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.
