The World of Achaemenid Persia by John E. Curtis

The history of the material from the cemeteries is somewhat tumultuous, but the first comprehensive publication of it was P. Particularly relevant for our purposes are the drinking and dining vessels, some of which are illustrated here, but you ought to get to know the assemblage as a whole.ĭeve Hüyük is located in Northern Syria, close to a crossing of the river Euphrates and c. It forms one of the finest assemblages of elite Achaemenid (or rather 'Persianizing'?) material culture known from the entire Achaemenid world.

Öztürk, Heritage Recovered: The Lydian Treasure (1996), and discussed here. The Lydian Treasure consists of some 363 objects, catalogued in the amazing volume I. Many of the objects were purchased by the Metropolitan Museum in New York after a landmark legal battle, they were returned to Turkey in the early 1990s, and are now the main reason to visit the excellent little archaeological museum in the remote Turkish town of Uşak. These tombs were systematically looted in the 1960s, and their contents sold in the United States. The so-called 'Lydian Treasure' is a large assemblage of grave goods from a group of elite tombs of the Achaemenid period from eastern Lydia, east of Sardis (Toptepe, Ikiztepe and others). Stein, ‘Persians on the Euphrates? Material Culture and Identity in Two Achaemenid Burials from Hacınebi, Southeast Turkey’ in M. Moorey, Cemeteries of the first millennium B.C., at Deve Hüyük (1980) Miller, ‘The Poetics of Emulation in the Achaemenid World: The Figured Bowls of the Lydian Treasure’, Ancient West and East 6 (2007) 43-72 Öztürk, Heritage Recovered: The Lydian Treasure (1996), especially pp.87ff Dusinberre, ‘Satrapal Sardis: Achaemenid bowls in an Achaemenid capital’, AJA 103 (1999), 73-102. Dusinberre, Empire, Authority and Autonomy in Achaemenid Anatolia (2013), 114-140, 179-187Į. Gruen (ed), Cultural Identity in the Ancient Mediterranean (2011), 97-134.Į. Miller, ‘Manners makyth man: diacritical drinking in Achaemenid Anatolia’, in E.

Kuhrt, The Persian Empire: A Corpus of Sources from the Achaemenid Period (2007), 509-10, 604-614 Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander 286-297.Ī. Tallis, Forgotten Empire: The World of Ancient Persia (2005) 104-131 (superb illustrated introduction) St John Simpson, ‘The royal table’, in J. Essay: Why is the paraphernalia of drinking and dining so prominent in the material culture of the Achaemenid Empire?

The World of Achaemenid Persia by John E. Curtis