Perses ancestor of Persia

[Phalanx Pursos]

Greetings to thee, most esteemed Pothos.

Perses was the son of Andromeda & Perseus, Andromeda was heir to Phoenicia and Perseus heir to Argos. Supposedly Persia was named after Perses the son of Perseus, could it also be true that Persepolis was actually built by Perses ? It was Cyrus II who founded the Persian empire, he also was credited for building Persepolis.

But I think it was actually the Perseid dynasty who built Persepolis.

[amyntoros]

Greetings to thee, most esteemed Pothos.

Perses was the son of Andromeda & Perseus, Andromeda was heir to Phoenicia and Perseus heir to Argos. Supposedly Persia was named after Perses the son of Perseus, could it also be true that Persepolis was actually built by Perses ? It was Cyrus II who founded the Persian empire, he also was credited for building Persepolis.

But I think it was actually the Perseid dynasty who built Persepolis.

Darius I built Persepolis to replace Cyrus's Persian capital at Pasargade with a new capital, and according to Cyrus H. Gordon's The Ancient Near East it was the "home residence of the king in his native province. It was too remote to serve as a capital of the empire for which a more central location (such as Babylon's) was called for." He also says that by calling it a Persian capital he means "pertaining to Persis, the homeland of the Achaemenians."

Best regards,

[smittysmitty]

[
But I think it was actually the Perseid dynasty who built Persepolis.

What is the Perseid dynasty?


Ok! i get it now - the descendants of Perseus. Sorry!

[Phalanx Pursos]

" He also says that by calling it a Persian capital he means "pertaining to Persis, the homeland of the Achaemenians."

Best regards,

Thanks for this information.

My thoughts:
There's Persepolis, Persia and the Persian Gulf, some historians claim that Perses is the ancestor of Persia. So I figure if Perses the Mycenaean would built a city, it should have been called Perses Polis. Polis is Greek for city (I bet you know), so I figure that Cyrus II & Darius I only added to a city which already was built in 1300 BC.

My theory:
All the Greek aspects of Persepolis were built by the Perseid dynasty (Cyrus ?) and all the Sumerian aspects of Persepolis were built by Darius I.

Just look at the city names, you can inmediately see which cities are Sumerian just from the names. Maybe Cyrus was an ancestor of Perses, I do not know.

Maybe Cyrus was a Mycenaean descendant.

There are so many things, take Aethiopia for example. That was a region of the Perseid dynasty, Ethiopia is mentioned in the garden of Eden.

There is a chance Aethiopia stretched from Mesapotamia to the Red sea.

Was this all conquered by the Sumerians who changed it into Canaan ? Same with Persepolis, was this taken over by Sumerian Persians ?

Maybe Darius was of Sumerian descendants.

[Paralus]

So I figure if Perses the Mycenaean would built a city, it should have been called Perses Polis. Polis is Greek for city (I bet you know), so I figure that Cyrus II & Darius I only added to a city which already was built in 1300 BC.

Very busy people those Myceneans. Well travelled too. I wonder how they dealt with the Hittites?

Whose side did they take at Kadesh?

[Phoebus]

He did have flying boots, Paralus.

[Semiramis]

Hi, Phalanx Pursos,

Maybe Cyrus was an ancestor of Perses, I do not know.

Maybe Cyrus was a Mycenaean descendant.

In Greek myth, Perses was the son of Perseus and Andromeda. Perseus was the son of Zeus and Danae. Danae was the ancestor of Danaans, who are mentioned in the Iliad interchangably with the Acheans. Andromeda was the daughter of the king and queen of the Phoenician Kingdom of Ethiopia. Perses was the ancestor of the Persian tribe Persidae.

What is accepted by history scholars is that the Acheans inhabited the north-central part of the Pelopponese. Homer's Achaens have been identified with the Myceneans. Cyrus is probably descended from the Persian tribe Persidae from his father's side. The Persians are believed to have originally been a nomadic people from Central Asia, who later settled in Iran. Achaemenids claimed that Cyrus was a descendant of the Medes from his mother's side. The Medes were an ancient Iranian people.

