Dr. Jenny Rose on "From Behistun to Bamiyan: Meetings Between Ancient Empires"
Department: Art History
Date and Time: April 2, 2015 | 11:00 AM-12:30 PMEvent Location: 135 Humanities Instructional Building
Event Details
This illustrated presentation by Dr. Jenny Rose will focus on the interaction between the three successive Iranian world empires and contemporary regimes in India. At Behistun in northwestern Iran, a remarkable rock-cut inscription proclaims that the Achaemenid king Darius I came to the throne ‘with the aid of Ahura Mazda.’ The same relief mentions three subject countries to the east of Iran, which later formed part of the Mauryan Empire. Beginning with depictions of various tribute-bearers from India at the Ancient Persian capital of Persepolis, Dr. Rose will trace the interplayof Iranian (‘Zoroastrian’) and Indian (‘Hindu’ and Buddhist) concepts and iconographies through Ashoka Maurya’s Arameo-Iranian edicts, the coinage of Indo-Parthian and Kushan rulers in Gandhara, to the Sasanian period, when Zoroastrian merchants from Iran established trading posts on the northwest coast of India, and those from Sogdiana inscribed graffiti alongside Indian Hindus and Buddhists on the Karakorum highway.
Dr. Jenny Rose holds a doctorate in Ancient Iranian Studies from Columbia University, New York, and currently teaches Zoroastrian Studies in the Department of Religion at Claremont Graduate University. She has written extensively on many aspects of the religion, most recently on early encounters between Parsi traders in Bombay (Mumbai) and their Yankee counterparts in Salem and Boston. She is also a study leader on tours to archaeological, cultural, and religious sites in Iran, Central Asia, and northwestern China.