November 19, 2024 • 48 mins
Unlock the secrets of the ancient Persian Empire and discover how its innovations shaped the world as we know it. Join me, Mike D, as we unravel the captivating history of this formidable civilization, from the pioneering leadership of Cyrus the Great to the empire's revolutionary impact on trade and currency. Ever wondered how the Persians thrived in arid landscapes or outmaneuvered mighty Assyrian forces? Learn about their ingenious qanat system and strategic prowess that allowed them to flourish in the face of adversity.
Embark on a journey through time as we explore the intricate web of power struggles, alliances, and legendary tales that defined the ancient Near East. Witness the dramatic fall of the Assyrian Empire and the subsequent rise of Persia through strategic marriages and alliances. Experience the thrilling narrative of Cyrus the Great's rise to power, filled with destiny, betrayal, and rebellion, and understand how these events set the stage for one of the most influential empires in history.
As we navigate these fascinating stories, gain insights into the cultural and technological advancements that allowed the Persians to maintain stability amidst regional upheavals. From controlling vital trade routes to pioneering the use of coinage, the Persian legacy is one of resilience and innovation. Whether you're a history buff or simply curious about the past, this episode promises to enrich your understanding of a civilization that left an indelible mark on the world.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome podcast listener.
I am Mike D, and this is theHistory of Money, banking and
Trade podcast.
My goal is to expand yourknowledge of the history and
evolution of trade, along withmoney, banking and credit, from
ancient civilizations all theway to the present.
I truly hope you find theseepisodes to be informative and
entertaining.
Now, I'm not a historian, but Iam a fan of history.
(00:31):
There have been numerous peoplethroughout history that have
taken up the title the Greats intheir name, and, yes, there
have been some truly greatpeople, but only a handful of
people probably really deserveto be referred to as the great.
Out of those handful of peoplewho truly deserve that
description, one of them isprobably the most
(00:53):
underappreciated out of thatgroup, and that one person that
I'm referring to is Cyrus theGreat from the Achaemenid
Persian Empire.
Although his life was somewhatcut short, his impact can
possibly be felt to this veryday, because if it wasn't for
him, there's a small possibilitythat the Jewish population
fades out of history, and if theJewish population went away,
(01:17):
then there's no Christianity orIslam.
The Achaemenid Persian Empirewas much more than just Cyrus
the Great.
It was one of, if not the Great.
It was one of, if not thelargest empires ever made.
And to give you an idea of thesize, they ruled about 44% of
the global population at onepoint.
But who were the Persians?
(01:37):
Where did they come from?
And, more importantly, how didthey get so big and powerful and
how did their empire transform,trade money and speed up the
use of coinage?
Unfortunately, like a lot ofother ancient societies, it's
really hard to fully understandand appreciate who these people
(01:59):
were.
The reason being is, like somany societies before and after
them, a lot of information getslost after the chaos that
follows the destruction of theempire, and in reality, what it
is a lot of times is there's somuch natural decay, and then
there's other materials orresources are really buried
(02:19):
beneath thousands of years oftime.
Then you factor in modernproblems such as the Iran-Iraq
war, and then modern Iranessentially chose to isolate
itself from the internationalcommunity.
So there's been a lot lost, orthere just really hasn't been as
much information unearthed aswe probably would like to see
(02:49):
unearthed, as we probably wouldlike to see.
Sometime in prehistory, whichessentially means it was before
the advent of written records, agroup of people who have been
referred to asProto-Indo-Iranians lived in
Central Asia, which would be inmodern-day Afghanistan,
uzbekistan, turkmenistan, alongwith other places such as
China's Xinjiang province andeven part of the Indian
(03:12):
subcontinents, where they beganto migrate.
This group of people is oftenreferred to as the Aryans, which
translates into free or noblepeople, and even the modern name
Iran means land of the Aryans.
I discussed the Aryans brieflywhen I was talking about the
(03:34):
Indus Valley, and it's worthnoting that you should not
confuse the anglicized termAryan.
That had developed into apurely racist meaning
implicating the Nordic racialsuperiority, a purely racist
meeting implicating the Nordicracial superiority.
The Aryan wave of migrationessentially happened in three
separate waves.
