In Our Time - Persepolis

Episode Date: June 7, 2018

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the role of the great 'City of the Persians' founded by Darius I as the ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid Empire that stretched from the Indus Valley to Egypt and the coast of the Black Sea. It was known as the richest city under the sun and was a centre at which the Empire's subject peoples paid tribute to a succession of Achaemenid leaders, until the arrival of Alexander III of Macedon who destroyed it by fire supposedly in revenge for the burning of the Acropolis in Athens.The image above is a detail from a relief at the Apadana, the huge audience hall, and shows a lion attacking a bull.With Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones Professor of Ancient History at Cardiff UniversityVesta Sarkhosh Curtis Curator of Middle Eastern Coins at the British MuseumAndLindsay Allen Lecturer in Greek and Near Eastern History at King's College LondonProducer: Simon Tillotson.

This is the BBC. Thanks for downloading this episode of In Our Time. There's a reading list to go with it on our website, and you can get news about our programs if you follow us on Twitter at BBC In Our Time. I hope you enjoy the programmes. Hello, in 520 BC, Darius the Great started building on the site of Pespolis, the ceremonial city of the Persians, and for almost two centuries, this was the richest place on Earth.

Its extravagance was a mark of the ruler's power, as King of Kings over land that stretched in modern terms, from Libya to Pakistan, from Egypt up to the Russian steps. This was the Archimid Empire, and it was then the largest in the world. When an act of revenge or vandalism, Alexander of Macedon sacked the city in 330 BC, it said he removed 200 wagons of gold and silver, some of the tributes and taxes from across the empire. With me to discuss the rise and fall of Persepolis are Lloyd Llewellyn Jones,

Professor of Ancient History at Cardiff University Besta Sajahos-Kirtis, curator of Middle Eastern Coins of the British Museum and Lindsay Allen, lecturer in Greek and near Eastern history at King's College, London. Lloyd Llewellyn Jones. Darius Agraith was head of what's known as the academic empire. What were its origins?

Oh, the Persians originate from... Persian is Iran that we can use them interchangeably. Modern-day Iran is what we're thinking of. The Iranian plateau, the essential. border still of Iran, but of course, as you said, the empire was so much bigger. The original Persians came in in nomadic formation. They were nomadic tribes from the steps of Eurasia. In the second millennium BC, they went into different parts of Iran, taking on different

traditions. So in the north of Iran, there were the Medes. People are probably heard of those. And in the south, southwest of Iran, this is where our Persians settle. They're Indo-European speakers, so the languages are not Semitic at all. so they're very different kind of people from the area of Mesopotamia, for instance. So they settled down in these areas, and in these tribal confederacies over the centuries, they gained more and more power, also interacted more with the peoples of Mesopotamian,

in particular the Elamites, very strong and powerful, sophisticated civilization in south-east of Mesopotamia. And from there, really, well, what we hear from Greek historians, is that an individual, Cyrus, who we call Cyrus the Great, unified some of these southern Iranian, Persian tribes. March north, conquered the tribes of the Meads, and from there took over median lands, which stretched actually well into northern Mesopotamia and into what we now would see as eastern Turkey as well. and from there this small tribal confederacy within a generation and a half had conquered much of the ancient world

They came in as nomads you say How long did it take for them to become non-nomads They never stopped And what long did the non-nomads take? They never stopped being nomads So they moved around all they didn't have cities then They had ceremonial sites like Persepolis But they also have cities such as the old site of Babylon

The old Elamite site of Souser the old median site of Hamadan, Ekpatana. And what they did was the court, the king and his court, travelled constantly between these regional centres. So they've never, ever given up nomadism, essentially. So this is a peripatetic people. So when they build in stone at places like Passagard and Pespolis for the first time, they really are taking on the influences of the civilizations that they've conquered.

There was no real deep legacy of stone building in Iran before this period. Little in the north in the median period, but very little else. And some people have said, in fact, that the palaces that we'll be talking about today, Persepolis in particular, in a way, is a kind of a tent in stone. So the nomadic essence of the Persians never left them. So they, like the courts in medieval England, they toured around city after city, place after place. Constantly, constantly. What did this give them? What strength did this give them?

Well, there's strength in being seen, of course, showing yourself. around the empire, but there's also practicalities too. I mean, a court of thousands and thousands of people can easily eat its way like locusts through the surrounding countryside, and so they need to move regionally to follow the weather, to follow the crops, but to follow war, but in particular to follow ritual as well.

