The Ancients - Persepolis: Jewel of Persia

Episode Date: July 4, 2021

It is one of the most remarkable ancient sites in the World. Situated east of the Zagros Mountains in modern day Iran, Persepolis was an important urban centre of the Achaemenid Persian Empire for almost two centuries. From the stunning, rich variety of imagery depicted on the walls of the Apadana to the complex sewer system, the art and architecture of this site is astonishing, snippets of which can today be seen at the V&A's newest exhibition, 'Epic Iran'. In this fascinating podcast, ancient Persia expert Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones from Cardiff University returned to the Ancients to explain all about this awesome ancient site. Stay tuned for a follow up podcast in due course with Lloyd on the other Achaemenid urban centres! Lloyd is the author of 'Persians: The Age of the Great Kings', out in 2022.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like The Ancients ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host. And in today's podcast, well, we're going east. We are going to the Middle East and we're going to one of the most remarkable ancient sites in the whole of the world. This ancient site is Persepolis, a site

that was right at the centre of the ancient Achaemenid Empire which thrived in the 6th, 5th and 4th centuries BC until ultimately a fellow called Alexander III of Macedon, better known as Alexander the Great, came along and wreaked havoc on ancient Persepolis. Now in today's podcast we're going to be focusing in on the history of Persepolis, we're going to be looking at its incredible art and architecture and joining me today I was delighted to get on the show the ancient Persia expert, he's been on the podcast once before, it's Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones from the University of Cardiff. Lloyd is a fantastic speaker, if you haven't heard his previous podcast on the Persepolis fortification texts, then do go and have a listen to that one after this. It's an incredible story. It's an

incredible piece of evidence. The Persian version, shall we say. Now, we're also doing this podcast right now because at the moment in London at the V&A Museum, there's an incredible new exhibition on called Epic Iran, an exhibition which looks at Iran over thousands of years of history and in which there is a large section dedicated to ancient Iran and in particular the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Some of the objects on display are from ancient Persepolis, they are absolutely extraordinary so if you do get the chance to go and see this exhibition, you must go. It is a must see. But without further ado, here's Lloyd to tell all about ancient Persepolis. Lloyd, it is wonderful to have you back on the podcast.

Well, thank you very much. It's a great pleasure to be back here. I enjoyed it so much last time and I'm really pleased that you've asked me back. So thank you. You're very welcome. Our last podcast on the Persepolis fortification text was incredible. And of course, we're staying on ancient Persia today, but this time we're focusing on the urban centres of the Achaemenid Empire because Lloyd, Susa, Ecobitana, Persepolis, these were right at the heart of the Achaemenid Empire, its administration and its royalty. Yes, these were all built in the Persian heartlands in the ancient area that the Persians themselves called Pars or Parsa, from which the Greeks here had Persia or Persis and Persia,

and from which today we get the modern day district of Fars, Fars province. It's called Fars today. The P has dropped and become an F. That's because when the Arabs invaded in the 6th century CE, the Arabs can't pronounce P. They don't have P in their alphabet, really. And so they automatically had to change the P to an F. So Fars district is what we're dealing with now. And it's still, you know, a large sort of municipality. The biggest city in the area is Shiraz. And really the great Achaemenid sites that we're speaking of initially, so Persepolis and Pasagadae, are about maybe 25, 30 to 50 miles to the north of Shiraz, just to give you a bit of a location on the modern map of Iran.

And those two places, Persepolis and Pasagadae, there are more than just those two if we go a bit of a location on the modern map of Iran. And those two places, Persepolis and Pasargadae, there are more than just those two if we go a bit further out from the centre of Persia too. Yeah, precisely. So if we go still remaining in essentially what the Persians would have called that kind of heartlands, if we push to the north, beyond the centre of Iran, towards the north of the mountains, we get the area of Media. And there we have the ancient city of Ekpatana, which today is still a very flourishing metropolis. Today it's called Hamadan. And that's actually very close to only half an hour's drive from the Bisitun monument that derives the great setup. And then if we go back down to the south and drive from Shiraz about five hours to the west. Then we get to the flat plains of ancient Elam and the ancient city of Susa, which is still inhabited today, of course, and

it's the modern city of Shush, which sits right on the border with Iraq today and actually is quite an Arabic-speaking area of Iran. So they're the kind of hubs. But beyond that, we can also say another one of the great centres, and actually this is a kind of inherited centre, was the old city of Babylon, as well lying in Mesopotamia on the shores of the Tigris. And of course, that is one of the great, great urban centres of all antiquity. And after Cyrus the Great conquered it, of course, the Persians settled it. They set it up as one of their major satrapies and also, of course, one of the first founding areas of the empire. So it had a governor of high renown as well. And I think we'll come back to this, but in a way, Babylon becomes a kind of hallmark for a kind of design process of what these new Persian

