Greeks and Greece in Mesopotamian and Persian Perspectives

In this lecture, delivered at New College, Oxford, on the 7th of May, 2001, Kuhrt considers the question of perceptions: the problems inherent in trying to define what the people of the 'east' may have thought about Greeks at different periods in history. She focuses on the period between the 8th an [...]
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In this lecture, delivered at New College, Oxford, on the 7th of May, 2001, Kuhrt considers the question of perceptions: the problems inherent in trying to define what the people of the 'east' may have thought about Greeks at different periods in history. She focuses on the period between the 8th and the 3rd centuries BC, when the 'known world' was dominated, successively, by the Neo-Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian, Achaemenid Persian and Hellenistic Macedonian empires. She outlines the political changes in these empires, the evidence for Greek social and political interactions with them, and considers the role that 'Greeks' were allotted in their respective visions of the geographic world. The evidence is made up of allusions in formal, public royal proclamations, brief references in chronicles, king-lists, diaries and scholarly texts and the appearance of Greeks in various administrative and business documents.