So cultic belief and so forth is very important to be in certain places at certain times. Did they gather enough people, enough men-at-arms, to be formidable in the face of any of the people they took on, any of the other states. Yes, absolutely. I mean, the Persian army was diverse, made up of crack forces at the centre, but also mercenary soldiers as well. So a very, very powerful army,

and certainly by the end of the fifth into the fourth century. What were their weapons? Oh, they're very, very varied from chariotry and cavalry, of course, and also even camel cavalry as well, the Ushabarish, through to, of course, spears, bows and arrows, and that's the most important thing of all.

On an inscription on his tomb, Darius the Great says, as a spearman, I am a great spearman, as a bowman, I am a great bowman, as a horseman, I am a great horseman. And horseback, and therefore linking to the nomadic origins of these things, horseback riding was, by default,

the essence of Persian identity. Thank you. Vesta, Vestar Sarkos Kherdi. How did Darius Great stand out as an leader? What distinguished him? He was certainly the organiser. Cyrus the Great founded the empire by amalgamating the tribes of the Medes and the Persians.

And just to get back to what Lloyd said, the Medes, of course, are identified by many people as the Kurds, modern Kurds. So he amalgamated these two main tribes, Cyrus, the Great, founded the empire. conquered Lydia, conquered Babylon. But it was really Darius or Darius, who organized the empire. He introduced roads. He introduced a postal system. He created the royal road that led from Sousa in southern Iran to Sardis in modern day Turkey, Western Turkey. He also divided the country

into provinces or satrapies and he introduced taxes. He was certainly the king who consolidated the empire and he made Persia or the Akimid Empire as we know it today. Were these battles easily won? Well, they certainly these places put up opposition. I mean, we know that, for example, under Cyrus, Lydia's King Creeces, fought against Cyrus, but he was eventually conquered. Babylon was conquered in 5-38 BC. I think the Persians took over these areas, these regions put in place people who were related to them as governors or satraps.

And as long as these regions paid allegiance to the King of Kings, they were. left in peace. Comey sort of start at the end here. It was sacked, it was destroyed. What's it like now to visit? What sort of place will we see? We have some photos from the internet on the thing, but obviously we're on radio.

So what's it like? I think I haven't taken anybody there who hasn't been impressed. It's sheer magic. Simply because you drive to Persepolis from Shiraz in southern Iran. It's about 100. 100 kilometres northeast of Shiraz, and you turn off the main road and you come to an avenue

which is aligned by Cyprus trees, and you sort of see in the distance a terrace with very tall columns, and you get a notion of what is awaiting you, and as you come closer, you see this magnificent large terrace with ruins, with buildings, with buildings, with buildings, buildings with very high columns, some are 20 metres high. And what is so beautiful about these columns is that most of them, or some of them, have the column capitals still on top. And they consist of birds, lions, bulls. So you sort of set into a different world.

It truly is magic. And every corner of the site has a different view. look northwards, you see the big mountain, the mountain of Mithra. You turn left, you see the gate of all nations. You turn right, you see the palace, audience palace of

Deraes. So it's just magnificent, I would say. I think I haven't seen a single person who hasn't been impressed. Well, thank you for that. Lindsay Allen, why

we've been given a good clue to it from that description of it, but what was particular about that location and for what purpose was it chosen? Well, it's, as Vestros really well described, it's a very charismatic location. It's a place you reach at the edge of a very large plane called Mavdashd, which is fertile and was already settled. So there was already a certain amount of agricultural production, a certain amount of development and a population, a long-term population in this area. This was also close to but not immediately on the route that went down from the north

to the south to the Persian Gulf and the valley of the river there, the Pulvar River Valley leads down from an earlier capital built by Cyrus the Great Pasagadai. So it's possible that this area was also in the process of being developed quite early in the Persian Empire's

sort of, let's say, evolution into a world empire. But the creation of Persepolis itself seems to be a slightly later sort of fortification. So it's a strong position. It's an outcrop, a rocky outcrop on a mountainside, which has been created into a sort of charismatic, imposing and sort of a between place. And even when you can tell from the ruins, it's monumental and magnificent as you've been describing.

Did it have any strategic significance? Well, it is well, let's say, watered, it is well supplied, and it is also strategically important for the routes leading down from the Iranian plateau into Mesopotamia towards Sousa. So if you wanted to go on routes either to the Persian Gulf or further west to Sousa, Persepolis is effectively in that network. And texts that we have from the site do show that it is very well connected, right to the extremities of the empire,

but also it's a centre for the region, which is really quite a large region, reaching almost halfway up the Zagov Mountains and all the way down to the Persian Gulf Coast. And I like Lloyd's idea of these things being tense, really, stone tents. What presidents were there, if any, for such a ceremonial, mainly ceremonial place to be built at such vast expense, size and so on. Well, the use of the term ceremonial for the site is really up for debate.

