Éditeur : I.B.Tauris | Date & Lieu : 2001, New York |
Préface : | Pages : 332 |
Traduction : | ISBN : 1-85043-999-0 |
Langue : Anglais | Format : 156x234 mm |
Thème : Histoire |
Présentation
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Table des Matières | Introduction | Identité | ||
Ancient Persia: from 550 BC to 650 AD Of all the great civilisations of the ancient world, that of Persia is one of the most remarkable but least understood. That is a study of the country's origins and of why it collapsed so dramatically with the Arab invasions of the seventh century. Josef Wiesehöfer provides a comprehensive survey of the Persian Empire under the Achaemenids, the Parthians and the Sasanians. By focusing on promary sources - written, archaeological and numismatic evidenc from Persia - he avoids the traditional Western approach which has tended sto rely so heavily on innaccurate, and sometimes prejudiced, Greek and Roman accounts. Part of the freshness of Ancient Persia comes from presenting a historical discussion of Persia from a Near Eastern perspective. A comprehensive social, political and cultural history of ancient Persia, Wiesehöfer's work provides important new material for specialists while being fully accessible and appealing to anyone interested in the ancient world. |
Introduction: The Beginnings of Iranian Supremecy in the Ancient Near East How did it happen that in the sixth century BC a Persian dynasty was able to establish a world empire on the soil of the ancient Near East – an empire that stretched as far east as the Indus and as far west as Egypt, and was to become a model for future Iranian dynasties? Since the ninth century BC, Assyrian testimonies have yielded the names of Iranian tribes and places in the territories on the eastern border of their empire, among them the name of the ‘Medes’, whose ‘tribes’ with their apparently loose political ties were later repeatedly subdued by the Assyrians, but were only partially controlled by them. By the end of the seventh century, the Medes even proved capable of a counterattack; they fell upon the territory east of the Tigris, conquered Assur (614 BC) and – in league with the Babylonians – Nineveh (612 BC), and subsequently extended their ‘empire’ westward at the expense of the Scythians, the Mannaeans and the Lydian empire. After 585 BC, the common border of the Lydians and Medes was the Halys in eastern Anatolia. In the absence of any written traditions of their own, and given the uncertain archaeological evidence, the territorial, political, social and cultural profile of the ‘empire’ of the Medes as yet remains unclear. |