Persepolis or Parseh (; ), also known in modern Persian as Takht-e Jamshid (, "Throne of Jamshid"), was the ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid Empire (). It is situated in the plains of Marvdasht, encircled by the southern Zagros Mountains, in Fars province of Iran. It is one of the key Iranian cultural heritage sites and has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979.
The earliest remains of Persepolis date back to 515 BC. The city, acting as a major centre of the empire, housed a palace complex and citadel designed to serve as the focal point for governance and ceremonial activities. It exemplifies the Achaemenid style of architecture. The complex was taken by the army of Alexander the Great in 330 BC, and soon after, its palaces were destroyed by fire. According to one account, Alexander deliberately set fire to Persepolis to avenge the destruction of Athens by the Persians; according to another, the fire was started at the urging of Thaïs, a courtesan, during a feast when Alexander was intoxicated.
The exact function of Persepolis remains unclear. It was not one of the largest cities in ancient Iran, let alone the rest of the empire, but appears to have been a grand ceremonial complex that was only occupied seasonally. The complex was raised high on a walled platform, with five "palaces" or halls of varying size, and grand entrances. It is still not entirely clear where the king's private quarters actually were. Until recently, most archaeologists held that it was primarily used for celebrating Nowruz, the Persian New Year, held at the spring equinox, which is still an important annual festivity in Iran. The Iranian nobility and the tributary parts of the empire came to present gifts to the king, as represented in the stairway reliefs. It is also unclear what permanent structures there were outside the palace complex; due to these factors, Persepolis is more often referred to as a complex rather than a "city" in the usual sense.Mousavi, Ali, Persepolis: Discovery and Afterlife of a World Wonder, p. 53, 2012, Walter de Gruyter, , Google Books
The exploration of Persepolis from the early 17th century led to the modern rediscovery of cuneiform writing and, from detailed studies of the trilingual Achaemenid royal inscriptions found on the ruins, the initial decipherment of cuneiform in the early 19th century.
Name Persepolis is derived from the Greek , a compound of () and (), together meaning "the Persian city" or "the city of the Persians".
To the ancient Persians, the city was known as (), which is also the name of the region of Persis, the homeland of the Persians.Bailey, H.W. (1996) "Khotanese Saka Literature", in Ehsan Yarshater (ed), The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol III: The Seleucid, Parthian, and Sasanian Periods, Part 2 (reprint edition), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 1230. Trilingual inscriptions in Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian on the site's gate, together with other textual evidence, show that the palace complex built by Darius the Great bore the same name as the surrounding land. The name also appears in the Elamite administrative tablets found at the site, which record payments to workmen in Pārsa and its suburbs. In modern Persian, the ancient name is rendered as ().
An inscription left in 311 AD by Sasanian Prince Shapur Sakanshah, the son of Hormizd II, refers to the site as , meaning "Hundred Pillars".
Early Muslim geographers, including al-Masudi, Istakhri, al-Muqaddasi and Ibn Hawqal, described the ruins but attributed them to the legendary world-king Jamshid, whom they identified with the biblical Solomon. As a result, the site was also called or . Others attributed it to the legendary queen Homāy; Hamza al-Isfahani called it ("Thousand Columns").
Because medieval Persians attributed the site to Jamshid, it has been referred to as (, ; ), literally "Throne of Jamshid". This remains the most common modern Persian name for the site, although there is no evidence that Jamshid had any connection with it. Another name given to the site in the medieval period was (, "Forty Minarets"), transcribed as in De Silva Figueroa and as Chilminar in early English sources.. The Spanish traveller De Silva Figueroa, who visited in the early 17th century, appears to have been the first to recognise that the site known locally as Chehel Menār or Takht-e Jamshid was the Persepolis of the ancient Greek authors.
History Construction There are some indications that the site of Persepolis was already a government centre under Cyrus the Great and his son Cambyses II, but no archaeological traces of this older phase have been found. It was Darius I who created Persepolis as the splendid seat of the government of the Achaemenid Empire and as its centre for receptions and festivals. The earliest remains date back to 515 BC, and inscriptions on the buildings support the view that the terrace and the first palaces were built by Darius. Under his successors Xerxes I and Artaxerxes I the complex was extended in several building phases, and further buildings were added in the 4th century BC.
With Darius I, the sceptre passed to a new branch of the royal house. The administrative capitals of the empire were Susa, Babylon and Ecbatana. This may be why the Greeks were not acquainted with the city until Alexander the Great took and plundered it.
Darius I's construction of Persepolis was carried out parallel to that of the Palace of Susa. According to Gene R. Garthwaite, the Susa Palace served as Darius' model for Persepolis. Darius I ordered the construction of the Apadana and the Council Hall ( or the "Triple Gate"), as well as the main imperial Treasury and its surroundings. These were completed during the reign of his son, Xerxes I. Further construction of the buildings on the terrace continued until the downfall of the Achaemenid Empire.Guaitoli, M. T. & Rambaldi, S. (2002). Lost Cities from the Ancient World. White Star. p. 164.
