Persepolis Fortification Archive Project

RIP Herbert Harry Paper

2012-01-25T15:02:00.001-06:00

Herbert H. Paper died January 23, 2012 in Cincinnati. A notice of his death appears in the January 25 2010 Cincinnati Enquirer. Another, by Jonathan D. Sarna appeared January 30, 2011 in H-Judaic.

His faculty profile at the website of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion reads:

Dr. Paper is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics and near Eastern Languages, and is the Editor of the Hebrew Union College Annual, HUC-JIR/Cincinnati. He received a doctorate from the University of Chicago. Dr. Paper taught at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and joined HUC-JIR as the Dean of Graduate Studies. His specialties are Persian studies, concentrating on the history of the Persian language and on the ancient languages of Iran, and Yiddish literature.

Education

Ph.D., University of Chicago (1951)
Lecture Titles

History of the Yiddish Literature
The Languages of the Jews Throughout History
Sholem Aleichem as a Social Critic

Why is he mentioned here on the Persepolis Fortification Archive Blog?

He was a student of George Cameron, and a member of the first generation of scholars focusing on Elamite language at the University of Chicago following World War Two. He wrote his dissertation under Cameron in the Department of Oriental Languages and Literatures, accepted in August 1951. It was subsequently published as The Phonology and Morphology of Royal Achaemenid Elamite by the University of Michigan Press in 1955. It is available online from the HATHI Trust Digital Library. That digital version was mentioned here on this blog in May 2009.

The University of Michigan Faculty History Project has a cursory profile.
WorldCat Identities has Paper, Herbert H. (Herbert Harry) 1925-

He is alleged to have said:

It is well to remember that a Martian observing his first baseball game would be quite correct in concluding that the last two words of the National Anthem are: PLAY BALL!

MA Thesis: Culture in Court --- The Saga of The Persepolis Tablets A Case Study

2012-01-20T15:53:00.001-06:00

Culture in Court --- The Saga of The Persepolis Tablets A Case Study
Ahouraiyan, Taraneh; Warren-Findley, Jannelle; Warrren-Findley, Jannelle; Thompson, Victoria; Smith, Louis.Arizona State University, 2011. 2011. 1502753.
ISBN 9781267060761
MA Thesis Arizona State University

ProQuest document ID 912168904

This thesis explores the implications that the outcome of a certain U.S. lawsuit involving antiquities could have on practices and programs in the United States, related to cultural heritage and history. This paper examines the Rubin et al case, which sought to attach a collection of ancient Persian artifacts (known as The Persepolis Tablets) as a source of legal compensation.

Presented as a case study, and using primary and secondary research sources, this paper analyzes the Rubin et al lawsuit and the factors that led to its initiation, and seeks to determine how and why adverse consequences could result from its final ruling.

This thesis demonstrates that the final decision in the lawsuit could leave a negative impact on a number of practices related to cultural heritage in the United States, especially with regards to cultural and academic institutions such as museums and universities.

You may download this document through your Library.

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

News: The Truth Behind the Tablets

2011-12-17T16:57:00.003-06:00

The Truth Behind the Tablets

Archaeology Magazine

Volume 65 Number 1, January/February 2012

by Andrew Lawler

The rush to document thousands of ancient texts before they are sent back to Iran, or sold, reveals the daily workings of the Persian Empire

Tens of thousands of clay tablets and fragments from Persepolis are written in cuneiform to express Elamite, an ancient language of western Iran.
(Courtesy Persepolis Fortification Archive Project, Oriental Institute)

Tensions between Iran and the United States have rarely run higher, with both governments sparring over alleged terror plots, disputing the nature of Iran’s nuclear program, and vying to influence the uprisings across the Arab world. But in Chicago and Boston courtrooms, the two countries have found rare common ground—neither wants ancient tablets from the royal palace of Persepolis in Iran to end up on the auction block. To the relief of scholars, two recent court rulings may give them their joint wish, preserving open access to what is the most significant source of information on the ancient Persian Empire uncovered to date.

In the early 1930s, during excavations of Persepolis, University of Chicago archaeologist Ernst Herzfeld unearthed tens of thousands of fragments of fragile clay tablets dating from about 500 B.C. The fragments were packed into 2,353 cardboard boxes and shipped to the university’s Oriental Institute. The Iranian government of the day allowed the export, with the understanding that the tablets would be translated and then returned. But the task of piecing together and understanding the vast number of fragments has been under way for more than seven decades and the majority of the collection remains in Chicago. Now, fearing loss of the archive, the university has moved into high gear to create thousands of digital images of the tablets, which record the day-to-day accounts of the empire during the reign of Darius the Great (521–486 B.C.) and include records of those traveling on behalf of the king, lists of workers’ rations, and careful notation of offerings made to deities.

Researchers hope to have most of this intensive effort completed within the next two years. To get the job done, the institute has assembled what Gil Stein, director of the Oriental Institute, calls a “dream team” of textual scholars, archaeologists, and technical experts in digital cataloguing to take images of the tablets and make them available for public use. Translations are also being done, though it will take much longer to complete that daunting task. “Whether they are seized for sale or the government of Iran demands them back, the tablets will be out of the building soon. We all understand how important and urgent this is,” says Stein.

To read more, find ARCHAEOLOGY in your local newsstand or bookstore, or click here to buy a copy of the issue online. And if you'd like to receive ARCHAEOLOGY in your mailbox, click here to subscribe.

Andrew Lawler is a contributing editor at ARCHAEOLOGY.

Go to the chronicle of news on Persepolis.

Go to the chronicle of news on the Persepolis Fortification Archive.

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

Persepolis Fortification Archive Upload to InscriptiFact

2011-12-08T20:05:00.001-06:00

The InscriptiFact Team reports in an email to registered users

We have just uploaded 2112 new images of229 new texts from the Persepolis Fortification Archive. Most of theseimages are RTI images (Reflection Transformation Imaging). The Greek,Akkadian and Old Persian tablets are now posted.

In addition, we have added the AssyrianReliefs from the Oriental Institute, RTIs of KTU 1.18, and RTIs ofobjects from USC's Archaeological Research collection and the LosAngeles Unified School District's Art and ArtifactCollection.

See here for a previous announcement about the PFA from Inscriptifact.

About InscriptiFact

The InscriptiFact Project is a database designed to allow access via the Internet to high-resolution images of ancient inscriptions from the Near Eastern and Mediterranean Worlds. The target inscriptions are some of the earliest written records in the world from an array of international museums and libraries and field projects where inscriptions still remain in situ. Included are, for example, Dead Sea Scrolls; cuneiform tablets from Mesopotamia and Canaan; papyri from Egypt; inscriptions on stone from Jordan, Lebanon and Cyprus; Hebrew, Aramaic, Ammonite and Edomite inscriptions on a variety of hard media (e.g., clay sherds, copper, semi-precious stones, jar handles); and Egyptian scarabs. These ancient texts represent religious and historical documents that serve as a foundation and historical point of reference for Judaism, Christianity, Islam and the cultures out of which they emerged...

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Step-by-step instructions for using the InscriptiFact Viewer, featuring RTI (Reflectance Transformation Imaging) images, in PDF format.
Bibliographic References for Text and Publication Numbers (PDF)
One possible way to search for texts in InscriptiFact is by choosing "Text or Publication Numbers," i.e., common abbreviations used in the field of Ancient Near Eastern Studies. This PDF documents gives bibliographic information for the abbreviations or references used in InscriptiFact.
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Persepolis in Pleiades http://pleiades.stoa.org/places/922695

OI Members Lecture: 'Of Faith and Fire Altars: New visual evidence for ritual in the seals and sealings of the Persian Empire'

2011-12-06T09:51:00.001-06:00

Mark B. Garrison, of Trinity University, will be giving a lecture entitled 'Of Faith and Fire Altars: New visual evidence for ritual in the seals and sealings of the Persian Empire'.

When: Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Time: 19:00 - 22:00

What was the role of Zoroastrian religion in the Persian Empire? This question has dominated much of the analyses of the royal inscriptions that invoke the god Auramazda. A critical resource in these inquiries has been the visual evidence. This lecture investigates the representation of "fire altars" by examining the early reigns of Darius I and Xerxes at their capital city of Persepolis. This tight focus gives us the advantage of dealing with only the most critical, formative period of the Persian Empire, when most of the visual and courtly protocols were established and canonized. Analyses of these sort can help us understand the complex connections between art, religion, and politics in the Achaemenid Persia.

Join us for a reception following the lecture in the Lasalle-Banks room.

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

Manfred Mayrhofer's Onomastica Persepolitana

2011-11-14T14:45:00.001-06:00

Manfred Mayrhofer, who died 31 October 2011, was the author of Onomastica Persepolitana.

In this video, he talks about the book. You can read more about him at his own website.

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

Persepolis and Ancient Iran at ASOR

2011-11-14T13:41:00.001-06:00

See the full program and other information on the ASOR Annual Meeting

Thursday, November 17

SessionA15
Olympic
Archaeology of The Persian Empire: In Honor of David B. Stronach

Theme: This session is dedicated to David B. Stronach, one of the key figures of our era for the study of ancient Iran.
Sabrina Maras (University of California, Berkeley), Presiding

10:40
Introduction (5 min.)

10:45
Pierre Briant (Collège de France), “Archaeology, Iconography and Epigraphy in Achaemenid Asia Minor (2000-2011): A Fresh Look” (20 min.)

11:10
Margaret Root (University of Michigan), “Contemplations on the Pasargadae ‘Genius’” (20 min.)

11:35
Remy Boucharlat (Maison de l'Orient), “Water Courses, Pool and Aqueduct in Pasargadae” (20 min.)
12:00 Matthew W. Stolper (University of Chicago), “Recent Results from the Persepolis Fortification Archive Project” (20 min.)

12:25
Mark Garrison (Trinity University), “The Figure in the Winged Disk in Persepolitan Glyptic: Select New Evidence” (15 min.)

Thursday, November 17

Session A22
California West
Archaeology of Iran I Theme: This session will focus on the archaeology of ancient Iran.
Ali Mousavi (Los Angeles County Museum of Art), Presiding

2:00
Elspeth Dusinberre (University of Colorado), “Pasargadaeans in Ionia: A Talk in Honor of David B. Stronach” (20 min.)

2:25
Antigoni Zournatzi (National Hellenic Research Foundation), “Herodotus’ Mêdikos Logos and the Persians’ Legitimate Rule of Asia” (20 min.)

2:50
Elizabeth Carter (University of California, Los Angeles), “The Role of the Susiana Hinterlands in the Rise and Fall of the Middle Elamite Empire” (20 min.)

3:15
Jessica Nitschke (Waseda University, Tokyo), “Cross-Cultural Exchange in Iron Age Iran and the Genesis of Achaemenid Imperial Art” (20 min.)

3:40
Kim Codella (Cosumnes River College), “Achaemenid Gordion: The Deep Sounding at Gordian” (20 min.)

Friday, November 18

Session A43
California East

Archaeology of Iran II Theme: This session will focus on the archaeology of ancient Iran.
Renée Dreyfus (Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco), Presiding

2:00
Introduction (5 min.)

2:05
Narges Bayani (University of Pennsylvania), Anne Bomalaski (University of Pennsylvania), David Massey (Ohio State University), and Christopher Thornton (University of Pennsylvania) “Tepe Hissar IIIC: A View from Treasure Hill” (25 min.)

2:35
Evan Carlson (University of California, Los Angeles) “Al-Untash-Napirisha (Choga Zanbil) as a Disembedded Capital in its Global Context” (25 min.)

3:05
Jack Green (University of Chicago) “Between East and West: Persian Period Burial Customs in the Jordan Valley” (25 min.)

3:35
Parisa A. Moghadam (State University of New York, Buffalo) “Intercultural Exchanges in Sassanian Eastern Territories and Central Asia” (25 min.)

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

Rick St. Hilaire comments on Rubin v. Government of Iran v. Boston MFA and Harvard

2011-09-30T09:01:00.004-05:00

Massachusetts Court Dismisses Rubin v. Government of Iran v. Boston MFA and Harvard
Thursday, September 29, 2011
CULTURAL HERITAGE LAWYER

A Massachusetts federal court has ruled that the Museum of Fine Arts and Harvard University will not lose their collection of ancient Persian objects to eight plaintiffs injured in a 1997 terrorist bombing. The United States District Court, District of Massachusetts, issued a five page opinion on September 15, 2011 denying the plaintiffs’ efforts to gain control over the artifacts to satisfy their multi-million dollar court judgment against the government of Iran.

Jenny Rubin and several other Americans were injured in Jerusalem after Hamas carried out three bombings. Because the terrorist group received backing from Iran, the eight plaintiffs sued the government of Iran in federal district court in Washington, DC, winning a $71.5 million default award after the Iranian government failed to show up to court. Since then, the plaintiffs have sought to recover that judgment.

The government of Iran would not be expected to pay the court award, so the plaintiffs searched for local Iranian assets to seize. One place they looked was Boston/Cambridge, Massachusetts, where museums housed artifacts excavated from ancient Iran. The plaintiffs initiated a court action--known as an attachment--against the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Harvard, the Harvard University Art Museums, the Busch-Reisinger Museum, the Fogg Art Museum, the Sackler Museum, the Semitic Museums, and the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. But the judge dismissed the plaintiffs’ case in his recent court order.

District Court Judge George O’Toole ruled that the plaintiffs could pursue their attachment action under the federal Terrorism Risk Insurance Act of 2002 so long as they could prove, under Massachusetts state law, that Iran owned the artifacts in the museums. But the plaintiffs could not supply this proof. Judge O’Toole wrote: “In the present case, the plaintiffs have not shown that the ‘goods, effects, or credits’ at issue here are property ‘of the defendant’ Iran." He added that “[d]espite extensive discovery, the plaintiffs are unable to sustain their burden of showing that any particular item held by the Museums is the property of Iran . . . . It is not enough simply to show that antiquities held by the Museums originated from sites within Iran.”

The court highlighted that the plaintiffs failed to prove that an Iranian cultural patrimony law declared ownership of the artifacts. Judge O’Toole wrote: “For example, the so-called ‘1930 Law’ [the plaintiffs’] cite does not automatically vest ownership of excavated antiquities in the government of Iran. In the first place, the 1930 Law does not on its face purport to vest ownership of excavated antiquities in the government. Moreover, the 1930 Law clearly contemplates that antiquities may be owned by private persons. . . . Additionally, other courts have concluded that the 1930 Law permits private ownership and is inconsistent with automatic government ownership of all antiquities originating from Iran.”

The court struck down the plaintiffs’ further argument that an Iranian civil law, Article 26 of its 1928 Civil Code, makes the artifacts government property. The opinion declared that [t]he plaintiffs have not shown that any of the antiquities now held by the Museums were at the time of removal from Iran ‘Government property . . . in use for the service of the public or the profit of the state.’ The necessary conclusion cannot be drawn simply from the fact that the items are the products of archeological explorations that were conducted in Iran . . . .”

The court also rejected the plaintiffs’ claim that antiquities from Persepolis were the property of the Iranian government. The court ruled that “[t]he plaintiffs’ specific argument that items taken from the ruins of the ancient city of Persepolis cannot be privately owned is also not persuasive. The legal argument relies heavily on Article 26 which . . . does not support a generalized conclusion that excavated items necessarily belonged to the government of Iran. The plaintiffs point to texts suggesting that foreign excavators unlawfully took items from Persepolis. Even if that is true as an historical matter, it does not get the plaintiffs where they need to go. As a general matter, establishing that a particular item was unlawfully exported or removed from Iran is not equivalent to showing that it now should be regarded as property of Iran subject to levy and execution. And as a particular matter, the plaintiffs simply are unable to establish that any item in the possession of the Museums, whether from Persepolis or elsewhere, is rightly considered to be the property of Iran.”

