Dr. Mitchka Shahryari initially trained in law before shifting to art history and archaeology, ultimately specializing in the archaeology of the Ancient Near East. Her first master’s degree at the Sorbonne University focused on first-millennium fortresses across Iran and Turkmenistan, where she developed a large architectural and ceramic database. Inspired by Professor Wouter Henkelman, she pursued a second master’s at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, studying the Persian period, Aramaic, and Achaemenid provincial history. Her PhD research centred on the Aramaic ostraca from Idumea, exploring Persian administrative systems and imperial networks in Transeuphratene. Throughout her career, she has maintained a pluridisciplinary approach, combining archaeology, history, epigraphy, and digital humanities, emphasizing the importance of multiple perspectives in understanding fragmentary ancient evidence.
Dr. Shahryari is currently affiliated with the Centre of Excellence in Ancient Near Eastern Empires (ANEE) at the University of Helsinki.
What initially drew you to this project and how does it connect to your broader research interests? What do you expect to learn from it?
I had already explored various themes from the Idumean corpus in my work, and taxation was one of the chapters. This project came along around the same time. Since taxation is the central theme here, it is a great opportunity for me to delve deeper into a specific topic from the corpus. My earlier exploration was broad and included many themes, now I can narrow my focus for a deeper analysis.
The texts in the Idumean corpus are very short and implicit. We don’t have much explicit information, so we draw meaning from certain words or connections. It was very useful to compare the corpus with Persepolis, but I knew I also had to extend that comparison to Babylonia to the east, and Egypt to the west. We have evidence from those regions about land, taxation, mechanisms of administration, and relationships between agricultural communities and higher institutions. This project allows me to continue that comparative approach.
In my PhD, the key debate was whether the Idumean corpus is private – maybe from a small village – or whether it is tied to the administration. I argued that it is connected to the institutional landscape. But now the question is: how? Is it purely institutional? Is there a temple connection, even if it’s not explicitly mentioned? That’s the focus of this project. I’m looking at the corpora from Persepolis, Babylonia, and Egypt to see how similar dynamics work there. The goal of my research is to find a better way to understand Idumea, how it functioned and what kinds of systems were in place. This project is the perfect setting for that, especially because of its comparative approach.
Your research focuses on the Idumean corpus. For our non-expert readers, what is that exactly, and why is it such a valuable source for understanding the Southern Levant? What drew you to these Aramaic ostraca in particular?
The Achaemenid Empire dominated the Near East from 559 to 330 BCE, until the arrival of Alexander the Great. They were economically exploiting the territory via a large administrative network. I focus on one of the imperial provinces, the Transeuphratene, meaning “beyond the [Euphrates] river” (Abar Nahara in Aramaic), located in the western part of the empire. After the empire lost Egypt, the region became a frontier. This had an impact on things like fortress installations and the construction of administrative centres to reinforce the edge of the empire.
Inside the provinces, the territory was divided further into smaller regions. In Transeuphratia, the region that we call Idumea is one of these. The Idumean corpus includes documents from different sites within that area of Idumea. Etymologically, it comes from Edom (meaning red, likely referring to the soil), which was located further south. When the Edomite population moved, Idumea became a mixed region with many Edomites. We don’t exactly know when the name Idumea began to be used by the administration. It doesn’t appear in the corpus itself. However, we do know the Idumea was an eparchy in the Hellenistic period, during the reign of Ptolemy II, as we can see in the Zenon Papyri.
The second important word is “ostraca”, the plural form of "ostracon". An ostracon is a ceramic sherd, usually a broken piece of a jar. Instead of throwing the pieces away, people reused them. One reason for that could be economical, but of course not only (see my co-edited book around the phenomenon of reuse or reutilization process). Sherds can be reused in different ways: Sometimes the ceramic is crushed to make clay powder, sometimes they used sherds to fill holes or reinforce walls and floors, and sometimes they used them as writing supports. That is when the sherd changes its role and becomes an ostracon. In this region, nearly 2150 ostraca have been found, written in Imperial Aramaic. Imperial Aramaic was used by the Assyrian, Babylonian, and Achaemenid Empires. Since it was used so much for administration, it became increasingly standardized. That’s why studying this language and corpus is so interesting: it is linked to institutional and imperial practices.
Unlike other textual sources, most of the Idumean corpus didn’t come from archaeological excavations. It appeared progressively on the antiquities market in the 1970s and some were bought by private collectors, some by museums, impacting the publication process which are scattered. Most of the unexcavated ostraca were published by well-known scholars like Porten, Yardeni, and Lemaire, in many different books and articles. I created a database that brought the material together, so it is easier to find and navigate into it. When you have so much data, it’s helpful to move inside it and search. Interactive databases are far more effective than printed editions.
Your doctoral work explored administration and imperial structures in the Persian Levant through archaeology, history, and epigraphy. How do these different disciplines complement each other in your research, and how does that interdisciplinary training shape your current approach?
Since the 1990s, the ostraca have been predominantly studied from a philological perspective. That is why it was interesting to build a database and apply a pluridisciplinary approach. I started to bring in archaeology and history as well. It is important to focus on the text, but we should never forget that the ostracon is not only a text. We have the words and the themes, but we also have the object itself. What kind of ceramic is it? What size? What colour? When we compare different pieces, do we see a pattern? Where was the material found? Was it lying on the floor? Was it put away? Was it stored or organised in a specific way? In what kind of building? Unfortunately, for most of the ostraca, we don’t have the archaeological context. But we still have some information from a few sites, and we can try to make connections (Tel Arad, Tel Bersheba, Tel Jemmeh...). Bringing in history, sociology, and economics helps change our perspective. You get a broader understanding, not only of the object but also of the human behind it. An interdisciplinarity approach is challenging, but it gives different angles and a better understanding in the end. It’s not just about the past, but about the thinking process and the methodology applied to this research and this corpus.
We are products of our own environment, living in a society that is still connected to the past. Understanding that past can help us in our daily lives. It offers something to society as a whole, because it sheds light on things we often forget to take time for. This is also why I find Bourdieu’s theory interesting. He talks about three major elements: field, capital, and habitus. Even if we are unaware of them, we still carry all of that. We are part of the society we live in. We have a capital that shaped us, and a habitus. We should be aware of that for ourselves, but also aware of it when we are studying the past.
If you could sit down with a historical figure from the period you study, who would it be and what would you ask them?
Meeting only one specific person feels a bit too narrow for me. When you meet one individual you might not even fully understand them, because their perspective is shaped by the society and habitus they belong to. Two things would interest me more. First, being like a mouse, living in that period, observing interactions between people, seeing different social roles, backgrounds, daily routines. Going among the elites, the rural communities – unnoticed, witnessing how they act and speak. I would love to experience the reality of the era, not just one conversation. Being there means experiencing social interactions, hearing speech, voices, body language, and the whole environment. Or living one life-time during that period would be also really fascinating! Maybe as the daughter of an Arab or Phoenician merchant, or even a woman of the aristocracy, or a Judean woman in the Elephantine garrison...
Stay tuned for the next post in this series, where Dr. Shahryari delves deeper into the economic structures behind the Idumean corpus. We’ll explore how these ancient fragments reveal the workings of the Persian Empire’s fiscal system, shedding light on taxation, agriculture, and administration. Don’t miss this fascinating continuation of our conversation!