JOIN US SATURDAY, OCTOBER 24, for a day-long feast of world-class scholarship and artistic performance as we celebrate the 31st annual Humanities Day at the University of Chicago.
Since 1936, scholars at the Oriental Institute have been studying tens of thousands of tablets excavated at Persepolis, the complex of palaces that Kings Darius and Xerxes built in the heartland of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Their results have transformed modern understanding of the languages, art, society, and institutions of the Persian Empire. But, since 2004, they have been working under a cloud of litigation that threatens the future of these tablets. This presentation discusses what the Persepolis Fortification Archive is, why it is important, and how the PFA Project is using digital tools and methods to record and publish it.
"The Persepolis Fortification Texts and the Achaemenid Economy" Matthew Wolfgang Stolper, Professor of Assyriology, University of Chicago Todd M. Beamer Center, Phelps Room, 421 Chase Street, Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL For more information, call 630.752.5886 or email
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.
Right now, the Senate is considering legislation that would prevent attempts to confiscate and auction off some of the most powerful symbols of Persian civilization. This legislation is designed to protect the priceless artifacts from Takht-e-Jamshid and all the other Persian artifacts under attack.
A group of lawyers wants to seize these relics of our heritage and auction them off to the highest bidder like cheap items sold on e-bay. "Maybe they'll end up on coffee tables around the country," one lawyer for the plaintiffs mused.
Rois, tributs et paysans par Pierre Briant Besançon, Les Belles Lettres, ALUB (269), 1982, 538 p.
Les textes présentés ici couvrent une dizaine d'années de recherches (1971-1981) consacrées aux États et sociétés du Proche et du Moyen-Orient sous les dominations achéménide et hellénistique (c. VIe-IIe siècle av.n.è.), La plupart des études qui constituent le corps de l'ouvrage sont des communications présentées à des Colloques. Beaucoup d'entre elles ont été publiées dans des recueils ou des revues peu accessibles. L'unité thématique de ces textes et leur état d'extrême dispersion m'ont paru constituer deux bonnes et simples raisons pour les rassembler dans un recueil. En est absent l'article le plus long paru dans DHA 2, 1976 car je l'ai très largement repris dans un autre livre. Faut-il préciser que la republication de ces études n'implique pas qu'elles soient exemptes d'erreurs ou de défauts ? Du moins, leur publication dans une collection désormais bien connue des historiens de l'Antiquité suscitera, je l'espère, de nombreuses discussions critiques.
(Extrait de l'introduction par Pierre Briant)
Antigone le Borgne par Pierre Briant Besançon, Les Belles Lettres, ALUB, 1973, 397 p.
These books appear in the context of the Bibliotheque numerique des ouvrages publiés par l'Institut des Sciences et Techniques de l'Antiquité. A full listing of the offerings of that digital collection is here.
Riemerge una parte sepolta della città, grazie agli scavi compiuti dagli archeologi italiani. Intervista a Pierfrancesco Callieri, direttore della missione.
This series of notes and articles summarises the results of the rescue excavations (2005-2007) conducted at the occasion of the construction of a dam in the Bolaghi valley, which opens about 2km south of the tomb of Cyrus at Pasargadae. Only the results pertaining to the Achaemenid and Post-Achaemenid periods are presented here: full excavation reports will be published in separate volumes edited by the respective joint missions between Iran and Germany, France, Italy, Japan, and Poland.
Legal action on behalf of victims of terrorism has attempted to force the sale of cultural artifacts on loan to U.S. institutions in order to compensate those victims. Such action jeopardizes the participation of American institutions in international cultural exchanges. The authors maintain that archaeological artifacts should not be sold to satisfy a court judgment, regardless of the actions of a particular regime, and that it should be possible for nations to share their cultural heritage without fear of loss.
L'Institut oriental de l'Université de Chicago -celle où Obama a été chargé d'enseignement-, dépositaire d'un ensemble d'environ 20 000 tablettes trouvées à Persépolis en 1933, se trouve au centre d'une bataille judiciaire inédite : des victimes d'un attentat réclament la vente de ces objets originaires d'Iran comme indemnisation.
Un tribunal de Washington a condamné l'Etat iranien à verser 412 millions de dollars (323 millions d'euros) aux familles des victimes et survivants d'un attentat perpétré à Jérusalem en 1997.
Les plaignants arguent, en effet, que l'Etat iranien aurait financé et entraîné le Hamas, responsable de l'attentat. Ils s'appuient dans leur action sur une loi de 1970 permettant d'attaquer un Etat. Cette législation a encore été élargie en novembre 2008 par le sénateur du New Jersey, Lautenberger, levant l'immunité d'un Etat souverain...
The Artifacts of Life, By Carl Marziali, USC News Science / Technology, June 23, 2009 11:16 AM.
USC’s first pilgrims to a temple of high-energy physics will be seeking answers to worldly questions about ancient commerce.