Each wave more or less settledinto different regions and some
(03:55):
would have settled in modernplaces such as Uzbekistan,
afghanistan and places like that.
Other places would have beenfurther south, to the plains
between the mountains of Iranand Afghanistan, and the last
wave would have moved into theIranian plateau, but that would
have taken place in two separatewaves.
(04:16):
The first group of people wouldhave been arriving sometime
around 1100 BCE and settled inthe region of northern Iran.
This group would eventuallybecome known as the Medes.
The second wave would havemoved further south, into
modern-day southwestern Iran,and these people would have been
known as the Persians.
Why did all these groups move?
(04:38):
Well, we really don't know, butit could have been for a number
of factors.
If I were to guess, I wouldprobably say that it was
probably due to climate change,the same reason that the people
of the Indus Valley had to leave.
But maybe it was somethingdifferent.
We just don't know.
But either way, there wouldhave been people from other
(05:00):
tribes living in these regionsfor hundreds, if not thousands,
of years.
By the time we get to this point, you would have had the nomadic
people known as the Gudians inthe region.
The Gudian people were thepeople whom the inhabitants of
Sumer and Akkad originallyfeared the most, as they were
nomadic shepherds who plunderedconstantly and basically at free
(05:20):
will, and when I say plunder, Imean they would burn villages,
steal cattle and kill people.
So these were the types ofpeople that the Indo-Iranians or
the Aryans were running intowhen they migrated into the
region.
In the end, the people ofMesopotamia had reason to fear
(05:41):
the Gudian people, as they wereeventually able to overthrow the
Akkadian kings and rule theland.
This was known as the Gudiandynasty, which would have lasted
from about 2141 to 2050 BCE, sothis is well before the Aryans
were coming into the region, butthis kind of gives you an idea
as to how powerful they couldbecome and what kind of
(06:04):
potential foe that they could berunning up against when they
moved into the region.
Eventually, the Gutian rulerswere overthrown by Utu Hangal,
who was a Sumerian ruler whomysteriously died when he was
inspecting a dam.
That was probably more or lessfoul play, but that's for a
(06:24):
previous episode, not thisepisode.
Another group of people thatwould have also been in the
region would have been known asthe Hurrians.
The Hurrians were the peoplethat lived in northern
Mesopotamia and Iran.
Not a lot is known about them,but they spoke a language called
Hurrian, and this was alanguage isolate, meaning it
(06:46):
wasn't an Indo-European orSemitic language.
However, they eventuallydeveloped a writing system using
the Akkadian script, and it'squite possible that they had
come from the north in theCaucasus, but they were
relatively independent peoples.
But the primary player in theregion were the Elamites.
(07:08):
The people of Elam probably hadthe most complex and dominant
culture in the region, and whenI say region, I'm more or less
referring to the Near East ingeneral, as the Elamites were
early adopters to writing andeven using the wheel, and became
wealthy traders in the NearEast.
In fact, their ancient city ofSusa, which was founded around
(07:32):
4400 BCE, is one of the oldestand most impressive cities in
the ancient Near East.
The thing about Elam is theirrelationship with Mesopotamia
and the kingdoms, becausesometimes they had great
relations and other times theywere at each other's throats.
So while the Elamites wereprimarily in western Iran, the
(07:56):
Persians were expanding fromsouthwestern to central Iran
around 1000 BCE, to central Iranaround 1000 BCE, but they
really weren't independentbecause at the time they would
have been basically living underthe rule of the Assyrian kings,
along with the Elamites, forthat matter.
And since Elamites were more ofa dominant player and the fact
(08:22):
that the Persians initially didnot have any written languages,
they would have adopted anElamite script for their writing
.
In addition, I get the sensethat the Elamite language may
have been an upper classlanguage, if that makes any
sense, because it appears thatthe higher level of government
officials would have spokenElamite, not the Persid dialect.
(08:44):
Now, if you know much aboutRoman history, you will know
that the upper class of theRoman society often would have
studied Greek, not Latin, andspoke Greek, not Latin.
Now, all in all, it appearsthat the Elamites and the
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Persians had a pretty goodworking relationship because
they did live peacefully neareach other for hundreds of years
and there really wasn't anymajor reports or incidents of
any kind of severe conflictsbetween the two different
ethnicities.
