Workshop Five

Languages of empire

4 July 2011, Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies, 66 St Giles, Oxford

Programme

10-10.30 Coffee

10.30-11.00 Introduction

Lindsay Allen (King's College London), The letter as object: multilingualism and the performance of commmunication in the Achaemenid Empire.

11.00-12.45 Iranian languages

Chair: Elizabeth Tucker (Oxford)

Ilya Yakubovich (Oxford), The formation of Old Persian and its role within the Achaemenid Empire.

Jan Tavernier (Louvain-la-Neuve), Iranian vocabulary in non-Iranian languages: patterns and models.

12.45-1.15 Lunch

1.15-3.00 Forms and uses of Aramaic

Chair: David Taylor (Oxford)

Bezalel Porten (Jerusalem), How the Aramaic scribe strove to sharpen his text

Shaul Shaked (Jerusalem), Aramaic administrative documents between Egypt and Bactria

3.00-3.30 Tea

3.30-4.30 Elamite

Wouter Henkelman (Amsterdam), Achaemenid Elamite as contact language.

The workshop is followed at 5.00 by a public lecture by C. J. Tuplin (Liverpool), Revisiting the world of Arshama.