Lost Worlds: Persia's Forgotten Empire (Ancient History Documentary) | Timeline

In the middle of a plane in modern-day Iran lies a

forgotten

ancient

city. Persepolis, built two and a half thousand years ago, was known in its time as the richest city under the sun. Persepolis was the capital of the largest

empire

the world had ever had. never seen but for more than two thousand years after its destruction the life and achievements of the Persians who built it were largely ignored I took from

history

the Persians remain an enigma to us we do not know them as well as we like to think We know the Greeks, the Romans or the Egyptians, so in a sense they are one of the remaining mysteries of

ancient

civilization.

It's one of the most underrated periods of

history

in ancient times imaginable, but no longer through archaeology, ancient texts. and the work of a new generation of historians we can build a picture of this remarkable civilization and it is this place, Persepolis, that holds the key to this Forgotten Empire, until recently Iran was largely closed to Western visitors; The political turmoil of the 1980s made this almost impossible. come here, but in recent years this has started to change. Iran is opening up. You know, it's actually welcoming people from the West, so now was the time for our study of ancient Persia to accelerate.

I think we should take the opportunity. opportunity dr. Lloyd Llewellyn Jones has spent 15 years studying ancient Persia, but this is the first time he has been able to visit Persepolis, the heart of Persian civilization. By coming to places like Persepolis, we can start to give the Persians a personality, start to give them an identity. amazing guy, what they were doing is incredible, amazing, you know, in the stillness of the morning and just with the birds singing, it's just extraordinary, it really is remarkable. Persepolis may be, but history has never given it its due, most of what we know about it.

We have deduced from Greek accounts that the Persians themselves left little written history, but the Greeks were sworn enemies of the Persians, they defeated them in battle, and it is the victors who write the history books. The Greeks like to paint themselves as the creators of all things. civilized and the Persians as cruel despotics and when we in the West identify with a Greco-Roman tradition we know the works of Greek and Latin authors and they are going to downplay Persia in its historical framework they are going to say that the Persians are barbarians and this is the issue which appears again and again in the sources, but the Persians cannot be so easily dismissed for 250 years.

They ruled the largest

empire

the world had ever seen. It had humble beginnings among nomadic tribes. who lived on the Persian plains in 550 BC. Cyrus, a tribal leader, set out with his army on a campaign of conquest with his charisma and what the Greeks called the fear he inspired and the terror he instilled in all men. Cyrus took more and more control. territory in just 30 years laid the foundations of an empire that would extend from the borders of India in the east to Greece in the Mediterranean, passing through Egypt in Ethiopia and to what is now Russia, more than 30 different peoples gathered under the rule of the man who called himself king of the world and at the heart of this Empire was Persepolis, the largest of all Persian cities and the key to understanding the achievements of the ancient Persians.

Persepolis was started around 515 BC. by Darius the great IV. King of the Persian dynasty known as the Mana above, but much of what we can see today remained hidden beneath the sands for 2,000 years. It was not until the 1930s that many of the wonders of Persepolis were finally discovered. Entire staircases adorned with perfectly preserved reliefs were first seen the splendors that their excavation would reveal to the world for more than 22 centuries the capital of the Persian Empire was neglected, as were the reliefs, archaeologists found some less spectacular artifacts that would prove vital to Discover the secrets of ancient Persians 30,000 fragments of these small clay tablets were found among the rubble of Persepolis.

They provide one of the few sources of information about the workings of the Empire written by the Persians themselves. The markings on the tablets are the ancient Persian script known as cuneiform dr. Maria Brosius is one of the few scholars in the world who can decipher what is written on the tablets. What we have here is an example of a clay tablet found at Persepolis. A scribe would take a piece of wet clay and then hold it in his left hand and it actually fits perfectly into the shape of your hand and then he would write it.

