Rachel Kousser (City University of New York)
Chryselephantine couches — exquisitely carved and gleaming with gold, glass, and ivory — are among the most widespread manifestations of Hellenistic elites’ embrace of Near Eastern custom. Well-documented in archaeological remains and written texts (e.g., Andronikos 1984; Plaut., Stich. II.2.50-55), the couches offer a concrete material lens through which to analyze the transfer of cultural knowledge about feasting: an ephemeral activity as significant for Mediterranean aristocrats as for their Assyrian and Persian predecessors.
Scholars have long studied the aristocratic symposium in Archaic Greece, highlighting its social and political importance (Murray 1983) as well as its indebtedness to Near Eastern precedents (Baughan 2013). But they have paid less attention to Hellenistic feasting, despite its clear significance for the era’s court culture and for its economic life, as the desire for exotic ingredients and luxury materials encouraged far-flung trade.
This paper draws on artifacts as well as epigraphic and literary texts to examine Hellenistic feasting and its relationship to Persia. I stress the critical role played by Alexander the Great, whose banquets integrated Macedonian and Iranian dining practices. As his ancient biographers attest, the king held a number of high-profile feasts attended by Persians, Greeks, and Macedonians, for instance, his wedding banquet at Susa (Arr. Anab. 7.4.4-8; Plut., Alex. 70.2-4, Mor.329e; Ael. VH 8.7; Ath. 12.538b-539a). At these feasts, he drew on Near Eastern custom for the seating arrangements, prayers, and marriage rituals (Grenet 2017; Brosius 1996). The king also provided a visual environment that evoked Persian luxury, with gold couches and tents hung with gold-and-purple tapestries, At the same time, his campaigns in India gave his soldiers new access to ivory as well as familiarity with its source, elephants, which they encountered above all in war (Scullard 1974).
Alexander’s example proved irresistible to his officers, who emulated his feasting practices and his embrace of luxury materials upon their return to Macedonia. They are the likely patrons of the numerous Macedonian tombs with chryselephantine couches excavated in recent years (Rhomiopoulou 2010: 87-99). With the couches, Alexander’s officers both referenced Near Eastern imagery and customs and also asserted, through scenes of battle with Persians, their conquest of the Achaemenid Empire. The couches thus shed light on an important but understudied aspect of knowledge transfer in the globally interconnected Hellenistic world.