The only time that there wasany kind of reports of conflicts
between the two groups was whenthe Persians began to settle
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down and form settled, notnomadic, societies, and
therefore it sounds likePersians would have come into
the settled cities and kind ofdisrupted the local populations,
but that didn't appear to be amajor problem between the two.
I get the sense that there was alot of similarities between how
(09:49):
the Akkadians and the Sumerianslived side by side.
This peaceful relationship mayhave been part of their culture
and also kind of bled into howthey viewed women.
Women in ancient Persia wereoften viewed as equals to men,
so therefore they could have hadthe ability to buy and sell
land, they could have conductedbusiness for themselves without
(10:13):
the need of a husband or afather, they received equal pay
for equal work and they werefree to travel about on their
own.
Furthermore, women in the royalcourt could have, and often did
hold councils for the meetingson policy.
Now, this appears to have comedirectly from the Elamite
(10:35):
culture, which was the oldestculture in Iran, but this would
have also been applied to theMedian empire as well.
Now, it's also not much of asurprise to imagine that, if
women were provided equal rights, that the Persians would have
also been very tolerant of otherreligions, but there still
(10:55):
needed to be some certain levelof respect for the dignity and
autonomy of women, regardless oftheir class.
So ultimately, this toleranceand open-mindedness probably
played a major part in the waythe culture saw things, and
therefore they would become someof the world's great engineers,
(11:16):
because ultimately, theirculture allowed for free
thinking.
They were allowed to drive newideas, test them out, and this
ultimately led to them to thrivein general.
Now, because of all this, it'squite possible that this
resulted in the Persians beingadvanced aquatic engineers, as
(11:39):
they had developed thetechnology for accessing water
in their arid lands by buildingunderground water tunnels called
canuts.
What they did is they wouldbuild these long underground
tunnels that used a naturalslope of the land by starting
from one endpoint, and then theywould dig a tunnel that was
(12:01):
slightly sloped until it hit theunderground water aquifer.
Since the slope of the tunnelwas slight, water would be
transported naturally for manymiles or kilometers.
All along these canots, thePersians built these vertical
shafts that allowed people tobring water above ground for
(12:23):
regular use and farming.
Since these water tunnels werewell below the Earth's surface,
water wouldn't be lost due toleakage or, more importantly,
evaporation.
The Mesopotamians and theEgyptians were at the mercy of
the rivers, which ultimately,were unpredictable.
(12:44):
The Persians didn't have thesegreat rivers, but because of
these canats, the Persians wereable to have a reliable water
source in the region of theworld that was typically very
hot and very dry.
Therefore, they didn't have toworry about prolonged droughts,
the same way other civilizationshad to worry about it.
(13:05):
I mean, I would imagine that ifthis technology were known by
the people of the Indus Valley,for example, then the population
may not have had to move awayfrom the region.
So this is the reason why agroup of people can emerge from
a place that doesn't appear tobe conducive to population
(13:25):
growth.
Now, keep in mind the time framethat we're talking about here.
This is some 2,000 years beforethe Roman aqueducts were being
built.
Now, despite this greattechnology, the Persians were,
for the most part pretty obscure.
People really just didn't knowabout them for centuries.
(13:45):
In fact, the first writtenmention of them was from the
Assyrian king Shalmaneser'sobelisk that inscribed tribute
from 27 Persian kings in 836 BCE.
Persian kings in 836 BCE.
(14:07):
The idea that there were kingsmight be a bit of a stretch as
they were probably localwarlords, but either way, it's
the first time that we hear ofthe Persians in any kind of
historical written records thatwe know of right now.
I mean, I say right now becauseyou know, in the very near
future we could find some buriedtablets somewhere.
That gives us a little bit morehistorical records regarding
the Persians.
(14:27):
Before this point, despite thislittle bit of information, the
Persians begin to be vital tradepartners for the people of
Mesopotamia and I say tradepartners a bit loosely, because
it could have been the casewhere it was more about plunder,
not so much trade.
But either way, these traderoutes would have secured
(14:50):
animals from the region, such ashorses and camels and sheep.
But also the people ofMesopotamia had an open trade
route that ran through Iran.
