Tenth Annual Leon Levy Lecture Video Now Live

We are happy to announce that the video recording of the Tenth Annual Leon Levy Lecture presented on November 3rd by Dr. Theo van den Hout (Oriental Institute, University of Chicago) is now available. 

Dr. van den Hout's lecture, "A People Without a Name or, Who Were the Hittites?," explores ideas of Hittite identity. Whereas the civilizations of the Assyrians and Babylonians in Mesopotamia and that of Egypt never faded from memory, knowledge of the Hittites was almost fully erased after the collapse of their kingdom around 1200 BC. In the now one-hundred-year-old resurrection of Hittite culture and society that followed the decipherment of the Hittite language in 1915, they were largely cast in the image of Mesopotamian civilization, especially where Hittite sources remain less eloquent or even silent. But is this always justified? Are we at liberty to assume entire text genres and social systems just because others had them? What would Hittite society look like without them? This lecture will address these questions and explore some of the definitions of the term "Hittite."

As videos for other lectures become available, they will be published on the event's webpage. Videos will also be searchable within the Events tab of the website. To find a full list of recordings, please visit our video archive.