Classical Civilizations of the
Middle East and Mediterranean

Persia
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Ancient Persia arose in the area that is now Iran, mostly a high, dry plateau surrounded by mountains to the north, east, and west, and by the Indian Ocean to the south.
The Persians were an Indo-European people (Aryan) who lived on the margins of the earlier Mesopotamian civilization.
Iran means “Land of the Aryans.”

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Around 560 BCE, the Middle East was divided into four great powers: Egypt and the kingdoms of Lydia, Babylon, and Media
(northern Iran).
These four thought they could live in peace and prosperity, but their fragile balance of power collapsed before a new, massive force, Persia.
Persia’s rise to prominence demonstrates the instability of the balance-of-power concept.

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Persia would be the greatest empire that the ancient world had yet seen.
At one time, Assyria had controlled the northern portion of the Middle East, but they were conquered by the Medes (Media).

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The Medes were famous warriors, feared by all Greeks. But their king was a tyrant and the Persians would eventually conquer
Media.
Here is the story as related by the ancient
Greek historian Herodotus many centuries later…

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Around the year 580 BCE, the tyrannical king of Media, Astyages, had a dream that his daughter would give birth to a son that would destroy his empire.

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Astyages ordered his general (his second in command)
Harpagus—to have the child killed…but
Harpagus, morally unable to do the deed, had the boy raised by a shepherd instead.

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The child grew up thinking he was the son of a shepherd.
But by the time the boy was 10, it is said that he behaved like the son of a noble, not a shepherd.

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So he was brought before the king. The king realized the boy looked like himself and questioned
Harpagus, who admitted he hadn’t killed the lad.

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The king asked
Harpagus to bring his own little son to the palace to celebrate a great feast in honor of the return of his grandson.

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When the little boy arrived, he was killed without his father Harpagus knowing.
The little boy was cut into pieces, and put into a stew which was fed to his father
(Harpagus had no idea).
Then his head, hands, and feet were brought in on a covered silver dish (as dessert) that Harpagus was ordered to uncover.

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The king’s grandson, Cyrus, was spared then sent back to live with his real parents.
According to the Greek historian Herodotus,
Harpagus was looking for an opportunity to avenge himself and his son.
When Cyrus had come of age, Harpagus managed to convince the young Cyrus that the Medes were ready to revolt against their king, who had become an evil despot.

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Cyrus organized a federation of ten
Persian tribes and revolted, and
Astyages 'armed all the Medes, and blinded by divine providence he appointed Harpagus to be the leader of the army'.
Harpagus switched sides and the
Persians under Cyrus captured
Astyages.

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Ultimately he would overthrow his grandfather’s kingdom, unite the
Persians, and establish the Persian
Empire.
This story of Herodotus illustrates the
Greek’s view of the history of the Middle
East, highlighting the difference between the Greek love of freedom and the Middle Eastern willingness to accept absolute rule.

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In the ancient Middle East, the king was a absolute ruler.
Individuals had no rights, except those allowed by the king.
The king was not only the law itself, but as the story of Harpagus showed, he was bound by no moral scruples, although there were limits to his power.
Like the
rule justly.
, rulers ruled at the discretion of the gods and must

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But as Herodotus showed, even those in positions of command and power— like Harpagus—had no rights and no protection from abuses.
In the Persian Empire, everyone from the highest vizier to the lowliest peasant was regarded as the king’s slave.

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Its location was in between the population centers of the Indian subcontinent and southwest Asia, so traders had crossed the area for many centuries before its people were organized under the first Persian warrior-king,
(r 557-530 BCE).

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As the founder of the
dynasty, Cyrus forged a unified Persia by uniting the two original Iranian tribes: the Medes and the Persians.
He created an imperial system based on
Mesopotamian examples, like the
Babylonians and the Assyrians, but surpassed them all in size and splendor.

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Cyrus was able to overcome other rulers, like the king of Medes (his grandfather Astyages), to extend his territory from the edge of India to
Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea.
When he conquered territory, he presented himself not as a conqueror but as a liberator and legitimate successor.

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The Cyrus the Great Cylinder is considered by many to be the world’s first declaration of human rights.

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There were three main premises in the decrees of the Cyrus Cylinder:
1. racial, linguistic, and religious equality;
2. slaves and all deported peoples were to be allowed to return to home;
3. and all destroyed temples were to be restored.

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In 1971, the Cyrus Cylinder was described as the world’s first charter of human rights and it was translated into all six official U.N. languages.
A replica of the cylinder is kept at the
United Nations Headquarters in New
York in the second floor hallway, between the Security Council and the
Economic and Social Council chambers.

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Cyrus owed a lot of the success of his empire to the rich mineral resources of his kingdom, especially iron.
Persian iron was considered the best in the world.