That would have made it mucheasier to import tin from modern
Afghanistan, because that'swhere the bulk of the tin was,
and if you did not secure thattrade routes and bring tin into
(15:13):
the region, well, your kingdomand the people probably would
have been ruled by someone else,because you wouldn't have had
the ability to make bronze.
Now, in order to make bronze,you had to have a mixture of 88%
copper and about 12% tin, buttin was very rare.
In fact, I would say it wasmore valuable than gold or
(15:37):
silver throughout the Bronze Age, which would have lasted until
approximately 1200 BCE.
So each region would haveentered the Iron Age at
different times.
Also, too, I would look at tinthe way we look at oil.
In modern times, any countrythat has any kind of military
(15:59):
would absolutely have to secureoil reserves, or at least oil
supplies, if they wanted todefend their region or become an
offensive player.
Tin and oil, I think, have alot of similarities in the way
they would have been viewed fornational defense.
So, ultimately, as a lot ofthese countries or states were
(16:22):
entering the Iron Age, thepeople of Persia were still
somewhat quiet, in the sensethat for a few hundred years we
just don't really hear muchabout them at all.
To be honest with you, theAssyrian king, well, he annexed
(16:45):
Persia in around 744 BCE andfrom there he would have
received tributes of horses,camels, sheep and cattle from
the Medes and the Persians.
Then, in 737 BCE,tiglath-palasser recorded
obtaining over 1700 horses fromvarious Median cities, 1,700
horses from various Mediancities.
One of the more notoriousAssyrian tactics was when the
(17:06):
Assyrians came to dominate aregion, they often instituted a
system of resettlement.
So if a territory had beenconquered and they weren't
playing ball with the Assyrians,such as paying their required
tributes, or they were rebellingagainst the crown, the
Assyrians would simply invadethe region again and take the
people from the region, such asIran, and move them somewhere
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else, say to Anatolia, and thensomeone else would move into
that region.
So the Assyrians weren't goingto leave a region empty.
They were going to more or lessput people in a region that
they felt would be morecompliant and therefore they
could extract any kind ofresources that that particular
region had.
This is one of the big mistakesthat the Babylonians made.
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Years later, they would try tocopy the Assyrian tactic.
They would move people that arerebellious from one region and
put them in another region, butthey failed to bring people back
to that region.
So then you have a territorythat was rich in certain kind of
resources that were notexploiting the Assyrians.
At least they had the sense tomake sure that they had people
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there that they could getwhatever resources were valuable
to the particular crown.
So, with all that being said,it appears that Tiglath-Balasar
may have resettled over 60,000Medes from the northwest of Iran
all the way to the Levant, andthe people of the Levant would
have been sent back to theMedian territory.
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Luckily for the Persians, theywere spared from this relocation
program, but they weren't letoff too easily, because the
Persians, who were disruptive,had their right thumbs cut off
so that they couldn't throw ajavelin or wield a sword.
But they could still pay theirtribute, would know who the
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people that weren't playing ballwere, and they would see that
they don't have a thumb.
They couldn't really contributeto society the way they had in
the past.
So you might look at that andsay you know what?
It's probably just not worthrebelling against the Assyrians.
I'm just going to pay mytribute, my taxes and live a
normal life.
However, despite all this andthe threats that were imposed by
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the Assyrians, diocese, apowerful Median king, was
growing stronger and stronger,and he unified the Medes and
other surrounding tribes in thisregion.
Well, that wasn't going to work, as it would have been a direct
threat to the Assyrian kingSargon II, who ruled from 722 to
(19:43):
705 BCE.
So he seized diocese and exiledhim to Syria as part of the
Assyrian resettlement program.
But it wasn't just the Medesthat were unifying, it was also
the cousins to the south, thePersians, who were also unifying
under the leadership of KingThesebes, who would have been
(20:06):
Cyrus the Great'sgreat-grandfather.
Darius the Great claims thatThesebes was Achaemenid's son,
whom we get the name of theaccumulated or Achaemenid Empire
.
The interesting part for me isit's nearly impossible to find
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out any information regardingAchaemenid's life, so it's quite
a mystery at this point.
In fact, it might be a greatmystery, because it's quite
possible that Achaemenid's wasmade up entirely by Darius the
(20:47):
Great.
So at this point I don't knowfor sure if Darius the Great is
telling the truth or if it isjust a made-up story or not.