So I figure if Perses the Mycenaean would built a city, it should have been called Perses Polis. Polis is Greek for city (I bet you know), so I figure that Cyrus II & Darius I only added to a city which already was built in 1300 BC.

The magnificent palace complex at Persepolis was founded by Darius the Great around 518 B.C., although more than a century passed before it was finally completed. Conceived to be the seat of government for the Achaemenian kings and a center for receptions and ceremonial festivities, the wealth of the Persian empire was evident in all aspects of its construction. The splendor of Persepolis, however, was short-lived; the palaces were looted and burned by Alexander the Great in 331-330 B.C.

[...]

An inscription carved on the southern face of the Terrace proves that Darius the Great was the founder of Persepolis. Work was started about 518 B.C., although the tremendous task was not completed until about 100 years later by Artaxerxes I.

[...]

According to tablets inscribed in Old Persian and Elamite found at Persepolis, it seems that Darius planned this impressive complex of palaces not only as the seat of government but also, and primarily, as a show place and a spectacular center for the receptions and festivals of the Achaemenian kings and their empire. Darius lived long enough to see only a small part of his plans executed. His brilliant and grandiose ideas were taken up and followed by his son and successor Xerxes, who, according to an excavated foundation inscription, said: "When my father Darius went (away from) the throne, I by the grace of Ahuramazda became king on my father's throne. After I became king . . . what had been done by my father, that I also (did), and other works I added." Actually, the Persepolis we know is mostly the work of Xerxes.

My theory:
All the Greek aspects of Persepolis were built by the Perseid dynasty (Cyrus ?) and all the Sumerian aspects of Persepolis were built by Darius I.

By far the largest number of finds were from the royal storehouse in the Treasury. Additional objects-far fewer-came from other buildings of the Terrace. Many of these finds were pieces of booty from wars with foreign nations, such as Greece, Egypt, and India, or tokens of tribute from the subject nations of the empire. Some native objects clearly show foreign cultural influences. We know from excavated tablets that Darius I had called to his court many foreign artists and workers whose skill and inspiration were utilized, but never copied, by the Persians.

Uncovered in the debris of the Treasury were hundreds of clay tablets with inscriptions in Elamite cuneiform. These tablets, originally sundried, were baked in the heat of the immense fire that destroyed the building, so that many were found intact instead of having crumbled to dust long ago. These tablets, written for the most part in Old Persian and its corresponding translations of Elamite and Babylonian, were of great value to the excavators. We learn from them of the presence in Persepolis of skilled workmen from many parts of the empire, of stone-relief and inscription workers from Egypt, goldsmiths from Caria, and ornament makers from Susa.

http://www.iranchamber.com/history/pers ... polis1.php

It seems a decent website.

Amyntoros,

Is the Cyrus Gordon book a good one? I was a bit scared when I saw the ancient publishing date (1965!), but the author's name is tipping the scale the other way...

Take care

[Phalanx Pursos]

Thanks Semiramis.

This information is really useful, thank you for showing this to me.

The magnificent palace complex at Persepolis was founded by Darius the Great around 518 B.C.

The magnificant palace complex was built by Darius, but did the ancient Persians speak Greek languages ?

An inscription carved on the southern face of the Terrace proves that Darius the Great was the founder of Persepolis. Work was started about 518 B.C., although the tremendous task was not completed until about 100 years later by Artaxerxes I.

So Darius I built the southern part of Persepolis.

After I became king . . . what had been done by my father, that I also (did), and other works I added." Actually, the Persepolis we know is mostly the work of Xerxes.

That's also what happens in ancient Egypt, the ones who added to the structures of the Piramids are regarded as the builders of the Piramids. I figure this also happened with Persepolis, that the ones who added to the city are regarded as builders.