centres could possibly be. And these centres, and you mentioned whilst you were answering that question, Lloyd, about the Biston inscription near Ecbatana, but it's quite interesting. Does it seem to really convey, these multiple centres, multiple capitals, as it were, the movement of the royal family of the court during the Persian period in antiquity? So the Persians of the Achaemenid period never forgot their nomadic ancestry. You know, they originated from the steppes of Eurasia as a great nomadic people, a sort of horse people, very much an equine-centred society. And when they settled in the plains of southwestern Iran, that idea of nomadism never left them. So the great king and his court would

habitually travel throughout the centre of the empire. So they would spend the wintertime in Susa, where it was nice and warm. But certainly you couldn't survive in Susa in the summer. You know, the temperatures there get up to 50 degrees. I've been there on times when it's hit 45, and that's bad enough. Even Strabo says even lizards can't live in Susa. It's too hot for them. So then when the summer heat began to build up, the court would then trundle off. And you have to imagine here, there are multiple thousands of people. It's a whole society on the move, you know.

And they trundle slowly, slowly, slowly up the side of the Zagros Mountains. And they go to Ekpatana, Hamadan, in the north for the summertime. Because, of course, with the Albruz Mountains behind you, with their snow-topped caps, this is the coolest part of Iran at that time of the year. Following this, the court then trundles all the way through the centre of Iran, passing through what is now the modern city of Isfahan. And we know now, because lots of good archaeology have been done on this, not just of the kind of roads that were taken, but also we found many, many examples of way stations, you

know, so sort of service stations, if you like, on the way down. And some of these are really, really top end, you know, very, very lush kind of pavilions of some considerable splendor, obviously, where some of the royalty would stay. But don't forget, all of the time as they're traveling this route, they are staying in covered wagons, but also in very grandouise tents as well. Huge tents. We know about these tents because the Greeks captured some of them after Plataea and after Marathon, for instance, you know, and used them, set them up in Athens as these great display centres. They were enormous, enormous great things. It's something that later on the Mughals, the Mongols and the Ottomans all inherited as well. So, you know, when the Ottoman army went on march in the 16th, 17th, 18th century, this is the kind of way they travelled as well in tents. And if you ever get to Istanbul, to the military museum there, you'll see some of the Ottoman tents set up in all their grandeur.

I mean, they're amazing. Silk and splendour, you know, and intricate embroideries and pretend windows and doors, you know, palaces essentially in canvas and silk. So this is how the court is trundling along, taking days and days and days, probably traveling no more than maximum of 20 miles a day. All of the animals, the pack animals there, the army is there, the treasury is there. Herodotus says herds of eunuchs traveled with them, the carriages of the concubines and the wives, trundling, trundling, trundling. So as they got to the spring, they found it necessary then to be down the south because Persepolis, as far as I'm concerned at least, there's some debate which we can come on to, was probably the great ceremonial centre for the annual celebration of Nowruz, which is still the Persian New Year, which is celebrated in the spring equinox. And I think that's the time when the Persian great king would receive

diplomats from around the empire. It was the great sort of period of the annual derbars, if you like, when all of the peoples from the empire would come and give their gifts. And after that was done, then the court would trundle once again to Susa, and then the whole process would start again. So constantly, the court is constantly on the move. And it has to move, really, because if you think of the practicalities of it, thousands and thousands of people eating their way through the local produce, you know. So actually, like a sort of plague of locusts, they settle in one part of the land and then they take off and they go again. And that land then has time to regenerate because it does seem as though

villages and towns around the areas where the great king and his court settled were tasked with feeding and watering the court. We get quite a lot of descriptions from this in Herodotus on Xerxes' campaign into Greece through, as he goes from Thessaly through to Boeotia into Attica, how certainly the lands under Persian occupation or in allegiance to the Persians were tasked with feeding Xerxes and his court. So, you know, the logistics of this is enormous, absolutely enormous. And even though, you know, what we're going to concentrate on now are these kind of stone buildings, which today, of course, are the things that we go and look at, you know, the great ruins of ancient Iran. What we have to remember all the time is that these were only temporary accommodations. I don't think Persepolis was,

the actual terrace of the palace, was occupied for more than a month, a year, even if that, you know. And even when the court was there, we have little sort of individual palaces, you know, Palace of Darius, a Palace of Xerxes, a Palace of Attic Xerxes I. Even when they were there, of course, that could never have been enough space to accommodate the whole court. so what we must think about is that when the court was in residence at one of these palaces around it for miles and miles and miles would have been a huge city of tents no for as far as the eye could see there would have been tents and i think if we're thinking of an urban landscape at all that's what we have to think of. It's a portable, movable landscape constantly. So, you know, even the words like urban doesn't quite sit comfortably with the Persians,

and neither does the word capital either. You know, there was no capital of the Persian Empire. You know, we can't look to Rome or to Constantinople for that kind of example. When the Romans and the Greeks spoke about the Persians, they often tried to formulate the Persian state on their own terms, you know, so they think about it in that kind of way. But actually, it doesn't work that way for us at all. So we need to be a little bit more sort of refined in the way that we think about describing these centres. And, you know, it's really interesting, you know, when you go to Iran today, obviously, one of the beelines you make for as a tourist is Persepolis, because, I mean, it's magnificent. It's one of the great ruins of antiquity. But, you know, before the Alexander historians, so that's the second century CE, there is not one mention of Persepolis in any Greek text.