The case in the Massachusetts district court is now at an end. Any appeal would be filed in the First Circuit federal court.

Contact information may be found at www.culturalheritagelawyer.com. DISCLAIMER: The information provided on this web site/email/blog/feed/podcast is general information only, not legal advice, and not guaranteed to be current, correct, or complete. No attorney-client relationship is formed, and no express or implied warranty is given. Links or references to outside sources are not endorsements. This site may be considered attorney advertising by some jurisdictions. The attorney is licensed in NH. The attorney is not certified by the TX Board of Legal Specialization, nor certified by NY regulators as a so-called "specialist" or "expert." Do not send confidential communications through this web site or email.

Go to the chronicle of news on Persepolis.

Go to the chronicle of news on the Persepolis Fortification Archive.

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

Harvard Crimson Editorial: Cultural Loot: Harvard and others should be more open to art repatriation

2011-09-30T08:29:00.003-05:00

Cultural Loot: Harvard and others should be more open to art repatriation
By The Crimson Staff
Published: Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Last week, Harvard escaped from a bizarre and potentially damaging lawsuit after federal judge George A. O’Toole, Jr. threw out a request from a group representing victims of Iranian terrorist attacks to seize various Persian artifacts from Harvard. Still awaiting unpaid damages that a U.S. court ruled they were owed by the Iranian government, the group—under the leadership of Jenny Rubin—has recently set its sights on certain artifacts they believe to be the property of the Iranian government. Unfortunately for the plaintiffs, however, these artifacts are held in various collections such as the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute and Harvard’s Peabody Museum, which acquired them long before the Islamic Republic of Iran was established in 1979.

And while Judge O’Toole’s ruling appears in part a straightforward and appropriate rejection of what seems a patently opportunistic attempt to benefit financially from both the tainted reputation of the Iranian regime and a warped view of history, it included a broader stance on the issue surrounding the ownership of formerly stolen artifacts—a controversy in which Harvard’s own position, in our view, warrants a re-evaluation.
“As a general matter,” O’Toole wrote, “establishing that a particular item was unlawfully exported or removed from Iran is not equivalent to showing that it now should be regarded as property of Iran subject to levy and execution.”

Of course, we cannot imagine any other appropriate response to such an attempt. After all, the argument of Rubin et al concerns an alleged—and obviously false—association between the Persian Empire and the belligerent Iranian Islamic “Republic” that currently exists within its former borders. But, even still, we worry that these words may set some sort of dangerous legal precedent that gives Western institutions such as Harvard the right to keep artifacts regardless of the circumstances under which they were acquired. While Harvard has a very good argument for keeping possession of the particular items concerned in the Rubin case, it’s troubling that this case may only lead to Western institutions keeping a tighter stranglehold over the rest of the world's stolen cultural heritage.

As an institution at the forefront of learning and education, Harvard's steady acquisition of numerous artifacts whose provenance spans both time and space falls into a tradition of prominent historical collections held by universities. While not quite the Ashmolean, our Sackler and Peabody Museums, amongst others, house many rare and notable artistic and historical materials. Many of these pieces, it must be said, were acquired around the turn of the last century, at the same time or soon after many of this country’s great international collections were assembled in museums and at other universities. It is of course no coincidence that the acquisition of many of these items from cultures such as Ancient Egypt, China, Greece, and the Islamic Middle East came during a period of unparalleled Western hegemony. And it is no secret that many of the Western world's most famous collections, such as the British Museum's storied Elgin Marbles, were effectively stolen from their territories of origin. Much of the finest Chinese porcelain that today adorns many museums and private homes was looted from Beijing's Old Summer Palace during the nineteenth century, coming as revenge for China's role in the Opium Wars and Boxer Rebellion.

A walk through any major museum—be it the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the British Museum in London, or the Louvre in Paris—would show that Harvard takes a backseat in the saga of Western museums proudly holding onto artifacts that others want back. Many of the circumstances in which these objects were taken do not amount to the trope of a civilizing mission that is so frequently used to justify Lord Elgin's seizing of the Elgin marbles: Look again, for instance, to the looting of the Forbidden City in the summer of 1900 by the Eight-Nation Alliance. And even when objects were taken from their areas of origin for the purposes of protecting them, why not follow Harvard's own example of returning the Lowell Bells to Moscow after 50 years of safeguarding them? For too long, museums in Western Europe and the United States have jealously clung to objects to which they have no underlying valid claim. As a rule, they should begin returning them to the many nations of Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Asian and others who now have the ample resources to take care of them.

We would not dispute that collections in the great Western museums have served as infinite sources of education, enjoyment, and awe for countless residents and tourists of these cities. There is even an argument to be made that more people across the world encounter and learn from these artifacts in a Western museum than would were they all returned to the sites of their creation. However, the purpose of a historical artifact is the rare insight it affords the world of the present into the world of the past, and the value of that insight depends upon a conversation between an object’s current home and the site of its creation. In moving forward, we urge Harvard to consider following the example of peer institutions like Yale, which, after a lawsuit of its own from the Peruvian government over certain Incan artifacts taken years before, is moving to create a jointly operated research center slated to open in October.

This question of artifacts stolen years ago in different times from national entities that no longer exist is indeed a complicated one. We can only hope that Harvard’s approach in the future will be one of active engagement with the cultures from which many of the artifacts in its museums were taken and that the Rubin case doesn’t set a precedent of stifling discourse between East and West.

Go to the chronicle of news on Persepolis.

Go to the chronicle of news on the Persepolis Fortification Archive.

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

The Implications of Rubin v. Iran

2011-09-25T10:54:00.001-05:00

Should National Treasures be Subject to the Judicial Auction?: The Implications of Rubin v. Iran
By LAINA LOPEZ, ESQ.

The main question at issue in Rubin v. Iran, a case pending in both the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago and the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, is whether national treasures of cultural heritage should be – or legally can be – subjected to a court-ordered auction to satisfy judgments. In that case, a group of plaintiffs who won a default judgment against Iran have asked the Chicago court to seize collections of Iranian national treasures to be auctioned off – with no guarantee that they will be auctioned off as collections – so that the proceeds can be used to satisfy part or all of the judgment...

Even though the Seventh Circuit has ruled, the core issue still is not resolved. That is, the district court will now have to answer the main question – can the antiquities be seized and sold at judicial auction?

Read the article in the Summer 2011 Newsletter of the American Bar Association Art & Cultural Heritage Law Committee.

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

News: Heritage Hunters

2011-09-22T10:49:00.004-05:00

Heritage Hunters: Trying to cash in on what Darius and Xerxes left us!?
Iranian.com
by Ari Siletz
22-Sep-2011

In 2010 James Dolan, chief executive officer of Cablevision got paid about $13 million, or about 400 time the wages of an ordinary you and me. By comparison the manager of the royal household of the Achaemenid king Darius the Great was paid 700 sheep, 600 loads of flour, and 32000 liters of beer and wine. This is about 100 times the wage of an ordinary Achaemenid postal worker (courier). Never mind how much Darius got paid—the king was a national symbol, and therefore beyond labor pricing--but when it comes to income disparity Achaemenids seem to have the U.S. beaten four to one in terms of social justice. How do we know how much workers and top administrators got paid during the Achaemenids?

The information comes from deciphering a fraction of the 12000+ clay tablet “file cabinet” found at Persepolis circa 1930, and now stored mostly in the U.S. These are the famous Persepolis tablets now facing death by lawsuit in the U.S. legal system. The U.S. says the IRI is a state sponsor of terrorism and therefore U.S. citizens can sue Iran for injury resulting from IRI sponsored terrorist activity. For example, if Hamas hurts an American citizen during a terrorist attack, the injured person can sue Iran for supporting Hamas’ act. In fact many plaintiffs have already won large damages against Iran; the only problem was how to collect the court awarded money. After some hunting around in law books, they found out that a loophole in the 2002 Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA) allows them to auction off the Persepolis tablets housed in U.S. universities. That should raise a few million, they thought.

But just last week the NIAC news email brought good tidings that some of the tablets have been rescued, apparently through clever use of a legal technicality. Lawyers defending the tablets in Massachusetts successfully argued that the plaintiffs couldn’t prove that the items actually belong to the IRI. To get more detail on the temporarily good news I talked on the phone with NIAC president Trita Parsi. NIAC has been involved in the tablet rescue efforts, leading where it can and assisting where it can. When I asked what would happen to the tablets if they were auctioned, Parsi’s typically measured interview voice became troubled:

“When you have a lot of artifacts--as we see in this case--the relative market value of each item drops. And as has happened before, the business owners destroy many of the items in order to increase the value of the remaining ones. We have seen this happen with Egyptian artifacts in the past. There’s a significant risk. It may actually happen that there will be a deliberate effort to destroy the stocks to make sure that the remaining 500 out of the 12000 fetch the best price! Then this part of our history and heritage will be destroyed.”

This is simply barbarism, committed in the name of 21st century justice. From a perfectly reasonable angle these tablets are just as important as the Darius Behistun inscriptions or even the Cyrus Cylinder. Why? Because archeological sites and museums are full of self-descriptions by rulers of what kick-ass heroes they were and how justly they ruled. Bein e khodemoon, “Cyrus Cylinder” kings were a dime a dozen. Even today, Kayhan is a daily Cyrus Cylinder made out of paper. To give substance to our past we need more than the words of Cyrus and Darius; we need to audit their receipts. And this is precisely what these tablets are: receipts, invoices, pay stubs, wage tables, reimbursement, how much food and wine the priests of different religions got to offer their gods, etc. sampling several periods of Achaemenid rule. So far the tablets reveal an empire buzzing with a complex economy, an active society and run by an intricately structured administrative system. There’s an astonishing amount of detail about Achaemenid life in these tablets, beyond what we could have reasonably hoped; their discovery is a cultural windfall for Iranians. Ironically if it hadn’t been for another barbaric act—Alexander’s--more than two millennia ago, these tablets may have been scattered centuries ago. The quick collapse of the Persepolis building hid the tablets and made them inaccessible...

Go to the chronicle of news on Persepolis.

Go to the chronicle of news on the Persepolis Fortification Archive.

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

Update on RUBIN v. THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN

2011-09-16T10:00:00.003-05:00

GEORGE A. O'TOOLE, Jr., District Judge, issues an OPINION AND ORDER on 15 September 2011 in the case of RUBIN v. THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN, JENNY RUBIN, et al., Plaintiffs-Judgment Creditors,v.THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN, et al., Defendants-Judgment Debtors,v.MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS and HARVARD UNIVERSITY, et al., Trustee Process Respondents. Civil Action No. 06-11053-GAO. United States District Court, D. Massachusetts.

The final paragraph reads:

Accordingly, the plaintiffs' Motion (dkt. no. 2) for Order of Attachment by Trustee Process is DENIED; Harvard's Motion (dkt. no. 150) to Dissolve Attachment is GRANTED; and the Museum of Fine Arts' Motion (dkt. no. 158) to Dissolve Attachment is GRANTED. The trustee attachments are DISSOLVED

All those interested in the case are urged to read the full document.

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

Persepolis at the University of Chicago's 33rd annual Humanities Day

2011-09-13T11:39:00.002-05:00

Recording Persian Antiquities in Crisis: The Persepolis Fortification Archive Project

October 22, 2011, 2.00-3.00pm

Matthew Stolper
Session II

In 1933, Oriental Institute archaeologists made a startling discovery at Persepolis, near the palaces that Darius and Xerxes built in the heartland of the Achaemenid Empire (near the Fars Province of modern Iran): tens of thousands of clay tablets, with texts in several ancient languages and the impressions of thousands of seals. Oriental Institute researchers have been studying them ever since, with results that have transformed our understanding of the Persian Empire at its zenith. But since 2004, researchers have been working under the shadow of litigation that threatens the future of the tablets. Since 2005, the Persepolis Fortification Archive Project has marshaled electronic tools and techniques in a race to preserve a comprehensive record of the Archive and to enable new kinds of research.

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

Course: From Ground to Gallery, The Persepolis Fortification Archives

2011-09-06T13:16:00.001-05:00

Course: From Ground to Gallery, The Persepolis Fortification Archives

When: Saturday, October 15, 2011 1:30 pm
Where: Oriental Institute
1155 East 58th Street, Chicago, IL
Description:
This course is part of the Ground to Gallery series, but may be taken individually.

In 1933, Oriental Institute archaeologists working in Iran at the site of the ancient capital of Persepolis discovered tens of thousands of clay tablet documents within a bastion of the city’s fortification wall. Most of the tablets, which date to around 500 BC, were loaned to the Oriental Institute for analysis in 1936. Join Professor Matthew Stolper to learn how the Institute’s long and painstaking study of the Persepolis Fortification Archive has provided a wealth of information about the languages, society, institutions, religion, and art of the ancient Persian Empire at its zenith. Then go behind the scenes to see how the Archive is now the subject of a multi-institutional research project that uses the most advanced imaging equipment to record and study the tablets.

Matthew Stolper, John A. Wilson Professor of Oriental Studies, Oriental Institute

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

Persepolis Fortification Archive Upload to InscriptiFact

2011-08-18T06:35:00.001-05:00

The InscriptiFact Team reports in an email to registered users

We have just uploaded approximately 5700 new images of 296 new textsfrom the Persepolis Fortification Archive. The majority of Aramaictexts from the archive are now available.

About InscriptiFact

The InscriptiFact Project is a database designed to allow access via the Internet to high-resolution images of ancient inscriptions from the Near Eastern and Mediterranean Worlds. The target inscriptions are some of the earliest written records in the world from an array of international museums and libraries and field projects where inscriptions still remain in situ. Included are, for example, Dead Sea Scrolls; cuneiform tablets from Mesopotamia and Canaan; papyri from Egypt; inscriptions on stone from Jordan, Lebanon and Cyprus; Hebrew, Aramaic, Ammonite and Edomite inscriptions on a variety of hard media (e.g., clay sherds, copper, semi-precious stones, jar handles); and Egyptian scarabs. These ancient texts represent religious and historical documents that serve as a foundation and historical point of reference for Judaism, Christianity, Islam and the cultures out of which they emerged...

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Paper Online: Xerxes, Atossa, and the Persepolis Fortification Archive

2011-08-08T12:30:00.002-05:00

Xerxes, Atossa, and the Persepolis Fortification Archive
by Wouter F. M. Henkelman

Annual Report 2010, Netherlands Institute for the Near East, Leiden, Netherlands Institute in Turkey, Istanbul, Leiden 2011: 26-33

All Papers by Wouter Henkelman available online at Academia.edu

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

Related News: Achaemenid palace found in Iran

2011-08-02T11:31:00.000-05:00

Achaemenid palace found in Iran
Posted by TANN
7:15 PM

Archaeologists have unearthed an ancient palace dating back to the Achaemenid dynasty in Dahaneh Gholaman located in Iran's southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchestan.
The Dahaneh Gholaman site, in Iran's southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchestan [Credit: Press TV]
Comparing the structure in the Dahaneh Gholaman site with Achaemenid palaces in Takht-e Jamshid and Pasargaad proved that the newly-found site dates to the Achaemenid era, said Kourosh Mohammadkhani, leader of the archeological team, IRNA reported.

He added that the finding is the most significant achievement in the current phase of the recent study.

The Dahaneh Gholaman site comprises of 54 ancient structures, most of which were discovered during the years 1959 and 2008.

Takht-e Jamshid (Throne of Jamshid) or Persepolis was the ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid Empire (550-330 BCE) which is located in Iran's Fars Province.

Pasargadae was also the capital of another Achaemenid king, Cyrus (559-530 BCE), and is the location of his tomb. Recent research has shown that Achaemenid engineers constructed the city to withstand a severe earthquake.