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At its height,
Persia contained about 40 million people.
It was extremely diverse, with dozens of ethnicities, languages, and cultural traditions.

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The ancient Persian capital of Pasargadae.

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The Imperial complex:

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Starting with Cyrus, the empire centered on an elaborate cult of kingship in which the monarch, secluded in royal magnificence, could be approached only through an elaborate ritual (you had to crawl on your belly then kiss the feet of the king).
Ruling by the will of
, kings were absolute monarchs, more than willing to crush rebellious regions or officials.

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In the eyes of many, Persian kings deserved their many titles…”King of kings, Great king, King in Persia, King of all countries, King in this great earth far and wide.”
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Cyrus conquered not only Media but
Lydia (today, western Turkey) as well.

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He captured the legendary Croesus (the king of Lydia and his great-uncle r.560-546
BCE) and subjected him to a humiliating imprisonment and almost deat h.

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Croesus had conquered most of the cities of Asia Minor including the Greek cities.
He was on fairly good terms with the
Greeks, mainly because he left them alone.
They were free to pursue their internal disputes, so long as they paid tribute money.
The Greeks were okay with this because trade was flourishing, thanks to Croesus' wise rule.

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Cyrus was now the ruler of the Ionian
Greeks, having more or less inherited them by conquering Lydia.
The Greeks did not like their new Persian overlords, for the Persians drafted
Greeks into their armies, levied heavy tribute (taxes), garrisoned Persian troops in the Greek cities, and interfered with the local governments.

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Soon the Greeks were complaining about Persian oppression thwarting
Greek liberty.
The Greeks began walling their towns and calling war councils.
Cyrus responded to this by conquering the Greek cities directly.
This would set the stage for later
Greek/Persian issues.

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The success of the empire under Cyrus was due to superior military leadership and organization.
Cyrus also left in place native political systems (if they submitted to his rule).
He allowed his subjects to retain their own customs and laws, under the supervision of his Persian representatives, the
.

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It was more than conquest and royal decree that held the empire together.
The satraps were an effective bureaucratic system of governors placed in each of the empire’s twentythree provinces.
Lower-level officials were drawn from local authorities.

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Satraps were responsible for collecting tribute (mostly gold), providing soldiers, and keeping order.
The satraps had miniature courts that mimicked that of the Persian king in
Persepolis and their positions could be rotated…eventually they became hereditary.

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A system of imperial spies, known as the “eyes and ears of the King,” represented another imperial presence in the far reaches of the empire.
Yet under Cyrus there was a general policy of respect for the empire’s many non-Persian cultural traditions which also cemented the state’s authority.

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Under Cyrus, large areas of his empire enjoyed peace and prosperity longer than in any previous period.
Herodotus talked of how beautiful the
Persian Empire was and even how the
Persians valued flower gardens (tulip cultivation became an art under Cyrus).

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Cyrus famously won the gratitude of the
Hebrews when in 539 BCE he allowed those exiled in Babylon (which had started in 597 BCE) to return to their homeland and rebuild their temple in Jerusalem.
Even though many Jews decided to stay in
Babylon, this is an important and pivotal point in Jewish history.

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The prophet Isaiah saw in Cyrus’ victories the hand of God, named him the “Lord’s anointed,” and gloated over the fate of the old enemy Babylon:
“Let now the astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators, stand up, and save thee from these things that shall come upon thee.” Isaiah x1v, x1vii, 1-13

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But Cyrus wanted to expand his empire to the east, into what was called Scythia
(today’s Turkmenistan and Afghanistan).
For Herodotus and the Greeks, this action of
Cyrus showed outrageous arrogance, what they called
.

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Cyrus, we are told, met his death trying to take over the land of the Scythians in an unnecessary preemptive war that he did not need to fight.
It is said the Scythian ruler had Cyrus’ face buried in a bucket of his own blood.
When news that the king had died reached Persia, sacred fires all across the land were extinguished .

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This is the tomb of Cyrus at Pasargadae (Cyrus’ capital in Southern Iran).
Inside the tomb were found a golden coffin, a table set with drinking vessels, and jewel studded ornaments.

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An inscription inside the tomb read:
O man, whoever thou art, from wheresoever thou cometh, for I know you shall come, I am Cyrus, who founded the empire of the
Persians. Grudge me not, therefore, this little earth that covers my body.
Persians were expected to shave their hair in mourning, and the manes of horses were cut short.
Cyrus’ son Cambyses II took over the
Empire, and inherited Cyrus’ project of conquering Egypt.

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The Persian army easily crossed the
Sinai, and attacked the
Nile Valley.
The Persians were aided by the
Phoenician fleet.
Cambyses capturing the Egyptian pharaoh.

