| Date | 6-7 March 2025 | |
| Time | 9:00-17:30 | |
| Venue | Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, Copenhagen |
If the growing interest in sculptures and representations of individuals from the Parthian and Roman Near East has seen the flourishing of extensive research in the past decade, with the Palmyra Portrait Project taking the lead on collecting and researching the largest corpus of portraits outside of Rome, a comprehensive overview of individual portraits in rock-cut art from the same period is still lacking, as is their contextualisation in and dialogue with other regions. This conference will consider evidence from the wide area of the Near East to open new avenues of investigation across the borders of the Roman, Parthian, and early Sasanian Empires in a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective. It will bring together scholars who work on rock-cut reliefs and related monuments, with a focus on the period 2nd c. BCE‒3rd c. CE. Such a focus will offer the opportunity to trace aspects of continuity and change in the reuse and reworking of the same spaces and surfaces as well as in iconography, styles, and techniques, and to observe the chronological development of different traditions.
Rock-cut monuments were an essential element of Near Eastern art and culture and provide valuable insights into the self-representation and representation of individuals, usually of rulers and elites. Dating as far back as the 3rd millennium BCE, they appear where suitable cliffs and surfaces exist. By altering and transforming the landscape, they represent the tangible traces of human activity and its impact on the natural environment. Even more than other archaeological objects, rock-cut monuments are deeply connected to the surface and the space that they inhabit, entertaining a complex dialogue with both their commissioners, creators, and viewers over time. Their location ‒ sometimes secluded and difficult to access, sometimes alongside a major road ‒ tells us about their function and the audience that these monuments were addressing. Therefore, the images and texts carved were powerful means reflecting specific strategies of communication.
The event will centre on the contextual analysis of individual portraits, comparing elite modes of representation and looking into how the choice of elements of location, gesture, attire, attributes, style, etc. shaped the way the individuals represented negotiated their personal, familial, and group identity. The conference particularly welcomes papers along the following lines of investigation: exploring the connection of portraits in rock-cut reliefs to older local traditions and portrait styles; investigating the transmission of ideas in the area and assessing to what extent the cumulative impact of diverse traditions and interactions gave rise to supra-regional and comparable modes of representations across the political divides between empires, smaller kingdoms, and principalities; examining how rock-cut representations differ and function when compared to examples of contemporary portraits in other media (e.g., reliefs, statues, and busts in different materials, coins, etc.), especially to Roman individual-portrait styles.
TBC
For invited speakers we will cover travel (economy class only) and up to 3 nights of accommodation. Please book your own travel to Copenhagen, and we will reimburse you after your stay (please book your ticket directly through an airline and not via a travel search engine). We would appreciate it, if you could book sooner rather than later in order to get a reasonably priced flight.
You will receive a link to Aarhus University's travel reimbursement form. Please keep your receipts as you will be asked to upload documentation for your expenses.
NOTE: As soon as you have booked your flight, please forward your itinerary to Sine Grove Saxkjær (saxkjaer@cas.au.dk), so that the hotel booking can be finalised.
Comfort Hotel Vesterbro
Vesterbrogade 23/29
1620 København
Website
A speakers’ dinner will be held 6 March, and we will of course cater for you during the conference.
If you have any dietary restrictions (incl. allergies), please let Sine Grove Saxkjær (saxkjaer@cas.au.dk) know no later than 17 February, so that the restaurant/caterers can be notified.