No Greek ever mentions it until well after Alexander's death, you know, 200 years later. It's incredible. They all know about Susa and they all know about Ecbatana, but not one person, not one writing mentions Persepolis. Isn't that incredible? And yet on the walls of Persepolis, there they are, the Greeks are there, the Jauna are mentioned in the inscriptions, the Greeks, you know, so this is how untrustworthy our classical sources can be. You know, if we only had to go on that, Persepolis would be unknown to us. So, you know, that's the big warning flag, isn't it? You know, that, you know, don't take everything for granted. Don't believe everything that the Greeks are

telling us or not telling us at all. We have to go to the Persian version as often as possible. The Persian version. There we go. They're the words I was waiting to hear. That's my mantra. That's the mantra. Fantastic, Lloyd. Well, let's stick on the construction then, because you mentioned the Greeks there last time when we spoke about the Persepolis fortification text, I mentioned the Kirtash, you remember, these workers who I said actually the word really should be slaves, as well as the kind of more privileged artisans. We know that they were all present there. And in fact, we have lists and lists of ration accounts for these workers who are named variously as Ionians, Sogdians, Egyptians,

Bactrians, Babylonians, and Syrians. I mean, they are all there. We don't have an equivalent text found at Persepolis, but let me just tell you a little bit about a text that we discovered at Susa. So Susa and Persepolis really kind of were mirror images of each other, if you like. Both of them had a large terrace platform, which the Persians call a taht. That means in Persian, a throne or a platform. So it's an artificial sort of raised up area where the apadana, and that's the word that the Persians give to a, I suppose we call it a throne room, I suppose, or certainly a kind of a ceremonial centre for diplomacy. Both of them had these

great apodanas. And when excavations were done at Susa from the early 1970s, we discovered a trilingual set of inscriptions, which are actually laid into the foundations of the apodana. So you have to obviously dig deep, several cubits down into the ground to make sure that this structure is going to be safe. And when that building was commissioned by Darius the Great, he laid down these multilingual texts in Elamite, Old Persian and Babylonian, obviously for posterity, but also, of course, to activate the blessing of the gods as well. So it's kind of dedicatory inscription. And then these are placed down and the ground is packed with rubble and the Apadana was built.

So let me, I'm going to read out to you, if I may, what the inscription says, because it's really fascinating. And it's the kind of thing, again, that only exists in the Persian version. So this is what he says. The palace which I built at Susa, from afar its ornamentation was brought. the palace which I built at Susa, from afar its ornamentation was brought. The sun-dried brick was moulded. The Babylonian people performed these tasks. The cedar timber, this was brought from a place called Lebanon. The Assyrian people brought it to Babylon. From Babylon, the Carians and the Greeks brought it to Susa. The yaka timber, whatever that is, was brought from Gandhara and Carmania. The gold was brought from Gandhara and Karmania. The gold was brought from Lydia and from Bactria, which here was wrought.

The precious stone lapis lazuli and carnelian, which was wrought here, this was brought from Sogdia. The precious stone turquoise, this was brought from Hosamia, which was wrought here. The silver and the ebony were brought from Egypt. The ornamentation with which the wall was adorned, that from Greece was brought. The ivory which was wrought here was brought from Nubia and from India and from Ahosia. The stone columns which here were wrought, a village named Abiradu in Elam, from there were brought. The stone cutters who wrought the stone, those were Greeks and Lydians. The goldsmiths who wrought the gold, those were Medes and Egyptians. The men who wrought the wood, these were Lydians and Egyptians. The men who wrought the baked brick, these were Babylonians. The men who adorned the

wall, these were Medes and Egyptians. Darius the king says, at Susa a very excellent work was ordered a very excellent work was brought to completion isn't it amazing it's an incredible text and what we've got of course is like enumerated here are no less than 16 regions of the empire which are furnishing the raw materials you know from different parts of the empire bringing it centrally to Susa and then eight more countries are listed providing the talented craftsmen to do the work as well. So the Egyptians are working the wood, Sogdians are there, Medes are working the gold. Notice that the Babylonians are doing the foundation work and the brickwork. And of course, you know, what we know from Babylon, the remains of Babylon is there. Glazed bricks were second to none. So, you know, Darius is

using the specialist crafts of each and every component of the empire to bring together in this kind of labour of love. And as we noted in our discussion of the fortification texts, the workforces themselves were kind of corralled, sort of ghettoed together according to, I suppose, really, the languages more than anything, you know, so that translators could be working with them and so forth. But what we see in the Caesar charters is how manpower and specialist workers were urgently needed in Persia because Persia did not have a history of building in stone. So it was needed. They had to import these people from the various parts of the empire to suddenly make something which was completely unknown to the Persians, building in stone for the very first time.

