FRIENDS OF 17勛圖WEBINARS
Lions, Rams, and Kings: Interpreting Animals at Persepolis
Friends of 17勛圖present the next webinar of the 2025-2026 season on March 25, 2026, at 7:00 pm EDT, presented by Neville McFerrin. This webinar will be free and open to the public. Registration through Zoom (with a valid email address) is required. This webinar will be recorded and all registrants will be sent a recording link in the days following the webinar.
Lion and Bull, Persepolis, Iran. Photo courtsey of Gabriel White.
Shortly after 515 BCE, upon the successful conclusion of his military campaigns in Egypt, the Achaemenid king Darius I began construction on a new imperial center: Persepolis. Here, as the records of the Persepolis Fortification Archive attest, individuals from across the empire gathered to conduct the administrative business of an empire that stretched from the Indus River to the Mediterranean Sea and from Egypt to Thrace. It is also here that Darius articulates an ambitious re-imagination of imperial power and interaction, one built upon bonds of cooperation rather than coercion. Across the site, as reliefs depict Persian ushers carefully grasping the hands of delegates from subject nations and as inscriptions name monumental gateways in honor of all lands, a vision of an inclusive empire, one that celebrates diversity as strength, emerges. This novel conceptualization of imperial power was likely alien to many visitors to the site, leaving those who designed the site with a problem. How can the notion of an inclusive empire be conveyed to those who have not experienced it? What concepts might be used to convey such an idea to people from so many different places, with such a wide range of experiences?
Assyrian Delegation, Eastern Stairway Facade, Apadana, Persepolis, Iran. Photo courtesy of Ahmad Masoominezhad.
This talk argues that in reliefs across the site, the designers of Persepolis turn to depictions of animal encounters as a way to demonstrate to visitors the potentials of their imperial system. Through a focus upon depictions of lions, rams, and interactions between these animals and humans, the talk argues that these depictions carefully reference observed animal behavior, building upon the close relationships between humans and animals, particularly in pre-industrial societies, to highlight the agency of animals, even in those situations in which they work on behalf of their human counterparts. By focusing carefully on depicted behavioral cues, the talk suggests that animals across Persepolis signal their willing participation in the activities around them, standing in contrast to previous depictions of animals in the wider area, and serving as doubles for the humans that view them, concluding that, like visitors to the site, like humans depicted in reliefs along side them, these animals join the imperial system as partners, a partnership that parallels that of subject and ruler.
Neville McFerrin holds a PhD in Ancient Mediterranean Art and Archaeology from the Interdepartmental Program of Ancient Mediterranean Art and Archaeology at the University of Michigan. She now serves as an Assistant Professor of Ancient Mediterranean Art in the Department of Art History at the University of North Texas. Her research focuses upon intersections between dress, perception, materiality, and embodiment at the sites of Persepolis and Pompeii. Her published and forthcoming work explores a range of topics from reconsiderations of gender in the reliefs of the Apadana to the fashionability of pearls in late first century BCE Pompeii. It has appeared in multiple journals and edited volumes including Fashioned Selves: Dress and Identity in Antiquity, Fashion Studies, the Handbook of the Senses in the Ancient Near East, and most recently in The Routledge Companion to Seals and Seal Studies in Antiquity. She is currently working on a monograph that considers dress as a lens through which to reinterpret the site of Persepolis.