Right Good Men? The Median Palace of Godin Tepe" 

Hilary Gopnik                                                                                                                                                                          Lecturer, Emory University, Ancient Mediterranean Studies Program

Thursday, October 27, 2011, 6:30 p.m. | Denny Hall 317 

This lecture is fee and open to the public.

The Greek historian Herodotus wrote these words 2,500 years ago—some 150 years after the event—but modern scholarship still does not understand a great deal more about the Medes and their revolt that Herodotus did. The horse-riding Medes of the Zagros Mountains are referred to often in Assyrian royal reliefs, inscriptions, and letters: they are described as numerous, might, treacherous, and diplomatic, and their leaders are given the distinctive title bēlāli (head of city). But the Assyrians can offer us only a very distorted view of the Medes whom they were trying to subdue. The recent publication by the author of the excavation of Godin Tepe, one of the few archaeological sites that can be securely identified with the Medes, provides some new first-hand evidence of Median society. The massive storage rooms, restaurant-sized kitchen, and elaborate columned throne room of the citadel-palace of Godin must have been built by a Median bēl āli intent on receiving and entertaining on a large scale. In this talk the author presents the evidence from Godin, including an animated video reconstruction of the palace, and considers what the site can tell us about Median society in the ninth to seventh centuries BCE.

Sponsored by Department of Archaeology at Dickinson College 2011-12. For more information contact archaeology@dickinson.edu  or 717-245-1519.