Source: Press TV [July 31, 2011]

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Related News: Herzfeld Paper Squeeze Digitization Project

2011-07-30T07:55:00.002-05:00

The Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives (Freer|Sackler Archives) received a grant from the Smithsonian Institution's Collections Care and Preservation Fund to aid in the preservation of the Herzfeld squeezes in the Archives, which date from 1911-1934.

See my full entry in AWOL for the Ernst Herzfeld Paper Squeeze Digitization Project

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

Paper Online: The First Administrative Document Discovered at Persepolis

2011-07-01T21:34:00.001-05:00

From the Persepolis Fortification Archive Project, 3 The First Administrative Document Discovered at Persepolis: PT 1971-1

By Charles E. Jones - Institute for Study of the Ancient World, New York, and

Seunghee Yie - Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago

ARTA 2011.003

Ernst Herzfeld’s field photographs from the 1932 excavation season at Persepolis include three pictures of a large fragment of a cuneiform tablet (Herzfeld Nos. 32.85 a & b [= Oriental Institute No. 12979] and 32.86 a [= No. 12978]; see Fig. 1).1 The photographs were made in the year before the discovery of the first Persepolis Fortification tablets in March, 1933, and about four years before the excavation of the first Persepolis Treasury tablets in 1936 (Schmidt 1939: 3-37; 1957: 4f.).

Although this was the first cuneiform tablet discovered by the Oriental Institute’s excavations at Persepolis, there is no mention of it in the publications of Herzfeld or of Erich Schmidt, who succeeded him as director of the excavations, or in those of George G. Cameron or Richard T. Hallock, who undertook the publication of the many Treasury and Fortification tablets found later. Perhaps Herzfeld was not excited by a fragment with a text that was mostly numbers and “dittos” and a few
words that would have been incomprehensible in 1932, accompanied by the merest traces of a seal impression.

It is tempting to infer from these photographs that Herzfeld made trial excavations in the Treasury as early as the season of 1932, but no records of such an effort survive....

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

News: PARSA CF Award to the Persepolis Fortification Archive (PFA) Project

2011-06-02T19:52:00.000-05:00

PARSA CF Awards $370,000 to Museums and Institutions for Preserving and Advancing Persian Arts

June 2, 2011

The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, which is the recipient of two previous PARSA CF grants, has been awarded a $200,000 grant for their important work on capturing, recording, and distributing the information from the famous tablets of the Persepolis Fortification Archive (PFA). The archive is comprised of some 30,000 clay tablets and fragments found in 1933 by the Oriental Institute archeologists, examining and clearing the ruins of Persepolis palaces of kings Darius and Xerxes and their successors, near Shiraz. The tablets contain close to 20,000 original texts in cuneiform and Elamite language, Aramaic script and language, and seal impressions, and are currently on loan from Iran at the Oriental Institute.

PFA is the largest and most consequential single source of information on the Achaemenid Persian Empire at its zenith. It provides a very important portal into the languages, art, society, administration, history, geography and religion in the heart of the Persian Empire in the time of Darius I, around 500 BC. It has fundamentally transformed every aspect of modern research on Achaemenid history and culture.

The PFA Project at the Oriental Institute is responsible for carefully cleaning these important ancient tablets, taking high resolution digital imagery of the texts on the tablets, exploring various technologies for the best imaging of the tablets such as 3D, laser, and CT scanning), and recording the texts and impressions. An editorial team within the group reviews and prepares editions of the texts, and all of the tablets, texts and impressions are carefully cataloged for publication and archiving. At this point more than 8000 tablets are completed, resulting in almost 40 Terabytes of data, and the team expects to grow the collection to approximately 11,000 over the next two years.

The tablets have been subject to a long legal battle where plaintiffs suing the Iranian government are asking for the ancient tablets as compensation. With the fate of the archive hanging in balance, the PFA Project has been under pressure to clean, scan, and record as many tablets as possible and as fast as possible. The grant from PARSA CF helped the PFA Project during an urgent time, since the project was in critical need for servers and other resources. An appellate court ruling a while later at the end of March came out with favorable result for the PFA, although the battle still continues.

The PFA project has received support from many other organizations besides PARSA CF, including the Andrew Melon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Iran Heritage Foundation is also working closely with the PFA project, and supports and promotes their work.

"After almost eighty years, the Persepolis Fortification Archive is producing a growing stream of new information, deeper understanding, and surprising discoveries. Making sure that this stream continues to flow repays the trust and hope that Iran's loan of the Archive to the Oriental Institute entailed, magnifies the cultural heritage of which these tablets are the humble vessels, and lays that heritage before its cultural heirs and before the civilized world" said Matthew W. Stolper, Director, Persepolis Fortification Archive Project.

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News: Ancient Persian Treasures in American Courts

2011-05-02T12:39:00.000-05:00

Ancient Persian Treasures in American Courts

by ARASH KARAMI
02 May 2011 23:40

Legal dispute over Persepolis tablets threatens international lending of cultural assets.

In 1930, archaeologist Ernst Herzfeld came across 30,000 clay tablets on a dig in the ancient city of Persepolis, near modern-day Shiraz. Now these same Persepolis tablets are embroiled in a legal battle involving the Islamic Republic of Iran, the University of Chicago, and a pedestrian mall bombing in Jerusalem.

After they were unearthed in the 1930s, the inscribed and sealed tablets have been on loan to the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago for study, where many still remain. They have become a treasure trove in revealing the inner administrative workings and social structure of ancient Persia during the reign of Darius I around the time of 500 BCE.

Among many facts, they hold the records of the different rations apportioned to women and men, receipt and taxation, redistribution to priests and artisans, means of travel and communication, storage of food and livestock. Not least of all, they have proven to be a valuable asset in the study of ancient languages such as Elamite, which died off with the invasion of Alexander the Great, and Old Persian, a language which the tablets show was surprisingly used more often than expected by everyday Persians.
The tablets hold a further value: What is known about this era historically comes from Greek and Arabic sources, and the Aramaic and Hebrew versions of the Old Testament. For the first time, scholars had the day-to-day story of the Persians, by the Persians, and for the world.

In 2002, the Persepolis Fortification Archive at the Oriental Institute began state-of-the-art 3D imaging of the tablets that had not already been returned to the government of Iran. Though the primary purpose of the Fortification Archive is to store digitally the clay tablets for future scholars who happen to find the daily administrative routine of the Persian Empire titillating reading, there was a more immediate motivation for initiating the process.

Only one year before the Oriental Institute began the 3D imaging, five American victims of a 1997 Hamas suicide bombing that occurred on Jerusalem's Ben Yehuda Street sued the government of Iran in a U.S. court for its support of the Palestinian organization...

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

PFA on Facebook

2011-04-10T19:31:00.000-05:00

The Persepolis Fortification Archive Project is now on Facebook

Derek Fincham comments on today ruling in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit

2011-03-29T18:10:00.001-05:00

Derek Fincham: Seventh Circuit Rules Terrorist Victims Attachment Request Against Iran was Overbroad

He is commenting on today ruling in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit

Read the ruling

Read reports on the ruling

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News: U.S. court backs Iran in dispute over assets

2011-03-29T17:40:00.000-05:00

U.S. court backs Iran in dispute over assets
Reuters
CHICAGO | Tue Mar 29, 2011 3:58pm EDT

(Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday backed Iran in a dispute with Americans who demand that Persian antiquities in two Chicago museums be used to pay damages for victims of a 1997 suicide bombing in Israel.

The decision by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals overturns a lower court ruling allowing the U.S. plaintiffs to search for any and all Iranian assets in the United States to pay a $71.5 million judgment against Iran.

The case grew out of a September 1997 triple suicide bombing at a Jerusalem pedestrian mall that killed five people and injured 200. Two members of the Islamist group Hamas were convicted.
The lawsuit filed by five groups of Americans who were either seriously wounded or relatives of the injured argued Iran bore responsibility because it provided training and support to Hamas for attacks.
Having won their case, the plaintiffs embarked on a search for Iranian assets to pay the judgment. They found three collections of ancient Persian artifacts -- prehistoric pottery, ornaments, and precious tablets with Elamite writing -- owned by or on loan to Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History and the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute.

The museums argued the artifacts qualified for immunity under U.S. law and could not be used to pay the judgment. They said seizing the artifacts would set a dangerous precedent for institutions who rely on scholarly interest to trump political and legal disputes.

But the plaintiffs insisted the artifacts were fair game, arguing U.S. legal protections afforded to foreign-owned property do not apply when the property is used for commercial purposes, or when it belongs to an agent linked to a terrorist group.

Iran initially ignored demands that it appear in U.S. courts to assert its sovereign rights. It later hired an American lawyer to represent its interests.

The appeals court did not rule on the fate of the antiquities but it said the lower court wrongly denied Iran its sovereign immunity, which it says is presumed and did not need to be asserted in court by Iran.

The ruling also voided the lower court's order that all Iranian assets in the United States be disclosed, and sent the case back to the lower court for further proceedings "consistent with this opinion."

(Reporting by Andrew Stern; Editing by Xavier Briand)

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News: U. of Chicago and Museums Win Key Ruling in Legal Battle Over Iranian Antiquities

2011-03-29T17:31:00.000-05:00

U. of Chicago and Museums Win Key Ruling in Legal Battle Over Iranian Antiquities

The Chronicle of Higher Education

March 29, 2011

By David Glenn

Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History and the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute won a victory on Tuesday in their efforts to maintain possession of thousands of ancient Iranian artifacts. In a ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit reversed a lower court's order that might have handed the artifacts over to several American victims of a 1997 terrorist bombing in Jerusalem.
Those victims won a $90-million judgment in 2003 against the government of Iran, which is believed to have financed and trained the terrorists who carried out the Jerusalem bombing. But the victims and their families have struggled to collect any of that judgment from Iran, and their lawyers have sought instead to seize purported Iranian assets in the United States, including antiquities held in American museums. Those legal efforts have been condemned by some scholars as a dangerous politicization of the world's archaeological heritage.

In Tuesday's ruling, a three-judge panel of the Seventh Circuit ruled that the lower court had misinterpreted the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976, which generally protects the property of foreign governments in the United States. The plaintiffs have asserted that the antiquities in Chicago are exempt from that immunity because of a provision in the 1976 law that excludes property "used for a commercial activity."

The lower court had ruled that the plaintiff's argument on that point must win by default because Iran had not come forward to assert its immunity under the 1976 law. But the Seventh Circuit, like other appellate courts in similar recent cases, ruled that the 1976 law requires courts to decide for themselves which foreign immunities apply to each case, whether or not a foreign government has explicitly demanded those immunities. (Complicating the case, Iran did eventually come forward to assert its immunity.) ...

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News : Lawsuits by Victims of Terrorism Imperil Archaeological Studies

2011-03-06T14:13:00.002-06:00

Lawsuits by Victims of Terrorism Imperil Archaeological Studies
In claiming $4-billion in damages from Iran, American plaintiffs demand that colleges and museums turn over ancient Persian artifacts
By Peter Schmidt
Chronicle of Higher Education
March 6, 2011

U. of Chicago
Matthew Stolper, a professor of Assyriology at the U. of Chicago's Oriental Institute, examines a tablet on loan from the government of Iran.
Enlarge Image

Their original owners, in what is now Iran, probably saw them as ordinary records of day-to-day transactions, like today's ATM statements or store receipts. More than two millenniums later, however, clay tablets housed at the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute have assumed extraordinary significance, as both objects of archaeological study and sources of modern conflict...

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BISOTUN WORLD ROCK CLIMBING FESTIVAL IRAN NOV 2010

2011-01-26T11:14:00.000-06:00

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News: Ernst Herzfeld Archive

2011-01-03T08:37:00.002-06:00

See today's notice of updates on Ernst Herzfeld Online Resources by Rachael Cristine Woody on the Smithsonian blog.

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Persepolis Fortification Archive Project Annual Report 2009-2010

2010-12-08T14:22:00.005-06:00

[The following is a very slightly altered (addition of hyperlinks and color photographs) version of the text of an article appearing in Oriental Institute 2009-2010 Annual Report. Page images of the article as it appeared in its original context follow below]

Persepolis Fortification Archive Project

2009-2010 Annual Report
Matthew W. Stolper

The Persepolis Fortification Archive is a treasury of information about the languages, society, institutions, religion, and art of the Achaemenid Persian Empire at its zenith, around 500 bc. Its value depends on a combination of complexity (the archive contains detailed information of many different kinds) and integrity (the archive is an excavated artifact, a single, coherent cache of tens of thousands of documents from a single time and place).

The legal crisis that puts the future of the many Persepolis Fortification tablets in doubt also endangers the integrity of the single Persepolis Fortification Archive. The suit is still before federal courts, and the threat remains grave and persistent, but while the law takes its stately course, the Persepolis Fortification Archive Project pursues its emergency priorities: to enable future research by making thorough records of the archive, and to enable current research by distributing the records freely and continuously.

Figure 1. Four BetterLight scans of a fragmentary Persepolis Fortification Aramaic tablet (PFAT 684). Clockwise from upper left: polarized light, infrared filter, negative tone scale, red filter

During 2009–2010, Clinton Moyer (PhD 2009, Cornell), Joseph Lam (PhD candidate, NELC), Miller Prosser (PhD candidate, NELC), and John Walton (PhD candidate, NELC) continued to operate the two Polynomial Texture Mapping (PTM) domes and the BetterLight scanning camera, making very high-quality images of selected Fortification tablets and fragments (fig. 1). As of mid-2010, this phase of the project — a collaboration with the West Semitic Research Project (WSRP) at the University of Southern California — has captured images of about 2,600 items: more than 670 monolingual Aramaic tablets, more than 200 Aramaic epigraphs on tablets with Elamite cuneiform texts, about 1,500 sealed, uninscribed tablets, and about 200 Elamite tablets and fragments.

Figure 2. Wear and repair on one of the PTM domes

The range of imaging techniques, the range of detail that they reveal, and the rate of output from this phase of the project grow with experience. Making the images outruns processing them for display, so two PTM-image processing stations have been added at the Oriental Institute to supplement post-processing done at the University of Southern California. Despite the duct-tape and baling-wire look of the PTM domes (fig. 2), their reliability is outstanding: the shutters of the cameras on the two PTM domes have tripped more than 1,000,000 times during the life of the project.

Manning the post-processing stations are some of the crew who are also making and editing conventional digital images of the largest component of the Persepolis Fortification Archive, the Elamite Fortification tablets and fragments. During the past year, this group included Lori Calabria, Jon Clindaniel, Gregory Hebda, Will Kent, Megaera Lorenz, Tytus Mikolajczak, and Lise Truex (all NELC), Joshua Skornik (Divinity School); Anastasia Chaplygina (MAPH); Nicholas Geller, Amy Genova, Erika Jeck, and Daniel Whittington (Classics); and returning Persepolis Fortification Archive Project alumnus Trevor Crowell (Catholic University). Three photography and editing stations are in use now, and so far this phase of the project has made about 50,000 images of about 4,000 tablets and fragments with Elamite cuneiform texts. Editing these pictures for display now runs ahead of taking them, so the backlog is shrinking. Older picture sets are being checked and reshot as necessary for completeness and to match the higher standards of the later sets that reflect the photographers’ accumulated experience. Haphazard file names from earlier picture sets are being made consistent with later sets, to facilitate linked online display and to prepare metadata for long-term storage.

After two more extended visits to the Oriental Institute, Persepolis Fortification Archive Project editor Wouter Henkelman (Free University of Amsterdam and Collège de France) has finished revised, collated, and annotated editions of about 2,400 of the 2,600 Elamite texts known from preliminary editions by the late Richard Hallock (called NN texts). He expects to collate the remainder in the summer and autumn of 2010 and to furnish complete translations in preparation for online distribution and hard-copy publication. I have continued to make preliminary editions of new Elamite Fortification texts, concentrating on document types that are underrepresented in the published sample of the Persepolis Fortification Archive; as of mid-2010, I have recorded about 585 of these.

