College Record 2017

Research Clusters
Ancient World
The celebration of Wolfson’s fiftieth birthday continued in Michaelmas Term with
the Syme Lecture, given this year on perceptions of Roman portraits by Professor
Mary Beard of Cambridge University. Also in November, Professor Martin Goodman
hosted a lecture by Professor Emanuel Tov of Tel Aviv University on A Jubilee of
Dead Sea scrolls: research 1966-2016, and Dr Susan Walker organized and chaired
with Dr Peter Barber a day of papers presenting London’s First Voices, the recently
discovered earliest evidence of writing in Britain, records largely of commercial
transactions scratched in wax on wooden tablets found on the Bloomberg site in the
City of London. Speakers included Dr Roger Tomlin, who deciphered and published
the tablets. Their context and the challenge of conserving them was explained by
archaeologists from Museum of London Archaeology who brought with them a
fascinating range of finds, including the tablets themselves, with handling permitted
for the more robust objects. Again in November, Dr Peter Barber organized and
led another event with three speakers inspired by the date of Wolfson’s foundation:
Maciej Wencel on When was 1966 BCE? Problems with time and chronology; Dr
Christopher Metcalf on Fantasy philology, ca. 1966 BCE; and Dr Jacob Dahl on By
1966 BC it was all over.
In Hilary Term 2017 the Cluster organized lectures by Mathieu Ossendrijver of the
Humboldt University, Berlin, on geometric methods in Babylonian astronomy; and
on the afterlife of a Byzantine ivory by Georgy Parpulov, a leading member of the
Empires of Faith project hosted jointly by Wolfson and the British Museum.
In Trinity term 2017, Professor Philomen Probert and Dr Stefanie Roussou presented
their research in Don’t talk about recursion: ancient Greek rules of thumb for getting
enclitics roughly right (22 May), and on 9 June Professor Richard Sorabji organized
and led a day of papers investigating the spread of Greek philosophy to Persia, Syria,
Baghdad, Spain and cross-cultural Mughal India. Two Ancient World lunches were
followed by presentations. On 15 May, Dr Maria Kopsacheli, formerly of Wolfson
College and now of Manchester University, spoke on Mapping a ‘rough and pathless
land’: a geospatial approach to the archaeology of Athamania in Classical Antiquity.
On 6 June Dr Rachel Wood, Wolfson JRF and researcher in the Empires of Faith
project at the Ashmolean Museum, brought a newly made replica of the Khosro Cup.
This is a remarkable Sasanian shallow bowl with a central image of the enthroned
95