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.

Stolper is one of the leading authorities on the ancient Persian Empire and has taught, lectured, and written extensively on the social, economic, and political history of Persia and the Near East in the first millennium BCE, and its bearing on the present day. In addition, Stolper has published editions of texts and authored a grammar of Elamite (the administrative language of the Persian Empire).  Stolper leads an international team of scholars, researchers, and graduate and undergraduate students charged with digitizing, deciphering, preserving, and publishing the Persepolis Fortification Archive, roughly 20,000 texts written in Elamite, Aramaic, Old Persian, and Greek.

The talk is sponsored by The Berry Center for Economics, Business and Public Policy, Cornell’s Student Life Office,  the Russell D. Cole Library, the Department of Classical and Modern Languages and LACE.