Rise of the Persians
The Ancients
History Hit
4.7 • 4.5K Ratings
🗓️ 4 September 2022
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Achaemenid Empire, or better known as the First Persian Empire, was one of the largest empires in History - led by Cyrus the Great it covered 2.1 million square miles. But where did it come from? And what do we know about their society? It was in their DNA to travel and explore - so why did the Persians settle on the Eurasian plateau?
Tristan is once again joined by Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones from Cardiff University to talk about the rise of the Persians and how they fit into this turbulent period of ancient history. The first society to have worn trousers, the original cowboys, and some of the first peoples to domesticate animals - the rise of the Persian empire dramatically effected intercontinental relationships for years to come.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's the ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes your host and in today's |
| 0:13.5 | podcast. Well we're going east, we're going to the Middle East, we're going to |
| 0:18.2 | ancient Persia. We're talking about the Akiminid Persian Empire but today |
| 0:23.8 | actually we're not talking about the Empire at its height. We're not talking about |
| 0:27.9 | the Empire at the time of Alexander the Great and its eventual form. We're |
| 0:32.2 | talking about the Empire's rise, the rise of the Persians. Where did the |
| 0:36.1 | Persians originate from? How did they come to Cecil and the Iranian Plateau? |
| 0:40.2 | What do we know about their society and how they interacted with Mesopotamian |
| 0:44.7 | civilizations, other cultures that were already present in that area of the |
| 0:49.6 | ancient world when the Persians arrived? Well to explain all we have got an |
| 0:55.1 | absolute legend. A person who's been on the podcast before he's a brilliant |
| 0:59.8 | speaker, he knows everything about the Persians. He is a world expert on this |
| 1:04.0 | topic. I'm of course talking about Cardiff University's Professor Lloyd |
| 1:08.4 | Luelon Jones. Lloyd's been on the podcast a couple of times before to talk about |
| 1:12.9 | topics such as Persepolis, the Persepolis fortification texts and other great |
| 1:18.6 | centers of the Akiminid Persian Empire such as Sousa, Ekbaterna and Pissargadai. |
| 1:24.5 | It was wonderful to get Lloyd back on the podcast to give us an overview of how |
| 1:29.5 | the Persian Empire came to be, how the Persians rose to prominence in this |
| 1:33.8 | area of antiquity and I've got no doubt you're going to absolutely love this one |
| 1:37.7 | because Lloyd is such a good storyteller. So without further ado to talk all about |
| 1:42.5 | the rise of the Persians, here's Lloyd. |
| 1:54.5 | Lloyd, it is so great to have you back on the podcast. |
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