I mean, it's slightly contested. I found it in one in the notes. But so it definitely has been interpreted as maybe a ceremonial, a sort of ritual site. A lot of tombs, though? There are, well, that's a question of how it may be changed over a couple of hundred years. So the tombs were initially constructed across the river, Valley in a different location, another incredibly charismatic and impressive site with cliffs overlooking the plain. And it's only in the fourth century just before Alexander arrived that

there are tombs also cut into the mountainside above Persepolis. So it may have changed in function over its lifetime. And that's maybe a little bit difficult to discern because the architecture stayed quite similar throughout that period. It really tried to assert a sort of dynastic continuity. But why do you, all right, cancel it or put ceremonial on the back burner. Why did they build it there? What was the purpose of it then?

I think, again, that's alphabet. It is definitely projecting a message of power. It is projecting a message of the bas-reliefs, the sculptures on the site, project a message of populaceness. and the inscriptions added to the site by Darius promotes the strength of Persia of the region of the homeland as a sort of imperial power.

But moving on tipto here, it wasn't a fort, it wasn't a trade centre, and the king came every so forth with thousands of courtiers and concubines and unix and so on, and then he went to his next stone tent. So it wasn't ceremonial? I think you could call anything. Because it was so terrific. I don't want to completely squash the word ceremonial. I'm sorry, please.

It's a large impressive site, and anything involving the kingship has facets of magic that are being conjured up for those who are experiencing it, even if the king isn't there. So you might have visitors to the site year round who are encountering the charisma of the king in a site where the person is not. No.

I guess, you know, one of the things I really sympathise Lindsay's Racken sometimes to pronounce this, is that, you know, all right, we're ancient historians, but our discipline is changing all the time, and the site of Persepolis is changing all the time, as it was in antiquity. Persepolis was a building site, right the way up until the moment,

Alexander destroyed it. Even Darias III, the last of the Achaemenid kings, was adding to it. Every acumen had wanted to put something there. And most remarkably in the last... 200 years. Yes, yes, yes, absolutely. This was a dynastic site.

This was something for kingship. It was the idea, the ideology of king... But what's really fascinating. But what's really fascinating, in the last decade, and more and more information is coming out now, Iranian and Italian teams working around the plateau of Persepolis have discovered something which is blowing our minds. I mean, quite literally, rewriting the history of Persepolis. So off the platform itself, in the plateau around, we've now discovered the remains of a Babylonian-style gate, like the gate of Ishtar, which perhaps you'll know from the Pergammon Museum, from Babylon,

which was built by Cyrus the Great. And we know that because we actually have Cyrus' names and titles on that gate. So now we're having to rewrite Darius' history from Persepolis' history back two generations from Darius. What happened there? Why did Cyrus decide to build this year? Well, we really don't know yet. We don't. But was he trying to recreate a second Babylon in this area? which comes back again to why the choice of this particular site,

we always thought it was kind of a virgin site for Darius, but now we have to take it back two generations. You want it coming? I think what is important, and we shouldn't forget, Lindsay touched on that. The whole region, the area of PASS or FAS, has a significance for the Achaemenids. They came from there.

And that's why Cyrus founded Pesagoday, and that's why we have Pesopolis. And if you look at the inscriptions of Darius from Sousa, from Persepolis, he says very clearly that he is a Persian and that he is an Aryan, Aryan here meaning simply Iranian, no, nothing else. But he says he's very proud to describe himself as a Persian. So Pars, Persis, the modern-day province of Fars in southern Iran, had a special meaning to them, and that's why Persepolis was built.

Now, to come back to the question of ceremonial reason or ceremonial place for Persepolis, yes, there was a ceremonial reason behind it, but we also have these thousands of Ilamite tablets from Persepolis dating to the time of Darias, where we hear that the administration was there throughout the year. So if the king moved to Babylon in the summer and to Ekbatan Ahamadan in the winter, and this is partly because of the weather, they did not abandon the site completely. Life went on, the administration stayed there,

and these tablets reveal a lot of information. I've talked about, we've mentioned it once at twice, that it was the richest city on earth and we know Alexander took away at least 200 carts of gold, silver and stuff. Where did all that, where did those riches come from? Well, the provinces or satrapids pay tax to the king, to the king of kings.