But one of the persons that wassupposedly deported to the
Levant was the founder of theMedian kingdom, who was
supposedly the lineage thatCyrus the Great's mother came
(21:08):
from.
Now, this is a bit ofinformation that came from
Herodotus, so who knows if thatis true, but where we are in
this story is.
Elon was still the dominantplayer in Iran, and really was
for hundreds, if not thousands,of years before this period.
But the thing is is they mayhave gone a little too far with
(21:32):
the Assyrians, and I went intothis a little bit when I was
discussing the Assyrian episode.
But long story short, elon kepton getting involved with
Babylon's desired independencefrom Assyria.
The first major incident wouldhave happened when Snokrib
installed his son and heir asthe king of Babylon, but he was
(21:53):
assassinated by a group ofElamites and an Elamite king was
placed on the Babylonian throne.
As you can imagine, theAssyrians weren't going to let
this slide.
So in 691 BCE, according toSnakir, thousands of Persians
upwards of 20,000 to 30,000 ofthem joined in a coalition of
(22:16):
Aramanians, babylonians,chaldeans and Elamites to fight
the Assyrians.
It was said that the Persianwarriors were the sons of the
men whose thumbs had been cutoff.
A little bit dramatic, but itstill sounds not great
nonetheless.
Now it's quite possible thatthis may have been the only time
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that the Persians took the sideagainst the Assyrians.
The Assyrians sieged Babylon in690 BCE, and this is when
Sennacherib may have gone alittle too far, because he had
destroyed the temple to the godof Marduk.
And to make matters worse, hetook the statue back to Nineveh
(22:59):
and he put it on trial.
The people of Babylon andAssyria were outraged by this.
So by the time Ashurbanipaltook the throne of Assyria, he
was dealing with rebellions tothe east and the west.
He was probably more concernedabout Egypt, but Elam was always
(23:20):
the thorn in their side.
Ashurbanipal had weighedsuccessful campaigns against the
Medes and fought off severalrebellions in Egypt, but his
biggest concern was probably hisolder brother, who he feared
would attack him and takecontrol of Assyria for himself,
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and take control of Assyria forhimself.
This revolt by the Babylonianswas quite large, as it included
Arabs and the Chaldeans.
But more importantly for thisepisode, the Elamites thought it
would be a good idea to dealwith their Assyrian problem once
and for all.
They all ganged up and foughtthe Assyrians.
On a side note, the Egyptianstook this opportunity to declare
its independence from Assyria,but they did not choose a side.
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This war between the brotherslasted approximately four years
and caused massive disruptionsthroughout the region.
It finally ended in 648 BCE,when the Assyrian troops
apparently surrounded and setfire to the Babylonian palace
where Ashurbanipal's brother hadcommitted suicide.
(24:27):
Ashurbanipal's first actionafter his brother's suicide was
to make sure that he took careof all the people that took his
brother's side.
Ashurbanipal invaded the Arabpeninsula and killed the Arab
kings.
Ashurbanipal then lookedtowards Elam.
In 646 BCE, ashurbanipaldestroyed Susa quite easily.
(24:47):
Ashurbanipal then installed thepuppet king, but this new
puppet must not have been wellvetted, because the puppet
turned on Assyria due toAssyria's continued plunder of
Iran.
The last Elamite king wascaptured in 640 BCE by
Ashurbanipal, who just simplyannexed Elam, after massive
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destruction, to Susa and othertowns in and around the region.
In a tablet that was discoveredin 1854 that was written by
Ashurbanipal, he said Susa, thegreat holy city, abode of their
gods, seat of their mysteries, Iconquered.
I entered its palaces.
I opened their treasuries wheresilver and gold goods and
(25:32):
wealth were amassed.
I destroyed the ziggurats ofSusa.
I smashed its shining copperhorns.
I reduced the temples of Elamto knots.
Their gods and goddesses Iscattered to the winds the tombs
of their ancient and recentkings.
I devastated, I exposed to thesun and I carried away their
bones toward the land of Ashur.
I devastated the provinces ofElam and on their lands I sowed
(25:57):
salt While Elam was devastatedit was a bit of an exaggeration
by Ashurbanipal.
Elam was able to lean forwardand eventually Elamite kings
were able to retake theirthrones and they would have
ruled somewhat independently.
