History
The British Museum. Magnificent palaces, glittering gold life-like carvings: the wealth and power of ancient Persia "" modern Iran is legendary. Two thousand years ago, this vast and powerful empire stretched from the Mediterranean to the River Indus. Great kings created the breathtaking cities of Persepolis, Susa and Pasargadae, which now lie in r...
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The Iranian plateau, much of the territory of present-day Iran, was first populated in the 9th century BCE, when the Medes people migrated there from Central Asia. The Medes were followed by the Persians in the 8th century BCE, and these two groups laid the foundation for a series of empires that arose on the Iranian plateau over the next thousand ...
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Questia. Book by Maria Brosius; Clarendon Press,1998, 260 pgs. This book discusses Greek attitudes towards the royal women of the Achaemenid court ( 559-331 BC). It also attempts to look at the position of royal and non-royal women from a Near Eastern view point by examining the evidence of the Fortification texts from Persepolis and Neo-Babylonian...
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The Persians, like other Indo-European groups such as the Medes and Scythians were originally polytheists. They worshipped numerous gods associated with natural phenomena such as the moon and the sun, fire, wind and water. Their religious practices included, animal sacrifice, a reverence for fire and the drinking of a natural intoxicant made from t...
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Always known as Iran to its people, the country for centuries was referred to as Persia by the Europeans. Both names are widely used today. Its position as a vast natural fortress, with mountain ranges, enabled the Persians to preserve their individuality in spite of the conquests by the Arabs (7th century), the Turks (10th century), and the Mongol...
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Known as Persia until 1935, Iran became an Islamic republic in 1979 after the ruling monarchy was overthrown and the shah was forced into exile... Conservative clerical forces established a theocratic system of government with ultimate political authority vested in a learned religious scholar referred to commonly as the Supreme Leader who, accordin...
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History; Culture & Art; Celebrations; Religion; Codes of Behavior; and Gender Relations in Iran...
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The Ten-Horned Beast? Alexander the Great "" The End of Persia
Alexander the Great (*356; r. 336-323): the Macedonian king who defeated his Persian colleague Darius III Codomannus and conquered the Achaemenid Empire. During his campaigns, Alexander visited a.o. Egypt, Babylonia, Persis, Media, Bactria, the Punjab, and the valley of the Indus. In t...
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The Chronicle of Nabonidus tells us the story of the rule of the last king of independent Babylonia. The text is badly damaged and contains many lacunas. However, it makes clear that the rise of Cyrus was not unexpected. We meet him for the first time in Nabonidus' sixth year (=550 BCE), when he defeats the Median leader Astyages. A second referenc...
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Around 1200 BC, some new people invaded West Asia from the north. These people were called the Persians and the Medes. Both of them were Indo-European people, distantly related to the Hittites, the Greeks and the Romans. Like the Scythians, the Medes and the Persians were nomadic people. They travelled around Siberia with their horses and their cat...
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