The Cyrus Cylinder and Ancient Persia: A New Beginning     

May 3—June 14, 2013 Museum of Fine Art, Houston TX

Docent Education Session – FREE Open to ZAH members

Saturday, May 4, 2013 – 10:00 a.m.- American General Conference Room

Presented by John Curtis, Keeper of the Middle East Collections, The British Museum, and organizing curator of the exhibition The Cyrus Cylinder and Ancient Persia: A New Beginning, and Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis, Curator of Middle Eastern Coins, The British Museum

Opening Weekend Lecture – FREE but you need to reserve your seat

The Many Meanings of the Cyrus Cylinder – Sunday, May 5, 2013 -6:00 p.m.- Gallery 214 

Modest in scale and appearance, the Cyrus Cylinder is one of the most famous icons to have survived from the ancient world. The origins of this baked clay object, which was buried as a foundation deposit, can be traced to the Persian king Cyrus the Great (reigned circa 559–530 BCE) and his victory over the last Babylonian ruler, Nabonidus, in 539 BCE. The Cylinder was not discovered until 1879, but Cyrus’s tolerance has inspired generations of philosophers, rulers, and statesmen—from ancient Greece to the Renaissance, and from the Founding Fathers to leaders in the modern-day Near East—and has made the Cyrus Cylinder a powerful symbol of religious tolerance and multiculturalism. In this enthralling talk Neil MacGregor, Director of The British Museum, traces 2600 years of Middle Eastern history through this single object.

Friday & Saturday Afternoon Lectures – $5.00 for members and all who print the MFAH (blue) flyer and show at admission desk

Friday, May 10, 2013 at 1:30 pm, 

and repeated on Saturday, May 11, 2013 at 4:00 pm

Cyrus the Great: “Friend of God” and Paradise Builder 

Cyrus II was the founder of the ancient world’s largest empire. In this lively illustrated presentation, Dr. Jenny Rose explores the ways in which, beginning with the Cyrus cylinder, the Ancient Persians were able to appeal to the “hearts and minds” of their various subject peoples in the Ancient Near East. She also considers whether Cyrus’s diplomatic tolerance of local cultures and religions, alongside the quadripartite garden plan of his dynastic capital, may reflect a “Zoroastrian” understanding of the world. Dr. Jenny Rose teaches Zoroastrian Studies at the School of Religion, Claremont College, and is the author of The Image of Zoroaster: The Persian Mage Through European Eyes (Bibliotheca Persica Press), Zoroastrianism: An Introduction (I.B. Tauris), and Zoroastrianism: A Guide for the Perplexed, (Continuum). 

Artful Thursday – FREE

Cuneiform in Context

Thursday, May 16, 2013 – 6:30 p.m. 

The MFAH is one of five American venues to host the famed Cyrus Cylinder, an artifact dating from the 6th century B.C. discovered, in 1879, among the ruins of Babylon in ancient Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq).  Made of clay, now broken into several fragments, the cylinder was impressed with a declaration in Akkadian cuneiform script in the name of Cyrus II of Persia, called Cyrus the Great, who ruled from about 559 to 530 B.C.  By the time of his death, the Achaemenid Persian Empire was the largest the world had ever seen, stretching from Asia Minor in the west to northwestern India in the east. At the May Artful Thursday, Dr. Sarah Kielt Costello, Instructional Assistant Professor, Department of Art and Art History, School of Art, University of Houston, provides a richly-illustrated talk about one of the world’s earliest civilizations, the structure and decoding of the world’s first known written language, and the significance of the Cyrus Cylinder.

Lecture – $5.00 for members and $8.00 for non-members

Cyrus, the Anointed of the Lord: The Cyrus Cylinder and the Bible

Sunday, May 19, 2013 – 3:00 p.m.

Brown Auditorium Theater 

Cyrus II of Persia, victorious over the Babylonian Empire in 539 B.C.E., is mentioned over 20 times in the Hebrew Bible.  The prophet Isaiah praises the Persian king as “anointed” by the God of Israel, as Cyrus liberated the Israelites (along with other subjugated peoples), and encouraged them to return to their homeland and to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. In this richly illustrated talk, Dr. Matthias Henze—the Watt J. and Lilly G. Jackson Chair in Biblical Studies and Professor of Religious Studies, and Founding Director, Program in Jewish Studies, Rice University—compares the words of Cyrus, ruler of the world’s largest empire in that age, from his famous cylinder with what the Hebrew Bible records of the Persian monarch, to show why the remarkable legacy of Cyrus the Great remains so strong. 

Lecture – Please check MFAH website for details

Ancient Persepolis in Blue – New Research on Colors, Gilding, Painters and Monuments in the Achaemenid Persian Empire, c. 520 to 330 BCE – Sunday, June 2, 2013 – 2:00 p.m. 

Much of what we know of ancient Persia’s history has been informed by studies of the magnificent site of Persepolis, the capital of the Achaemenid Persian Empire from the 6th to the 4th centuries BCE.  UNESCO world cultural heritage sites since 1979, these well-preserved ruins in Southwestern Iran constitute the most important examples of Achaemenid dynastic architecture in Iran.  Although it has long been known that these monuments and reliefs were painted, Dr. Alexander Nagel Assistant Curator, Ancient Near Eastern Art at the Freer Sackler Galleries in Washington, D.C., shows us what new research in the fascinating field of polychromy has revealed about the role of color in the ancient world.