Topic: material culture (15)

• ConceptAchaemenid Art and the Imperial Style

  Achaemenid art comprises the buildings, images and objects made under the Persian dynasty that ruled from the sixth to the fourth century BCE. Its most recognisable products are the royal monuments of Pasargadae, Susa, Persepolis and Naqš-e Rostam: columned halls, carved processions, figures…

• PlaceAnshan

  Anshan (Elamite Anzan) was the highland capital of Elam, on the Marvdasht plain in the province the Old Persian sources called Parsa, modern Fars. Its ruins are the tell of Tall-e Malyan, some 47 km north of Shiraz, identified as Anshan only in 1973, when inscribed bricks from the site were read.…

• PlaceBabylon

  Babylon was one of the largest cities of ancient western Asia and the centre of the Achaemenid empire's most heavily assessed province. It was a royal residence and, among the principal residences of the Persian kings, the only one whose densely built urban character is beyond dispute. Rebuilt on…

• PlaceEcbatana

  The chief city of the Medes and, after Cyrus took it in 550 BCE, one of the four working royal residences of the Persian empire, the one where the King and his court passed the height of summer. It lay on the flank of Mount Alvand (the ancient Orontes) on the great road from Mesopotamia into Iran,…

• ObjectGold plaque of a barsom-bearer (Oxus Treasure)

  The barsom plaque is one of the small gold votive plaques of the Oxus Treasure (British Museum 123949): a standing man in Median dress holding before him a slim bundle of rods, the barsom of Iranian worship. It is the clearest surviving material image of the rite the texts only name, one of about…

• PlaceNaqsh-e Rostam

  Naqsh-e Rostam is the perpendicular cliff about six kilometres north-west of Persepolis where the Great Kings of the Achaemenid house were entombed. Four cruciform tombs are cut into the rock: the oldest secured to Darius I by its inscriptions, DNa and DNb; the other three attributed on position…

• PlacePasargadae

  The first Achaemenid capital, raised by Cyrus the Great on the high, well-watered plain of the River Pulvar in the heart of Persis, some forty kilometres north-east of the later Persepolis. Here Cyrus built a dispersed royal park of columned stone halls (a free-standing gatehouse, Gate R, with its…

• PlacePersepolis

  Persepolis was the ceremonial and administrative heart of the Achaemenid empire in its Persian homeland, a vast terraced complex of palaces, audience halls and treasuries raised by Darius I from about 518 BCE on the Marv Dasht plain of Fars. The Persians called it simply Pārsa, the name of the…

• PlaceSardis

  Sardis, the old royal capital of Lydia at the foot of Mount Tmolus on the river Pactolus, became after its capture by Cyrus in 547 or 546 BCE the chief seat of Persian power in the west, and held that place for two centuries until it surrendered to Alexander in 334. Under the Mermnad kings it had…

• PlaceSusa

  Susa was the great lowland capital of the Achaemenid empire, the ancient city of Elam that Darius I rebuilt from about 520 BCE as a royal residence and working seat of government. It lay on the Susiana plain of south-western Iran, at the meeting point of the Iranian plateau and the Mesopotamian…

• ArtworkThe Apadana Reliefs

  The Apadana reliefs are the sculptured façades of the two great stairways of the Apadana, the audience hall of Persepolis: files of Persian and Median guards, courtiers and royal grooms on one wing and, on the other, twenty-three delegations of subject peoples, each in the costume of its land,…

• ObjectThe Daric (and the Siglos)

  The gold daric (Greek dareikos statēr, about 8.4 grams of nearly pure gold) and its silver companion the siglos (about 5.4 grams) were the coins of the Achaemenid king, introduced by Darius I in the last decade of the sixth century BCE and stamped with a single unchanging image, the crowned royal…

• ConceptThe paradise garden

  The enclosed, well-watered royal park of the Persian king and his satraps, and the single most resonant word the Achaemenids gave to the languages of Europe. In its own tongue the name was concrete and unromantic: Old Iranian pairi-daiza-, 'a walled enclosure', from pairi- 'around' and *daiza-…

• ConceptThe Sacred Fire

  The sacred fire (Avestan ātar) was the purest of the good creations and the earthly emblem of aša/arta, tended by the Magi and honoured in the open air at free-standing stone fire-holders. The roofed sanctuary whose consecrated flame is kept perpetually alight belongs to the later empire and…

• ArtworkThe Winged Symbol (the figure in the winged ring)

  The winged symbol is the ring or disc with outspread wings, most often enclosing a robed male figure, that hovers above the Great King at Behistun, on the reliefs of Persepolis and over the royal tombs at Naqsh-e Rostam. It is the most conspicuous religious image of Achaemenid kingship and the…