It's an extraordinary feeling to know that something like this has survived to tell us about life 2,500 years ago, information we would never have had otherwise. They tell me something about how people lived and how this Empire worked and that's what fascinates me. So what can the tablets tell us about Persepolis? The Empire's receipt and invoice tablets, including those of the workers who built Persepolis, record a year and a half. silver shekels for the carpenters who make sculptures, another details a jug of wine for each of the 74 Syrian workers working in the pillared hall, and another two and a half shekels for the workers who transport gold.

The amount of gold that appears to be used here indicates that again We know that the cost of the site must have been immeasurable from the information on the tablets, we can deduce what materials once decorated these enormous buildings for decades. We have seen only the stone pillars and walls, but now we can recreate the halls and palaces of Persepolis in all of them. its dazzling splendor as we do so, we can see why Persepolis was once known as the richest city under the sun. Access to the complex was through the All Nations Gate. Bulls with human heads announced to visitors that they were entering the heart of Persian royal power. covered with a cedar wood roof, its doors adorned with golden ornaments in the heart of the complex was the Adana application, where today King Darius received his subjects, in ancient times only 10 of the original columns remain, 36 columns of 20 meters high supported another solid cedar wood.

Look, the walls were covered with sumptuous tapestries. This huge hall had capacity for 10,000 people. Something that was built with 20 meter high columns. I think it was impressive. People probably looked up when they were completely stumped. You can see how each of these columns rise. towards the sky and they would have supported a huge roof of beautiful cedar wood there, they would also have given us this intoxicating cedar aroma wherever we went. King after king added Tudor eyes, his creation it would have been dimly lit, it might have been flowing through the window gaps and, in fact, we can tell from some of the very polished Don't know that this would have glowed, that's helium.

In fact, some people have called this room the hall of mirrors. The building was located on an artificial terrace 15 meters high. In terms of beauty, it's hard to find the right words. one feature is an architectural symphony everything is built to harmonize with each other each building is synchronized with another to form a beautiful harmonized whole Persepolis is one of the great architectural achievements of the ancient world, but why did the Persian kings go to such extremes? Beyond housing the royal entourage, what exactly was the purpose of these extraordinary buildings? More than two and a half thousand years ago, the Persians built the largest city in the world from which they ruled most of the known world, but this was no ordinary city because it was built with a particular purpose in mind, the use of city ​​was an integral part of how the Persians maintained their vast empire for 250 years.

Clues to the function of Persepolis are found carved into the city's walls and stairs in the scenes depicted in its impressive stone. The reliefs show the different peoples of the Empire coming to Persepolis to give gifts and pay homage to the great Persian king. The Nubians of Africa, the Lydians of modern-day Turkey, returned from what is now Afghanistan, so what you have here is a series of representations of tribute bearers who have come to Persepolis and all of them bringing gifts from different parts of the Empire . Good horses. Hairy mountain goats. It is all the wealth of the Empire that is forced to pay tribute to the Great King.

So much personality in the face. Wonderful sheep with curved horns. and depicted in such detail and they filled it in, it's a very stylized way of doing things like the way they draw curls in the hair and the beard in a very artificial way and then when you get to the hairy fleece of the sheep, you can see that that repeats again, so you have these triangles that end in these perfect little swirls and finally this tail movement at the bottom, just as the costumes of all these foreign delegates are finished in such detail and it is clear that the Persian artist is fascinated by the variety, the ethnic variety that is visited here, so this is what Persepolis was, it was not a military capital, it was above all a symbolic and ceremonial place of the entire Empire, the subjects came here to give their gifts to The king's formal presentation of the tribute confirmed the loyalty of the subject nations and the power of the king.

The path to the king followed a specific route through the complex intended to maximize the impact of the architecture. Climbing these stairs would have been an overwhelming experience if you look. the stairs, they're not something you go up quickly, they're so shallow that you have to walk very, very slowly, that heightened the anticipation and I guess it gave you a sense of the power of the King that you can't just walk on. a room and there you are, everything has to do with a procession to the king, what you have here are the offerings of Baris leading his camels, bringing his bowls and his jewels, and all the while you have to imagine an absolute cacophony of noise behind of you, so If you go all the time, your heart beats faster and faster, you hear languages ​​you've never heard before, you see places you've never seen before and you come to this place and I think your knees are about to give out because This is the so-called gate of all nations, this is the welcoming portal for all these visitors and they are immediately confronted with this image of royalty, these bulls with human heads, symbols of royal virility, strength and power, he walks through these huge structures complete and now anything goes.

