Linguistic and Cultural Interactions between Greece and the Ancient Near East

In Search of the Golden Fleece
"In Search of the Golden Fleece": Linguistic and Cultural Interactions between Greece and the Ancient Near East.

Friday 27th January 2017 (afternoon), St Hilda’s College, Cowley Place, Oxford, OX4 1DY

Saturday 28th January 2017 (all day), Ertegun House, 37A St Giles', Oxford, OX1 3LD

Hosted by the Ertegun Scholarship Programme and St Hilda’s College, with the kind support of the Faculty of Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics of the University of Oxford, this two-day conference will bring together international experts to discuss the issue of language and cultural contacts between Ancient Greece and its Eastern Neighbours, (especially the Indo-European populations of Anatolia) in the II and I millennia BCE.

Registration is £15 (or £10 for students/concessions): this price includes a sandwich lunch, tea/coffee and biscuits throughout the two days, a drinks reception and conference materials.

N.B: St. Hilda’s College Fellows and Students and Ertegun Scholars are automatically entitled to free tickets, but they need to register in advance as well.

Registration link: In order to register please click here.

A dinner with the speakers is taking place on January 27th at St Hilda’s College; all participants are welcome to join, at an additional cost of £20.

Programme (to download the programme please click here)

Friday 27th January

2pm Registration & Welcome Reception

2.30pm Welcome address - M. Bianconi (Oxford)

2.45pm Homeric covenantal terminology and its Near Eastern forerunners - P. Dardano (Siena)

3.30pm Where was Aḫḫiya? Who was Attarissiya? - S. Durnford (Independent)

4.15pm Refreshments

4.45pm The literary evidence -  from Hittite to Homer? - C. Metcalf (Oxford)

5.30pm Dynastic Marriage as an Engine for Religious Change: the Case of Assuwa and Ahhiyawa - I. Rutherford (Reading)

(papers end at 6.15pm)

7.00pm Drink reception and Dinner

Saturday 28th January

10.30am Refreshments 

11.00am Language Contact between Lydian and Greek - N. Oettinger (Erlangen-Nürnberg)

11.45am Gods of the Lydians, Greco-Lydian Contact and the Problem of Lydian Ethno-Linguistic Identity - R. Oreshko (Warsaw)

12.30am Anatolian and Greek: languages in contact or common inheritance - J.L. García Ramón (Center for Hellenic Studies - Washington, Harvard University)

1.15pm Lunch

2.30pm Trends in writing and literacy: Greece and Phrygia, Cyprus and Phoenicia - P. Steele (Cambridge)

3.15pm Signs and Seals. Early writing and administrative practices in the Aegean and Anatolia - W. Waal (Leiden)

4.00pm Refreshments

4.30pm The linguistic Landscape of North West Anatolia in pre-Roman times  - A. Kloekhorst (Leiden)

5.15pm A Possible New Greco-Carian Contact Phenomenon - H.C. Melchert (UCLA)

(papers end at 6.00pm)