Open Sesame: Ancient Persia and the Greek Imagination

To coincide with the British Museum’s current exhibition Luxury and Power: Persia to Greece, this BIPS seminar will explore how Achaemenid Persian luxury items made their way into Greece and the Greek consciousness. Whether coveted as symbols of prestige or disparaged as signs of oriental decadence, Persian luxury was encountered in several ways and was often transformed by the Greeks to make ‘luxury’ more culturally and politically acceptable.

The seminar, which draws on objects displayed in the exhibition, is led by Dr James Fraser, the exhibition curator, and Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, who aided to its creation.

About the Speakers:
James Fraser is Curator for Ancient Levant and Anatolia at the British Museum. He completed his PhD in Middle Eastern Archaeology at the University of Sydney, and has worked on archaeological projects in Jordan, Syria, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Kashmir, Greece, Cambodia, and the Solomon Islands.

Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones is Professor of Ancient History at Cardiff University. Lloyd’s research interests include ancient Greek socio-cultural history, especially women’s history and gender-issues, dress, and visual culture. His book Aphrodite’s Tortoise: the veiled woman of ancient Greece has won much critical acclaim. For the last decade, however, he has expanded his research into the study of ancient Persia, especially the history and culture of the Achaemenid period (559-331 BCE) and he is fortunate to be one of only a few scholars world-wide to work on pre-Islamic Iran. Recent publications have included Ctesias’ History of Persia: Tales of the Orient and King and Court in Ancient Persia.