Dr. Machinist Presents Roland E Murphy Memorial Lecture
On Monday, April 20th, the Biblical Studies Area hosted the annual Roland E. Murphy Memorial Lecture. Dr. Peter Machinist, Hancock Professor of Hebrew and Other Oriental Languages at Harvard University, presented the lecture "Achaemenid Persia as Spectacle: Greek and Biblical Reactions." Dr. Machinist looked at the Achaemenid Persian empire of the first millennium BC as a pageant of power and authority. He focused on the reliefs of the main staircase to the Apadana in the main capital of Persepolis as well as the biblical book of Esther and the Greek drama, The Persians, by Aeschylus. Dr. Machinist explored all of these and the relationships among them in order to chart the impact that Achaemenid Persia had on the world in and around it as well as the Achaemenid impact in our own time.