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In Egypt, resistance to the Persians was particularly difficult; the Egyptians fought with great determination and the conquest was notoriously hard.
Cambyses violated tombs and destroyed the mummies of pharaohs, all in an effort to break the will of Egypt.
He died in Egypt in 522 BCE under
“mysterious” circumstances.

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The Empire continued to expand and reached its maximum extent under
, extending beyond Egypt into Libya, and into an area north of Greece called Macedonia
(where Alexander the Great came from).

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In Egypt and Babylon, Persian kings took care to uphold the local religious cults in an effort to gain the support of their followers and officials.
The Greek historian Herodotus commented that
“there is no nation which so readily adopts foreign customs. They have taken the dress of the Medes and in war they wear the
Egyptian breastplate. As soon as they hear of any luxury, they instantly make it their own.”

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Below a Persian administration, the
Persians very cleverly worked through local elites. This was part of their genius.
They won over the Hebrews by rebuilding the Temple in Jerusalem and putting the priestly elites in charge.
In Lydia, they put the ancient Lydian aristocracy in charge. Same in Babylon.
Egypt will be an exception.

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Cyrus’ grandson,
(r. 522-486 BCE), was an extremely competent ruler, but a strongly authoritarian one.
Cyrus was the warriorking, the conqueror;
Darius was an administrator.
He had the misfortune of trying to rule the Greeks.

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The Persian king Darius worshipping

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Darius knew the Ionian Greeks were a problem and he realized that they could get help and encouragement from the
Greek mainland.

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He was determined to conquer Greece proper in order to secure his western frontier.
But the Greek city-states rebelled (the
Ionian Revolt), killing or driving out the Persian garrisons and declaring liberty.

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The local satrap could not control the rebellion, and the revolt spread.
By 499, most of the cities on the Ionian coast were once again independent, a situation Darius would not tolerate.
The revolt had succeeded, but only temporarily.
The Ionian city-states appealed to the
Greeks on the mainland for help.

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Sparta refused, arguing that events in
Asia were none of its concern.
Athens, on the other hand, sent an entire army plus a navy to defend her fellow Greeks from the Persians.
The expedition burned Sardis, capital of that part of the Empire, in 496 and the
Persians were driven completely out of
Asia Minor (Western Turkey).

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Ruins of the Lydian capital, Sardis.

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When the Persians arrived in force, the rebellion ended quickly. By 493 BCE, the
Ionian rebellion had been crushed by the
Persians (it started in 499 BCE).
Darius was surprisingly lenient, at least with those cities that agreed to submit to Persian rule once more.
He did re-institute the garrisons and the taxes.
This was the first salvo in the Greco-Persian conflicts that would last for decades.

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Since Athens had been the principle ally of the Ionians, they fully expected to feel the wrath of Darius.
The Athenians were so worried, in 493 they fined the playwright Phrynichus
1,000 drachmas for his play
, because it recounted the events of the Ionian Revolt and reminded them of the reasons for their current fears.

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In order to punish the Greeks for their impudence, Darius did send his army to the Greek mainland (since Athens supported their Ionian cousins).
In 492 BCE, Darius gave his satrap in
Thrace (Northern Greece) command of
600 ships, sent to bring Athens to its knees.

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But a freak storm (a gift from the gods) destroyed the fleet and Herodotus says
20,000 Persians were lost.

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Two years later, Darius sent another armada of 600 ships that unloaded over 20,000 infantry and cavalry
(compared to about 10,000 Athenian defenders).

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The Athenians' feelings are best expressed by Aeschylus, who fought in the Persian wars, in his tragic play
:
"On, sons of the Hellenes! Fight for the freedom of your country! Fight for the freedom of your children and of your wives, for the gods of your fathers and for the sepulchers of your ancestors! All are now staked upon the strife!"

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The two sides met on the Plains of
Marathon, about 26 miles north of Athens.
Against great odds, the Athenian
warriors killed over
6400 Persians (while losing about 192).

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Pheilippides then famously ran the 26 miles from the battlefield to tell the people of
Athens of Persia’s defeat then collapsed and died (he ran 150 miles to Sparta and back two days before the battle to enlist
Sparta’s help).

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The Persians retreated to their ships, sailed to what they thought was an undefended Athens, and were surprised to find the Athenian army had marched back in time to thwart their efforts (Sparta arrived after the battle and couldn’t believe Athens won). http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer
.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=1296
52464&m=129653903

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A second series of battles began under Darius’ successor, his eldest son
Xerxes (520-465 BCE).
The Persians under Xerxes were defeated even more decisively at the Battle of
Thermopylae (480 BCE) (The famous Spartan 300) and again at Plataea (479 BCE).

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In 480 BCE Xerxes returned to Greece with an even larger army of over 1 million men and over
1000 warships.
Xerxes himself rode in the battle chariot of the god Ahura
Mazda.

