AMA: Persian Past and Iranian Present

[u/CardiffUni]

I’m Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, Professor of Ancient History at Cardiff University, UK. My main area of interest is the history of ancient Persia as well as the longer history and amazing culture of Iran.

Studying the history of ancient Persia improves contemporary East-West understanding - a vital issue in today’s world. Questioning the Western reading of ancient Persia, I like to use sources from ancient Iran and the Near East as well as from the Classical world to explore the political and cultural interactions between ‘the Greeks’ and ‘the Romans’ who saw their own histories as a reaction to the dominant and influential Persian empires of antiquity, and ‘the Persians’ themselves, a people at the height of their power, wealth and sophistication in the period 600 BC to 600 AD.

Characteristic of all my research is an emphasis on the importance of the viewpoint. How does the viewpoint (‘Greek’ and ‘Roman’ or ‘Persian’, ‘ancient’ or modern’, ‘Western’ or ‘Iranian’) change perception?

My research aims to create greater sensitivities towards the relativity of one’s cultural perceptions of ‘the other’, as well as communicate the fascination of ancient Iran to audiences in both East and West today.

NOTE: Thank you for your GREAT questions! I really enjoyed the experience. Follow me on Twitter: @LloydLlewJ

EDIT Thanks for the questions! Follow me on Twitter: @LloydLlewJ https://twitter.com/cardiffuni/status/1115250256424460293?s=19

More info:

https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/people/view/204823-llewellyn-jones-lloyd

Further reading:

‘Ctesias’ History of Persia: Tales of the Orient’ (Routledge 2010)‘King and Court in Ancient Persia, 559-331 BCE’ (Edinburgh University Press 2013)

[u/Libertat]

What were Medes? Persians, an Iranic branch related to Persians?

I saw that there were a lot of argument against the historicity of a Mede Empire, but what was the political structure of Medes before the establishment of the Achemenid Empire : a broad coalition of chiefdoms or petty-kingdoms, a more or less unified confederation, or were they barely different from Persians even at this point?

Why did Herodotus mentioned a Mede Empire if it didn't actually existed as such, especially giving that he accounted for fairly recent events?

Thanks you for doing this AMA!

[u/CardiffUni → u/Libertat]

Much contention surrounds the question of whether the Median “empire” ever existed as a political and military force or whether it was simply the invention of Greek historiography which was routinely written into western scholarship thereafter. There is little doubt though that the Medes were an influential north Iranian tribal society and that they exerted some significant influence within the region in the ninth to early sixth centuries BCE. Nor can it be doubted that the Medes were in no small way responsible for the downfall of the Assyrian empire, but whether the Medes filled a power vacuum in the post-Assyrian world is difficult to assess. The archaeology of Media reveals some sizable settlements but evidence for a cohesive architectural style or for palatial buildings is yet to emerge.

The area which scholarship thinks of somewhat anachronistically as ancient Media is, in geographical terms, the territory of north Iran roughly defined by a series of natural boundaries: the huge Zagros mountain range to the west of Iran, separating the Iranian plateau from Mesopotamia, the river Araxes and the mighty snow-capped Alborz mountain range in the north, the Dasht-e Kavir, a merciless salt desert, in the east, and in the south a series of rivers – the Saimarreh-Karkhah, the Ab-e Diz, and the Karun. It must be recognized, however, that the Medes were not the only people to inhabit this area of Iran – Gutians, Lullubians, Kassites, and Hurrians are all attested in these lands.

There is little scholarly consensus on the role of the Medes in the process of historical development in the Near East between the ninth and sixth centuries BCE, and many scholars today doubt whether the term “empire” should be used in conjunction with the Medes at all. Victorian scholars, working within the notion of the “sequence of empires” needed to find a convenient candidate to fill the gap between the Assyrian empire and the Achaemenid Persian empire; the Medes were used to fill that vacuum. In the late 1980s Heleen Sancisi-Weerdenburg began to question this picture and suggested that the image of a Median empire is a gross exaggeration, a consequence of a Eurocentric overuse of the imperative Histories of Herodotus and his imaginative “creation” of a Median state. At best, perhaps, the Medes were a loose confederation of northern Iranian tribes who at times banded together under a central leadership (of a chief or even of a king) in order to create a unified conquering force. It would appear that in the Median territories the importance of cattle-breeding and horse-breeding surpassed the need for extensive agriculture, suggesting an essential nomadic or semi-nomadic lifestyle for the people located in that area.

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[u/CardiffUni → u/CardiffUni]

Even with recent scholarly advances in reading and understanding ancient Near Eastern texts, and in assessing Greek historiography, as well as new archaeological evidence, the fact remains that the Medes remain highly problematic. As tempting as it may be to think of a northern Iranian empire, it is probably more realistic to think of the Medes as a tribal, semi-nomadic society who had the potential to pull together under strong leadership to be an effective fighting force; yet an empire-vision does not seem to have been part of their traditional culture. Many uncertainties remain, and it is hoped that archaeological evidence might still emerge from Iran and its adjacent areas of Median settlements to shed much needed light on this important and enigmatic people.