The second largest component of the Persepolis Fortification Archive consists of uninscribed (anepigraphic) tablets (PFUT or PFAnep), that is, tablets with seal impressions but without accompanying texts. Our first estimates of the number of useful pieces of this kind were too low. During nine trips to the Oriental Institute during the past year, Persepolis Fortification Archive Project editor Mark Garrison (Trinity University) systematically examined another 25 percent of the 2,600 boxes of Fortification tablets and fragments to select uninscribed tablets for cataloging and PTM imaging. Now that about half of the boxes of tablets have been sifted, more than 2,100 uninscribed tablets have been selected for study. Post-doctoral researcher Sabrina Maras (University of California–Berkeley) is cataloging this material under Garrison’s direction, a process that involves identifying impressions of previously known seals, assigning numbers to new seals, and sketching impressions of them; during the summer of 2010, she is joined in this work by graduate student Jenn Finn (University of Michigan). The results continue to bear out the general observation that some seals used on uninscribed tablets were also used on Elamite or Aramaic Fortification tablets, but most — around ten times as many — were not: on 275 cataloged tablets, there are impressions of more than thirty seals previously known from tablets with Elamite texts, but there are also impressions of 300 new seals. Garrison also continues to read the seals on the NN tablets. As of mid-2010, he has identified seal impressions on almost half of the NN tablets, and about 1,250 tablets that have yielded impressions of another 465 previously unknown seals. Post-doctoral student Wu Xin (Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York) is documenting some of this material under Garrison’s direction.

Figure 3. Impression of a newly identified inscribed seal in Assyrian style accompanying
a newly edited Elamite text of an underrepresented type

All told, impressions of about 2,500 distinct seals have been cataloged on Persepolis Fortification tablets so far, the markers of as many distinct individuals and offices. Even if new seals are identified at a slower rate as work continues, the Persepolis Fortification Archive is certain to yield one of the largest coherent sets of images from anywhere in the ancient world.

The third main component of the Persepolis Fortification Archive consists of tablets with texts in Aramaic, some 670 identified to date. Persepolis Fortification Archive Project editor Annalisa Azzoni (Vanderbilt University) made two extended trips to the Oriental Institute during the past year to work on them. She has examined, numbered, cataloged, and made preliminary editions of about 100 monolingual Aramaic tablets and about 110 of the 200 Aramaic epigraphs on Elamite tablets identified so far. She is developing a formal typology of the documents to allow consistency with work on the Elamite texts and to clarify functional connections among streams of data recorded in Aramaic and in Elamite. Graduate student Emily Wilson (Classics), working under the direction of Persepolis Fortification Archive Project editors Elspeth Dusinberre (University of Colorado) and Mark Garrison, has been completing Dusinberre’s collated drawings of seals on the Aramaic tablets and entering new descriptive and cataloging data on the PFAT seals in the On-Line Cultural Heritage Research Environment (OCHRE).

Figure 4. What the seals show that the texts do not: PTM views of altar scenes from seal impressions on four uninscribed fortification tablets

Figure 5. What the seals tell about the seal users: among 2,500 seals identified so far in the PFA, only four show scenes of human warfare; here, a Persian archer shoots a Scythian warrior in the seal impression on an Elamite Fortification tablet

Persepolis Fortification Archive project manager Dennis Campbell (post-doctoral student, Oriental Institute) coordinates, connects, and smoothes data and images for presentation via OCHRE. Oriental Institute Internet data specialist Sandra Schloen has prepared a revised version of OCHRE’s display of
Persepolis Fortification Archive material that includes a range of options for viewing and combining texts, translations, glossaries, grammatical information, and seals, displayed with a new look and feel. Lying behind this display are improved tools for importing texts and glossing and parsing them, hotspotting images, and linking images to texts — all processes that are increasingly automated as the corpus of information in OCHRE grows. Graduate student Seunghee Yie (NELC) imports Elamite texts into OCHRE and prepares editions for export to other sites (notably the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative [CDLI]); graduate student Wayne Munsch (Divinity School) tags and links photographs, transliterations, and grammatical parse of Elamite Fortification documents.

Figure 6. Two views of an Aramaic Fortification tablet: left, PTM image highlighting seal impression;
right, BetterLight scan with red filter, highlighting inked text

More than 20,000 conventional and high-quality digital images, more than 7,000 low-resolution PTM sets, more than 3,200 editions of Elamite texts, and 100 editions of Aramaic texts, drawings, and analytical information on more than 650 new seals and a catalog of about 1,100 previously known seals have been entered in OCHRE in preparation for public display. As of mid-2010, about 1,400 Fortification tablets are publicly available on OCHRE, including 1,250 Elamite tablets presented with transliterations, many with translations, and all with click-through glossary and morphological parsing, conventional photographs (many of them tagged and linked to transliterations), seal analysis, and other options; 40 Aramaic tablets, presented with transliterations, translations, seal information, click-through glossary and parse, and high-quality images, including screen-resolution PTM images that allow the viewer to control the lighting on screen; and 110 uninscribed, sealed tablets with cataloging information, some collated drawings, and high-quality images, including live screen-resolution PTM imagery.

Figure 7. OCHRE display of an Elamite Fortification tablet, text, translation, and seal impression

The West Semitic Research Project (WSRP) team at the University of Southern California presents images of Persepolis Fortification tablets via their online application InscriptiFact. Publicly available there as of mid-2010 are about 15,000 images of about 525 Persepolis Fortification tablets, including 400 Aramaic and 100 uninscribed tablets. In the spring of 2010, InscriptiFact released a new version that incorporates a robust online viewer for high-resolution PTM imagery. This allows users to manipulate apparent lighting (direction, intensity, and focus of one light or two) and apparent surface reflectivity and to compare PTM views with one another and with high-resolution static images. The viewer and the PTM files can also be downloaded for local use.

Figure 8. Antiquity at Persepolis: three views of the seal impression and Aramaic epigraph on reverse
of an Elamite Fortification tablet (PF 2026), displayed in Inscriptifact. Left: static views with polarized light and infrared filter; right, high-resolution PTM image. The Old Babylonian seal was more than 1,000 years old when it made this impression

Efforts to promote awareness of the plight of the Persepolis Fortification Archive, the unique qualities and value of the Persepolis Fortification Archive, and the aims, methods, and results of the Persepolis Fortification Archive Project included a panel at the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America in January 2010, with presentations by me and by Persepolis Fortification Archive Project members Annalisa Azzoni, Dennis Campbell, Elspeth Dusinberre, and Mark Garrison, along with WSRP collaborators Marilyn Lundberg and Bruce Zuckerman (USC). A panel at the annual meeting of the American Oriental Society honoring the Achaemenid historian (and member of the Persepolis Fortification Archive Project’s international advisory board) Amélie Kuhrt included papers by me and by project editors Garrison and Henkelman, and one by graduate student Persepolis Fortification Archive Project worker Tytus Mikolajczak. As professeur invité at the Collège de France in Paris in November 2009, Garrison gave four lectures on the glyptic art of the Persepolis Fortification Archive, drawing on recent project results. Azzoni lectured on the Persepolis Fortification Archive and the project at the Warren Center for the Humanities at Vanderbilt University, and at Baylor University. Dusinberre presented a talk on the Persepolis Fortification Archive at the Boulder, Colorado, Society of the Archaeological Institute of America. I talked about the Persepolis Fortification Archive and the project in and around Chicago at the Harvard Club, at the University of Chicago Humanities Day, at Wheaton College, at the Illinois Institute of Technology, at the Franke Institute for the Humanities, and at the Midwest Faculty Seminar; farther afield I talked at an event organized by Friends of the Persepolis Fortification Archive Project in Palo Alto (a video of the talk is available), at Berkeley, at the New York University Humanities Institute, at the University of Pennsylvania, at a symposium of the American Institute of Iranian Studies in New York, and at the British Museum. At Johns Hopkins University, I had the honor of devoting the annual W. F. Albright Memorial Lecture to the Persepolis Fortification Archive Project. At Oxford University, I described our methods and experience to the staff of an Oxford-Southampton pilot project using PTM imaging to record ancient artifacts.

Figure 9. Athenian owl in Persepolis and California; title slide of PFA Project panel at 2010 meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America: an Athenian tetradrachm impressed on an uninscribed Fortification tablet, and the same image incorporated in the emblem of the AIA

For the worldwide online audience, the Persepolis Fortification Archive Project Weblog provides access to articles from scholarly and news media about the archive, the lawsuit, and topics in Achaemenid archaeology and epigraphy: thirty-six entries were posted in the last year. Persepolis Fortification Archive Project editor Charles Jones (Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York) reports that the blog has been viewed more than 18,000 times in the last year, by more than 12,000 unique visitors, more than 1,800 of them repeat visitors. It has been viewed almost 70,000 times since it debuted in October 2006.

The University News Office released a new press release on the project’s collaboration with WSRP in recording the Aramaic Fortification texts, with an accompanying video. Online journalistic accounts focus on the archive’s legal situation and its broader implications for other cultural artifacts; examples are an article in the Phi Beta Kappa Society’s Key Reporter by a lawyer working at Corcoran and Rowe, the firm representing Iran in the litigation, and an article in the online journal of the U.S. State Department, America.gov.

Persepolis Fortification Archive Project editorial staff (Azzoni, Dusinberre, Garrison, Henkelman, Jones, and Stolper) prepared an entry for the Encyclopaedia Iranica on “Persepolis Administrative Archives,” providing an authoritative description of the Persepolis Fortification and Treasury Archives
and an extensive bibliography of current scholarship on them. Images, texts, analysis, and other current results also appear in a stream of publications by project staff and their collaborators, for example, “Seals Bearing Hieroglyphic Inscriptions from the Persepolis Fortification Archive” by Mark Garrison and Oriental Institute Egyptologist Robert Ritner, and “The First Achaemenid Administrative Document Discovered at Persepolis” by Charles E. Jones and Seunghee Yie, both in ARTA: Achaemenid Research on Texts and Archaeology; “Archers at Persepolis,” by Mark Garrison, in The World of Achaemenid Persia, edited by J. Curtis and St. John Simpson (London, 2010); and “New Observations on ‘Greeks’ in the Achaemenid Empire,” by Wouter Henkelman and Robert Rollinger, and “Ethnic Identity and Ethnic Labelling at Persepolis,” by Wouter Henkelman and me, both in Organisation des pouvoirs et contacts culturels dans les pays de l’empire achéménide, edited
by P. Briant and M. Chauveau (Paris, 2009).

In last year’s Annual Report, I mentioned that I was particularly pleased to have found a document of a new type, an example of the surprises that the Persepolis Fortification Archive still has to offer. Now I can report with even more delight that we have found four other examples of the same type. What began as an extraordinary sidelight has become a repeating feature of the Persepolis Fortification Archive’s structure and function. This is a well-known phenomenon in work on ancient Near Eastern texts and objects: finding one clear example of something newly understood brings other examples out of the shadows. It is a reminder that the Persepolis Fortification Archive Project is not only producing emergency records of basic information; it is also making strides in our ability to interpret the information.

Figure 10. Old Persian tablet from the Persepolis Fortification Archive illustrated on the dust jacket of
Numerical Notation: A Comparative History (Cambridge, 2009)

Gratifying in another sense is the citation of the unique Old Persian Fortification text in Stephen Chrisomalis’s Numerical Notation: A Comparative History. The expected audience for the Persepolis Fortification Archive, students of the Achaemenid Persian empire as a whole or in its parts, is scattered among academic subdisciplines, but this citation testifies to the value of the Persepolis Fortification Archive for an unanticipated audience and unexpected research, and it vindicates the use of electronic techniques and media.

A sadder note in closing: July brought the startling news of the sudden death of John Melzian. John was an industrial designer by training and profession and key member of the InscriptiFact team by inclination and choice. He built and installed the Persepolis Fortification Archive Project’s PTM domes, and he supported the work of the project with curiosity, perspicacity, realism, and grace.

News: Persepolis II back in print

2010-12-08T11:26:00.000-06:00

After several decades out of print, Oriental Institute Publication 69, Persepolis II: Contents of the Treasury and Other Discoveries, has been digitally reprinted. An Adobe Portable Document Format (pdf) version is also available for download.

Go to the chronicle of news on Persepolis.

Go to the chronicle of news on the Persepolis Fortification Archive.

News: NIAC Grant for an education campaign about the Persepolis artifacts

2010-12-02T11:09:00.001-06:00

Major New Grant Awards Will Help Build the Capacity of Iranian-Americans
Thursday, December 2, 2010
By: NIAC Press Release

NIAC has received three major grant awards totaling $446,000 from the Parsa Community Foundation, the leading philanthropic organization serving the Iranian-American community.

For Immediate Release
Contact: Nobar Elmi
Phone: 202-386-6325
Email: nelmi@niacouncil.org

... A third grant will underwrite a comprehensive media and education campaign about the Persepolis artifacts, priceless Persian antiquities currently caught in a legal battle. The case is ongoing and its outcome could set potentially shattering precedents for the art world, museums and cultural institutions worldwide, as well as have a deep, negative impact on the cultural identity of Americans of Iranian descent.

Go to the chronicle of news on Persepolis.

Go to the chronicle of news on the Persepolis Fortification Archive.

Persepolis in the News

2010-10-27T15:40:00.005-05:00

Beginning January 1, 2007, this page will include links to stories from the news on Persepolis, but not related to the Persepolis Fortification Archive. News stories on the archive will be in Persepolis Tablets in the News.

Achaemenid palace found in Iran
Posted by TANN
7:15 PM

Archaeologists have unearthed an ancient palace dating back to the Achaemenid dynasty in Dahaneh Gholaman located in Iran's southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchestan.

The Dahaneh Gholaman site, in Iran's southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchestan [Credit: Press TV]
Comparing the structure in the Dahaneh Gholaman site with Achaemenid palaces in Takht-e Jamshid and Pasargaad proved that the newly-found site dates to the Achaemenid era, said Kourosh Mohammadkhani, leader of the archeological team, IRNA reported.

He added that the finding is the most significant achievement in the current phase of the recent study.

The Dahaneh Gholaman site comprises of 54 ancient structures, most of which were discovered during the years 1959 and 2008.

Takht-e Jamshid (Throne of Jamshid) or Persepolis was the ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid Empire (550-330 BCE) which is located in Iran's Fars Province.

Pasargadae was also the capital of another Achaemenid king, Cyrus (559-530 BCE), and is the location of his tomb. Recent research has shown that Achaemenid engineers constructed the city to withstand a severe earthquake.

Source: Press TV [July 31, 2011]

The squeezes contain Arabic script, Middle Persian, and Cuneiform impressions from archaeological sites: Bastam, Isfahan, Rayy, Samarra, Shiraz, Sunghur, Taq-i Bustan, Tus, Sarpul, Pasargadae, Persepolis, Naqsh-i Rustam, and Paikuli.

See today's notice of updates on Ernst Herzfeld Online Resources by Rachael Cristine Woody on the Smithsonian blog.

After several decades out of print, Oriental Institute Publication 69, Persepolis II: Contents of the Treasury and Other Discoveries, has been digitally reprinted. An Adobe Portable Document Format (pdf) version is also available for download.

3d Imaging to Unlock Ancient Mysteries

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Rachael Cristine Woody

Archivist

Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives

There are some very exciting activities happening around the Freer|Sackler Gallery, and in the Archives specifically. I am going to unveil to you my favorite object. I know I say that about a lot of the collections I show you, but this object really is an amazing specimen. Let me introduce to you squeeze 50A. For you to better understand, below are a couple definitions.

