In 1933, archaeologists from the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute found clay tablets, fragments, and seal impressions in two buried storerooms in the northeast corner of the fortification wall at the edge of the great stone terrace of Persepolis.
There were tens of thousands of tablets and fragments, mainly of four different kinds:
;Pieces with texts in cuneiform script and Elamite language, the remains of about 15,000 - 18,000 original documents
;Pieces with texts in Aramaic script and language, the remains of about 1,000 or fewer original documents
;Pieces with no texts, but with seal impressions, the remains of about 5,000 - 6,000 original documents
;And some oddities (a tablet in Greek, a tablet in Phrygian, a tablet in Old Persian, tablets marked with Greek or Persian coins in lieu of seals, and others)
These were records produced by the operations of a single administrative organization in the years around 500 BCE, all bits and pieces of a single information system. At first, the discovery of these clay documents, collectively known as the “Persepolis Fortification Archive (PFA),” created tremendous excitement among scholars. But the excitement soon faded when initial translations of the poorly understood Elamite tablets revealed the routine administrative nature of the archives: just everyday records of an ancient bureaucracy. Most of the Fortification tablets came to the Oriental Institute in 1936, on loan for study and analysis. The results of long, painstaking work - especially the late Richard T. Hallock’s magisterial analysis of 2,087 Elamite texts - were far-reaching. These ordinary records of storage and outlay of food--grains, fruit, meat, poultry, beer and wine--to workers employed by the imperial administration, slowly have become a rich source of information on gods, art, language, culture, customs, and the fascinating interworkings of the complex and sophisticated administration of the Persian Empire. The PFA has fundamentally changed every aspect of the study of Achaemenid Iranian languages, art, institutions and history.
All the presentations can also be viewed consecutively along with introductory remarks by Nahal Iravani-Sani.
Further Reading...
Arfaee, Abdolmajid: Persepolis Fortification Tablets, Fortification and Treasury texts, Ancient Iranian Studies v. 5., The Center for The Great Islamic Encyclopedia, Tehran, Iran, 2008.
Briant, Pierre: From Cyrus to Alexander, a History of the Persian Empire, Winona Lake, 2002.
Briant, Pierre, Wouter Henkelman, and Matthew Stolper (eds.): L’archive des Fortifications de Persépolis: État des questions et perspectives de recherches, Persika 12, Paris, 2008.
Brosius, Maria: Women in Ancient Persia 559-331 B.C., Oxford, 1996.
Brosius, Maria (ed.): Ancient Archives and Archival Traditions. Concepts of Record-Keeping in the Ancient World, Oxford, 2003.
Curtis, John and Tallis, Nigel (eds.): Forgotten Empire: the World of Ancient Persia, London, 2005.
Henkelman, Wouter F.M.: The Other Gods Who Are: Studies in Elamite-Iranian Acculturation based on the Persepolis Fortification Texts, Achaemenid History 14, Leiden, 2008.
Kuhrt, Amélie: "Bureaucracy, Production, Settlement" in Kuhrt, Amélie: The Persian Empire, a Corpus of Sources from the Achaemenid Period, 2 Vols., London, 2007.
Get involved...
Please join the Friends of PFA Project and show your support of the rich and ancient history of Iran by making a gift to the Persepolis Fortification Archive Project through the Oriental Institute's Website.
You may use the Electronic Gift Form or print and fax or mail the Paper Gift Form.
The Oriental Institute is a research organization and museum devoted to the study of the ancient Near East. Founded in 1919, the Oriental Institute (OI), a part of the University of Chicago, is an internationally recognized pioneer in the archaeology, philology, and history of early Near Eastern civilizations.
Gifts to the PFA Project are tax deductible under applicable rules. For tax information and other giving options, please contact the Oriental Institute directly.