Did the ancient Persians really speak Greek ?

Perseus came from a family of city builders originating from Egypt, therefor it is already hinting for someone as Perses to build a city and name it after himself. It's true that a lot of Persians added structures to Persepolis, but what if the original fundaments of the city actually date back from 1300 BC and were Mycenaean ?

It was Alexander the great's drunken troops who sacked Persepolis.

[Paralus]

Is the Cyrus Gordon book a good one? I was a bit scared when I saw the ancient publishing date (1965!)...

Ancient publication date?? Ancient??

Hurrumph!



Flying boots eh Phoebus? That would explain it then. Quite forgot, quite forgot.

Hmmm, still wondering where the allegiance of these world travelling "Achaeans" will have laid when Thutmose III came thundering northwards to Megiddo and when Suppiluliumas I was busily carving out the empire (the new version) that Ramses II would have to but heads with and, like many a Ptolemy (much later and with different "empires" of course), learn to come to an accommodation with.

Perhaps they backed Urhi-Teshub, murdered by his uncle Hattusilis III, and suffered accordingly?

What, with a plethora of 'Hats', 'Murwats', 'Uris' and 'Tudhas' about, a poor Peloponnesus Greek is spoilt for choice.

[Paralus]

The magnificant palace complex was built by Darius, but did the ancient Persians speak Greek languages ?


So Darius I built the southern part of Persepolis.

That's also what happens in ancient Egypt, the ones who added to the structures of the Piramids are regarded as the builders of the Piramids. I figure this also happened with Persepolis, that the ones who added to the city are regarded as builders.

Did the ancient Persians really speak Greek ?

It's true that a lot of Persians added structures to Persepolis, but what if the original fundaments of the city actually date back from 1300 BC and were Mycenaean ?

"Number five's alive..."

[amyntoros]

Amyntoros,

Is the Cyrus Gordon book a good one? I was a bit scared when I saw the ancient publishing date (1965!), but the author's name is tipping the scale the other way...

Hmm, is it a good one? Well … I probably wouldn’t recommend it to Pothosians in general because the primary interest on this forum is Persia's relationship to Alexander and the Greek World. The subtitle to Gordon's book (which is only to be found on the flyleaf) is The Common Background of Greek and Hebrew Civilization! The focus of all the later chapters is on Hebrew history, although there is a brief earlier chapter on Homer and the ancient East.

The reason I own this book is that I found it at a tag sale (for 25 cents) and I haven't read it cover to cover but only used it for reference. I have no idea how much scholarship on the subject may have changed in the intervening decades. Dr. Gordon's background is provocative though. A Professor of Near Eastern Studies, and of Assyriology and Egyptian Studies, in 1957 "He identified the language of the Minoan Linear A tablets from Crete as Semitic. Then in 1962 he refined his decipherment of Minoan and proved that the Minoan language was northwestern Semitic, by recognizing that the same language persisted until 300 B.C. in the 'Etocretan' writings inscribed in Greek letters. His findings are summarized in his Evidence for the Minoan language." A quick Google search on the subject, however, tells us that “the idea was dismissed by other scholars.”

So … I would say only buy it if you have a general interest in Middle Eastern studies. Used copies can be found on Amazon for 13 cents, but then there's the $4 shipping.

Best regards,

[Semiramis]

Amyntoros,

Is the Cyrus Gordon book a good one? I was a bit scared when I saw the ancient publishing date (1965!), but the author's name is tipping the scale the other way...

Hmm, is it a good one? Well … I probably wouldn’t recommend it to Pothosians in general because the primary interest on this forum is Persia's relationship to Alexander and the Greek World. The subtitle to Gordon's book (which is only to be found on the flyleaf) is The Common Background of Greek and Hebrew Civilization! The focus of all the later chapters is on Hebrew history, although there is a brief earlier chapter on Homer and the ancient East.