They take away the dark lights of the sun and ask you to stop and wait right here and then you turn around and you're struck by this incredible imperial platform and you know that somewhere in there you will literally meet your maker. to see the great king in person, so walk forward and get closer to your hearts, really get into it a little now, if it seems like such a long walk when you are doing this, if you come from the remotest corners of the Empire, you will never they will have it. seen a structure like this, all the visitors in ancient times who were allowed to climb the Royal Terrace were in total or you have a perfection that they have not seen anywhere else and the people must have been absolutely astonished and you climb the Staircase imperial and you are in the heart of the complex.

Well, in front of you now is a great Adama application. Now this is where the mystery really begins. You can't get any closer to how the Persian kings wanted to present themselves and what we're really doing here is proving that we've conquered the world, we no longer need to prove anything, so you're offering the bearer to begin his journey to the king, he would have paused. and here he would have done a specific act, he would have fallen. He kneels in front of the king and then immediately prostrates himself on the floor and is then given his gifts, his job is done, he slowly steps back out of the great throne room and his 15 minutes of fame ends with the giving of gifts in Persepolis was the way Persian kings reinforced the loyalty of their subjects, but had other, less benign ways of exercising power.

The relief at Bisset Tune, in northwestern Iran, shows the Persian king in his most ruthless form. Here King Darius, the great ones, enslaved those who threatened his throne. It is a public warning to those who might try to resist him. Ancient Greek accounts also suggest that Persian kings ruled with an iron fist. It is told how the Persians cut off the limbs and even the nose of their prisoners and yet the reliefs from Persepolis seemed to paint a very different picture there you see these men holding hands or one holding his hand against someone's shoulder they talk. among themselves they encourage each other the whole image that is represented here is an image of peace and harmony that there is There is absolutely no battle scene, it is not representedviolence here, it is a Persian piece.

Persian royal inscriptions found at Persepolis reinforce this image of benevolent rule. They declare that the King loves peace, not war, and the subjects are allowed to practice their customs and religions, but is all this mere Persian propaganda? After all, these are reliefs commissioned by the king and tablets written by his loyal servants. The Jewish book of Ezra offers a self-contained account in Chapter 1. The Persians are praised for freeing the Jews and allowing them to practice their religion freely. I think it's fair to say that the Persians are unique in the way they envision how an empire should be run.

In general, in the ancient world there seems to be an idea of ​​conquering, destroying and rebuilding on our terms, we don't find that with Persia. not at all if you paint your tribute if you paint your taxes to the Persian king that was fine that was all the king wanted from you any other way of life cultural environment was accepted by allowing subject nations to live their own lives the Persians ensured that a multiethnic and multilingual empire flourished in relative peace for 250 years. It is tolerance that has a completely political objective. The objective strength of the Persian kings.

If he left the people their ethnicity and religious cults, then they would have less reason to resist my power, but it was necessary. more than tolerance to maintain this vast empire empires need infrastructure 50 miles outside of Persepolis carved into the side of the hill there is an ancient Persian road leading to Persepolis the sides of the road are up to 10 meters high such feats of engineering are They repeated throughout the empire being in charge of an empire that extends around 4000 kilometers from west to east needed to be controlled in order to control it, you need a fabulous network, a road system that allows you to get information from one corner of the Empire to wherever the king is.

