Culture and Ideology under the Seleucids: an Interdisciplinary Approach

29-31 March 2019

The conference seeks to bring together historians, archaeologists, epigraphists and other scholars interested in the cultural ideologies that shaped the character of Seleucid rulership from its foundation to its end. The renewed interest in Seleucid studies in the past two decades, anticipated by Andreas Mehl and his Seleukos Nikator und sein Reich (1986), has certainly restored its early obscure scholarly profile as a dynasty that spiraled into decline soon after the death of its founder (E.R. Bevan, 1902, The House of Seleucus, 1.76). More recently, the appreciation and sensitivity of the Seleucids to the cultural symbols and traditions of the regions they ruled has attracted significant scholarly attention (D. Ogden, The Legend of Seleucus, 2017; K. Erickson, “Seleucus I, Zeus and Alexander,” in Every Inch a King, 2013 and id. “Apollo-Nabû: the Babylonian Policy of Antiochus I,” in Seleucid Dissolution, 2011; N. Wright, Divine Kings and Sacred Spaces, 2012; P.A. Beaulieu, “Nabû and Apollo: the Two Faces of Seleucid Religious Policy,” in Orient und Okzident in hellenistischer Zeit, 2014; P.J. Kosmin, “Seeing Double in Seleucid Babylonia,” in Patterns of the Past, 2014).

Equally, Seleucid archaeology has made huge strides, not only in the Levant, Turkey and Central Asia, but also in Syria and Mesopotamia; as the 2018 SCS “New Directions in Seleucid Archaeology” panel showcased, “Numerous surveys and excavations that have been initiated in the last 5-10 years in Iraq and the Gulf are producing great quantities of material of Seleucid date.”

We now think it is time to enrich the scholarly debate on the Seleucids by inviting voices from all disciplines studying the Seleucid phenomenon to contribute to it. Our aim is to initiate an interdisciplinary network of scholars interested in the Hellenistic successors and their regimes so that this conference can be repeated every two years in universities across the world and pave new lines of communication and new research agendas across disciplines. The Seleucids were proud of their mixed cultural background and therefore, to be able to appreciate them we need to expand our lenses of studying them.