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Leonidas at Thermopylae by David

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Xerxes’ force rolled over every nation in their path.
Only 31 out of the hundreds of Greek cities, led by Athens and Sparta, fought against the Persians.
Many others, including Thebes, supported the Persians.
It seemed as if Xerxes would prevail.
At the pass of Thermopylae, the
Spartan 300 defeated 20,000 Persians.

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Xerxes found Athens empty and burned it in retaliation of the Greeks burning of
Sardis (Lydia), but against his counselor’s advice, he fought a naval battle in the Bay of Salamis off the coast of Athens, and the Persian fleet was destroyed.

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A year later, the army of Xerxes was defeated at Plataea (479 BCE), and the disorganized Persian army was no longer much of a threat to the Greeks.

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40 years after the Persian wars, Herodotus wrote his
“researches.”
(
) meaning
He tried to answer the question of why nations rise and fall—why great nations were once small and why weak nations were once great.

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Herodotus wanted to understand if invariable laws of history explained these changes.
His book was also the first attempt to explain why the Middle East was different from the
West.
He noted conflict from the two regions from the very start, including the Trojan War.
The Persian Wars were one more struggle in a series he believed would continue as long as humanity.

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Herodotus intended his history as a lesson to the people of Athens as they embarked on their empire.
Because he understood that people frequently learned from the mistakes of others, he pointed to the mistakes of the once-mighty
Persians.
Darius wanted to conquer Athens, but his much larger army was defeated…this should have taught the Persians that their army wasn’t invincible.

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The Persians should have learned, according to Herodotus, that a small army of free men—in this case the Greeks—fighting against an invasion of their country will defeat a much larger professional army fighting as the slaves of a despot.

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The Persian Empire began to decline, and the empire of Athens began to rise.
Herodotus found an explanation in the concept of
, arrogance that leads to the abuse of power and self-destruction.
Xerxes made the choice to invade when he did not have to.
Xerxes found that free men defending their country could not be conquered.

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Some historians see the clash between
Athens and Persia as the trigger event that set the “West” (Greece) against the “East”
(Persia) as a defining concept for modern day international politics.
Following this line of thinking, today’s events in the Middle East are framed in the mind set that “West” and “East” have been natural enemies since these ancient days.

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The Persian Wars were significant for two primary reasons : 1). they signaled the decline of Persia, and 2). they showed Athens to be the premier citystate in Greece.

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For the next 1,000 years, the
Achaemenid imperial bureaucracy and court life, with its satraps (governors), bureaucratic administrators, diplomats, tax collectors, record keepers, and translators provided the model for later governments in the region, including those of the Islamic world.

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The Persian infrastructure included a system of standardized coinage, predictable taxes levied on each province, and a newly dug canal linking the Nile with the Red Sea, which greatly increased commerce and enriched Egypt.

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To facilitate imperial unity across such a diverse empire, Achaemenid
(Persian) kings built a network of roads that stretched over 8,000 miles.
The “royal road,” some 1,700 miles long facilitated commerce and communications and connected the eastern and western regions of the vast empire.

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The “royal road.”

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Caravans of merchants could traverse this highway in 90 days, but imperial couriers, with a fresh supply of horses every 25-30 miles, could carry a message from one end of the road to another in less than two weeks.

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Herodotus was impressed, for “Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor darkness of night…prevents them from accomplishing the task proposed to them with utmost speed.”
This description was later made the motto of the United States Postal
Service.

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Before the cult of Zoroaster,
Persian religions centered on sacrifice and fire.
Zoroaster (c.630 – c. 550
BCE), also called
was an ancient Persian prophet who founded the monotheistic religion
Zoroastrianism.
,

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According to the
', the sacred book of
Zoroastrianism, he is said to have received a vision from
, the Wise Lord
(God), who appointed him to preach the truth.

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According to Zoroaster, man had been given the power to choose between good and evil (the idea of Free Will)...between the God of Light and the principle of evil.
Zoroaster was the first to promote a vision of cosmic dualism: an all-powerful monotheistic god (Ahura Mazda) and his opposite, Angra Mainyu, the evil spirit of violence and death (God/Satan).

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Zoroaster believed in each person having a soul , that there would be a messianic deliverance from a virgin birth, in the resurrection of the dead, and a life everlasting after a judgment day .
His religion was based upon what was known as the three-fold path: good thoughts, good words, and good deeds.

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The end of the world would come when the forces of light and goodness would triumph over evil and the saved souls rejoiced in its victory by living on in a heaven while condemned souls would spend eternity in pain (Hell).

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Zoroastrianism influenced Judaism and by default, Christianity and Islam.
The angels of the Judeo/Christian/Islamic tradition and the notion of heaven/hellfire which awaited the good/wicked both came from Zoroaster.