As quickly as possible, even critical Greeks could not fail to be impressed by the Persian road system that extended from Persepolis to another Persian city, Souza, and then 1,500 miles west to Ephesus, along the Mediterranean roads, which also They went east to India and south to Egypt. The Greeks were particularly amazed by the messengers who traveled these roads keeping the Persian kings in Persepolis informed of everything happening in the Empire. The great Greek historian Herodotus wrote at the time that no mortal being travels faster than Persian couriers. possible due to another Persian innovation, the stopping post what you seem to have here is a system in which a messenger mounted on a horse arrives at a garis and quickly changes directly to a new horse, a new horse, leaves directly again and then maybe 20 miles down the road, get back on a new horse so the speed continues, it seems that because the messenger has this pioneering spirit and can continue as long as he has new horses, he can do it, you know, the road to through the Persian-manned staging posts.

The soldiers also ensured that, for the first time in ancient times, travelers and merchants could move across a vast expanse of land safe from bandits, so from Persepolis the Persian kings administered their immense Empire in a tolerant, peaceful and wealthy way. . The Achaemenid kings believed themselves to be the masters of everything they inspected. and to demonstrate their power they set out to create nothing less than a paradise on earth the first formal gardens in the world two thousand five hundred years ago the Persians created the largest empire the world had ever seen the Greeks said they were an uneducated population and race warrior but here in the ancient city of posaga day the stones tell a different story posaga day was the palace of cyrus the great founder of the

persia

n empire and first king of the accumulation dynasty and here there is evidence of

persia

n culture in its most sophisticated and refined, hidden among the undergrowth, there are irrigation canals for the lazy days.

The most impressive feature of his royal gardens, he would run around the garden so that the entire area here in front of Cyrus' residential palace would be irrigated. Imagine that it was shiny white, it was polished stone. shined in the sun, water would float through it would cool the area, cool the air here no archaeologist has ever found the legendary Gardens of Babylon, so these canals are the oldest known evidence of a formal garden anywhere in the world. world. world King Cyrus called his garden Paradiso, this Persian word meaning walled garden is one that we still use today paradise, it was his paradise and it was the perfection of nature where life grew where water was the essence of life .

Syrus was famous throughout the ancient world for About his love of gardens, the Greek historian Xenophon wrote that in all the districts in which he resides he takes great care that there be paradises filled with all the beautiful things that the floor. Cyrus himself was even said to cultivate a garden, he told a Greek visitor. The arrangement is my own work. I swear by the Sun God that I never sat down to dinner without first working on some gardening task, so what really grew in these Persian gardens, the clay tablets found in the great city of Persepolis list the different trees and plants that were planted here demonstrated that the garden's composition was deeply symbolic.

The tablets tell us that there were thousands of tree seedlings, different types of trees including olive trees, blackberries, dates that were collected for planting next spring. These were delights. which he imported from across his empire to reflect the size and extent of his empire in this garden in this garden space, ultimately the Persian garden was a political statement by having plants grow in an otherwise landscape barren that the Persian kings showed to all who came here. that they were the Masters of the world, the king was practically the king of the world and the garden reflected the power of the Empire.

What Cyrus did here was produce order in a disordered, chaotic and wild nature, the garden in some ways symbolized the king's ability to control light. The Persians may have built great cities and gardens, but they were still essentially a nomadic people, This type of nomadic feeling always remained with the Persians even though they built these vast imperial cities, they felt as at home in a city as they were in a tent to the Greeks the nomadic lifestyle of the Persians was a source of ridicule. Like modern nomads, the ancient Persians spent the winter months tending their flocks on the plains and the hot summer months in the cool of the mountains.

For the Greeks, this escape from the summer heat was evidence of the unmanned leanness of the Persians. The Greeks like to criticize the Persians for this softness. They see them as rather hot and humid creatures. And the other thing is that the Greek sea is hot and humid. They are women. This is how women's bodies. it works if women have our heat and humidity and therefore the Persians are hot and humid they must be one in the same thing basically the Persians are not real men because they cannot stand the heat what the Greeks never understood was that traveling was part of Persian Lifestyle, even around large centers like Persepolis which would have been a tent city as people came and went, certainly within these tents we can imagine that ancient Persian life would not be very different from the type of images that can still be seen.

