6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Columbia University, Art History Department, Schermerhorn 807
Between the Hellenistic and Iranian Ecumenes: Seleucids, Arsacids and the Agonistic Cocreation of a New Iranian World
Witnessing rapid changes and broad Afro-Eurasian interconnections, the period between the genesis of the Seleucid Empire under Seleucus I Nicator (312 BCE) and the consolidation of the Arsacid Empire under Mithradates II (ca. 125/121–91 bce) oversaw one of the most creative and dynamic periods of both Hellenistic and Iranian art and architectural history. The Seleucid Empire introduced exceptionally innovative art and architectural forms throughout Mesopotamia and the Iranian Plateau while they were major powers controlling or contesting these regions (ca. 312-129 BCE). The decades of competition and artistic, material and even dynastic enmeshments with the rising Arsacid dynasty, ensured that the court arts of both dynasties were closely and agonistically entangled. This lecture analyzes the formation of new political cultures in Mesopotamia and the Iranian Plateau after Alexander, focusing on problems of competition, continuity and change in the art, architecture and urbanism of empire under the Seleucid and their Arsacid competitors and successors in Mesopotamia and the Upper Satrapies, that is, the Iranian Plateau. Focusing on key case studies, including changes in urbanism, architecture, the royal and divine image, and the materiality of political commensal cultures, this contribution joins broader scholarly debates interrogating the nature of both “Greek” and “Persian” identities after Alexander in the last decade and a half. It situates the culturally complex political and visual cultures that developed in the Mesopotamian and Iranian core of the former Persian Empire as the products of active choices and deliberate strategies of contemporary patrons and communities rather than the binary of atavistic holdovers of timeless, “local” Persian traditions or superficial imperial residue of a new colonial regime, which have served as paradigms in past scholarship. Indeed, when approaching Parthian art, architecture, urbanism and luxury wares, we are talking a competitive cocreation.
The lecture is co-sponsored by the Ehsan Yarshater Center for Iranian Studies.
