard supporters of Persian history and heritage, and the who-is-who of the Persian Achaemenid studies.

Tell Parnakka (probably the paternal uncle of Darius the Great and the first chief of the imperial administrative archives at Parsa) to order more Shiraz wine for the feast. Persians are coming.

See  the chronicle of news on the Persepolis Fortification Archive

See also the chronicle of news on Persepolis

Lecture in Toronto for the Canadian Society for Mesopotamian Studies

On Wednesday, 19 February, Matthew W. Stolper, John A. Wilson Professor of Oriental Studies at the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, will give a lecture for the Canadian Society for Mesopotamian Studies:

PERSIAN RECORDS IN CRISIS:  RESCUING THE PERSEPOLIS FORTIFICATION ARCHIVE

The Persepolis Fortification Archive (PFA) is the richest, densest, most complex and most consequential source of information about languages, art, institutions, religion, and society in the heart of the Achaemenid Persian Empire at its zenith, about 500 BC.  Since 2006, in the face of a legal threat to the future of the Archive, the PFA Project at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago has been working to open this source by recording and analyzing the tens of thousands of clay tablets and fragments, their texts and seals, that make up the Archive, and by reconnecting them in meaningful systems of information.  This presentation will discuss what the PFA Project is, why it matters, what the PFA Project does and what it seeks.

This free public lecture is at 8:00 pm in Earth Sciences Auditorium B142, 5 Bancroft Avenue, University of Toronto, St. George Campus.

Persepolis Fortification Archive (PFA) Project 2012-2013 Annual Report

See now here.