They just didn't have the technology for any of that. So what we have, I think, you know, it's Darius's palace at Susa. And therefore, what we see at Persepolis, Hamadan, had it existed, and Pasagada as well, is multinational design, if you like, and international manufacture. That's where you really see the kind of cogency of the empire working together. Lloyd, I absolutely love, and I always love this in Ancient History Podcast, where we can see one archaeological source from one side, which gives all that incredible information, that Persian version you mentioned from Susa, but how it can tell us also about the construction of another place, which is in this case Persepolis, because you can see the similarities.

So the bringing of all these people from all edges of the empire at Susa, and also it's a microcosm for what probably happened at Persepolis those hundreds of years earlier or whenever it was built. Yeah, precisely. Kind of being built around the same time, I think, probably implying exactly the same type of workforce, you know, going between these two regional centres and probably to many others, to be honest, as well. It's really fascinating. Persepolis itself, I mean, its history has been completely overturned very recently, in the last 10 years. And I'll tell you why, because the workforce is actually very important to this. So for many, many years, since really Persepolis was being uncovered in the 1930s by Herzfeld and

the team from the Oriental Institute of Chicago, we were discovering texts which were written on the orders of Darius the Great. And basically what he was saying was, nobody had ever built in this site before. It's virgin territory. And I raised my palace here. And the texts have, well, why have we ever thought about disbelieving them? Until 10 years ago, a team of Iranian and Italian archaeologists were working around the vicinity of Persepolis. Now, the area has been sort of messed around with quite a bit. In 1971, for instance, the last Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Shah, he held this huge spectacle at Persepolis for all the world's press and the heads of state, which was a kind of celebration of 2,500 years of Persian monarchy. In doing so, he invited people to Persepolis for this kind of sonne lumiere and this huge, huge celebration, which was held there, a kind of big costume extravaganza. In doing it, he ploughed up half of the archaeology because he built a helipad, he built tar-marked roads and so forth. So we know that there's been a lot of disturbance in the immediate archaeology just below the platform. But now the archaeologists went a bit

further out, maybe two, three, four miles beyond. And what we've discovered finally was evidence not only of a settlement, a town that supported the palace when it wasn't being occupied. It's almost like the white sheets went over it, but a town was there to keep on functioning. So we found for the first time furnaces and bakeries and things like that, which is really, really rare in Iranian archaeology. We've also found out evidence of the formal gardens that surrounded Persepolis. And we can pin down exactly what kind of trees were there because we now can take archaeological data, you know, remains of seeds and so forth. now can take archaeological data, you know, remains of seeds and so forth. And my colleague Volta Henkelman has married these up to the fortification texts, where now we can see that there were orchards, where saplings were being built of pear trees, grape vines, cuttings taken

from Lebanon, all of this is going on. But the most important thing was at a site which the locals have long called Tole Ojori, which means the hill of bricks. The archaeological teams discovered a gateway which predates Darius's construction of Persepolis, which probably started about 515 BCE. This gateway goes back to Cyrus II, Cyrus the Great, and it was built purely in Babylonian style. The Babylonian brickmakers have been hard at work there, and we know that because we have Babylonian inscriptions. We even have the one inscription beginning, Shar, something or other, Shar, the Akkadian word Sharu, probably, which means king. We have images of dragon-headed beasts. What we're seeing at Persepolis, essentially, is a facsimile of the great Ishtar Gate at Babylon, which is now in the Pergamon Museum. Darius actually was not the first to build there. Cyrus certainly was. And I think

what Cyrus was trying to do was to create a new Babylon in the heart of Pars itself. Isn't that incredible? I mean, it's completely and utterly changed our perception of what was going on there. But then the other interesting thing is that when Darius came along, he destroyed that gateway. He pulled it down and he replaces, he builds the Tach, this huge sort of platform. and he replaces, he builds the Tach, this huge sort of platform, and on that he builds his new palaces, quite literally looking down on the rubble now of Cyrus's gateway. Now that speaks a lot, it tells me a lot about the relationship that Darius had to the memory of Cyrus the Great. Don't forget, Darius usurped the family's position and became king, you know, basically through murdering Cyrus's second son and second heir, Bardia. So I think the politics of the day

is playing out now in the archaeology as well. But isn't it incredible to think that Cyrus's dream, it seems to have been, was to actually have at Persepolis a place of imperial splendor, a new Babylon. And you kind of have to ask why that area then? Well, today the area around Persepolis, there's a mountain just beyond it, and it's called in Persian Hu-e-Ramat, which means the Mountain of Mercy. And it probably was a cult centre. There probably was some kind of sanctuary built there. So it was a holy site, I think, for the very early acumenids, for the taste buds of Cyrus's family. So yes, you know, every day in Iranian history and archaeology, things are changing. And that's why I love

this world so much, because, you know, we're still in its infancy. And big, big questions are being answered on other ones are being posited because of daily what's being discovered, either in libraries or on the ground in Iran itself. What caused the anarchy? How did medieval migrants shape the language I'm speaking right now? Who won the Hundred Years' War? Could England's lost patron saint be buried under a tennis court in Suffolk? How did England's last medieval king end up under a car park?