Yeah, but where did they get the money? They had to... Well, the treasures, sorry, better, yes. I'm asking you, sorry, I interrupted you, I shouldn't have done it. No, no, no. I mean, they did agriculture and they produced agriculture. culture, they had raw products, they had semi-precious stones that they were trading with different

areas and what they got instead from that, they then passed it on to the King of Kings, to the treasury. I mean, the wealth of the Persian Empire came from the satrapies. And also, the wealth of the Persian Empire at the beginning certainly came from the areas that were conquered, like Lydia, which was extremely wealthy Babylon and the Babylonian Empire. So that's where the wealth came from. What I should say also is that the treasury excavated at Persepolis is the only treasury that we have surviving from the Achaemenid period. And what we regard as treasure should perhaps be broadened out. You know, there are stone carved vessels, there are antiquities from earlier kingdoms.

brought through into Persepolis. So you might have almost a sort of museum-like atmosphere of wealth and sort of special resources that the King is regarded as having, as well as, let's say, new flows of money. And the other thing to point out, which is, I think, linked to the landscape around Persepolis itself, is that there is an ekemanid exploitation of land. There is an ekemanid effort to develop agricultural productivity in some areas, what we're beginning to find

in some new archaeological findings in the rest of Iran, is that the water in the landscape is their speciality. So increasing productivity and creating a sort of productive and lush environment is kind of one of their prime activities. So, Kalinga, you showed you one, then I'll ask you a question.

Well, we get a sense of the kind of wealth that pours into Iran from, not only from relief sculptures at Persepolitz itself, which show dignitaries bringing gifts of livestock, gifts of jewelry, gifts of textiles. These are obviously just the tip of the iceberg. But also we have this incredible inscription from Sousa

in the reign of Darius the Grating, which he talks about the building of an Apodana, so a throne hall, just as we have at Persepolis, what stands for Souser, I think, stands for Persepolis here, where basically we have the peoples of the empire are tasked with bringing together different goods from across the empire. So, for instance, Assyrians are told to bring cedar wood from Lebanon and transport it through. We have brick builders from Babylon.

We have goldsmiths and ivory workers from Egypt. We have turquoise coming in from Afghanistan and lapis from Afghanistan. So all of this is coming to the heart of the empire to build these great structures. And Darius makes a great point of that. And what he's saying there in a way is, you know, in the kind of Scottish referendum campaign jargon, is kind of we're better together is the idea, you know, you build all of this together from the goods of the empire. And what Darius is kind of creating in these sites like Pusappalus and Sousa

is in a way a kind of empire in miniature. And Greek stonemasons. Greek stonemasons, absolutely. That's one of the wonderful things about it, the people who pour in from around the empire. This is multicultural. That's a thing, quite a lot of organising, wasn't it? Huge amount of organisation.

But this is something that the Iranians have always been very good at, is bureaucracy. And good roads. Excellent roads. Great communication systems. Criss-crossing the Empire. I know we have texts written in Elamite in Cuneiform, which talk about individuals traveling from Memphis in northern Egypt

right the way to Kandahar in Afghanistan. And there are road stations which would have facilitated those kind of journeys. I mean, that's a mammoth journey to undertake. But we know that they're able to do it because the bureaucracy sets up road stations. you know, service areas, cafes, service stations, if you like, dotted across the whole of the empire. It's worth saying also that the Elamite is a sort of developed bureaucracy that is adopted in these areas. You keep using Elam. Can you just unrabble it a bit?

It is a language, as Lloyd has mentioned, which is in historic use in this region. So Persepolis is both in Fars, but it is also, in a certain sense, is within Elam, which is an older kingdom in which one of the earliest, forms of writing was in use in the third millennium BCE. Elam became a kingdom which was very rich and powerful in the second millennium BCE and came to blows with Assyria in the first millennium BCE. So this is a very long, settled and very powerful and quite a lot of, let's say, self-awareness as a region. And Elamite is the language in use in that region,

which is already in sophisticated administrative use by the time the imperial, center in this region is being set up? I think this is very important. We often forget the contribution of the Elamites, the Elamites in southwestern Iran, that they made to the Achaemenid Empire. And Darias himself, when he talks in his inscription at Bissutu, or Behistan in Western Iran,

talks about the Elamites. And we think that even the old Persian script, we think that the old Persian script was actually created based on the Elamite script. So this was a very powerful kingdom, which was in a way on the same level as the kingdoms in Mesopotamia. And also strategically they were placed

in a very important place, and also all the trade that went on from India, for example, the east to Mesopotamia, had to come through Persia and the Elamite kingdom. And so what these really rich Ilamite tablets give us And they first hand They look as the dry as the dust that they're written on

But they actually But 300,000 of them Yeah, at least, at least And many are not even translated How clay carries history Yeah, it's quite incredible And these clay tablets speak for us They really do

