Overview of Ancient Persian City of Persepolis

UNESCO World Heritage Site Founded by Achaemenid King Darius I

Aug 30, 2009

Around five hundred and eighteen years before the birth of Jesus, Darius I, perhaps the greatest of all the Achaemenid kings, founded the Persian city of Persepolis.

What remains of Persepolis, now part of modern Iran, is located about 50 kilometres northeast of Shiraz in the southwestern part of the country.

In it's day It was a city of grand design and impressive architecture, built on a platform or terrace measuring 530 metres by 330 metres, partly man-made and partly dug out of a mountain.

The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago described the city’s conception as an opportunity to build a new seat of government and provide a suitable place for receptions and imperial ceremonial festivities. In essence It allowed Darius to display the ostentatious wealth of the Persian Empire.

Although history credits Darius with starting this immense project, much of the work was not completed for nearly a century. On Darius’s death in 486 B.C.E. his son Xerxes followed by his grandson Artaxerxes continued with the building work.

Sadly the fruits of the labour of Darius and kin were not left intact for many of the generations that followed.

Alexander the Great

During his march across Asia, Alexander the Great was determined to see the end of the Persian Empire and in particular the city of Persepolis which according to Diodorus Siculus, (first century historian) he described as the most hateful of the cities of Asia.

In his colossal Bibliotheke Historeke, Diodorus continued by describing Persepolis as the richest city under the sun and that the Macedonians, “Raced into it, slaughtering all the men whom they met and plundering the residences…” The destruction was complete when Alexander set fire to the city (331-330 B.C.E.).

Excavation Work at Persepolis

Although Persepolis was visited a number of times during the following centuries, historians and archaeologists must be grateful to the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago for their work, the first scientific investigation, at the site during the1933 spring season.

An excavation led by Ernst E Herzfeld found a cache of tablets, dating to the thirteenth to the twenty-eighth year of the reign of Darius I. The cache, which numbered between 20,000 – 30,000 tablets and smaller fragments, written in a number of languages including Aramaic, Greek, and Babylonian, allowed a remarkable insight into city life.

Excavations work, which continued after Herzfeld, revealed an amazing amount of information about Darius’s city adding appreciably to current historical knowledge.

UNESCO World Heritage Site

UNESCO describe the findings made on the terrace as an, “Ensemble of majestic approaches, monumental stairways, throne rooms and annex buildings… which have no equivalent and which bear witness of a unique quality of a most ancient civilisation.”

Sources:

The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, Persepolis Terrace: architecture, Reliefs and Finds

Harvard University, The Shelby White-Leon Levy Program, Tablets from Persepolis

The copyright of the article Overview of Ancient Persian City of Persepolis in Persian History is owned by Neil Gunn. Permission to republish Overview of Ancient Persian City of Persepolis in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.