Grey limestone was the main building material used at Persepolis. The uneven plan of the terrace, including the foundation, acted like a castle, whose angled walls enabled its defenders to target any section of the external front.
The workers who built Persepolis were paid for their labour. The Elamite administrative tablets found at the site record the issue of silver and foodstuffs to workmen of the royal economy in Persepolis and its suburbs, most frequently Cappadocians, Lydians, Carians, Thracians, Ionians, Sogdians, Bactrians, Babylonians and Egyptians.
Conquest by Alexander the Great After his victory over Darius III at the Battle of Gaugamela in 331 BC, Alexander the Great took Susa, which surrendered without resistance, and then marched towards Persepolis. In the winter of 331/330 BC he forced the Persian Gates, a pass through the Zagros Mountains, where Ariobarzanes of Persis had held off his army for some time. Some sources indicate that a local guide showed the Macedonians a path that allowed them to outflank the defenders, in a reversal of Thermopylae. Ariobarzanes was killed either during the battle or during the retreat.Arrian, Anabasis 3.18.1–9; Quintus Curtius Rufus, Histories of Alexander the Great 5.3.16–5.4.34.
During his advance, Alexander received a letter from Tiridates, the guardian of the royal treasury at Persepolis. Tiridates warned him that Persians loyal to Darius III were on their way to fortify the city, and offered to surrender it to him if he arrived first. Alexander accepted, crossed the Araxes river (the modern Kur) by forced march and took the city.Quintus Curtius Rufus 5.5.2; Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca historica 17.69.1. On his way, according to Diodorus, he was met by some 800 Greek artisans who had been captured by the Persians. Most were elderly and had been mutilated, with a hand or foot cut off, so that they could still practise their crafts but not easily escape. Alexander provided them with clothing and provisions. Diodorus does not cite this as a reason for the destruction of Persepolis, but it is possible that Alexander began to see the city in a more negative light after this encounter.Diodorus Siculus 17.69.2–9; Quintus Curtius Rufus 5.5.5–24.
Alexander took possession of the royal treasury, in which the state revenues had been accumulated since the time of Cyrus the Great. According to Diodorus, it contained gold and silver worth 120,000 talents.Diodorus Siculus 17.71.1; cf. Quintus Curtius Rufus 5.6.9. He kept part of it to meet the costs of the war and had the rest loaded onto mules and other pack animals and taken to Ecbatana.Diodorus Siculus 17.71.2. According to Plutarch, the treasure was carried away on 20,000 mules and 5,000 camels.Plutarch, Life of Alexander 37.4. The surrender of the treasury did not save the city: Alexander gave Persepolis, except for the palaces, over to his soldiers to plunder.Diodorus Siculus 17.70; Quintus Curtius Rufus 5.6.1–8.
Destruction
Alexander remained at Persepolis for several months.Plutarch, Life of Alexander 37.6. In the spring of 330 BC, before leaving the city, a fire destroyed the palaces. The fire consumed the complex so completely that only the columns, parts of the walls, stairways and doorways of the great palaces and halls remained. It has been suggested that the fire started in the Hadish, the palace of Xerxes I, and spread to the rest of the terrace.
The ancient authors disagree on how the fire began: According to Arrian, Alexander deliberately set fire to the palaces as revenge for the Persian destruction of Athens and the burning of its temples during the second Persian invasion of Greece in 480 BC, even though his general Parmenion advised him against it.Arrian, Anabasis 3.18.11–12. According to Diodorus Siculus, Quintus Curtius Rufus and Plutarch, the fire was started during a drunken celebration at the suggestion of Thaïs, an Athenian courtesan and later the mistress of Ptolemy I Soter. In these accounts, she or Alexander himself threw the first torch.Diodorus Siculus 17.72; Quintus Curtius Rufus 5.7.2–7; Plutarch, Life of Alexander 38.Mark, Joshua J. "Alexander the Great & the Burning of Persepolis" , 2018, World History Encyclopedia The two accounts need not exclude each other: the fire may have been both a symbolic act of revenge and the outcome of a feast. It may also have had the political purpose of destroying an iconic symbol of the Persian monarchy that might otherwise have become a focus of Persian resistance.
The Book of Arda Wiraz, a Zoroastrian work composed in the 3rd or 4th century AD, describes Persepolis' archives as containing "all the Avesta and Zend, written upon prepared cow-skins, and with gold ink", which were destroyed. In his Chronology of the Ancient Nations, the Iranian scholar Biruni notes the unavailability of certain native Iranian historiographical sources in the post-Achaemenid era, especially during the Parthian Empire. He adds: "[Alexander] burned the whole of Persepolis as revenge to the Persians, because it seems the Persian King Xerxes had burnt the Greek City of Athens around 150 years ago. People say that, even at the present time, the traces of fire are visible in some places."
The fire may, however, have helped to preserve the Persepolis Administrative Archives.Wiesehöfer 10–11. According to archaeological evidence, the partial burning of Persepolis did not damage the Persepolis Fortification Archive tablets, but may have caused the collapse of the upper part of the northern fortification wall, which buried and protected the tablets until their recovery by archaeologists of the Oriental Institute.
After the fall of the Achaemenid Empire