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Subscribe to Gone Medieval from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts. Lloyd, that was all incredible. It does sound absolutely amazing, an incredible place to visit. I hope one day to go and visit if possible. But what is so interesting, Lloyd, is you mentioned earlier this whole debate surrounding its whole ceremonial nature. And just before we delve into the detail of the art and architecture of Persepolis, what is this whole debate around its purpose or whether it's ceremonial and all of that?

Yeah, so we really don't know what it was intended for. Our inscriptions generally from the Achaemenid world are ahistorical, very repetitive, essentially kind of lists of genealogies and little more than that. So there is nothing which specifically tells us about what goes on at Persepolis, apart from what we might be able to deduce from the wall art, the wall reliefs there, where we do see these scenes of gift giving. Now, some colleagues have said that this was definitely a religious centre and it functioned more like a temple than anything else. You see, I can't agree with that because of the presence of this huge bureaucracy that we looked at last time. You know, that doesn't make sense to me for purely a temple kind of institution. And anyway, what are we looking for in a temple?

You know, what are we possibly looking for? You know, some sort of Cecil B. DeMille spectacle of a great cult image or something? Well, we're not going to have that in the Persian world. So I'm not so keen on that. I do think it's a ceremonial centre, but ceremony more in the terms of spectacle. It's a piece of living theatre where the whole kind of known world gathers for the sole purpose, really, of showing homage to the king. That's the ultimate thing, which is carried out, of course, in this great gift-giving ceremony. So that's where I am with it. You know, it's also interesting. I don't think it's a residential palace. I don't think people lived in it very often. Don't forget, I said they were there maybe for a month. I think there are little palaces where

kings could have slept, and certainly we have an L-shaped building, which might be domestic quarters. But there is no evidence for kitchens, for instance. Now, what we don't have, of course, are upper stories or rooftops. And of course, in a lot of ancient Near Eastern palaces, courtyards and rooftops were the places where people slept, but also cooked and ate as well. So of course, k kitchens could have been up there or kitchens and food preparation could have gone on below in the terrace in the tented accommodation then brought up. But we don't see it as a kind of functioning, easily livable space at all. In one section, there is quite a large sort of bathing pool. But I don't think that's where Darius relaxed, you know, with his rubber duck and just

sort of, you know, bathed. I think it's a ritual pool where he goes to cleanse himself before going into the ceremonial halls. So you pay your money and he takes your pick with Persepolis. I'm prepared to see it as a ceremonial space with an element of royal ritual going onto it. For instance, one of the things that we see in the reliefs is a common image of the king sitting on his throne, which is lifted up on high, like on a palanquin on the shoulders of the representatives of the empire. And I think that that's probably a ceremony that really happened. The king is probably paraded there. And if the Apadana had a flat roof, which it appears to have had, that would have been an amazing viewing spectacle.

So imagine if the king, and we know there are staircases up to the top of the Apadana because they've been found, huge staircases, you know, in big, big square blocks, really, they would have access to the roof. And it's possible that there, if the king had walked to the west, he could have displayed himself from the roof of the Apadana to the thousands of people crowded around him in the tented cities, you know, seeing him for miles and miles. So that kind of thing makes sense to me. If we think of it in that kind of way, I don't think it's necessarily religious ritual, but I do think it's like royal ceremonial. It's the stuff that goes on there. I immediately thought of like the Buckingham Palace balcony or something like that. But on a bigger scale, I'm more compelled to look at India in the Mughal period, which was also a

kind of movable court as well. We know that the Emperor Akbar, for instance, would go to the top of his tent, which was a flat-roofed, almost like solid structure made of wood. And every morning at dawn, he would show himself to his people there. Something like that is going on, on a more kind of annual, you know, one-off basis, I think. But, you know, I might be absolutely wrong. But that's my hunch. If I were to make the film, that's what I would do. That is absolutely awesome. And yes, when you do make the film, make sure also to get Darius and his rubber duck in there too.