The reason I own this book is that I found it at a tag sale (for 25 cents) and I haven't read it cover to cover but only used it for reference. I have no idea how much scholarship on the subject may have changed in the intervening decades. Dr. Gordon's background is provocative though. A Professor of Near Eastern Studies, and of Assyriology and Egyptian Studies, in 1957 "He identified the language of the Minoan Linear A tablets from Crete as Semitic. Then in 1962 he refined his decipherment of Minoan and proved that the Minoan language was northwestern Semitic, by recognizing that the same language persisted until 300 B.C. in the 'Etocretan' writings inscribed in Greek letters. His findings are summarized in his Evidence for the Minoan language." A quick Google search on the subject, however, tells us that “the idea was dismissed by other scholars.”

So … I would say only buy it if you have a general interest in Middle Eastern studies. Used copies can be found on Amazon for 13 cents, but then there's the $4 shipping.

Best regards,

Amyntoros,

Now I know where I came across Cyrus Gordon. 'Black Athena - volume I' by Martin Bernal. Bernal's proposing a common background between Greek and Semitic civilizations as well. Yeah, Gordon was considered a brilliant but nutty scholar by his contemporaries. Bernal gives him a lot more credit though. Then again, Bernal himself isn't that popular in classics circles.

Voume I actually doesn't get into anything too controversial. Just discusses how the Mediterranean and West Asian cultures viewed each other in the ancient periods. The views of Western Europe reagarding these cultures is included for the later periods, right up to the mid 20th century. Very little to do with Alexander, but a fascinating read anyway.

Before Bernal, people like ML West and Walter Burkert had tentatively proposed some exchanges between the West Asian and Greek cultures. West had published 'The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth' and Burkert 'The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age'. But they did not recieve even a fraction of the attenton that Bernal managed to generate. Black Athena vol 1 came out in 1989 and the rest in the 1990s.

EDIT: - I just remembered why Burkert is so tentative with his suggestions. The original German version actually came out in 1984. I've only read the English translation, which was published in 1992.

Burkert has just published a new book in 2004 called 'Babylon, Memphis, Persepolis: Eastern Contexts of Greek Culture '. I haven't got my hands on it yet. It seems from the blurb that Burkert will be much more direct in displaying his leanings in this new book than his previous one. Still, it hasn't generated the hostility Bernal's book did, which indicates to me that at least proposing the idea is becoming less offensive these days.

At the distant beginning of Western civilization, according to European tradition, Greece stands as an insular, isolated, near-miracle of burgeoning culture. This book traverses the ancient world's three great centers of cultural exchange--Babylonian Nineveh, Egyptian Memphis, and Iranian Persepolis--to situate classical Greece in its proper historical place, at the Western margin of a more comprehensive Near Eastern-Aegean cultural community that emerged in the Bronze Age and expanded westward in the first millennium B.C.

In concise and inviting fashion, Walter Burkert lays out the essential evidence for this ongoing reinterpretation of Greek culture. In particular, he points to the critical role of the development of writing in the ancient Near East, from the achievement of cuneiform in the Bronze Age to the rise of the alphabet after 1000 b.c. From the invention and diffusion of alphabetic writing, a series of cultural encounters between "Oriental" and Greek followed. Burkert details how the Assyrian influences of Phoenician and Anatolian intermediaries, the emerging fascination with Egypt, and the Persian conquests in Ionia make themselves felt in the poetry of Homer and his gods, in the mythic foundations of Greek cults, and in the first steps toward philosophy. A journey through the fluid borderlines of the Near East and Europe, with new and shifting perspectives on the cultural exchanges these produced, this book offers a clear view of the multicultural field upon which the Greek heritage that formed Western civilization first appeared.

I'm not sure Perses will feature though.

Take care

[Semiramis]

Ancient publication date?? Ancient??

Hurrumph!



Flying boots eh Phoebus? That would explain it then. Quite forgot, quite forgot.