But the region was fragmentedinto smaller kingdoms that were
probably more like chieftains orwarlords that still would have
(26:21):
had to deal with their Assyrianoverlords.
Persia, on the other hand, keptout of the fray by maintaining
peaceful relations with Assyria.
If Assyria wanted to plunder,the Persians typically pacified
the Assyrians by offering largesums of tributes and their royal
children as hostages.
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In other instances, they simplyabandoned their cities and
headed for the mountains untilit was safe to head back to town
.
Let us not forget that thePersians were originally nomadic
and great horsemen andshepherds, so leaving the city
for a period of time somewhatsuited their strengths.
(27:02):
And I just want to circle backto the hostage thing.
I had mentioned it prior in myAssyrian episode, but this was
something that a lot of theancient societies used as a tool
to keep people in line.
What this entailed, thishostage taking, was kings would
have taken the royal children ofrival kingdoms that they had
conquered and were reigning themfrom either Nineveh or some
(27:27):
other Assyrian city such asAshur.
This was designed to make surethat the rival kings didn't
attack Assyria or get out ofline because the Assyrian king
could have had the prince of therival kingdom killed.
This often worked as they wouldreturn to the homeland to
become the next king or assumesome kind of eminent position.
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The long-term goal was you wouldbuild some kind of loyalty to
Assyria, right.
So you're a prince from Elam.
You've been held hostagebasically since you're a toddler
or a young child, so you kindof grow up in the Assyrian ways
of life.
So you're almost becomingAssyrian at that point.
(28:11):
So when you're much older andyou're ready to retake the
throne of a far off kingdom, youwould have some kind of
Assyrian sympathies or almostview yourself as Assyrian.
So you're most likely not goingto get out of line because you
kind of almost view yourself aspart Assyrian, part Elamite, for
(28:31):
example.
So this is great in a sensethat it can build long-term
peaceful relations.
But there are potentialdrawbacks in that a prince of a
rival kingdom could learnvaluable inside information and
kind of figure out where all theweaknesses are and the tactics
they use in battle.
This was notoriously the casewhen Philip of Macedonia was
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taken hostage by thieves, and weall know how that turned out,
because eventually his son wouldhave turned around and
conquered the known world.
So that's the idea of hostagetaking in a nutshell.
But getting back to the Persians, one thing that's interesting
is if you know much about theMongols and their history, their
(29:17):
upbringing is similar to howthe Persians' upbringing was.
By the time a Persian boyreached the ripe old age of five
, he would have began histraining.
That would have started withlearning how to ride a horse and
then would have advanced intoarchery and even riding and
shooting at the same time.
(29:37):
Similar to that of the Mongols,this training would have lasted
from age five to 20, but alsothey would have been trained how
to speak the truth.
Now, this is probably one ofthose more unique
characteristics of the Persiansociety, because being accused
as a liar is probably one of thebiggest insults that you can
(30:00):
accuse someone of.
So for them, one of the biggestdisgraces a man could commit is
to lie.
In addition, another greatoffense is to be in debt,
because the Persians believeonce a person is in debt, they
are more likely to start lying,and lying is probably their
(30:21):
biggest taboo.
So obviously I'm getting aheadof myself a little bit here, but
the thing is this will kind ofreally show when the idea of any
kind of debt market or usury orlending of any kind of money
would be pretty much completelyprohibited within the Persian
empire.
(30:42):
So really, the two main thingsthat the Persians were really
teaching their young ones was tobe great horsemen and to not
lie.
And the whole idea of being agreat horseman is interesting
because even to this day it isbelieved that there are over a
(31:04):
million nomadic horsemen in Iran.
So you can kind of see how thislegacy still lives on.
But we're talking ancient timeperiods here, so I want to
really stick to that.
But the thing is is within theancient Persian population they
wanted to be and they wererelatively peaceful because they
realized that war brought ontoo many problems and
destruction.
So they typically prefer tolive peacefully with their
(31:25):
neighbors.
But they could be greatwarriors when called upon
because they were great horsemen.
But they could be greatwarriors when called upon
because they were great horsemenand their tactics allowed the
Persians to basically grow inpopulation and strength because
you're kind of, you know, inpeace and you're not getting
entire populations and citieswiped out.