They tell us the most remarkable things The most remarkable mix of evidence About individuals, groups of people From different parts of the empire Living around Persecular Yes, yes yes Absolutely

we have an incredible text of Ionian women, so Greek-speaking women, living around Persepolis, who are they? Are they there with their Ionian husbands? Are they war captives? We don't know, but they have given birth, and they're given rations. And according to, you know,

if they give birth to a male child, they get twice as many rations as given birth to a female child, which tells us something about gender ideology, perhaps, around Persepolis as well. We even hear of our first references to chickens, from the Persephalist fortification text. A bird called Baz-Baz, derius the great as his own flock of Baz-Baz,

probably chickens for cockfighting. Can I just get some idea? I'll come to you in a moment. What was going on there? We've restored the word of ceremonial, we've called it dynastic. The king came for the great feast. All his main persons came there,

but the great... Horos, is it called? Norus. That's it. and so on. Then he moved on. Then what, in the empty months? Were people just going about administrating a place, keeping it tidy

for when he turned up next time? No, I think there was a lot of... On building, of course. We've been told, constantly building, yeah. Building and also overseeing the activities that went on. I mean, it certainly was a ceremonial place,

but within a larger administrative center. So, I mean, it's not a surprise to find then sort of information about people travelling, people working. So there must have been a lot of activity going on. And it must have been a very important administrative centre in the heartland of the Persians. What evidence do we have from that time that it fulfilled its purpose in sort of giving a sense of awe and magnificence to the king, that people recognised it and said this was the... place, you must go to Pespolis. That is the centre of the biggest, biggest empire on Earth

and the biggest place on Earth. Are we anything, when anybody else is registering that? It only is known as Pussepolis in text stating after its destruction, but it was probably known by the term Persi, just the place of the Persians before that point. So it's difficult to kind of register the specific impact of the place, because if you refer to Persi, you could mean the Persians, the place or the Persians, the people. In terms of its iconographic and structural impact, it did have quite a lot. You can go as far as the Caucasus in the north and as far as Saigon in the west and find column capitals that are borrowing from the motifs that are in Persepolis.

So it's probable that the Echemenid architectural monumental image traveled further in a way, the kind of impression of monumental. and that was possibly through the movement of people, but also the movement of lots of objects. So the decorative world of the Ekemenid palaces goes to great monumental giant bulls and lion's heads, but it also goes right down into the miniature in a duplicate form. So if you think about it,

the environment of the palace could travel in a very fluid way along with personnel. I've talked about it taking over Egypt. What you're saying, conjures up Egypt, but it also, there's a little hint of the Acropolis, isn't it? Yeah, it's been a preoccupation of some, let's say, writing about Persepolis, that maybe the Parthenon, the development of the Acropolis and the Persepolis are in some kind of competitive relationship. It's true that Persepolis was being developed as a built-up Acropolis, let's say, a generational two before the main building phase of 5th century Athens under FIDES and,

and Pericles in Athens. However, the construction in Persepol has continued right through that period too. They are very distant to each other, and it's worth saying that there is... It's very very distant to each other. Yeah, they are, I mean, they are quite a long way apart. It's not many weeks on a camel's journey, is it really? If you had provisions all the way, supplied by all the satraps... That's what camels were for.

But, you know, the satraps could also keep you waiting around for provisions on the way as well. So it probably depended on your access to... how fast you could get there. But it's certainly true that there may have been a reputation of monumentality that a lot of places were trying to compete with. And therefore, places on the edge, like Athens, and Athens was an edge of this kind of large body of territory, may have been catalyzed into these kinds of displays,

may have been inspired in some ways by these. I'm always amazed by the amount of travelling and the distance of travelling of people in what we call ancient civilisations went in for. But you want to come in now, don't you? I just wanted to say that most satraps or governors were related to the king and were of Persian origin. So, for example, the satrap of Babylon or the satrap of Sidon, modern-day Lebanon, or Sardis in Western Turkey. So they had a notion what was happening actually in the homeland.

So they may have been also influential in transmitting the ideas. And physically, Lindsay is absolutely right. It's this transference of the imperial image, if you like, can happen in minutiae. So in seals and boulay, for instance. So every wealthy individual in the ancient world had his own seal, which we could press into clay. And this would carry images of kingship. And in the kind of things that don't survive in the archaeology,

unfortunately not very often is textiles, for instance. Leather paintings, all of this kind of thing, all of these images of kingship, monumentality, were transferred across the empire, not in their huge form, but in these detailed states. Can I just rest on kingship for a moment? Because Lindsay mentioned earlier on about the tombs, both in this place and nearby, quite nearby,

and tombs of kings and became sacred places to visit. How important was that? Did you have to, if you were a great satrap and son, did you have to go to Persepolis to be properly entombed, buried, and so take a notice of? No, no, not at all. So who were those tombs for? So the earliest one we have is from the reign of Darias, the first, Darius the Great,

and we have them then throughout the rest of the Achaemenid period. Our understanding of royal burial is probably one of the most shaky things we have in our discipline. We do have texts which talk about the sustenance of cult for certain kings, the offerings, monthly offerings of sacrifice and so forth. But we really don't know. What did they sacrifice? Well, one of the things they sacrificed in one of our texts is a horse every month.