Hmmm, still wondering where the allegiance of these world travelling "Achaeans" will have laid when Thutmose III came thundering northwards to Megiddo and when Suppiluliumas I was busily carving out the empire (the new version) that Ramses II would have to but heads with and, like many a Ptolemy (much later and with different "empires" of course), learn to come to an accommodation with.

Perhaps they backed Urhi-Teshub, murdered by his uncle Hattusilis III, and suffered accordingly?

What, with a plethora of 'Hats', 'Murwats', 'Uris' and 'Tudhas' about, a poor Peloponnesus Greek is spoilt for choice.

Paralus.

I doubt any of these people would know these asses from their elbows had it not been for the flying boots of the Myceneans.

And 1965 is an ooooollllllllddddd publication date. Come on!

[Phalanx Pursos]

Perses was born in Aethiopia but he was not heir to the throne of Mycenae, so I figure he traveled to the east and founded his own dynasty or maybe even built his own city.

[amyntoros]

Burkert has just published a new book in 2004 called 'Babylon, Memphis, Persepolis: Eastern Contexts of Greek Culture '. I haven't got my hands on it yet. It seems from the blurb that Burkert will be much more direct in displaying his leanings in this new book than his previous one. Still, it hasn't generated the hostility Bernal's book did, which indicates to me that at least proposing the idea is becoming less offensive these days.

Semiramis, I purchased Burkert’s Babylon, Memphis, Persepolis: Eastern Contexts of Greek Culture when it first came out. It's a slim volume – only 124 pages of actual text divided into an introduction and five chapters. The first two, Alphabetic Writing and Orientalizing Features in Homer are fairly straightforward and engaging, with the latter being somewhat similar in intent to the one in Cyrus Gordons' book. Burkert loses me in the third a little – Oriental Wisdom Literature and Cosmogony – perhaps because I've never paid much attention to the study of cosmogony in any period, although in his other books Burkert often writes easily understood and very entertaining chapters whilst on other occasions makes me feel like I am ten years old yet sitting in a post-graduate class! He returns to an easier understanding in his penultimate chapter on Orpheus and Egypt, followed by The Advent of the Magi.

Judging by your area of interest and your comments here on Pothos I think you will definitely appreciate this book, although I’m not sure that all other Pothosians would find it worth purchasing. Persepolis is only mentioned 4 or 5 times, however it is interesting to note that Burkert shares the view that the New Year Festival was held there. From the introduction:

Meanwhile, in the East, King Darius summoned Greek sculptors to decorate Persepolis, his new capital, built for the New Year ceremony.

And there's the following which begins his chapter on The Advent of the Magi:

With the fall of Sardis in 547 B.C. about one third of the Greek world suddenly became part of the Persian (Achaemenid) empire, and it was the leading section of Greece, in terms of development of economy, technology, art, and mind, that suffered this fate. The Persian domination lasted for more than 200 years, for six generations. Not only did every Greek know what a satrapes was, but the title of "king," Basileus, was used as a proper name for the Shah of Persia. What was the result of such a long coexistence? None at all, some classicists tend to assume.

At the same time, many scholarly interpreters gladly notice the remarkable evidence for influence in the opposite direction, from Greece to the East. Greek sculptors were active in working out the reliefs of Persepolis, the new capital and ceremonial center of King Darius; this is shown by the style and confirmed by some inscriptional evidence. The Persian king also introduced coinage in the manner of Lydians and Greeks, at least for the western part of his empire; the golden coins of Darius with an image of an archer, the Dareikoi, were well known and coveted by the Greeks. As Horace expressed it much later (Epodes 2.1.156), something strange happened: "Conquered Greece conquered the uncivilized victor," Graecia capta ferum victorem ceptit – or rather, Ionia capta, in this case. Yet the conquered could not remain indifferent to the victors. Influence from top to base, from the summit of power to the general populace, cannot have been absent.

Those who argue that Alexander's occupation of Persia must have left its mark on the native culture would surely agree.

Best regards,