Archaeologist Lynn Swartz Dodd of USC College and her students are taking trade artifacts from Egypt to the Argonne National Laboratory’s Advanced Photon Source, home of the most powerful X-rays in the country...
The group hopes to return to Argonne this fall or next spring for a second round of studies, this time to analyze Assyrian and Persian artifacts found in Israel, Turkey, Iraq and Iran, which are on loan from the Oriental Institute of Chicago...
This is not the first time that USC has brought modern technology to bear on ancient problems. Dodd’s colleague Bruce Zuckerman leads a team that has been creating digital images of the ancient writings on the Persepolis Tablets at the Oriental Institute in Chicago.
The project has two goals: to preserve at least digital access to the Iranian government-owned tablets, which may be sold off as part of a lawsuit seeking to punish Iran for its ties to the terrorist group Hamas; and to reduce physical study of the tablets by scholars.
“Looking at a text is probably the most damaging thing you can do to it,” Zuckerman said.
Washington, DC - Iranian-Americans from the New York tri-state area exceeded NIAC’s fundraising goals and helped raise over $110,000 to go towards preserving the Persepolis Artifacts on May 30th at the Asia Society in Manhattan...
Special guest, Professor Matthew Stolper who has dedicated his career to studying these tablets, made the gravity of losing just one of these artifacts crystal clear - If there are too many of these tablets being auctioned, their value will drop. So what do people do to ensure that the price remains high? "They destroy a good number of them," he exclaimed to a shocked audience. He also stressed the importance of keeping these items together, in fact, they are really to be seen as one item. Like a dinosaur fossil - if one bone is missing, we lose a sense of what the animal was. The same goes for these artifacts which tell the story of the Persian empire during the time of Darius the Great.
Thanks to our community in the City that Never Sleeps, NIAC is better positioned to ensure that not a single tablet from Persepolis is confiscated, auctioned or destroyed. NIAC is involved through legal, media and policy avenues to preserve the Persepolis tablets
A federal court in Massachusetts affirmed on 31 March that Iranian antiquities at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and the Harvard University Art Museums might be subject to a claim by the victims of a terrorist bombing allegedly sponsored by Iran...
In the latest round of litigation in Massachusetts, the court declined to reconsider its prior ruling that the plaintiffs might be able to claim the antiquities under the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act of 2002. The case will now go to the federal appeals court.
I've made a small change to the blog recently. If you're reading this in a feed reader or by email you may not it, so if that's the case, click the through to the Persepolis Fortification Archive Project blog.
In the righthand side bar is a form allowing you to receive notifications of updates to AWOL by email. This seems useful for those for whom news feeds are not. Your address will be safe. Neither we nor feedburner will send you spam. I have been testing it and I'm satisfied that it works reliably.
They say Alexander III [336-323 BCE], the Macedonian King who had defeated Dâriuš III [336-330 BCE], the Achaemenid Great King, in 3 pitched battles and savagely burned Pârsâ [Persepolis] to ashes, admired Great Kuruš [Cyrus II, the Great, 559-530 BCE] - the first Great King who had brought most of the known world under the sway of the Persians over 200 years earlier...
Second Isaiah's prophecy that the divine action to release the Judean exilic community in Babylon from bondage was to be through the human hands of the 'Persian Cyrus' must have come as a surprise to Judeans.
This 'Cyrus', the mythic figure of the Holy Bible, was no other than the historical King Kuruš II [559-530 BCE], namesake of his grandfather, King Kuruš I. Kuruš was given the epithet of 'Great' by the Romans of the Roman Empire centuries later and became known throughout the history of the world as the Latinized 'Cyrus the Great'...
A. J. Cave is an Iranian-American writer based in California, USA and a member of Stanford University's World Association of International Studies (WAIS). She is currently working on her second historical novel Cyrus Romance: Kuruš Nâmeh. Information about her first historical novel Roxana Romance: Rošanak Nâmeh is available at www.pavasta.com.
In late April–early May 2004, I had the privilege of helping to work toward the fulfillment of a seventy-year-old promise made by the Oriental Institute to the people of Iran by returning 300 clay tablets from the larger body of Persepolis Fortification Tablets that had been on long-term loan to the Oriental Institute for study and publication. The texts on these tablets have extraordinary importance for our understanding of the Persian empire and ancient Iran...
Since January, 2007, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has supported a collaboration between the West Semitic Research Project (WSRP), at the University of Southern California and the Persepolis Fortification Archive Project, making two kinds of very high-quality images of Persepolis Fortification tablets and distributing the images on line. Bruce Zuckerman and his WSRP team brought to the collaboration more than thirty years of experience with high-quality imaging of West Semitic documents and inscriptions, using conventional and digital techniques. WSRP has been distributing images since 2001 via the robust, easy-to-use application InscriptiFact. More than 8,700 images of more than 300 Fortification tablets will soon be available through InscriptiFact, and more will be displayed at frequent intervals. The following announcement and video clip describe some of the work under way at the Oriental Institute. The PFA Project expects to issue another announcement soon, focusing on the work WSRP-PFA/OI collaboration.
The Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago is using modern technology to digitally record thousands of tablets that, as they are being pieced together, tell an unusually detailed story of the Persian Empire.
These ancient tablets from the palaces of Persepolis include pieces of language and art from the center of the Persian Empire, all made when it extended from India and Central Asia to Egypt and the Mediterranean. Most have texts in impressed cuneiform characters, many them have inked texts in Aramaic writing and almost all of the tablets have seal impressions. They are now being recorded and distributed with digital processes that will allow scholars and viewers across the world to examine them as if they had picked them up and rotated under a light.
With a substantial grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, a team of researchers began work in 2007. Now, with a second Mellon grant, the team will continue this work through 2010. By that time researchers hope to have about 10,000 tablets and fragments recorded.
Gil Stein, Director of the Oriental Institute, where the tablets are kept, is principal investigator along with Matthew Stolper, John A. Wilson Professor in the Oriental Institute. Other team members and co-principal investigators are Annalisa Azzoni at Vanderbilt University, Elspeth Dusinberre at the University of Colorado, Mark Garrison at Trinity University, Wouter Henkelman at the Free University of Amsterdam, and Bruce Zuckerman and members of the West Semitic Research Project at the University of Southern California. The team collaborates in person, but also electronically.
The tablets being digitized come from the Persepolis Fortification Archive, some 30,000 administrative tablets and fragments that Oriental Institute archaeologists recovered in 1933 at Persepolis, the ruined palaces where the kings of the ancient Persian Empire held court. Since 1936 they have been on loan from Iran to the Oriental Institute for analysis and recording.
“They were written, sealed and filed in a short span of time, between 509 and 493 B.C., in the middle of the reign of the Achaemenid Persian king Darius I,” Stein said. “The oldest Greek tragedy of Aeschylus, and the first Greek history of Herodotus tell us about the reign of Darius, but they don’t tell us anything like this. The administration that these documents record touched every level of society, from lowly workers through bureaucrats and governors to the royal family itself,” he said.
Part of the collection has been recorded, and many of the tablets have been returned to Iran, but the tablets have challenged scholars since their discovery. Only one other document of its kind had been found before the discovery of the archive, making the comparison, reading and understanding of the archive’s tens of thousands of pieces difficult.
Matthew Stolper, Professor at the Oriental Institute, examines a tablet on loan from the government of Iran that has been digitized.
Oriental Institute professor Richard Hallock devoted his career to the tablets. His work, culminating in the groundbreaking publication of 2,087 texts in 1969, fundamentally changed how scholars look at the Persian Empire.
“It is no exaggeration to say that this knowledge has transformed every aspect of modern study of the languages, history and society, institutions and art of the Achaemenid Persian Empire,” Stolper said. “No serious treatment of the Achaemenid Empire can any longer omit the perspectives provided by the Fortification Archive.”
As the project continues, scholars will be able to better analyze the information available in the archive. Online presentation of images of the tablets, images of the seal impressions and editions of the texts will allow researchers to be able to look at each piece, compare and connect it with other pieces, and to assemble and work with the archive as a whole system.
How the recording works
The phase of the project supported by the Mellon grants is a close collaboration between the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago and the West Semitic Research Project at the University of Southern California. This phase captures and distributes two kinds of high-quality images of Persepolis Fortification tablets.
One set of images is made with a high-resolution, large-format scanning camera with polarized and filtered lighting. The lighting compensates for some of the staining, glare and fading that problematic in seeing inked texts.
The second set of images is captured with Polynomial Texture Mapping (PTM) apparatuses, using a technology developed by Hewlett Packard Labs and Cultural Heritage Imaging. Only a dozen or so of these apparatuses exist, and two of them are recording Persepolis tablets in the basement of the Oriental Institute. A computer controls the camera in each device, making a set of 32 distinctly lighted views of each document. Each image set is combined by a software application in such a way that viewers can control the apparent direction, angle and intensity of the light falling on the object, using a computer mouse just as if they were handling the original object under a desk lamp.
Clinton Moyer, senior imaging technician, photographs a tablet for digitization at the Oriental Institute.
High-resolution images of about 200 Persepolis Fortification texts are available on InscriptiFact, on the Web site of the West Semitic Research Project. Several hundred more will be available soon. Images of about 150 more Persepolis tablets, along with editions, and analytical tools, will soon be released on the On-Line Cultural Research Environment (OCHRE), the archaeological and textual database and presentation application developed at the Oriental Institute and maintained by the University of Chicago Library.
Un tribunal de Washington a condamné l'Etat iranien à verser 412 millions de dollars (323 millions d'euros) aux familles des victimes et survivants d'un attentat perpétré à Jérusalem en 1997. 