What did they sacrifice a horse for? This is for Cyrus. And, of course, the horse is one of the most important symbols of Iranian-ness. So why did they kill it? Because it is a sacred animal. It's the kind of thing that the ghost of an individual, the shade of the individual, most desires. This synergy between Iranian individual and his horse is very, very deep, very meaningful, very significant. Really, right up until modern times, in fact, there are stories from the 19th century of nomads

passing through Passagard to the tomb of Cyrus the Great, and they're offering a cup of mares milk, for instance, onto the tomb. and part of the ritual of investiture for the kings of ancient Iran was to drink sour milk, which must be mares milk. So there is something about the horse ideology which goes very, very deep into the ancient Iranian psyche. And now we come to the Terminator. Alexander the Great went for Sepulius.

And why did he go up? You're shaking your head. Firstly, he is not great to me. I thought, I'm getting words wrong here. I do not call him Alexander. Just to give people a clue This is the Alexander we're talking The people of Barisotel

The man who came out of Macedonia And no more worlds to conquer And on you went. Why did he go to Persepolis? Well, I think He certainly wanted to make a name for himself.

He certainly wanted to conquer regions. He was driven by the idea of conquering empires and I think more than anything else he was also driven by the wealth that existed in the empire of the Persians. I mean, it was legendary that the Persian kings were very wealthy. And I think at the time of Alexander, the scenario was not all that different from today.

Sort of you went and conquered areas that were rich and that had resources. and he went first to Asia Minor and then from Asia Minor to Persia to get hold of the wealth of the Persian Empire. He certainly didn't have to destroy Persepolis. We're not out of the destruction yet. He hasn't conquered it yet. Can we just, when he got,

how long did he take him to conquer it, Lindsay? Well, what's interesting about the use of the destination and therefore also maybe thinking about the context of destruction is that he has been battling through Asia Minor, the Levant, Egypt, across Mesopotamia for over four years by this point. And he is still pursuing the king who is in power, Darias III, who has fled eastwards to Egbatana northwards, which is really the other half of the empire. I mean, he can raise another army in the east and northeast of the empire. So, Alexander is picking off the main centres, which are, as we've noticed, kind of nodes of these

kind of central powerful areas. And he comes up from having conquered Babylon after a large battle and then moved into Sousa. And then he struggles over the mountains, over the Zagros mountains into Persepolis. And he does have some resistance on the way through those mountains. And that might be part of a reason why the context for its destruction. Susan and Babylon, survive because they effectively hand themselves over to this conqueror who has made clear that he will destroy something when he is being resisted. And Persepolis may have been defended a bit too much for its own good on the way. You want to come in. Yes, there's also perhaps an ideological reason sitting behind all of this as well. And, you know, Alexander saw himself

as a second Achilles and therefore was taking the kind of Trojan war back into the east again. and some have said, some early Greek historians, Alexander historians have said that Persepolis was targeted for destruction because of its connection to Xerxes, who of course had destroyed the Acropolis back in 480 BCE. And there's perhaps some truth in this. We do know, I mean, from the archaeology, that the space of Persepolis was attacked most was the so-called Hall of 100 columns, which is their most remarkable, fabulous hall. probably used for banqueting. And the evidence there suggests that there must have been a fire of such ferocity that the columns themselves simply burst, they simply shattered.

And this does go along with some of the accounts that we get in Aryan and Plutarch that Alexander told his soldiers to load up a room with the combustibles from the palace, so chairs, couches, carpets, hangings. So perhaps there we have our text on our archaeology. meeting together in a unusually unexpected way? I think one should also bear in mind that these texts are of a later period. So, you know, although some of them use early sources, but most of them really write about Alexander and the destruction of Persepolis

and the glories of Alexander at a much later time. So I think one should bear that in mind. Secondly, I think I like the idea. It may not be exactly correct. But I think I like the idea that by destroying Persepolis, Alexander certainly put an end to the Persian Empire and the Persianness. It was the heart of the Persian Empire. I think there's a sign of that as well.

When Alexander returns to Fars, he finds a pretender in post who has appointed himself and who, according to Aryan and Khrushkosos, claims descent from legendary Persian kings. So it's quite possible that despite the care that he took to really tear apart this royal stage that this is there, plus all the goods in it and perhaps kind of grind away at some of the beautiful objects in the treasury,

that didn't quite succeed, and there was still perhaps somebody trying to seize that power and make use of it when Alexander got back in the 320s. Can I later rest or not? piece of mere gossip as quick as we can't. He was getting, we read that he was getting drunk a lot at this time. Was this an act of drunken vandalism? This is one of these difficult texts to analyse that Vesta was just talking about.