A squeeze: is a series of sheets of paper that are layered on top of each other and moistened to create a wet pulp affect. This substance is pressed upon the inscriptions capturing the impressionistic writing like a 3-dimensional negative affect. These inscriptions typically cover the ancient culture's mythology, and histories. The squeezes in the Ernst Herzfeld papers are roughly 80-100 years old. The squeezes have been made out of varying qualities of paper from very high grade, to cigarette paper Herzfeld must of had to use in a pinch. The squeezes have since been transported around the world, squished in non-archival approved ways, and suffer from various issues that affect all paper products.

Squeezing: Here, you see Herzfeld and his team on ladders applying the wet paper to the monuments of ancient Iran.

Ernst Herzfeld: Archaeologist, art historian, and architect who excavated pre-Islamic and early Islamic sites.

Read the rest...

Iran publishes Persepolis petroglyph translations, PRESSTV, Wed, 05 Aug 2009 14:33:30 GMT

Iran's Center for the Great Islamic Encyclopedia (CGIE) has published Persian translations of a number of Persepolis petroglyphs.

The inscriptions have been translated by Iranian linguist and inscriptions expert Abdolmajid Arfaei and published in a book titled Translations of Persepolis Walls.

In an interview with ISNA News Agency, Arfaei said that the book contains 164 texts translated between 1998 and 2003.

“The original texts belong to Iran's National Museum and there might still be some inscriptions which have not been translated,” Arfaei said.

“The book includes Persian and English introductions as well as a Persian grammar section,” he added, saying that the English preface contains information on the original location of the inscriptions and the people who used them during the Achaemenid era.

Arfaei who is an Elamite language expert and the founder of the Inscriptions Hall of Iran's National Museum has also translated over 2,500 Persepolis inscriptions, which are housed at the University of Chicago.

His Decree of Cyrus the Great is a detailed account of the inscriptions on the Cyrus Cylinder, considered to be the world's first charter of human rights.

Alla scoperta di Persepoli, by Tiziano Mainier, sabato sera online, 2 July 2009

Riemerge una parte sepolta della città, grazie agli scavi compiuti dagli archeologi italiani. Intervista a Pierfrancesco Callieri, direttore della missione.

Destruction of Persepolis stone barrier denied, TEHRAN, June 5 (MNA).

An official of the Parsa and Pasargadae Research Center (PPRC) denied the destruction of a stone from the staircase structure in the Council Hall at Persepolis last week.

A block of stone from the northern stairway structure of the Council Hall was removed in the course of a restoration project that had been taking place over the past few weeks, the official, who requested anonymity, told the MNA.

The block was then reinstalled in-situ after deposits of sand and mud were cleaned from the fractures and crevices, he added...

Italian archeologists find commoner’s neighborhoods in Persepolis , adnkronos.com, Venerdì 5 Giugno 2009.

Rome – A joint Iranian-Italian archeological mission in Iran has made an exceptional discovery: the archeologists have found the first traces of the urban settlement in Persepolis, one of the five capitals of the Achaemenid Empire in ancient Persia, the construction of which began in 520 BC under the Emperor Darius the Great and lasted almost seventy years. In an interview with the “Tehran Times”, translated by the magazine “Archeologia Viva” (Giunti Editore), the Italian director of the mission, Pierfrancesco Callieri, professor of Archeology and Iranian Art History at the University of Bologna, affirmed that the new findings at the Persepolis site have furnished initial information on the city and on the neighborhoods where the common people lived. During the course of the excavations of the flat area at the foot of the Great Achaemenid Terrace and about 1 km from here, the team led by Professor Callieri discovered the first traces of a residential area which could correspond to the city of Mattezish, mentioned in the Elamite tablets in Persepolis. During the Achaemenid period (6th- 4th century BC), all the people working for the Imperial Court lived here, from functionaries to workers. Professor Callieri said that in one of the two excavation sites, “we localized a noteworthy structure, probably the walls of one of the building complexes of the city” instead in the other sites the archeologists localized “an artisan area with an oven and various waste ditches, surely connected to the work activities of the area as we found various ceramic pieces but also fragments of animal bones”.

Achaemenid Persian Griffin Capital at Persepolis, Posted by Patrick Hunt, Archaeolog, May 4, 2009.

One of the most impressive yet enigmatic surviving capitals from Persepolis is an Achaemenid masterpiece: the double griffin protome capital. On the one hand, there ought to be more than one of these griffin capitals from before the 330 BCE destruction, although it seems that only this extant one is intact. On the other hand, it is possible that only one was sculpted, since no other griffin protome fragments exist from Persepolis. A few archaeological accounts suggest its emplaced context at Persepolis was from the Apadana, although this cannot be proven since only 13 of the 36 (arranged 6 x 6) columns have survived, given the “conflagration…and catastrophic end” recorded under Alexander. More than a few scholars, including Wiesehöfer, maintain that numerous structures at Persepolis were not destroyed in 330 but only parts thereof and that some use continued thereafter.

South Korean Diplomat Arrested with a Stolen Stone Relief from Persepolis while Leaving Iran, CAIS NEWS: Latest Archaeological and Cultural News of Iran and the Iranian World, 04 March 2009.

LONDON, (CAIS) -- The 3rd Secretary of the South Korean Embassy in Iran has reportedly tried to smuggle a priceless relic dating to the Achaemenid dynastic era out of Iran.

Customs officials in Shiraz Airport found the relic in the South Korean diplomat's luggage during check-in, before the diplomat succeeded in transporting the priceless relic of Persepolis, Persian daily Tabnak reported on Tuesday.

Iranian Police, however, had to release the diplomat due to his diplomatic immunity, the report added.

“Customs officials in Shiraz Airport found an Achaemenid relief depicting the top section of head of an Achaemenid soldier, weigh 2kg from Persepolis in the luggage of the 3rd Secretary of the South Korean Embassy in Iran,” Shiraz public and revolutionary prosecutor, Jaber Banshi told IRNA.

“The relic has been delivered to the provincial cultural heritage office, but no cultural official has filed a complaint so far,” he added.

The S. Korean embassy declined to comment on the issue when contacted by Press TV.

The customs officials sent the stolen piece back to the ruins of Persepolis.

It is not clear how the diplomat obtained the relic, despite the claim by IRNA that the he picked it up while visiting the Persepolis.

Marvdasht Public Prosecutor's Office: The Case of Persepolis Robbery and its' Destruction Still is Open, 03 March 2009. CAIS: The Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies

LONDON, (CAIS) -- The case of destruction of part of Persepolis and the theft of an artefact are still open, and it is under investigation by the Marvdasht Public Prosecutor's Office, reported the Persian service of ISNA.

Until now 16 people from the excavation group and Security Unit office have been arrested, questioned and released on bail pending further investigations. The case was initially opened as the result of public and Iran Cultural Heritage, Handicraft and Tourism Organisation's complaints, said Kazam Akrami from the Marvdasht Public Prosecutor's Office.

Akrami with commented on the lack of CCTV in the area and said we have interrogated security officers who are responsible for safeguarding the site and they have relinquished themselves from any responsibility, since they claim the robbed grave and its' contents were not reported to the Security Unit by the archaeologists, therefore the site was not included in the protection coverage zone.?

Afshin Yazdani from Archaeological Research Centre, back in January asserted that the Security Unit was aware of their excavation and the discovery of the grave.

It is not clear whether the archaeologists from the Iran Archaeological Research Centre had a duty to report their findings to the security unit, or if they had reported it, the security unit are denying their claim.

The robbed grave is only 100 meters away from their station.

The theft and destruction of the site took place on 17th January, after the discovery of an Achaemenid dynastic grave by archaeologists. The grave contained a skeleton, a ceramic beaker and a burner. The beaker was contained a grave offering which is now missing.

Archaeologists have found broken pottery near the grave, which could be the beaker - maybe it was broken in order to remove its' contents. Currently the broken pieces are in process of being reassembled and it is now 80% complete, to verify if they belong to the missing beaker. The point of reference is the pictures taken by archaeologists on the day of crime.

This is not the first time thieves have targeted Persepolis. The most puzzling theft from Persepolis was taken place in March 2006, when police seized a double-bull-headed capital in Kerman. The Persepolitan-capital was discovered in Kerman by vigilantes and reported to police. The artefact was bound to leave Iran for West. Neither, the ICHHTO, Persepolis officials or any of the Islamic Republic's state controlled news agencies had reported the robbery -- nor did they offer any explanation as how such a colossal capital which weighs few tones could be removed from Persepolis complex without the officials' knowledge.

Wonders of Iran: Persepolis, Sat, 07 Feb 2009 17:47:14 GMT. By Tamara Ebrahimpour, Press TV, Tehran

["As German philosopher Friedrich Hegel once said, "The principle of development begins with the history of Persia; this constitutes therefore the beginning of history."...]

Experts excavating ancient water wells in Parsa, Tuesday, January 13, 2009, Tehran Times

["TEHRAN -- A team of archaeologists are currently excavating water wells of the ancient city of Parsa near the Persepolis...."]

Tomb of Cyrus sheds its metal cage, Thu, 18 Dec 2008 11:59:46 GMT

["The restoration of the tomb of the founder of the Persian Empire, Cyrus the Great, has been completed and its metal scaffolding removed. After three stages of restoration, the structure stands strong and will not sustain any further damage. The work on the historical site has gained UNESCO approval..."]

Parsa emerges from the shadow of Persepolis, by Hamid Golpira, Mehr News Agency, Tehran, 12/01/08

["The ancient town of Parsa has begun to emerge from the shadows of Persepolis. An Iranian-Italian joint archaeological team has brought to light the first remains of the town of Parsa, which was the residential area of commoners just outside the palaces of Persepolis..."]

A five-centimeter fragment of a blue ware in the form of a wing is one of most
important artifacts unearthed by the Iranian-Italian joint archaeological team
during their latest excavation at the ancient town of Parsa near Persepolis.

Achaemenid era "eye stones" used either as the
eyes of statues or as amulets to repel the evil eye have been
discovered by the Iranian-Italian joint archaeological team during
their latest excavation at the ancient town of Parsa near
Persepolis.

Remains of a wall were brought to light at one of the trenches dug by the Iranian-Italian joint archaeological team searching for the residential area of commoners outside the palaces of Persepolis. It is believed to be one of the boundary walls of the city of Parsa.

"Iran, The Forgotten Glory", Nov 30, 2008, Iranian.ws

["IRAN, The Forgotten Glory" is an attempt to recapture the story of the glory of the ancient Persian Empire in a documentary film for the first time. Taking the audience on a 3000 year old journey, to visit the greatest empire of the Mesopotamian civilization, The Achaemenids, who’s territory extended from India to the boarders of Europe...."]

Persepolis studies yield new findings,Sun, 26 Oct 2008 10:35:13 GMT (PRESS TV)

["...Twenty five objects were also unearthed in the area as a result of the current studies. The discovery included jewels, ancient weapons, and pieces left over from broken statues, potteries and azure plates..."]

Iranian, Italian archaeologists excavating Persepolis
TEHRAN, Oct. 19 (Mehr News Agency)

In a blog entry entitled Let’s Abandon Achaemenid Studies, Jona Lendering reviews three recent volumes on the Achaemenid Empire aimed at general audiences (and he's not pleased):
1. Kaveh Farrokh’s Shadows in the Desert;
2. Tom Holland’s Persian Fire;
3. Bruce Lincoln’s, Religion, Empire, and Torture.

Persepolis under modern tech excavation
Sun, 04 May 2008 14:36:54 Press TV

Iran: Discovery of one of the ten largest Achaemenid buildings with a structure similar to Persepolis
02/08/08 (Payvand.com)
A report on this year's excavations at Noorabad, Mamasani, Fars province.

Achaemenid Soldier Fetched in London
Tehran, 27 October 2007 (CHN Foreign Desk)
Despite all oppositions made by Iran regarding the sale of the head of the Achaemenid soldier, it has been sold in Christie’s auction in London.
And see also: The Denyse Berend Persepolis relief fragment is for sale at Christie's, and Iran boycotts bas-relief sale at Christie's, and UNESCO not Support Iran to Retrieve its Achaemenid Soldier, and IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION, Royal Courts of Justice, Strand, London, WC2A 2LL, 1st February 2007. B e f o r e : THE HON. MR JUSTICE EADY. Between: The Islamic Republic of Iran, Claimant - and - Denyse Berend, Defendant: HTML VERSION OF JUDGMENT England and Wales High Court (Queen's Bench Division) Decisions, 1st February 2007, and British court's decision on the ownership of the Persepolis relief fragment bought in 1974 by Denyse Berend, as well as earlier comments by Derek Fincham, of Illicit Cultural Property: No renvoi in Iran v. Berend, and Martin George, of ConflictOfLaws.Net: Rejecting Renvoi: Iran v Berend.

Austria to help restore Persepolis
Sun, 07 Oct 2007 08:18:4.
"With a joint project estimated to cost 30 million euros, Iran and Austria will restore Iran's foremost historic site, Persepolis."

The Denyse Berend Persepolis relief fragment is for sale at Christie's again at the October 25th Antiquities auction (see the articles below from January and February 200). Apparently it has been suggested that the Iranian government purchase it, and aparently the suggestion is being rejected:

Iran boycotts bas-relief sale at Christie's
Sun, 02 Sep 2007 11:14:25 (PressTV).

and

UNESCO not Support Iran to Retrieve its Achaemenid Soldier
Tehran, 3 September 2007 (CHN Foreign Desk).

Iran's Apadana column restored
Wed, 18 Jul 2007 19:47:36 (PressTV).

Website featuring Achaemenid art
Thu, 07 Jun 2007 18:37:05 (PressTV).

International Attempt for Cleaning up Lichen from Persepolis
ehran, 13 May 2007 (CHN Foreign Desk).

"Iran in conjunction with UNESCO has called an international cooperation for cleaning up the lichen from body of Persepolis World Heritage Site." [Nicely illustrated]

Persepolis outdoor museum to be opened
Thu, 22 Mar 2007 22:52:10. © Press TV 2007.

"A new outdoor museum in the ancient city of Persepolis, in southwestern Iran, is scheduled to open during Nowruz holidays, showcasing items belonging to Iran's Achaemenid and Sassanid eras."

A Glimpse of Things to Come
BY A STAFF REPORTER Friday, February 16, 2007 8:42:24 IST. © 2007, Cybernoon.

"... The Jeejeebhoy Dadabhoy Agiary at Navy Nagar was the scene of chaos yesterday. The ancient city of Persepolis, Persia, is being re-created in all its glory and splendour ..."

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION, Royal Courts of Justice, Strand, London, WC2A 2LL, 1st February 2007. B e f o r e : THE HON. MR JUSTICE EADY. Between: The Islamic Republic of Iran, Claimant - and - Denyse Berend, Defendant: HTML VERSION OF JUDGMENT
England and Wales High Court (Queen's Bench Division) Decisions, 1st February 2007.

British court's decision on the ownership of the Persepolis relief fragment bought in 1974 by Denyse Berend.
Update: Derek Fincham, of Illicit Cultural Property, comments on the case : No renvoi in Iran v. Berend.
Update: Martin George, of ConflictOfLaws.Net, comments on the case : Rejecting Renvoi: Iran v Berend.

Ancient Middle East fascinates Mexican museum goers
Reuters, Fri Feb 2, 2007 11:44 AM GMT

"MEXICO CITY, Feb 2 (Reuters Life!) - Fascinated by cultures as old as their own, Mexicans are pouring into museum exhibitions in wonder at ancient Middle Eastern artefacts never before seen in the Western Hemisphere ... A stone plaque inscribed in cuneiform script from the ancient city of Persepolis, destroyed by Alexander the Great in 330 BC, is one of the highlights. 'I didn't know Iran had such fabulous stuff, like gold cups and statues,' said retired clerk Sergio Zavala, 68, on his fourth visit to the Persia display. 'I always used to think of Iran and Iraq just as places of conflict,' he said ..."