I certainly will. Fantastic. Well, keeping on that, you mentioned the Apadana and you've mentioned the relief. So let's focus in on these particular reliefs first, because they are absolutely stunning what they depict. They are masterpieces, absolute masterpieces. There are two sets of reliefs, and these are on the great staircases, double set of staircases, which are on the north face of the Apadana and also on the east face. Now, the north face, we only have really the lower registers surviving

because that was the area that was really sort of bombarded with wind and sand during the centuries of Persepolis' abandonment. But fortunately, the eastern staircase was very well preserved under the sand. And so when the archaeologists revealed this in the 1930s, I mean, what they found was really a representation of all of the peoples of the empire coming to bring their gifts to the great king on these great ceremonial occasions. They're all carved in high relief, but exquisitely done. I mean, it's so tasteful and elegant. We actually know how the reliefs were carved as well, because in the British Museum, we have part of one of the reliefs

contained there, where you can see quite clearly there were three teams of sculptor at work at any one time. So the first team would come and very roughly outline in sort of silhouette the figures. come and very roughly outline in sort of silhouette the figures. The second lot would then come along and start filling that in in detail. The third lot would put all the exquisite details, the folds of garments, the curls in the hair. And I think then, of course, there was probably a fourth group, and that were the painters. Now, what we don't have surviving today, of course, in the archaeology are the paints. But a lot of good work has been done on chemical analysis of the paintwork of Persepolis, especially by a very good archaeologist and art historian called Alexander Nagal. And he has revealed a very rich palette of colours, not just on the walls, but throughout Persepolis itself, on the pillars, on the capitals, everywhere. It was a riot of colour, as, of course, virtually everywhere in antiquity was, right? So let's strip ourselves of that whole idea of a monochrome past.

So these things are incredible. And what I love is the detail to which the artists have gone into. I mean, the ethnic diversity is incredible. You know, the whole message of this sculptural program is about the unity of empire. We see Persians dressed in their court robes or dressed in their riding habits, and they're at the head of these delegations. And always the Persian leading holds the hand of the first of the delegates, you know, a very gentle kind of leading in, not being forced in on their knees before the king. You know, it's all about harmony, sort of working together on this. Every individual is represented differently. There are

different earrings, different clothes, different jewellery, the whole thing. You can look at the individuals and know where they come from, whether they're from, you know, northern Iran, whether they're from Ethiopia or Egypt, you really get a sense. And of course, national dress are real indicators. And then also the gifts they bring. And the gifts are such a variety, everything from gold and silver tableware, beautiful jewellery, textiles, and then a myriad of animal offerings as well. So chariot horses, stallions for riding, goats, oxen, zebu. There's even an okapi, which the Ethiopians have brought all the way from Africa. I do not know how they managed to get an okapi and keep it alive. Whether it really did arrive alive, I don't know. And also from Elam, we have a beautiful lioness and her two cubs being given to the great king as well. Incidentally, the lioness

is the only female thing represented in the whole of Persepolis. There is nothing else female. And she's only there because she's got the two cubs, because it's necessary. Really interesting. This is a very male-orientated world. The detail is incredible. The theme that goes out, of course, is we are better together, stronger together kind of thing. You know, that's what Darius is putting out there. Now, I said to you when we last met, of course, empire is not built and sustained by holding hands. OK, so what was going on on the walls of Persepolis are what Pierre Brion has called dreams in stone for the Persian kings. You know, it's propaganda. Of course it is. So on the walls of Persepolis, what's really fascinating, there are no scenes of warfare.

There's no scenes of violence whatsoever. This is a happy world. We're all in a happy place right now. So while in reality, Persian soldiers were striking terror into the hearts of, say, Greek-speaking peoples on the coast of Asia Minor, at Persepolis, everything is rosy. You know, there's none of that whatsoever. But, you know, when you think about the world that this new message has emerged from, if you think about, like, who were the predecessors of the Persians as a superpower in that area? Of course, it was the Assyrians. If you look at Assyrian art, it is violence upon violence. It is a propaganda of terror. That's the way that the Assyrians projected themselves for themselves and for their subjects. Here in Persia, the idea is

all about peace and harmony being together. Now, in reality, it probably wasn't like that. But isn't it amazing that this society could even conceive of that kind of idea? And I don't really know of many other empires who've actually ever done it successfully. Certainly, the Romans couldn't do it. You know, you just have to look at the reliefs at Aphrodisias in Turkey to see, you know, representations of provinces as women being trampled on by various Caesars, or Roman coinage for that matter. Certainly, the British never managed to do it in their kind of propaganda either. So, even though it is but a dream in stone, nevertheless, to have that vision, I think, is quite remarkable.

And while I can never tolerate the idea of empire, I do not like it, it's not a good thing, I suppose if I were to have to live under an empire, then I would prefer a system like the Persians than anything else. So art really speaks to us. Art and architecture really speak to us. And again, it's the Persian version because we don't find that anywhere else. It's incredible, Lloyd, just keeping that a bit longer, the amount of detail that is there and all those things you mentioned there, you've answered some of my questions in advance, whether it's the lioness or these people from different parts of the empire. But it's so incredible how on these reliefs you can have portrayed someone bringing gifts from Thrace in the West to a lioness, the only female figure on the relief also being there. These pieces of art, as you say say they can tell us so much yeah they

