Evans-Pritchard Lectures 2025-2026

The Reinvention of Rule: Political Leadership and Legitimacy in the Iron Age Eastern Mediterranean, ca. 1200–600 BC

Dr Marco Santini, The University of Edinburgh

This series of five lectures proposes an overarching interpretation of key political developments that characterized Greece, Anatolia, and the Levant during the period called the Iron Age (ca. 1200–600 BC). By overcoming traditional disciplinary divides between Classical and Near Eastern Studies, the lectures will show that significant common patterns can be detected across the three regions, disproving widespread views that the political development of early Greece followed a peculiar and unparalleled trajectory. By emphasizing the Mediterranean dimension of early Greek history, and by positing the existence of a shared, coherent system of political thought and practice across Iron Age Eastern Mediterranean societies, the lectures will make the case for a new understanding of the so-called foundations of “western civilization.”