Persian Responses

A generation ago the Achaemenid Empire was a minor sideshow within long-established disciplines. For Greek historians the Persians were the defeated national enemy, a catalyst of change in the aftermath of the fall of Athens or the victim of Alexander. For Egyptologists and Assyriologists they belonged to an era that received scant attention compared with the glory days of the New Kingdom or the Neo-Assyrian Empire. For most archaeologists they were elusive in a material record that lacked a distinctively Achaemenid imprint. Things have changed now. The empire is an object of study in its own right, and a community of Achaemenid specialists has emerged to carry that study forward. Such communities are, however, apt to talk among themselves and the present volume aims to give a professional but non-specialist audience some taste of the variety of subject-matter and discourse that typifies Achaemenid studies. The broad theme of political and cultural interaction - reflecting the empire's diversity and the nature of our sources for its history - is illustrated in fourteen chapters that move from issues in Greek historiography through a series of regional studies (Egypt, Anatolia, Babylonia and Persia) to Zarathushtra, Alexander the Great and the early modern reception of Persepolis.

A generation ago the Achaemenid Empire was a minor sideshow within long-established disciplines. For Greek historians the Persians were the defeated national enemy, a catalyst of change in the aftermath of the fall of Athens or the victim of Alexander. For Egyptologists and Assyriologists they belonged to an era that received scant attention compared with the glory days of the New Kingdom or the Neo-Assyrian Empire. For most archaeologists they were elusive in a material record that lacked a distinctively Achaemenid imprint. Things have changed now. The empire is an object of study in its own right, and a community of Achaemenid specialists has emerged to carry that study forward. Such communities are, however, apt to talk among themselves and the present volume aims to give a professional but non-specialist audience some taste of the variety of subject-matter and discourse that typifies Achaemenid studies. The broad theme of political and cultural interaction - reflecting the empire's diversity and the nature of our sources for its history - is illustrated in fourteen chapters that move from issues in Greek historiography through a series of regional studies (Egypt, Anatolia, Babylonia and Persia) to Zarathushtra, Alexander the Great and the early modern reception of Persepolis.

Preface Abbreviations Introduction - Christopher Tuplin 1. Thucydides' portrait of Tissaphernes re-examined - John O. Hyland 2. Xenophon's wicked Persian, or What's wrong with Tissaphernes? Xenophon's views on lying and breaking oaths - Gabriel Danzig 3. On Persian tryphe in Athenaeus - Dominique Lenfant 4. Treacherous hearts and upright tiaras: the Achaemenid king's head-dress -Christopher Tuplin 5. Darius I in Egypt: Suez and Hibi - Alan B. Lloyd 6. Indigenous aristocracies in Hellespontine Phrygia - Frederic Maffre 7. Hellenization and Lycian cults during the Achaemenid period - Eric A. Raimond 8. Babylonian workers in the Persian heartland: palace building at Matannan in the reign of Cambyses - Wouter F.M. Henkelman and Kristin Kleber 9. Reading Persepolis in Greek: gifts of the Yauna - Margaret Cool Root 10. Boxus the Persian and the hellenization of Persis - Nicholas Sekunda 11. The philosopher's Zarathushtra - Phiroze Vasunia 12. Alexander the Great: 'Last of the Achaemenids'? - Robin Lane Fox 13. 'Chilminar olim Persepolis': European reception of a Persian ruin - Lindsay Allen 14. Pottering around Persepolis: observations on early European visitors to the site -St John Simpson Index