really do one of the things i love you know questions we can't really answer elsewhere so for instance the persians they had two sorts of clothing which they could choose from essentially so one is kind of like a huge bag tunic which is clearly very expensive lots of fabric in it beautifully worked very often with sort of appliques in gold on it i've called that the the court dress. It seems to be the kind of thing that, you know, you would wear in ceremonial occasions. But the other thing that they could wear were riding garments. Okay, so the Persians, of course, as horsemen, they were well renowned for their trousers, their long sleeve tunics, and their what's called gaunaka, which is a coat, which they very often just hang over the shoulders with long sleeves that hang down. It's the sort of thing you see today in Afghanistan

for stuff still being worn, you know. So the reliefs show us both of these things. Now, it's really interesting that when we look at images of the great king, no matter who he is, you know, Darius Xerxes, Artaxerxes, whoever, we never ever see him wearing that riding habit. It's really interesting. We don't see it. He's always in the court robe. And yet in their inscriptions, the kings constantly echo the fact that, you know, Darius says, for instance, as a horseman, I am a good horseman. As a spearman, I am a good spearman. As a bowman, I am a good bowman. So horse identity, equine world, was so important to them. On the Persepolis Reliefs, we see that there are four delegations of Iranian-speaking people. That is to say,

Parthians, I think there are Armenians, for instance. So people of greater Iran. What do they bring in the king? They are bringing him gifts of horse riding costume, trousers, shirts, long-sleeved jackets. They're clearly saying to us, look, you are the great king of the Persian empire, but you're also one of us. You're also a horse rider. In my new book on Persians, I've used the kind of anachronistic title. I've called the great king the Khan as well. You know, he's a tribal leader at the same time. So without that relief there, detail you know of this presentation of this set of clothing to the king which happens not once but four times we wouldn't

get that articulation of the king's other side because the official art prefers to show him as a kind of courtier even in scenes in little seals that we get showing the king fighting he's always in like in his fancy robes, which of course would be completely impractical in real life. It'd be like fighting in an evening dress. I mean, you just can't do it, but he's shown in that way. So you have to put all of these little pieces together to create a picture of what probably was. Now, you mentioned the whole new theories arising in the last 10 years with Cyrus and then Darius and their placement of buildings in Persepolis. Now, as the Achaemenid period goes on, Persepolis, am I right in saying it almost evolves?

It continues being constructed, as it were, as future monarchs build more stuff there. Yes, it became essentially a dynastic site, very importantly a dynastic site. So throughout its history from Cyrus onwards, essentially every great king left his mark on Persepolis. So it was always a building site. It was never really completed. Nobody ever saw it finished. started the whole platform project. He built the Apadana. He built a little palace for himself, which we call the Tachara, which means a little suite of rooms. The whole place was added to by his son Xerxes. In fact, the access way to Persepolis was completely changed. Under Darius, it was at the south of the terrace. Xerxes changes it completely to the west of the terrace and builds a huge staircase, a double monumental staircase with an enormous gateway, which he entitles the Gate of All Nations, through which all of these diplomats would have come through. At the front of it are these two huge bulls and at the rear of it, two human headed sort of Assyrian type Lamassu. know that Ataxerxes I was active in building at Persepolis. And what's remarkable is the palace

of Ataxerxes, which is at the heart, really, of the sort of private section of the palace, hasn't yet been excavated. So there are things yet to come, even from Persepolis itself. Then we have a large treasury, which was probably built by Darius and added to. This is where many of the texts that we talk about come from. A garrison wall, which went around it, again, giving us much more of this bureaucratic information. And also then this large L-shaped building at the rear of the terrace in the private section of the terrace, if you like, which has been identified as a harem. This is a controversial word. I'm prepared to use it in its true meaning, which means essentially the domestic heart of the palace, which is perhaps where members of the royal family for a select period of time would have slept. Quite nice rooms, actually quite large rooms with stone column bases, very well worked. And then a larger communal area, which suggests to me as well, which is why it's a kind of like a domestic

part of the palace. All of these are then kind of interwoven together and around it constantly workmen at work. We also know that in the years just before Alexander destroyed the place, there was a huge earthquake there and a lot of damage was done to it. So Darius III, the last Achaemenid king, was actually in the process of repairing a lot of Persepolis when it was destroyed. So ongoing work constantly. when it was destroyed. So ongoing work constantly. And of course, just alongside Persepolis are several Achaemenid tombs, one of which actually probably belonged to Darius III. They were burying themselves on site. And then just about three miles away, across the plain at a place called Naxirostam, that had been the chosen site for the burial of kings from Darius the Great onwards. So you can see that it was really becoming this kind of dynastic centre more than anything else. Now I have in my notes, I'm sure

there are loads and loads of incredible buildings at Persepolis, but one I'd love to ask about is one you might not initially think of, and this is the sewer system. Because this sewer system at Persepolis, from what I've read, it seems really, really remarkable and impressive. It's incredibly sophisticated. And you can't now, when you walk the site, you can see very often large sort of crevices. And you can look down, you can see very clearly the big sort of sewage system, but also just the water systems generally, where clean water has been flushed down from springs in the mountains behind.

