Persia's Untapped Source: The Persepolis Fortification Texts

The Ancients

History Hit

History

4.7 • 3.5K Ratings

🗓️ 8 April 2021

⏱️ 55 minutes

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Summary

The Persepolis Fortification Tablets / Texts are the who’s who of the Ancient Achaemenid Empire, a unique insight into the administrative workings of this jurisdiction emerging from present day Iran. 30,000 of these clay tablets, inscribed in cuneiform, have so far been identified. Each forms a new piece of evidence for who the people of the Achaemenid Empire under Darius I were, where they were, what they did, and even what they ate. Tristan was joined by Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones from Cardiff University to discuss how these texts have completely reshaped our understanding of this civilisation, and how the Ancient Persian perspective has demonstrated its remarkable networks, trade, administration and international travel.

Lloyd's new book, out in April 2022, is called: 'Persians: The Age of the Great Kings'.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	It's the Ancient's on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes your host and in today's podcast
0:08.7	by Avigot another brilliant episode for you. I'm joined by the fantastic Professor Lloyd
0:15.9	Luel and Jones from the University of Cardiff to talk about one of the most extraordinary
0:20.2	sets of texts that survive from antiquity. Now these texts, they're not Roman, they're
0:26.4	not Greek, they're Persian, they're the Persepolis fortification texts. Now these texts,
0:33.9	they provide, shall we say, the Persian version of the Akimni Dempire. They tell us about
0:39.1	Persian administration, they tell us about royal women, they tell us about slavery, they
0:45.3	tell us about communication routes and so much more as you're about to hear. And it's incredible
0:51.2	because also in these texts you hear of figures working within the imperial administration
0:57.2	who we otherwise would never have heard of. So it almost makes in one sense these texts
1:02.8	be Persian equivalent of the Vindaland tablets, telling us stories of individuals who would
1:07.7	otherwise be lost to history. So this was a fascinating eye opening chat looking
1:14.2	at Persia from within Persia from the Persian records that survive the Persian version.
1:20.0	So without further ado, here's Lloyd. Lloyd, thank you so much for taking the time to
1:27.5	come on the podcast. Yeah, very welcome. It's good to be here. Now the Persepolis fortification
1:33.1	texts, these are a remarkable set of ancient documents that helped shine a light on Persia
1:38.9	from within on the administration and so much more. That's right. In many respects, they
1:44.6	are the untapped source for the uninitiated. For those of us who study ancient Persia,
1:49.8	they are probably one of the most important indigenous Iranian sources that we have. And
1:56.4	they've been known about for a long time since the 1930s when they've been worked on
2:00.4	translated, translated and many of them have been published. There are many, many more
2:04.7	to come. But really, unless you're sort of operating in that world, you don't know about
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