Ancient Iran

Question 1

Ancient Iran/Persia

Answer 1

• Ancient Iran, also known as Persia, historic region of southwestern Asia that is only roughly coterminous with modern Iran.
• The early history of Iran may be divided into three phases: (1) the prehistoric period, beginning with the earliest evidence of humans on the Iranian plateau (c. 100,000 bc) and ending roughly at the start of the 1st millennium bc, (2) the protohistoric period, covering approximately the first half of the 1st millennium bc, and (3) the period of the Achaemenian dynasty (6th to 4th century bc), when Iran entered the full light of written history.
• evidence of human presence on the Iranian plateau as early as Lower Paleolithic times comes from a surface find in the Bākhtarān valley.
• Evidence indicates that the Middle East in general was one of the earliest areas in the Old World to experience what the Australian archaeologist V. Gordon Childe called the Neolithic revolution.
• Rather less is known of the cultures in this time range in Iran than of contemporary cultures elsewhere in the ancient Middle East.
• Whereas the Iranian plateau did not experience the rise of urban, literate civilization in the late 4th and early 3rd millennia on the Mesopotamian pattern, lowland Khūzestān did. There Elamite civilization was centred.

Question 2

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Answer 2

• The earliest kings in the Old Elamite period may date to approximately 2700 bc. Already conflict with Mesopotamia, in this case apparently with the city of Ur, was characteristic of Elamite history.
• After two centuries for which sources reveal nothing, the Middle Elamite period opened with the rise to power of the Anzanite dynasty, whose homeland probably lay in the mountains northeast of modern Khūzestān. Political expansion under Khumbannumena (c. 1285–c. 1266 bc), the fourth king of this line, proceeded apace, and his successes were commemorated by his assumption of the title “Expander of the Empire.”
• After a short period of dynastic troubles, the second half of the Middle Elamite period opened with the reign of Shutruk-Nahhunte I (c. 1160 bc).
• A long period of darkness separates the Middle and Neo-Elamite periods. In 742 bc a certain Huban-Nugash is mentioned as king in Elam.
• The beginning of the Iron Age is marked by major dislocations of cultural and historical patterns in western Iran (almost nothing is known of the eastern half of the plateau in the Iron Age).

Question 3

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Answer 3

• Traditionally, the creator of the Median kingdom was one Deioces, who, according to Herodotus, reigned from 728 to 675 bc and founded the Median capital Ecbatana
• According to Herodotus, Deioces was succeeded by his son Phraortes (reigned 675–653 bc), who subjugated the Persians and lost his life in a premature attack against the Assyrians.
• Beginning as early as the 9th century bc and with increasing impact in the late 8th and early 7th centuries, groups of nomadic warriors entered western Iran, probably from across the Caucasus.
• Cyrus II united under his authority several Persian and Iranian groups who apparently had not been under his father’s control.
• Darius I, called the Great, tells in detail the story of the overthrow of the false Bardiya and of the first year of his own rule in his famous royal inscription cut on a rock face at the base of Mount Bīsotūn, a few miles east of modern Kermānshāh.
• It took more than a year (522–521 bc) of hard fighting to put down the revolts associated with Bardiya’s claim to the throne and Darius’s succession to power.
• Such activities, however, did not prevent Darius from following an active expansionist policy.
• Perhaps partly in response to these developments or perhaps for more purely internal reasons, the Ionian Greek cities on the west coast of Asia Minor revolted against Persian rule in 500 bc.

Question 4

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Answer 4

• Xerxes broke with the policy followed by Cyrus and Darius of ruling foreign lands with a fairly light hand, and, in a manner compatible with local traditions, he ruthlessly ignored Egyptian forms of rule and imposed his will on the rebellious province in a thoroughly Persian style
• The formation of the Delian League, the rise of Athenian imperialism, troubles on the west coast of Asia Minor, and the end of Persian military ambitions in the Aegean followed rapidly in the decade after Plataea.
• The three kings that followed Xerxes on the throne—Artaxerxes I (reigned 465–425 bc), Xerxes II (425–424), and Darius II Ochus (423–404)—were all comparatively weak as individuals and as kings, and such successes as the empire enjoyed during their reigns were mainly the result of the efforts of subordinates or of the troubles faced by their adversaries
• The major event of these three reigns was the Peloponnesian War between Sparta and Athens, which was fought, with occasional pauses, over the latter decades of the 5th century bc.
• The culture that developed under the Achaemenids was in reality the collective societies and cultures of the many subject peoples of the empire
• Little is known of Iranian social organization in the period. In general, it was based on feudal lines that were drawn in part by economic and social functions.

Question 5

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Answer 5

• Iranian religion in the pre-Achaemenian and Achaemenian periods is a subject on which there is little scholarly agreement.
• Probably about 600 bc there arose in the northeast of the plateau the great Iranian religious prophet and teacher Zoroaster (Zarathushtra). The history of the religion that he founded is even more complicated and controversial than the history of pre-Zoroastrian Iranian religion.
• The god of the Achaemenian kings was the great Ahura Mazdā, from whom they understood they had received their empire and with whose aid they accomplished all deeds.
• At the centre of the Achaemenian empire sat the king of kings. Around him was gathered a court composed of powerful hereditary landholders, the upper echelons of the army, the harem, religious functionaries, and the bureaucracy that administered the whole.