ANS Members in the Pacific Northwest will not
want to miss this lecture, or the series it
inaugurates. I certainly wish I could go!
Michael Bates

> To: silkroad-l@...
> From: Daniel Waugh <dwaugh@...>
> Subject: silkroad-l lecture by Nicholas
> Sims-Williams
> Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2005 07:54:56 -0700 (PDT)
>
> The Silkroad Foundation and the Simpson Center
> for the Humanities at the
> University of Washington are pleased to
> announce the first of four planned
> lectures in a Silk Road series for 2006-2007:
>
> Professor Nicholas Sims-Williams will lecture
> on "News from Ancient
> Afghanistan," November 10, 2005, 7 PM in Kane
> Hall 110, University of
> Washington, Seattle.
>
> During the millennium preceding the arrival of
> Islam in the 7th century
> CE, the area which is now Afghanistan was the
> scene of momentous events,
> including its conquest by Alexander the Great,
> the rise and fall of the
> Kushan empire, and the capture and death of the
> Sasanian emperor Peroz at
> the hands of the nomadic Hephthalites. Apart
> from such dramatic episodes,
> little is known of the political history of
> Afghanistan during this long
> period and, until recently, even less was known
> of its social history.
> Within the last ten to fifteen years, however,
> a large number of new
> sources have emerged from the region, ranging
> from Aramaic letters naming
> Alexander as king to Arabic documents of the
> early Islamic period. This
> lecture will describe the new finds and their
> significance, concentrating
> on the documents in Bactrian, the native
> language of northern Afghanistan,
> whose decipherment throws new light on the
> history of the country and the
> culture, religion and daily lives of its
> inhabitants during the 2nd to 8th
> centuries.
>
> Nicholas Sims-Williams is Research Professor of
> Iranian and Central Asian
> Studies, Department of the Languages and
> Cultures of Near and Middle East,
> School of Oriental and African Studies,
> University of London. His
> research focuses on the medieval Iranian
> languages of Afghanistan and
> Central Asia. He has published Bactrian
> Documents from Northern
> Afghanistan (2001) and co-edited several
> volumes, among them Parthian
> Economic Documents from Nisa (2001). He is an
> editor for Encyclopaedia
> Iranica; his numerous articles include studies
> of the "Sogdian Ancient
> Letters" and examination of evidence concerning
> Zoroastrianism and
> Manichaeism along the Silk Road.
>
> - - -
> Details about the other lectures in the series
> will be posted in due
> course. They will be by Professor Richard
> Salomon (University of
> Washington) on January 26, 2006; Professor
> Joanna Williams (University of
> California, Berkeley) on March 2; and Professor
> Eugene Wang (Harvard) on
> April 13. Questions may be addressed to Daniel
> Waugh
> (dwaugh@...).
>
>
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