And, you know, in no way do I want to suggest that what the Greeks write is absolutely true every time. And in fact, we see a process going on in some of the later texts of exoneration of Alexander. He couldn't have possibly done this. He gets drunk, but what he says is, you know, this is the burning down of Persepolis is hinted at to him by one of his concubines or courtesans a woman called Taiz and then this poor...

But he gets drunk. He gets drunk and while he's vulnerable she suggests I wouldn't it be good to burn this down? You know, I don't think there's any truth in that whatsoever but this is something... I really don't think it's... It sounds so peculiar. This is a typical...

One of those things just might be right? No, this is a typical Greek image. I think that Alexander did turn into a megalomaniac and he did turn into somebody who really wanted to destroy everything that was associated with the Persians. And that's why he decided to set Persepolis on fire. Otherwise, why did he do that? He didn't have to.

The Persians, whether it took them a long time or not, did capitulate. And he didn't have to really burn down the Persepolis. So it burned it down an enormous amount remains we can see from these magnificent photographs. and centuries up to century went on, where can I say, because it's near the end of the programme, not a great deal happened. People visited, eminent people visited it,

and they said, this is a wonderful place, and then it began to dig in in the 19th century. And how are its ruins seen now? I think they are viewed as a very important national and international monument. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and it has been since the 1970s. and it is an incredibly popular part of people's lives

and people's memories of Iran and people's identity and I think Vesta can weigh in on this too. It has been though an international site for a long time. It became known in Western texts from around 1600 onwards. And so it was almost the first site of the ancient Near East that was really very well known in European texts. And it's also the place which gave the first clues to the ability to read.

cuneiform because it has trilingual inscriptions of old Persian Elamite and Akkadian it gave a way in to understanding the scripts of the ancient Near East so although we associate it

with Alexander and the end of Near Eastern Empires it's kind of the beginning of our comprehension of Near Eastern history But for about 2,000 years it was until the 16th century it was in use It was in use I mean the Parthians and the Sasanians

had a memory of some kind of glorious dynasty that was here, in the Islamic tradition as well. I mean, its local name in Iran, of course, is Tach to Jamshed, which means the throne of Jamshed, Jamshed being this kind of Solomon figure from Iran's prehistory. So there was always some kind of memory here of it being associated with some depth of antiquity, even if the actual acumenids themselves were forgotten at that time. What's remarkable, I was at Persepolis three weeks ago, and it is the most alive and fantastic place, and Iranians themselves are rediscovering it. Thank you very much. Lloyd Llewellyn Jones, Lindsay Allen,

Bestor, Josh Curtis. Next year we'll be testing the ideas of Montesquia and his influence on the American Constitution. Thank you very much for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. I really got it in there, right? You wanted that ending, isn't we, of some sort of roller.

Even so, yes, of course things happen. And for you people, things are always happening. but on a bigger stage, when he'd sacked it, it seems to be more or less out of history until they'd be tugged back in in 2000. You don't agree with that. I mean, it lives more vividly in classical texts after it's destroyed.

And we also have references to it. It's still existing as a place. Existing is one thing. Was it active in any way? The parts of the monumental structures on the terrace were reconstructed and were in use. So it was kind of inconstructed. And the problem with that site is that it has always been regarded as, say, this single place created by Darias and Xerxes and Artix Xe's. But in fact, it's a very malleable space and you can go up and use it over and over and over again.

There are inscriptions from the 11th century, from the monarchs who set themselves up in the area as kings. 11th century, who claim descent from the antique kings, as it were. there are inscriptions from the Timurid period and then into the 15th century, the 16th century and then again in the 19th century so there was repeated engagement with it as a place. It's a very alive space actually. When I wanted to ask, I didn't get there, we didn't have time,

but a fairly big question, how does Islam square its history with the much bigger history? You're shaky, you're trying to run away from this. It changed over the years. It changes constantly. I think for Iranians, it has always been an important place

and they've been very good in separating it from Islam and I think one of the reasons why the name the throne of Tachd-Jam-Sheet T'hti-Jam-Sheed was given to the place is because generally speaking Iranians

give names of either Solomon or Jamshid this legendary ancient Iranian king to sites it's also a protection you protect a site by giving it a name that is related to Solomon or Jamshed

and I think they've kept it like that Yeah Has it been in any way I'm going to ask this question again So Yeah Has it been in any way Islamized

Has it been drawn in? No But it was a true Sorry Can I just finish the sentence And then I'll say no Is it now part of what Islam thinks Is it's own?

