Persepolis

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.

→ Listen on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones 2 episodes
  Professor of Ancient History at Cardiff University
• Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis 4 episodes
  Curator of Middle Eastern Coins at the British Museum
• Lindsay Allen 3 episodes
  Lecturer in Greek and Near Eastern History at King's College London

Reading list

• The Persian Empire: A History
  Lindsay Allen (British Museum Press, 2005) Google Books →
• Persia and the West
  John Boardman (Thames and Hudson, 2000) Google Books →
• Forgotten Empire: The World of Ancient Persia
  John Curtis and Nigel Tallis (British Museum Press, 2014) Google Books →
• Imperial Matter: Ancient Persia and the Archaeology of Empires
  Lori Khatchadourian (University of California Press, 2016) Google Books →
• King and Court in Ancient Persia 559 to 331 BCE
  Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones (Edinburgh University Press, 2013) Google Books →
• Persepolis: Discovery and Afterlife of a World Wonder
  Ali Mousavi (De Gruyter, 2012) Google Books →
• Persian Myths
  Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis (British Museum Press, 1993) Google Books →
• Persepolis: The Archaeology of Parsa, Seat of the Persian Kings
  Donald N. Wilber (Darwin Press Inc, 1989) Google Books →

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Programme ID: b0b4z075

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b4z075

Auto-category: 935 (History of ancient Persia)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello, in 520 BC Darius the Great started building on the site of Persepolis, the ceremonial city of the Persians, and for almost two centuries this was the richest place on earth.