Ancient Persia

 

Assyrians with Rams, Apadana, Persepolis (photo: CC BY-SA 3.0)

 

 

The Persian empire was a very large empire back in the second half of 6^th century B.C.E. The empire stretched from “the Indus Valley to Northern Greece and from Central Asia to Egypt.” and they also went by the name Achaemenids. The Persians literary source and architectural style was adapted from the ancient Greeks who at one point were their main enemies. According to smarthistory, “Persia was the first empire known to have acknowledged the different faiths, languages and political organizations of its subjects.” Which caused this tolerance to carry over to the administration side of things. Something very interesting that the Persians did to help keep ancient art alive was to use indigenous languages and administrative structures in the towns/villages that they conquered. They did this with all of the different groups they overthrew but used it to preserve the culture of who they conquered. By doing this the Persians were a very hard empire to judge because they were quite proud of this technique they have started to adapt into. One of the most popular architectural accomplishes they had was a humungous hall full of columns that was used to hold receptions for the kings. The hall had 72 columns with two incredibly large stair ways, called the Apadana. Leading up to the hall the walls were covered with many different scenes. These scenes were carved with hundreds of different pieces of art. The art (like above) represented different ethnic groups that the Persians conquered and what they were bringing forward to the Persian king. Like the piece above, it shows two Assyrians bringing forth tribute two rams to the Persian king. This is just one example of the conquered bringing tribute to the king but in fact there were hundreds of different gifts from different ethnic groups given fourth to the king. No later, Alexander the great came along and conquered the Persians but he himself was astonished at what the Persians have done and how they kept alive these other cultures around them. Alexander absorbed the Persians technique of keeping the ethnic groups and used this in his favor to win battles in the vast lands.

Link to Artwork:https://smarthistory.org/persian-art-an-introduction/