Persépolis, arquitectura celestial o terrenal? by Manel Garcia Sanchez.
Preprint of an article to appear in AZARA, PEDRO; FRONTISI-DUCROUX, FRANÇOISE; LURI, GREGORIO (eds.), Arquitecturas celestiales, Actas del congreso internacional celebrado en el Centro de Cultura Contemporánea de Barcelona, 14-16 de septiembre de 2006 (sous presse, 2007).
Published online at Achemenet.

"Persepolis, one of the Achaemenid empire capitals has been seen as a secret and ritual city, designed for the celebration of the Zoroastrian New Year Festival or Now Ruz on the vernal equinox. The silence of the classic authors, of the biblical books and the ancient near east tablets, as well as the majestic relieves in which the royal hero fights against bestiaries, which are the symbol of the Evil Spirit, had been used as an evidence to confirm that suggestive hypothesis. Nevertheless, if we interpret the Persepolitan iconography in the light of what we know about the religion and the ideology of the Achaemenids and if we do not find dark means in the silences of the sources, we find that the design of the city responds more to a political, ideological and earthly functionality than a wish of reflecting a celestial architecture..."

London Court to Officially Announce its Verdict to Iran
Cultural Heritage News, Iran, 27 January 2007

"In a formal statement, London’s High Court will be delivering its recent ruling on bas-relief of the Achaemenid soldier, which was announced on Jan. 19, 2007, to Iran in two weeks.

According to Omid Ghanami, director of the Legal Department of Iran’s Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organization (ICHTO), the Organization is waiting to receive the written verdict to make follow-up decisions. He also said that Iran wills take actions against the court’s ruling if given the right to object to the final decree..."

Court of London Ignores Iran’s Ownership of Achaemenid Bas-relief
Cultural Heritage News, Iran, Mon Jan 22, 2007

Iran loses court battle over ancient carving
Reuters, Fri Jan 19, 2007 8:03 PM GMT

"LONDON (Reuters) - Iran on Friday lost a legal battle against an 85-year-old French widow over a piece of carved limestone from the ancient Persian capital of Persepolis.

London's High Court ruled in favour of Denyse Berend, who bought the artefact in 1974, in a case brought against her by the Iranian government which sought to reclaim the relief fragment..."

Museums face fallout in fight over carving
By Stephanie Condron
Last Updated: 2:35am GMT 17/01/2007

"A stone carving of the head of a guardsman from the ancient palace of Persian kings at Persepolis is at the centre of a High Court battle that could have worldwide repercussions for museums and art collections.

For more than 30 years, the 5th century BC relief has been in the possession of a Frenchwoman who bought it at an auction in New York in 1974 and displayed it on her living room wall..."

No ban on Persepolis in Iran: official
Tuesday, January 16, 2007 - ©2005 IranMania.com

"LONDON, January 16 (IranMania) - Head of Iran’s Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization’s Research Center has said that enthusiasts, cameramen and researchers cannot be banned from entering historical monument of Takht-e Jamshid (Persepolis) in Fars province.

Seyyed Taha Hashemi told ISNA on the sidelines of the inaugural ceremony for Research Week that the competence of cultural and tourism stations is determined by the fact that they remain vigilant against any threat and at the same time they permit the entry of researchers and visitors to the sites..."

Persepolis to Host Biggest Horse Riding Festival in Iran
Cultural Heritage News, Iran - Jan 15, 2007

"Tehran, 15 January 2007 (CHN Foreign Desk) -- The biggest horse riding festival in Iran will be held in April/May 2007 close to Persepolis historic complex in Iran’s Fars province under the joint cooperation of sport tourism committee of Iran’s Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organization (ICHTO), Iran’s Equestrian Federation, and UNESCO..."

Fate of Iran's Bolaghi Valley hangs in balance
Monday, January 15, 2007 - ©2005 IranMania.com

"LONDON, January 15 (IranMania) - The reservoir of the Sivand Dam will be filled, pending archaeologists’ decision at a seminar to be held in Tehran on January 20, the Cultural Heritage, Tourism, and Handicrafts Organization (CHTHO) Research Center director said at a press conference, MNA reported.

“All the archaeologists that participated in the rescue excavations of the Bolaghi Valley will present their reports during the seminar. If the reports indicate that the rescue excavations have been completed, the filling of the dam will begin,” Taha Hashemi added..."

Red stains removed from Iran's Persepolis
Thursday, January 04, 2007 - ©2005 IranMania.com

"LONDON, January 4 (IranMania) - A team of experts from the Parseh and Pasargadae Foundation announced that they had successfully removed the red stains from the floor and walls of the Hadish Palace of Xerxes in Persepolis, MNA reported.
The stains were left by a film crew shooting a TV series in late December that used red liquid to represent blood in a scene..."

Leading train through tunnel, only way to save Naqsh-e Rostam
Islamic Republic News Agency, Iran - Jan 1, 2007
After studying different alternatives for saving the cultural landscape of the historic site of Naqsh-e Rostam against railway construction, experts of Parse-Pasargadae Research Center concluded that the most effective way to prevent the railway from intruding the historic landscape of this Achaemenid site is to construct a 6-kilometer-long tunnel from Sivand to Shoul village and direct the train through the tunnel.

Announcing this news, Hassan Rahsaz, an expert in Parse-Pasargadae Research Center explained that the tunnel could be constructed at a distance of 4 to 5 kilometers from Naqsh-e Rostam without posing any threat to its ancient structures..."

News: Talk at Illinois Wesleyan University

2010-10-20T16:03:00.001-05:00

Professor Studying Embattled Tablets Being Returned to Iran to Speak for Ides of November
Oct. 26, 2010
Illinois Wesleyan News

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Illinois Wesleyan University will welcome Professor of Assyriology Matthew Stolper on Monday, November 15 at 4 p.m. in Beckman Auditorium of The Ames Library (1 Ames Plaza, Bloomington). His talk, titled “Shattered Window on the Persian Empire: Rescuing the Persepolis Fortification Archive,” is sponsored by the Greek & Roman Studies Department, Eta Sigma Phi and the Classics Club, and is part of the Ides Lecture & Performance Series.

The director of the Persepolis Fortification Archive Project at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute, Stolper studies clay tablets discovered in the ancient ruins of Persepolis in the 1930s by a University of Chicago expedition. Stolper is hoping to make the tens of thousands of the Persepolis clay tablets, which recorded the daily rule of Achemenid Persian kings from 550-330 B.C., available online. American survivors of terrorist bombings are asking Federal courts to award them possession of the Persepolis Fortification tablets to satisfy punitive judgments against the Islamic Republic of Iran.
“There is only one Persepolis Fortification Archive,” Stolper said. “It’s the richest, densest, most complex source of information on the languages, society, institutions, and art of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Breaking it up or losing it entirely without harvesting all of this information would leave a tragic wound in the history of civilization.”

For additional information about the speaker or the Ides series, contact the Greek and Roman Studies Department at (309) 556-3173.

Contact: Rachel Hatch, (309) 556-3960

Go to the chronicle of news on Persepolis.

Go to the chronicle of news on the Persepolis Fortification Archive.

Persepolis sequence from The Human Adventure (again)

2010-10-05T10:38:00.000-05:00

In June I posted a link to an online version of the Persepolis sequence from The Human Adventure. Shortly thereafter the OI asserted its copyright and the clip was removed. Yesterday the Oriental Institute launched its own Youtube Channel. It's first public offering is the complete film.

The Human Adventure

This 1935 film, produced by the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago under the supervision of Dr. James Henry Breasted was written and told by his son, Charles Breasted. Though we no longer think about archaeology in the same way, this film gives us insight into the early days of the field.

Data (minimal) on the Human adventure is at IMDb, and at Turner Classic Movies.

And see a Review of a Review of The Human Adventure.

The Iranian sequence begins at 48:10

Online review of L’archive des Fortifications de Persépolis

2010-10-03T13:21:00.000-05:00

AJA Online Publications: Book Reviews

L’archive des Fortifications de Persépolis: État des questions et perspectives de recherches. Actes du colloque organisé au Collège de France, 3–4 novembre 2006
Edited by Pierre Briant, Wouter F.M. Henkelman, and Matthew W. Stolper (Persika 12). Pp. 574, figs. 126, pls. 11, charts 8, tables 28, plans 2, map 1. De Boccard, Paris 2008. €117. ISBN 978-7018-0249-7 (paper).

Reviewed by Bruno Jacobs

A personal take on the project

2010-08-04T14:43:00.001-05:00

Persepolis Fortification Archive Project from Joshua Elek's Me Things, The Stuff I Think...

...I've been trying to get in on the project for a few months now. Originally I heard that I could get in on it, and then I heard that there might not be enough room on the machines to help. I kept asking and today I got an email saying that I can start tomorrow. Which means that tomorrow morning at 8:00, I'll be walking into the Oriental Institute to start editing the photos of these documents hoping to help preserve the Persepolis Administrative Archives. Man, this is cool. I can't wait to start.

New in ARTA

2010-07-15T10:09:00.002-05:00

Pierre Amiet, Le palais de Darius à Suse: Problèmes et hypothèses. ARTA 2010.001

La publication finale des travaux de la Délégation archéologique française en Iran, le Palais de Darius à Suse, était très attendue. Elle a été conçue par le chef de mission, son maître d’oeuvre, comme une synthèse définitive, fondée sur des recherches pluridisciplinaires conduites avec de grands moyens, selon les procédés les plus modernes, avec une équipe de collaborateurs soumis à ses directives. Des personnalités indépendantes ont été associées à cette publication. Or les observations archéologiques nouvelles ont reçu des interprétations qui en sont comme imposées, en éliminant toute autre. Elles posent cependant des problèmes qu’il importe d’exploiter, et d’ouvrir la voie à des vues différentes...

Mark B. Garrison, Robert K. Ritner, From the Persepolis Fortification Archive Project, 2: Seals with Egyptian Hieroglyphic Inscriptions at Persepolis. ARTA 2010.002

Abstract — This article publishes six seals that carry Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions, and one seal that potentially employs Egyptian hieroglyphic signs in a decorative manner, from the Persepolis Fortification archive. These seals are the first evidence for the occurrence of Egyptian hieroglyphic script on seals at Persepolis. The seals raise various issues concerning glyptic use and production within southwestern Iran during the reign of Darius I.

The British Museum Persepolis Type Tablet

2010-06-14T16:02:00.002-05:00

The British Museum Collection Database includes data on the single tablet in that collection that looks like a Persepolis Tablet:

tablet / seal-impression
AN159725001
© The Trustees of the British Museum
Larger image
Use digital image
Print record
Obverse
Obverse
Reverse

Department: Middle East
Registration number: 1914,0407.129
BM/Big number: 108963
Commission photography
Back to search results
Back to search

Object types
tablet (scope note | all objects)
seal-impression (scope note | all objects)

Materials
clay (scope note | all objects)
Techniques
seal-impressed (scope note | all objects)
Production place
Made in Asia (scope note | all objects)
Period/Culture
Neo-Elamite (scope note | all objects)

Description
Right half of clay tablet with four and one and two lines of inscription; late Elamite; seal-impression showing winged figures.

Inscriptions
Inscription Type: inscription
Inscription Script: cuneiform
Inscription Language:

Dimensions
Length: 1.88 inches
Width: 1.88 inches

Condition
Fair; incomplete. Fired 1 Jul 1986. T.W.T. 1 Sep 1986. Completed 24 Sep 1986.

Acquisition date
1914

Acquisition name
Purchased from Albert Amor (biographical details | all objects)
Previous owner/ex-collection Maimon (biographical details | all objects)

Persepolis, The Chicago Blackhawks, and the Stanley Cup

2010-06-10T08:11:00.002-05:00

"So", you ask, "What have Persepolis, The Chicago Blackhawks, and the Stanley Cup got to do with each other"?

For those of you not paying attention: Last evening, the Chicago Blackhawks, an ice hockey team, won the final game of the National Hockey League championship, defeating the Philadelphia Flyers 4-3 in overtime, and claiming the Stanly Cup for the first time in 49 years.

49 years ago, the Blackhawks defeated the Detroit Red Wings for the 1961 championship. In the series leading to that championship two of the greatest athletes in Chicago sports history, Bobby Hull and Stan Mikita made their first Stanley Cup appearances. Hull scored two in the first game including the winner, and Mikita scored the winner in game five.

Robert Marvin "Bobby" Hull was the brother of Barbara Hull. Barbara Hull was married to Richard Hallock. The circle is complete!

So now I ask you, what have the Stanly Cup and WWII cryptography to do with each other?

Persepolis sequence from The Human Adventure

2010-06-09T15:44:00.006-05:00

[1/17/10. As you can see the excerpt of the Human Adventure has been removed because the Oriental Institute asserted it's copyright. You win some you lose some as the saying goes. Maybe it'll appear somewhere else, perhaps even in an authorized form? Watch this space!]

This is the Iran section of the Oriental Institute produced film The Human Adventure, filmed in 1933 and released in 1935. Most of the footage posted here is of the excavations at Persepolis.

Also have a look at a Review of a Review of The Human Adventure

News: A Battle over Ancient Bits of Clay

2010-06-03T13:37:00.002-05:00

A Battle over Ancient Bits of Clay
02 June 2010
By Jeff Baron
Staff Writer
America.gov

Washington — The fate of clay tablets that recorded details of everyday government transactions in the Persian Empire 2,500 years ago might depend on maneuverings in the government of the modern United States.

The tablets — more than 10,000 of them from a long-buried Persian government archive at Persepolis — are at the center of a lobbying effort in the U.S. Congress. They were discovered in 1933 and have been in the United States since 1936, on loan from Iran for study. Scholars, research institutions and Iranian-American groups are trying to protect them from being seized and auctioned off for the benefit of people who have legal claims against the current Iranian government over acts of terrorism...

Go to the chronicle of news on Persepolis.

Go to the chronicle of news on the Persepolis Fortification Archive.

News: Suicide Bombings and Archaeology: Unpredictable Connections

2010-05-17T10:59:00.002-05:00

Suicide Bombings and Archaeology: Unpredictable Connections
mud-brick.com
Monday, May 17th, 2010

In 1933 and 1934, archaeologist Ernst Herzfeld excavated an astonishingly large cache of inscribed tablets at Persepolis, once the monumental capital of the Persian Empire, and now a UNESCO World Heritage site.

On Sept. 4th, 1997, a Hamas-sponsored suicide attack at the Ben Yehuda mall in Jerusalem took the lives of five people, including three young girls.

Thought these two events would be completely disconnected? So did I, and maybe normally they would be. What they have in common is the Islamic Republic of Iran, the country where the tablets were found, and the country that partially funds Hamas. This connection has linked the tablets and the suicide bombing together in an unpredictable lawsuit that threatens the increasingly fragile nature of international archaeological cooperation...

Go to the chronicle of news on Persepolis.

Go to the chronicle of news on the Persepolis Fortification Archive.

Lecture at Cornell: From Persepolis before Persepolis: the Persepolis Fortification Archive in Chicago

2010-05-04T09:35:00.003-05:00

Scholar to speak about Near East archives

Matthew W. Stolper, The John A. Wilson Professor of Oriental Studies in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and the College at the University of Chicago, will spend two days on campus and deliver a lecture on Thursday, May 6 at 4:30 p.m. in the Hedges Conference Room in The Commons.