Nowadays, inside these shops what you have is of course your entire lifestyle, everything takes place there, from cooking of course, then there is animal husbandry and food gathering, as well as carpet weaving, rugs and tapestries, the very essence of the shop itself, but also weaving clothes and this is a traditional women's work, of course, all this is part of the current nomadic tradition and can certainly be reflected in the ancient Persian tradition throughout of the centuries. Fine, colorful textiles have been central to Persian culture since the most remote nomadic peoples of ancient times. Persia For shoppers and merchants in a modern Iranian bazaar, textiles are a way to express status and wealth.

I've brought them to a place like the Shiraz bazaar just because there's this long legacy of an artistic tradition and a cultural tradition and a thing. What we know about life in the ancient Near East in general is that they loved colors and textiles, these are wonderful turquoises and blues and also wonderful greens, so we know that these are the colors they would have had and the colors they would have had. I loved this idea of ​​a room completely covered in textiles, it's a very important part of ancient Near Eastern tradition and certainly something that the Persians would have identified with textile tapestries on the walls being a very important part of Persian culture.

Ancient world. Textiles all over the floors, textiles on the sofas too, so you know that you are surrounded, that you are inundated by this idea of ​​color and luxury and of course also warmth. Now that's the real McCoy, okay, modern faux velvet butter, maybe this will give you a better one than anything else. idea of ​​luxury that the Persians were famous for their purple, which first of all, of course, is the color of royalty throughout the ancient world because purple is very difficult to get in ancient times, a good solid dye of color imperial purple, you know, this is a modern textile. but it does the job very well I think it captures what the Persians are like for me a bit of sparkle really the smells, sounds and sights of this bazaar would be familiar to the ancient Persians spices, gold and reams of fine brightly colored fabrics, This modern market reflects why the Persians were famous in the ancient world.

Your search for luxury. The purpose of luxury in Persepolis has mainly to do with royal power and propaganda because, of course, having superfluous articles of clothing or having a palace full of stuff. textiles that are really redundant other than being, you know, Laurel Dawn or something that covers something or a cover that is then covered by another cover. This all has to do with this idea of ​​power and wealth expressed through material goods. It's not just similar to you. Learn about the kind of things happening in the West today. The ancient Persians were the greatest power in the world.

His style and fashions were widely copied. Persians address the aesthetic side of life in the finer points of living, from how to plant your garden to how to plant your garden. The way you walk around your garden and how you decorate your walls clearly had an impact on later world civilizations, certainly through Greece and Rome, possibly in contemporary Western society, as well as the Persian approach to architecture, gardens. and textiles has survived to this day, but there were those in the ancient world who despised everything that the Persians stood for, this hostility would one day lead to the destruction of the Persian Empire and Persepolis itself. 2,500 years ago, Persepolis was the sumptuous capital of the great Persian Empire, but what the Persians saw as a luxury, their Greek rivals saw as decadence a custom that fascinated and horrified the Greeks was the Persian festival.

Most of what we know about Persian feasts, of course, comes from Greek sources because the Greeks are so interested or fascinated by this concept of luxury that obviously the feast is going to be an element of the luxurious lifestyle. Persian parties are going to be opulent - all the kinds of things that are always associated with the luxury of drinking were an essential part of the Persian party Herodotus wrote that the Persians are very fond of wine and no one is allowed to vomit or urinate in the presence of Another person, the Persians seem to live according to this principle of telling the truth, that is something that the Greeks actually unfortunately admire in them and use drinking as a rather political system.

The Persians tend to get very drunk because only in drinking, tell me so that know that you have your political discretion, you drink a lot, you say things now everyone goes to bed and mows the lawn, you wake up the next day hungover and then you all get together again to have the same conversation. see if they still have those kinds of ideas, like many Persian traditions, feasting was not a luxury for luxury's sake, it had an important social role, feasting unites you as a community, everyone participates in the same food and the same experience, so it is brilliant. something that still unites the Greeks was another example of why the Persians were an inferior race.