So fresh water essentially is pouring down through this and getting rid of the effluents at the other end as well. So very, very sophisticated. And some of these tunnels are huge. They are big enough for an adult man to walk through, sort of bent over, but you can do it. And in fact, one of the findings that's happened quite recently, it's truly remarkable. We've discovered the skeletons of 13 humans and a whole series of dogs in one of these tunnels, and they all seem to have been killed by the Macedonians, the Macedonian soldiers, when Alexander's men went on a sort of 48-hour rampage. They were quite clearly hunted down into the systems and slaughtered there and left, their bodies were left there as well, which again incredible evidence for what happened to persepolis in 330

bce when the macedonians did go berserk there and how the locals of persepolis whether they were elites or not we don't know but were trying to shield themselves trying to find places to preserve their lives but obviously failed as well so you know our knowledge just keeps getting built up time and time again because of the current work that's going on there. It's really remarkable. It really feels, Lloyd, as we just end this first segment on Persepolis, it really feels that this centre, which may have had these stone buildings,

but also tents in their use, this really is one of, if not the jewel of Iran. Yes, I think so. I think it was the biggest site and the most palatial site in the whole of Iran, certainly. And I think it was the jewel of the Achaemenid Empire, which begs the question then, you know, why was it burnt down by Alexander? It happens in 330. And of course, the Alexander historians, again, you know, 200 years after Alexander's death are coming up with their theories. And one of the nice theories is, of course, it's burnt down as kind of tit for tat retaliation of Xerxes' attack and destruction of the Acropolis in 480-479 when he invaded Attica. And in fact, Quintus Curtis Rufus suggests that, you know, the whole conflagration was started by one of Alexander's courtesans, a woman called Thais from Athens, who says, you know, it's terrible.

This place is full of so much luxury when they burnt down my ancestral home. And she persuades Alexander to throw the first torch on the fire. That's all gobbledygook. All of it is gobbledygook. You know, there's not a thing to be recommended to any of those stories. I do not believe for one moment that Alexander burned Persepolis in retaliation. Let's face facts. Alexander was not a fan of Athens. He had no love of it.

He had no empathy for it whatsoever. What was happening, in fact, in 330 was the area around Persepolis was simply not kowtowing, was not coming under heel, constantly in a state of rebellion. While Alexander was putting down the other Achaemenid sites in the Persian heartland, Fars, Fars province, was not going to give in. Why would it? You know, that's the DNA beating heart of Persia. And so Alexander has, I think, very little choice but to destroy the palace in the end, because it's the ultimate symbol that, you know, it's the thing that keeps uniting them, keeps bringing the Persians back, you know, into conflict with him. And it simply had to go in the end. So I think that's why he'd do it.

I think he lived to regret it. I think it's probably one of the things he regretted most, because if we take truly his dream of a unified empire, then what greater image could there have been than Persepolis, where the whole raison d'etre was to expound that idea. We know that Alexander was kind of bitter about the thing when he arrived there. You know, he wanted to hold his own Durbar, where people came just like they did to the great king and bring gifts and kind of nobody turned up because it was all chaos. And I do get a bit of a feeling as well. It's like, oh, you know, it's my party and I'll cry if I want to because, you know, nobody's there. But really, the truly pragmatic reason for the burning of Persepolis was local

rebellions and just the inability of the Macedonians to keep that area under control. Well, of course, and as you mentioned, there is that strong fighting around that part of the area and just further west they have, it's almost described as the Persian Thermopylae, the Battle of the Persian Gates, which is a really difficult fight for Alexander just before he reaches Persepolis. That's right. Yeah. I've travelled to the Persian Gates just once, I remember. So quite really, I mean, the Zagros Mountains in that area in particular are just a curtain of stone. You know, you can't, it's incredible. They just tower and it just goes on and on and on for miles and miles and miles, as far as I can see. And then there is one little road, a tiny, just like two lane traffic, you know, today that cuts through

this and just a natural break in the rock. It's quite remarkable. And so I've driven from Susa to Persepolis through that route once. It is terrifying because the road zigzags high, high up then into the Zagros and back down into the plains around Shiraz. But I was thinking all the time, oh my God, this is what he did. This is the way that he came through. And I mean, really, no wonder he had to have a guide there because you would never have thought of trepsing all the way south following that mountain range thinking, oh, there will be a pass here

because, you know, you would never think that the Zagros was going to give up anything to an intruder. It's a remarkable, remarkable experience. One of the most vivid experiences of all my journeys in Iran. That's one of them. My travel list is getting bigger the longer we speak, Lloyd. Lloyd, this has been an incredible chat. As expected, as always, it's a pleasure to talk with you. Finally, your book coming out all about this is called? It's simply called Persians, The Age of the Great Kings. Fantastic. Lloyd, it just goes for me to say thank you so much

for taking the time to come back on the podcast. I'll trust him any time. It's a great pleasure. It's always a joy talking to you. Thank you so much. We'll be right back. They've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not. Just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push.

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