No No Right Can I just give you One important sort of scenario which I usually use. At the beginning of the revolution in 1979, tanks moved towards the terrace of Persepolis. And the excavator, the then excavator of Persepolis,

and hundreds of locals came to the side and they slept in front of the terrace. And they said to the people who, who were coming, the army, you have to roll over us and kill us before you go up to the terrace and destroy it. And the tanks returned, and they just stopped their action there.

It shows you how important the site has been to modern-day Iranians. And in fact, you know, we could trace this back over centuries. Even, you know, in the 20th century alone, the site has got so many political and ideological resonances. So for the Pahlavi dynasty, for instance, this is the last dynasty of monarchic Iran. The last Shah, Mohamed Reza Shah,

saw himself as the absolute heir of the Achaemenids. And he fetishized the Achaemenids. He fetishized the cult of Cyrus in particular. But Persepolis in 1971 was used for this huge kind of Durbar, this huge celebration of Iran's history. and it became a site of intense monarchic ideology and projection.

And maybe when the revolution came along, that was one of the reasons why there was this feeling of hostility on one level towards Persepolis, because it had been so tied up in the Shah's own ideology. So there's a constant shifting notion, shifting story around Persepolis. But nevertheless, they really didn't succeed. Absolutely. Nobody could touch Persepolis.

And this is remarkable, I think. Despite all the associations with the previous regime, Picepolis was not attacked and destroyed. Is it still being reconstructed? Yes, it still has a conservation team, and it's still being actively investigated. There are active excavations in the plane, and there are new conservation initiatives all the time.

There's been a constant conservation team in place since the 19th. and there's always been excavation of the site since the 1930s. So there's been a continuous study, a continuous inhabitation. It's been reoccupied in the 20th century effectively as a site. Does anybody live there anymore? It's a silly question, perhaps. Well, Hertzfeld, the first excavator of the site, actually rebuilt a palace to live in.

His lease was coming to an end in Tehran. And the first thing he did when he got a large matter, of money to start excavating the site was to reconstruct a palace which was to become the dig house and now the museum. So there is in fact a domestic house on the terrace which was

the dig house and is continually in use and there is still a library there, a study library, there are places to meet. There is a garden that was developed by the second excavator's wife in the mid-1930s. So it's a place.

It's a 20th century place as well. well as a ruin. And a lot of the people who actually work on the excavations and have worked their fathers and then the sons, they come from the plain of Persepolis. They are subpolytans. That legacy is quite remarkable. It's quite extraordinary actually. There's a young guy at the moment who's doing work on the water courses around Persepolis and he was born and bred, you know, in a stone's throw of the place. And there's something about it that draws these people back all the time. It's wonderful. It's not a dead place. It's very much. And to see it full of Iranian tourists now is quite remarkable.

And what I really like is, you know, the conservation is really thinking about the way in which tourists in their masses are now approaching this remarkable site as well. So there are proper walkways being set up. There are proper viewing areas being done as well. And in one respect, I think, oh, it's sad that, you know, we can't walk through everything like we used to back in the old days. But also I can see, you know, the practicalities, of course, of that. So it's been very well maintained. And around the site as well, you know, there are. small hotels growing up and this kind of thing.

I don't think there's any danger just yet of it being over commercialised, but it is growing in popularity amongst foreign tourists, but most remarkably amongst Iranians themselves. And that's a great thing to see, I think. I was there a few years ago with my family, and it took us more than an hour, actually, to walk up the terrace because there were, I would say, thousands of people walking along this very wide avenue.

and it was like going to a football stadium, you just could not move. And this was at the time of no rules, especially, I mean, it's become a kind of pilgrimage side. It is become, yeah. I think it has maybe been a pilgrimage side. Yeah, I think it may have always been a pilgrimage side.

I think you're right. And the crowds that do arrive are illustrative of what it's built to cope with. And that's exactly it doesn't it? Because it can cope. The scale is so vast. It can cope with those kind of numbers. And actually to see it in operations, in that kind of way, takes you back to what it was its original purpose.

I certainly see it as a site of pilgrimage. Whenever I go to Iran, I just like to go and see the site and pay homage to my ancestors. And it's something that you're very proud of as an Iranian, particularly at this time. It's a remarkable site. I mean, it does conjure up all of these emotions. It's overwhelming. Well, thank you very much again. I think the producers

impatient to get in and make you an offer. Would you like tea or coffee? Oh, a cup of coffee. Coffee, please. In our time with Melvin Bragg is produced by Simon Tillotson. In June 2017, the fire at Grenfell Tower in West London killed 71 people. Now a public inquiry is underway to establish what happened

and what caused it. Alongside the inquiry, a new podcast reporting every day the inquiry sits, explaining the evidence and demystify the jargon so we can all better understand what this important inquiry is doing. That's the Grenfell Tower Inquiry podcast with me, Eddie Mayer.