The world of Ancient Persia

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]

Bridge across the Persian gulf
Richard Holledge
August 26, 2005
IN 522BC, Darius, "Great King, King of Kings" as he modestly described himself, could survey his Persian empire with understandable satisfaction. It spread from Libya and Greece to the west, Afghanistan to the east and as far north as the Aral Sea.

Now he needed to celebrate his power with palaces, stately pleasure domes, walls and towers. He settled on a fertile plain northwest of Shiraz, the city of roses and nightingales, where he had a mighty terrace constructed out of the rocky hillside and threw up a conurbation of vaunting columns and shimmering halls to create Persepolis.

He brought in hundreds of artists, perhaps under the supervision of a Greek sculptor, and they set to in teams of seven in a frenzy of creativity, carving and decorating that was to last 50 years.

Next month another team of workmen will descend on Iran's National Archeological Museum in Tehran to dismantle an astonishing number of works of antiquity and take them to the British Museum for the biggest exhibition of Persian art yet assembled outside Iran. And, after much negotiation, it has been agreed that the great limestone statue of Darius, headless but dramatic and standing proudly in the museum, will be taking centre stage among hitherto unseen items of jewellery, gold and silver, rare artefacts and dazzlingly precise reliefs from the Achaemenid era, which lasted from about 550BC to 330BC.

For John Curtis, curator of the exhibition, it is the culmination of a career that has drawn him to Persia since 1969. He discusses his passion with an academic gravity that barely disguises his excitement as we detour from the dusty ruins of Persepolis to sit on the terrace of a tearoom overlooking the great flower-filled, traffic-jammed, square of Maidan Naqsh-e Jahan in Isfahan, a few hundred kilometres to the northwest.

...

Maybe not that different from the great days of the Achaemenids. We know that Darius had a powerful and scheming wife and that Xerxes was dominated by Esther, the biblical character who persuaded him not to kill the Jews. But what you will not see on any of the great reliefs of Persepolis is one single woman.

The Times

[ProudPersian]

what pisses me off the most is that in return for giving the British museum all those artifacts the British museum is supposed to loan Iran. LOAN!! it to us! I will terminate this post here to refrain from insulting anyone.

[Rasputin]