Persepolis: Glanzende Haupstadt der Perserreichs.

• Author: Abdi, Kamyar
• Position: Book Review

By HEIDEMARIE KOCH. Zaberns Bilderbande zur Archaologie. Mainz: VERLAG PHLLIPP VON ZABERN, 2001. Pp. 106, illus. 34.77 [euro].

Fascination with the Achaemenid palatial complex at Persepolis among professional researchers and laymen alike has in the past few decades produced a fair number of tomes in many languages of various length and detail. The volume under review is the latest in this group, written by one of the foremost scholars of the Achaemenid empire, and published in the usual lavish format of the von Zabern Bilderbande zur Archaologie series. It appears that the volume is primarily intended as a guide for educated tourists, especially German-speaking visitors, who, thanks to improving relations between Iran and European countries in recent years, have been visiting Persepolis and other sites in its environs in greater numbers and with increasing frequency.

The volume is organized into eleven chapters. Chapter 1 presents a historical introduction to the Achaemenids, Persepolis during Achaemenid and Sasanian times, history of research at Persepolis, and the religion of the Persians--both of the Achaemenids of the sixth to fourth centuries B.C. and of the Sasanians of the third to seventh centuries A.D. The author seems to subscribe to the still popular reconstruction of the early history of the Persians, tracing their movement from the ninth to the sixth centuries B.C. from the northwest to central Iran and finally to the southern Zagros Mountains. It is, however, worth noting that another viable hypothesis would date the arrival of the people who later came to be known as Persians as early as the Shogh/Teimuran Phase in the mid-second millennium B.C., and posit their entry from the north and east. (1)

Chapter 2 is a concise, yet handy introduction to Old Persian script. Chapter 3 is a study of the Persepolis terrace and Darius I's grand plan for construction of a massive palatial complex, an undertaking that began during his reign and continued through those of his son and grandson Xerxes and Artaxerxes I.

With chapter 4, the longest in the volume, the author shifts to a more detailed description of each major architectural unit at Persepolis. Brief description of each unit is enhanced by color pictures (apparently taken by the author in recent years), floor plans, and reconstruction drawings from the late Friedrich Krefter's splendid Persepolis Rekonstruktionen (Berlin, 1971). Further, architectural decorations, primarily...