Alexander the Great warned his own soldiers that gluttony and opulence lead to much harm to manhood. Those who eat such enormous meals are defeated too quickly in battles. What the sauce seems to highlight is the idea that Persians are luxurious, feminized luxury, loving a feminized race that isn't really good and that is somewhere in the east and is corrupting us and our morals and everything. what we represent, and it was Alexander the Great, who was determined to end the corrupting influence of the Persians once and for all in 334 BC. C., he began a campaign to seizeof the empire that had ruled the known world for the previous 250 years in the first pitched battle between the two armies. and Issus in Turkey Alexander's Macedonian army won a resounding victory over the forces of King Darius the Third of Persia despite being outnumbered.

A lot probably has to do with the different military tactics that the Macedonian army used against the Persians. The Persians were used to fighting in a plane, they used chariots that were not used in the Macedonian army, but it was also the Macedonian idea of ​​an immediate surprise attack that helped for the next two years. Alexander's superior military tactics allowed him to seize lands once under Persian control in 331 BC. arrived in Persia when he reached Persepolis the Persian armies had been defeated the twelfth and last Persian king Darius the third was dead Alexander entered the defenseless city without opposition the ceremonial center that for almost two centuries had embodied Persian domination of the world was finally in Greek hands, Alexander told his soldiers that they were now in the most hateful city.

You have to remember where Alexander of Macedonia really came from. Okay, these are guys who are bullies. That's what Alexander Stock is all about and suddenly he comes to this place that after all, the Persians have been accused for centuries of being a feat for lovers of luxury, now this is anathema to the Macedonian and Greek followers of Alexander. The triumphant Alexander held a banquet for some of his troops in Persepolis; according to Greek accounts, it was here that the fate of the city was decided. sealed, there is a lot of drinking, a lot of bad things are said, Alexander has in his company, according to some Greek and later Latin sources, a couple of courtesans, one of whom is called cara and is supposed to be one of the most beautiful courtesans .

In Greece now, I dare say, she's a little drunk and maybe a little emotional, we don't know, but she decides to ask Alexander if she would be okay if he burned Persepolis. Alejandro in his drunken state says yes, go ahead. Alexander fully understood the symbolic importance of Persepolis as the very heart of the Persian Empire had to be destroyed. Alexander will destroy everything that could be a The potential source of resistance and opposition to Persepolis was that he wanted to destroy Persian power, so Alexander's soldiers began burning and looting the city itself. Ancient authors describe that we were unprotected, there was no military guard here to defend the population.

Some people say that what he did was stack furniture curtains with flammable material and from there the fire started and then of course it spread throughout the Terrace, it just burned, I dare say there must have been chaos here tonight , so the massacre must have been chaos. It was horrible, Alexander's soldiers just looted the city, looted everything there, burned the houses. I believe that Alejandro is the first hooligan recorded in history, he used to meditate to force violence, unnecessarily destroy a site that had no military function and that in fact was unprotected when he. When they got here, it was totally unnecessary to burn it to destroy and kill the population of Persepolis.

The Greeks who claim to be the founders of civilization and who call the Persians barbarians had committed a serious act of vandalism. They had destroyed the largest city in the world. a sad death of this remarkable Imperial City, this seat of culture and this seat of ceremony at that time it was the most magnificent city in the non-ancient world and that Alexander had destroyed and with that an era came to an end, but burning it Ironically , Alexander helped preserve the city, much of it remained buried under the ashes produced by the fire protected from the elements for the next 2,000 years.

It was not until excavations in the 1930s that many of the reliefs and clay tablets that tell us so were discovered. Much about Persian life could be studied for the first time and although the city had been destroyed, the legacy of the Persians survived. They are formal gardens, they are ceremonial architecture and their sense of luxury was copied by other civilizations, including the Greeks, but their greatest. Their achievement was that the Empire itself, the first global empire in history, was built on a model of tolerance and respect for other cultures that few great powers have matched.

Perhaps now, at last, the Persians will take their rightful place as one of the world's great civilizations. antiquity