The lecture, titled “From Persepolis before Persepolis: the Persepolis Fortification Archive in Chicago,” will discuss not only the discoveries from the Persepolis Fortification Archive and the knowledge we have gained and will gain of the ancient Persian Empire, but also the cultural heritage issues surrounding the tablets. The lecture will be the first event introducing Persepolis, ancient and modern, to the Cornell community as part of the One Book, One Campus, One Community program. This year’s book is the graphic novel Persepolis II...

News: Iran Gambles with its Cultural Heritage in U.S. Lawsuits

2010-05-04T09:27:00.003-05:00

Iran Gambles with its Cultural Heritage in U.S. Lawsuits
Apr 29, 2010
E. E. Mazier

By ignoring lawsuits against it and failing to take an active role in the post-judgment phase of those cases, Iran is at risk of seeing a major component of its cultural heritage broken up and sold in pieces. That was the underlying message of an April 27, 2010 lecture by Matthew W. Stolper at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Philadelphia about the Persepolis Fortification Tablets...

Go to the chronicle of news on Persepolis.

Go to the chronicle of news on the Persepolis Fortification Archive.

Johns Hopkins: The William Foxwell Albright Lecture 2010

2010-04-19T08:15:00.002-05:00

Wed., April 21, 5:30 p.m. The William Foxwell Albright Lecture 2010—

“Persian Antiquities in Crisis: The Persepolis Fortification Archive Project at the University of Chicago” by Matthew Stolper, University of Chicago. Sponsored by Near Eastern Studies. 111 Mergenthaler. HW

Film: Terra X: Persien - Die Erbschaft des Feuers

2010-04-11T13:12:00.003-05:00

Terra X: Persien - Die Erbschaft des Feuers

1933 findet der Ernst Herzfeld das Gedächtnis des untergegangenen Perser-Reiches: 30.000 Tontafeln. Der Fund des Palastarchives macht den Archäologen weltberühmt. Doch die Nazis diffamieren ihn

A docudrama about the discoveries at Persepolis: a thrilling story of intrigue and betrayal!

Watch the film here in German. I'm told an English version will soon appear.

Persepolis Fortification Archive in the Encyclopaedia Iranica

2010-04-10T07:26:00.004-05:00

The newly (April 9, 2010) relaunched Encyclopaedia Iranica has greatly enhanced search and display functions. It now allows open access to eighty-eight articles referring to the Persepolis Fortification Tablets:

ĀŠBANAKKUŠ

M. Mayrhofer

name of an Iranian in the Persepolis Fortification Tablets.
BATRAKATAŠ

H. Koch

place name, apparently the same as Pasargadae, which appears on the Elamite fortification tablets found at Persepolis.
ARTAVARDIYA

M. A. Dandamayev

Old Persian personal name.
ĀÇIYĀDIYA

R. Schmitt

(a-ç-i-y-a-di-i-y-), name of the ninth month (November-December) of the Old Persian calendar.
ARTABĒ

M. A. Dandamayev

the Greek form of a Median and Old Persian measure of volume.
ĀÇINA

M. A. Dandamayev

son of Upadarma, a rebel against Darius I.
ANĀMAKA

R. Schmitt

name of the tenth month (December-January) of the Old Persian calendar.
ADUKANAIŠA

R. Schmitt

a-du-u-k-n-i-š-), name of the first month (March-April) of the Old Persian calendar.
GARMAPADA

Rüdiger Schmitt

name of the fourth month (June-July) of the Old Persian calendar.
ARTYSTONE

R. Schmitt

Persian female personal name.
BĀGAYĀDIŠ

R. Schmitt

name of the seventh month (September-October) of the Old Persian calendar, mentioned in Darius I’s Behistun inscription.
AMMITMANYA

M. Mayrhoffer

an Iranian, to whom were entrusted 215 (?) BAR of grain provided for provisions at Tukraš.
ARTASYRAS

M. A. Dandamayev

Greek rendering of an Old Iranian name.
ASPASTES

A. Sh. Shahbazi

Greek form of an Old Persian name attested in the Achaemenid period.
HALLOCK, RICHARD TREADWELL

Charles E. Jones and Matthew W. Stolper

(1906-1980), Elamitologist and Assyriologist, whose magnum opus, Persepolis Fortification Tablets, transformed the study of the languages and history of Achaemenid Persia.
ARTACHAIĒS

A. Sh. Shahbazi

Greek rendering of an Old Iranian name.
ARABĀYA

M. Dandamayev

(Arabia), a province of the Achaemenid empire.
PERSEPOLIS ELAMITE TABLETS

Muhammad Dandamayev

administrative records in Elamite inscribed on clay tablets. Parts of two archives of such tablets were discovered in Persepolis in 1933-34 and 1936-38.
LEWIS, David Malcolm

Amılie Kuhrt

(1928-1994), distinguished historian and epigrapher of Greece in the fifth and fourth century BCE and, by extension, of the Achaemenid empire.
This Article Has Images.
CYRUS, ii. Cyrus I

A. Shapur Shahbazi
CARMANIA

Rüdiger Schmitt

ancient region east of Fārs province, approximately equivalent to modern Kermān. The Old Persian form is attested only once in inscriptions.
ASPAČANĀ

A. Sh. Shahbazi

a senior official under Darius the Great and Xerxes.
ARTYPHIOS

A. Sh. Shahbazi

or ARTYBIOS, Greek rendering of an Old Persian name.
ASPBED

M. L. Chaumont

“master of horses, chief of cavalry,” Parthian title attested in the Nisa documents and the inscription of Šāpūr I on the Kaʿba-ye Zardošt.
ARTABAZUS

M. A. Dandamayev

Old Iranian personal name.
EDUCATION i. IN THE ACHAEMENID PERIOD

Muhammad A. Dandamayev
ARTABANUS

M. A. Dandamayev

Latinized form of an Old Persian proper name.
ATOSSA

R. Schmitt

Achaemenid queen.
GOBRYAS

R

the most widely known (Greek) form of the Old Persian name Gaub(a)ruva.
FASĀ ii. Tall-e Żaḥḥāk

JOHN F. HANSMAN
This Article Has Images.
ASTYAGES

R. Schmitt

the last Median king.
GANZABARA

Matthew W. Stolper

(treasurer), title of provincial and sub-provincial financial administrators in the Achaemenid empire, extended to workers attached to Achaemenid treasuries; title of financial administrators in Parthian and Sasanian provinces; title of temple administra
HAMĀRAKARA

Muhammad A.Dandamayev

(*hmāra-kara-, lit. “account-maker”), “bookkeeper,” an Old Iranian title attested in various sources of Achaemenid and later times.
DĀTA

R

Old Iranian term for “law” attested both in Avestan texts (Old and Younger Av. dāta-) and in Achaemenid royal inscriptions.
ĀΘRAVAN-

M. Boyce

(Avestan) “priest” regularly used to designate the priests as a social “class,” one of the three into which ancient Iranian society was theoretically divided.
ARACHOSIA

R. Schmitt

province in the eastern part of the Achaemenid empire around modern Kandahār, which was inhabited by the Iranian Arachosians or Arachoti.
HIDALI

Matthew W. Stolper

city and region in Elam (q.v.); a residence of Elamite kings in the early 7th century B.C.E., a regional administrative center thereafter.
JĀMĀSPA

W. W. Malandra

an official at the court of Vīštāspa and an early convert of Zarathushtra, who, in the tradition became widely known for his wisdom.
HERZFELD, ERNST iii. HERZFELD AND PERSEPOLIS

Hubertus von Gall

Herzfeld first visited Persepolis in November 1905 during his return from the Assur excavation. He returned to Persepolis during his expedition to Persia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, which lasted from February 1923 to October 1925.
ĀMĀRGAR

D. N. MacKenzie, M. L. Chaumont

a Middle and New Persian word designating a person holding a particular administrative post.
PERSONAL NAMES, IRANIAN iii. ACHAEMENID PERIOD

Rüdiger Schmitt

Evidence from the Achaemenid period is considerable, but in authentic sources, the inscriptions of the kings themselves, fewer than fifty names are documented in their Old Persian form.
DEIOCES

R

(Gk. Dēïókēs), name of a Median king.
BYZANTIUM

Jack Martin Balcer

(Byzantion): contact with the Achaemenids (ca. 513-439 BCE). The Greek polis of Byzantium, in the European province of Thrace (OPers. Skudra), played a pivotal role in the Greco-Persian wars.
HINZ, (A.) WALTHER

Rüdiger Schmitt

German scholar of Persian and Elamite studies (1906-1992).
This Article Has Images.
HYDARNES

Rüdiger Schmitt

(Gk. Hydárnēs), rendering of the Old Persian male name Vidṛna held by several historical persons of the Achaemenid period.
COURTS AND COURTIERS i. In the Median and Achaemenid periods

Muhammad A. Dandamayev
HERZFELD, ERNST v. HERZFELD AND THE HISTORY OF ANCIENT IRAN

Josef Wiesehöfer

Herzfeld’s classical education, giving him familiarity with Greek and Latin literature, and his training in Oriental philology as well as in archeology and architectural techniques proved of great benefit in his study of pre-Islamic Iranian history and culture.
AHURA MAZDĀ

M. Boyce

the Avestan name with title of a great divinity of the Old Iranian religion, who was subsequently proclaimed by Zoroaster as God.
Greece, vii

R

vii. Greek Art and Architecture in Iran.
MALIĀN

Kamyar Abdi

an important archeological site in the Kor River basin in central Fārs, identified as ancient Anshan, the highland capital of Elam.
This Article Has Images.
COMMERCE ii. In the Achaemenid period

Muhammad A. Dandamayev
WEIGHTS AND MEASURES i. PRE-ISLAMIC PERIOD

A. D. H. Bivar
This Article Has Images.
SUSA iii. THE ACHAEMENID PERIOD

Remy Boucharlat

The history of Persia before Cyrus and at the beginning of his reignindicate that Persian elements were present in the plain not far from Susa in the first decades of the 6th century.
This Article Has Images.
DATAMES

R

Iranian personal name, reflecting Old Iranian *Dātama- or *Dātāma-, either a two-stem shortened form *Dāta-m-a- from a compound name like *Dātamiθra- or an unabridged compound *Dātāma-from *Dāta-ama-“to whom force is given.”
ORIENTAL INSTITUTE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

Kamyar Abdi

a major research center devoted to the study of the history, languages, and archeology of the ancient Near East, and Egypt.
ELYMAIS

John F. Hansman

semi-independent state frequently subject to Parthian domination, which existed between the second century B.C.E. and the early third century C. E. in the territories of Ḵūzestān, in southwestern Persia.
ARIYĀRAMNA

A. Sh. Shahbazi

Old Persian proper name.
ARCHEOLOGY ii. Median and Achaemenid

D. Stronach
This Article Has Images.
CUNEIFORM SCRIPT

Rüdiger Schmitt

the conventional name for a system of writing ultimately derived from the pictographic script developed by the Sumerians in southern Mesopotamia (Uruk) around 3000 B.C.E.
ACHAEMENID RELIGION

M. Boyce

Greek writings establish with all reasonable clarity that the later Achaemenids were Zoroastrians; but the religion of the early kings has been much debated.
ECONOMY iii. IN THE ACHAEMENID PERIOD

Muhammad A. Dandamayev
ELAM v. Elamite language

FRANÇOISE GRILLOT-SUSINI
SHIRAZ i. HISTORY TO 1940

A. Shapur Shahbazi

The city of Shiraz has been the capital of the province of Fārs since the Islamic conquest, succeeding Eṣṭaḵr (q.v.) of the Sasanian period and Persepolis (q.v.) of the Achaemenid days.
DASCYLIUM

Michael Weiskopf

Achaemenid satrapy in northwestern Anatolia, part of the Persian empire until the 330s B.C.E.
JAPAN vi. IRANIAN STUDIES IN JAPAN, PRE-ISLAMIC PERIOD

Takeshi Aoki

Ancient Iranian studies in Japan started at the beginning of the 20th century in Tokyo and Kyoto independently.
CONTRACTS

Muhammad A. Dandamayev, Mansour Shaki, EIr

(usually ʿaqd), legally enforceable undertakings between two or more consenting parties.
INDIAN OCEAN

D. T. Potts

This entry will deal with the role of Indian Ocean in international trade in the following periods:

i. Pre-Islamic period. ii. Islamic Period. See Supplement.
EPIGRAPHY i. Old Persian and Middle Iranian epigraphy

Helmut Humbach
FĀRS i. History in the Pre-Islamic Period

Josef Wiesehöfer
EPIGRAPHY ii. Greek inscriptions from ancient Iran

Philip Huyse
COOKING

Multiple Authors

i. In ancient Iran. ii. In Pahlavi literature. iii. Principles and ingredients of modern Persian cooking. iv. In Afghanistan.
PASARGADAE

David Stronach and Hilary Gopnik

capital city and last resting place of Cyrus the Great (r. 559-530 BCE), located in northern Fārs.
This Article Has Images.
ELAM i. The history of Elam

F. Vallat
DARIUS, i.-iii.

R

(NPers. Darīūš, Dārā), name of several Achaemenid and Parthian rulers and princes.
DARIUS, iv.-viii.

Heleen Sanchisi-Weerdenburg, EIr, R

iv. Darius II. v. Darius III. vi. Achaemenid princes. vii. Parthian princes. viii. Darius son of Artabanus.
WOMEN i. In Pre-Islamic Persia

Maria Brosius
FIRE ALTARS

Mark Garrison

a term adopted by modern researchers to designate the stand upon which sacred fire was placed.
BABYLONIA i. History of Babylonia in the Median and Achaemenid periods

M. A. Dandamayev

The Medes, under their king Cyaxares, first seized the Assyrian province of Arrapha in 614 B.C. Then, in the autumn of the same year, and after a fierce battle, they gained control of Assyria’s ancient capital, Assur. Nabopolassar brought his Babylonian army and joined the Medes after Assur had fallen.
CAPITAL CITIES

A. Shapur Shahbazi, C. Edmund Bosworth

these centers played important diplomatic and administrative roles in Iranian history, closely linked to the fortunes of the ruling families.
IRAN ix. RELIGIONS IN IRAN (1) Pre-Islamic (1.1) Overview

Philip G. Kreyenbroek

From the 2nd millennium BCE until Islam became dominant in Iran, a remarkable number of religious traditions existed there.
IONIAN REVOLT

E. Badian

the unsuccessful uprising of the Greek cities of Asia Minor against Achaemenid control, 499-493 BCE. The main and almost the only source for the Revolt is Herodotus of Halicarnassus.
This Article Has Images.
MITHRA i. MITRA IN OLD INDIAN AND MITHRA IN OLD IRANIAN

Hanns-Peter Schmidt

Indo-Iranian god, with name based on the common noun mitrá “contract” with the connotations of “covenant, agreement, treaty, alliance, promise.”
ACHAEMENID SATRAPIES

Bruno Jacobs

the administrative units of the Achaemenid empire.
CALENDARS

Antonio Panaino, Reza Abdollahy, Daniel Balland

Although evidence of calendrical traditions in Iran can be traced back to the 2nd millennium b.c., before the lifetime of Zoroaster (see discussion of the Zoroas trian calendar below), the earliest calendar that is fully preserved dates from the Achaemenid period.
IRAN v. PEOPLES OF IRAN (2) Pre-Islamic

C. J. Brunner

This survey focuses on the early phase of the Iranian-speaking peoples’ presence on the plateau, during the early state-building phase.
ASSYRIA

M. Dandamayev and È. Grantovskiĭ, M. Dandamayev, K. Schippmann

i. The Kingdom of Assyria and its relations with Iran. ii. Achaemenid Aθurā. iii. Parthian Assur.
Greece ii. Greco-Persian Cultural Relations

Margaret C. Miller

Here the evidence for receptivity to Persian culture in Greece, the North Aegean, and West Anatolia is addressed, including receptivity on the part of the non-Greek peoples of these regions.
This Article Has Images.
JAMŠID i. Myth of Jamšid

PRODS OKTOR SKJAERVØ

News: Inside Washington: NIAC’s Battle to Save the Persepolis Tablets

2010-03-30T15:41:00.002-05:00

Inside Washington: NIAC’s Battle to Save the Persepolis Tablets
Written by NIAC Staff
Tuesday, 30 March 2010

Washington, DC - The campaign to save the Persepolis Tablets is quietly gaining momentum, as NIAC and some of the nation’s top universities work to protect thousands of priceless cultural artifacts at risk of being seized by lawyers and auctioned off to the highest bidder...

...Soon, NIAC will also deploy the Persepolis Center, an online resource that will not only serve as a clearinghouse for background information about the Persepolis Tablets but will also provide a direct connection between NIAC and members with the latest updates on our efforts, new opportunities for members to mobilize, tools for contacting elected representatives, and profiles of endangered collections.If we are successful in our efforts, the Iranian American community can take pride in protecting not only our own cultural artifacts, but all cultural artifacts from the threat of lawsuit in the U.S.

Go to the chronicle of news on Persepolis.

Go to the chronicle of news on the Persepolis Fortification Archive.

Lecture at University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

2010-03-30T13:36:00.002-05:00

Persian Antiquities in Crisis: The Persepolis Tablets at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago

Matthew W. Stolper, a professor of Assyriology at the Oriental Institute and the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago, is the director of the Persepolis Fortification Archive Project, an emergency task force now working urgently to record as much information as possible about these documents while they remain available. He will describe the Persepolis Fortification Archive and discuss its value, the lawsuit that could lead to its sale, and what the Persepolis Fortification Archive Project is doing to meet this crisis.

News: Iran’s Cultural Heritage Under Threat

2010-03-28T09:12:00.002-05:00

Iran’s Cultural Heritage Under Threat
by Alix McKenna
California Literary Review
March 22nd, 2010 at 12:40 am

...The use of the Iranian antiquities to satisfy the Rubin judgment could also put American cultural property at risk and cause foreign policy complications for the United States. The U.S. Government has filed several statements of interest with the court expressing these concerns. On June 6, 2006 Abbas Salimi-Namin, the former head of Iran’s Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organization sent a letter to the United Nations that illustrates the potential for problems. The missive demanded the immediate return of the tablets. While the Oriental Institute had previously enjoyed a good relationship with Iran based on a shared interest in gleaning knowledge from the tablets, the letter accused the museum of keeping the objects “on various grounds and pretexts” and ominously suggested that if the antiquities are turned over to the terror victims, American museums with objects in Iran would “face a similar measure from Tehran.”

Go to the chronicle of news on Persepolis.

Go to the chronicle of news on the Persepolis Fortification Archive.

News: Should Cultural Heritage Be on the Judicial Auction Block?

2010-03-17T12:25:00.003-05:00

Should Cultural Heritage Be on the Judicial Auction Block?
By Laina Catherine Wilk Lopez
Phi Beta Kappa: THE KEY REPORTER
Volume 75, Number 1
Spring 2010

...Consider the following real life case on which I am currently working. In 1997, several persons, including some Americans, were injured in a suicide bombing in Israel for which Hamas later took credit. In 2003, the U.S. victims of that bombing, in a lawsuit entitled Rubin v. Iran, sued Iran in a U.S. federal court in Washington, D.C. pursuant to a section of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act in effect at the time. That portion of the law, 28 U.S.C. §1605(a)(7), permitted Americans who suffered injury (or death) to sue those nations designated by the United States as “state sponsors of terrorism” for providing “material support” to commit an act of terrorism. At the time of the lawsuit, the nations designated as state sponsors of terrorism were Iran, Cuba, Syria, Iraq, Libya, North Korea and Sudan. Today, only Iran, Cuba, Syria and Sudan remain on the list. In the Washington, D.C. case, the Rubin plaintiffs won against Iran a multi-million dollar default judgment, which Iran refused to pay. The plaintiffs, still determined to collect their money, thus registered their judgment in jurisdictions in the United States where the plaintiffs believed Iranian assets were located. They asked the courts in those jurisdictions to permit them to “attach” (a legal term meaning essentially judicial seizure) the various alleged Iranian assets, sell them at judicial auction, and use the proceeds of such sales to satisfy their multi-million dollar judgment.

In one such instance, the plaintiffs registered their judgment in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. The plaintiffs selected that court because there are three collections of ancient Persian artifacts owned by Iran or alleged to be owned by Iran in Chicago. One of the collections is not a true collection but rather a smattering of artifacts at the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago and the Field Museum of Natural History collectively known as the Herzfeld Collection. The artifacts are so named because, according to the plaintiffs, noted archaeologist Ernst Herzfeld surreptitiously took the items from Iran in the early 20th Century and later unlawfully sold the allegedly stolen items to the University of Chicago and the Field Museum. Iran makes no claim to these artifacts and the university and the Field Museum vigorously defend their lawful ownership of the items. The plaintiffs assert that Iran nonetheless owns the Herzfeld items by operation of an Iranian patrimony law which, according to the plaintiffs, provides that any item unearthed in Iran is owned by Iran. Notably, the Rubin plaintiffs also have sued Harvard University and the Museum of Fine Arts of Boston in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts alleging that those museums also have in their possession several items stolen by Herzfeld and hence are Iran owned. Like the museums in Chicago, however, the Boston museums vigorously defend their lawful ownership of the items.

The other two collections involved in the Chicago litigation, the Persepolis Collection and the Chogha Mish Collection, are housed at the Oriental Institute and are, everyone agrees, owned by Iran. These two collections arrived at the Oriental Institute in the 1930s and 1960s, respectively, following archaeological digs. In the 1930s, the Oriental Institute sent a team of its archaeologists – led by Ernst Herzfeld – to Iran, with the Iranian government’s consent, to excavate the ancient Persian city of Persepolis. Persepolis, the capital of the Achaemenid Empire, was built by Darius I in approximately 515 B.C. and destroyed by Alexander the Great in approximately 330 B.C. Though largely destroyed by Alexander, the site was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1979 due to monumental ruins which were left standing. Following the excavation, Iran agreed to loan to the Institute for study a grouping of rare tablet and tablet fragments found in the fortifications. Some of the tablets are written in an ancient text known as Elamite, a now extinct language understood today by a handful of people. The tablets contain administrative records of daily Achaemenid society, such as the amounts and recipients of food rations...

Go to the chronicle of news on Persepolis.

Go to the chronicle of news on the Persepolis Fortification Archive.

New Book: L'archive des Fortifications de Persépolis. État des questions et perspectives de recherches

2010-02-23T13:00:00.000-06:00

[First posted 2/16/09, updated 2/23/10 with the addition of a link to the Review at BMCR]

A new volume (no. 12) in the Persika series, dedicated to the
Persepolis Fortification archive is out:

P. Briant, W.F.M. Henkelman and M.W. Stolper (eds.),
L'archive des Fortifications de Persépolis. État des questions et
perspectives de recherches.
Actes du colloque organisé au Collège de France par la "Chaire
d'histoire et civilisation du monde achéménide et de l'empire
d'Alexandre" et le "Réseau international d'études et de recherches
achéménides" (GDR 2538 CNRS), 3-4 novembre 2006
Paris, De Boccard, 2008.
570 pp., 127 fig., 11 pl.
117 Euro

The volume contains 16 contributions (13 in English and 3 in french).

Detailed table of contents

The volume can be ordered from De Boccard

And see also the detailed information on the series at the Collège de France

Reviewed by Matthew P. Canepa, College of Charleston and University of Oxford Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2010.02.68.

PFAP at AOS 2010

2010-02-18T16:40:00.003-06:00

At the 220th Annual Meeting of the American Oriental Society, 12-15 March 2010, St. Louis, four papers will focus on the Persepolis Fortification Archive Project

Saturday Morning March 13th, in the session:

Ancient Near East III: The Achæmenid and Seleucid Near East. In Honor of Amélie Kuhrt.
Amélie Kuhrt, University College, London, Chair (9:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m.) Salon A

Matthew W. Stolper, University of Chicago, Interrogation, Auditing and Exchange according to an Unparalleled Persepolis Fortification Document
Wouter Henkelman, Vrije Universiteit (Amsterdam) & École Pratique des Hautes Études (Paris), Exit Atossa, Enter Irdabama: Royal Women in the Fortification Archive
Mark B. Garrison, Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas, Archers in Persepolitan Glyptic: A Newly Discovered Scene of Warfare from the Persepolis Fortification Archive
Tytus K. Mikolajczak, University of Chicago, Seals on Journal and Account Tablets in the Persepolis Fortification Archive

Program of the 220^th Annual Meeting, 12-15 March 2010, St. Louis

Organisation des pouvoirs et contacts culturels dans les pays de l'empire achéménide

2010-02-08T12:57:00.002-06:00

A number of important papers related to the Persepolis Fortification Archive appear on this new volume:

Organisation des pouvoirs et contacts culturels dans les pays de l'empire achéménide. Actes du colloque organisé au Collège de France par la "Chaire d'histoire et civilisation du monde achéménide et de l'empire d'Alexandre" et le "Réseau international d'études et de recherches achéménides" (GDR 2538 CNRS), 9-10 novembre 2007, sous la direction de BRIANT (P.) et CHAUVEAU (M.). (20 x 28.5), 428 p., 103 ill., 2009, (1800 g) 95 Euros

Detailed Table of Contents

This and the other volumes in the series Persika are available from De Boccard.

News: The PFA Old Persian tablet makes the cover of Chrisomalis' Numerical Notation

2010-02-04T16:20:00.005-06:00

The Old Persian text in the Persepolis Fortification Archive appears on the cover of the new book

Numerical Notation
A Comparative History
Stephen Chrisomalis
Wayne State University, Michigan
Hardback
(ISBN-13: 9780521878180)

It is also discussed on p. 256 ff.

Go to the chronicle of news on Persepolis.

Go to the chronicle of news on the Persepolis Fortification Archive.

Audio: Four lectures on Persepolis Glyptic by Mark Garrison

2009-12-06T15:58:00.002-06:00

Invited lectures at the Collège de France

Mark Garrison
Professeur à l’Université de San Antonio (USA) :
New Light on Persepolis : The Glyptic Imagery from the Persepolis Fortification and Treasury Archives

Seals and archives at Persepolis: an introduction
Glyptic Imagery as Social Identity: The Seals of Zi awi
The Religious Landscape at Persepolis: New Glyptic Evidence for the So-Called "Fire Altars"
Glyptic Imagery and Ideology: The Emergence of a Visual Language of Empire at Persepolis

Ces leçons auront lieu le mercredi 4 novembre et les jeudis 12, 19, 26 novembre 2009, à 11 heures.

écouter les conférences

When:	Saturday, October 15, 2011 1:30 pm
Where:	Oriental Institute 1155 East 58th Street, Chicago, IL
Description:	This course is part of the Ground to Gallery series, but may be taken individually. In 1933, Oriental Institute archaeologists working in Iran at the site of the ancient capital of Persepolis discovered tens of thousands of clay tablet documents within a bastion of the city’s fortification wall. Most of the tablets, which date to around 500 BC, were loaned to the Oriental Institute for analysis in 1936. Join Professor Matthew Stolper to learn how the Institute’s long and painstaking study of the Persepolis Fortification Archive has provided a wealth of information about the languages, society, institutions, religion, and art of the ancient Persian Empire at its zenith. Then go behind the scenes to see how the Archive is now the subject of a multi-institutional research project that uses the most advanced imaging equipment to record and study the tablets. Matthew Stolper, John A. Wilson Professor of Oriental Studies, Oriental Institute Pre-registration is required
Cost:	$39 members, $44 non-members
	Website
Contact:	Oriental Institute - Museum Education Office 773-702-9507
Calendars:	OI, Arts, Short Courses
	Persons with disabilities who need an accommodation in order to participate in this event should contact the event sponsor for assistance. For events on the Student Events Calendar, please contact ORCSA at (773) 702-8787. Information on Assistive Listening Device

Persepolis Fortification Archive Project

RIP Herbert Harry Paper

MA Thesis: Culture in Court --- The Saga of The Persepolis Tablets A Case Study

News: The Truth Behind the Tablets

Persepolis Fortification Archive Upload to InscriptiFact

OI Members Lecture: 'Of Faith and Fire Altars: New visual evidence for ritual in the seals and sealings of the Persian Empire'

Manfred Mayrhofer's Onomastica Persepolitana

Persepolis and Ancient Iran at ASOR

Rick St. Hilaire comments on Rubin v. Government of Iran v. Boston MFA and Harvard

Harvard Crimson Editorial: Cultural Loot: Harvard and others should be more open to art repatriation

The Implications of Rubin v. Iran

News: Heritage Hunters

Update on RUBIN v. THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN

Persepolis at the University of Chicago's 33rd annual Humanities Day

October 22, 2011, 2.00-3.00pm

Course: From Ground to Gallery, The Persepolis Fortification Archives

Persepolis Fortification Archive Upload to InscriptiFact

Paper Online: Xerxes, Atossa, and the Persepolis Fortification Archive

Related News: Achaemenid palace found in Iran

Related News: Herzfeld Paper Squeeze Digitization Project

Paper Online: The First Administrative Document Discovered at Persepolis

News: PARSA CF Award to the Persepolis Fortification Archive (PFA) Project

June 2, 2011

News: Ancient Persian Treasures in American Courts

by ARASH KARAMI

02 May 2011 23:40

PFA on Facebook

Derek Fincham comments on today ruling in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit

News: U.S. court backs Iran in dispute over assets

News: U. of Chicago and Museums Win Key Ruling in Legal Battle Over Iranian Antiquities

News : Lawsuits by Victims of Terrorism Imperil Archaeological Studies

BISOTUN WORLD ROCK CLIMBING FESTIVAL IRAN NOV 2010

News: Ernst Herzfeld Archive

Persepolis Fortification Archive Project Annual Report 2009-2010

News: Persepolis II back in print

News: NIAC Grant for an education campaign about the Persepolis artifacts

Persepolis in the News

News: Talk at Illinois Wesleyan University

Persepolis sequence from The Human Adventure (again)

The Iranian sequence begins at 48:10

Online review of L’archive des Fortifications de Persépolis

A personal take on the project

New in ARTA

The British Museum Persepolis Type Tablet

tablet / seal-impression

Persepolis, The Chicago Blackhawks, and the Stanley Cup

Persepolis sequence from The Human Adventure

News: A Battle over Ancient Bits of Clay

News: Suicide Bombings and Archaeology: Unpredictable Connections

Lecture at Cornell: From Persepolis before Persepolis: the Persepolis Fortification Archive in Chicago

News: Iran Gambles with its Cultural Heritage in U.S. Lawsuits

Johns Hopkins: The William Foxwell Albright Lecture 2010

Film: Terra X: Persien - Die Erbschaft des Feuers

Persepolis Fortification Archive in the Encyclopaedia Iranica

M. Mayrhofer

H. Koch

M. A. Dandamayev

R. Schmitt

M. A. Dandamayev

M. A. Dandamayev

R. Schmitt

R. Schmitt

Rüdiger Schmitt

R. Schmitt

R. Schmitt

M. Mayrhoffer

M. A. Dandamayev

A. Sh. Shahbazi

Charles E. Jones and Matthew W. Stolper

A. Sh. Shahbazi

M. Dandamayev

Muhammad Dandamayev

Amılie Kuhrt

A. Shapur Shahbazi

Rüdiger Schmitt

A. Sh. Shahbazi

A. Sh. Shahbazi

M. L. Chaumont

M. A. Dandamayev

Muhammad A. Dandamayev