You can obviously grow in sizeand strength without people
(31:46):
realizing it, but there's adrawback to this growth.
The issue in growth inpopulation, in humans and also
don't forget cattle and horsesis more land is needed and at
some point constantly givingaway the store to maintain the
peace isn't going to work outanymore.
So while the Persian populationwas growing in size and
(32:10):
strength, and without anybodyreally knowing it, assyria was
about to fall apart after thedeath of Ashurbanipal in 627 BCE
, and the whole world as theyknew it would be upended.
So while the Persians weregrowing in size and strength,
the Elamites made theirresurgence once the Assyrian
empire collapsed.
(32:35):
Once the Assyrian Empirecollapsed, but the real growing
power wasn't the Elamites, itwas really.
It was after a Median king waskilled in battle, but his son,
syaxares the Great, took over in625 BCE and really kind of
reorganized the Median army andalso formed a large coalition
with other armies in an attemptto really take care of the
(32:57):
Iranian plateau and ultimatelymake sure that the Assyrian
problem would no longer be anissue.
So Syaxares was growing theMedian kingdom, but he had
problems with his Scythiancousins who also derived from
Aryan nomads.
The Scythians spoke a variantof an Iranian language and
(33:22):
followed the Vedic religion,just like other Iranian tribes.
Later, in 625 BCE, syraxeresinvited the Scythian lords to a
magnificent banquet.
The Medes drank wine which waswatered down significantly,
while the Scythian lords drankregular wine with regular
(33:42):
amounts of alcohol.
While the Scythians were drunkand basically defenseless, the
Medes massacred the entireScythian nobility.
Defenseless, the Medesmassacred the entire Scythian
nobility.
I feel like RR Martin got theidea of the Red Wedding scene
directly from this, rr Martinbeing the writer of Game of
Thrones.
This basically left the commonforces of the Scythians
(34:04):
leaderless and, as a result,they figured it's a good life
decision to join up with theMedes.
This new force was used toattack the limping Assyrian
empire.
So now the Medes and theBabylonians, along with the
recent addition of theleaderless Scythians, all joined
forces to once and for alldestroy the Assyrians.
(34:26):
To make matters worse forAssyria, the Bactrians from
eastern Iran and Afghanistandefected to the Babylonians.
Upwards of 400,000 soldierswere all in.
The Babylonians furtherenhanced this union when
Nebuchadnezzar, the king ofBabylon, arranged a marriage
(34:46):
between his son, the heirpresumptive Nebuchadnezzar II,
to Princess Amedis Syaxares'daughter.
So, with all these unions andalliances.
The Assyrians were pretty muchtoast by this point.
The sacking of Nineveh washorrific.
People were massacred, andtemples and holy places were
(35:07):
destroyed.
It was said that Nebuchadnezzarwas distraught by the holy
site's desecration, so much sothat he resorted to an unkempt
appearance and slept on theground to signal to the gods his
mourning for the desecrations.
While this was all happening,the Persians were led by Cyrus I
(35:29):
, the grandfather of Cyrus theGreat.
So now Assyria is basically donewith, and the question is what
do we do with the lands that theAssyrians had conquered?
So ultimately, what they cameup with is they divided the
lands up with the Babylonians,the Medes and the other Iranians
(35:50):
, with the Babylonians, theMedes and the other Iranians.
So with the destruction ofAssyria and the divvying up of
lands, peace was re-establishedin the region.
The Medes and the Persiansfurther enhanced their union
with a royal marriage betweenKing Cyrus I's son, cambyses of
Persia, and Mandani, the Medianking, estagi's daughter and
(36:13):
Syaxares' granddaughter.
Media remained the dominantkingdom, with Persia as its
vassal.
So it kind of gives you an idea.
Don't think that Persia is thisgrand empire at this point.
No, they're actually kind ofreally under the thumb of the
Median kingdom at this point intime, kind of really under the
thumb of the Median kingdom atthis point in time.
So the question is well, wheredid this accumulated Persian
(36:36):
empire begin?
Can you point to a specificspot or points in time that you
could say oh okay, that's reallythe beginning of this empire?
Herodotus attempts to give ussome color as to the beginnings
of the empire, but, like I said,the problem with Herodotus is
you really have some color as tothe beginnings of the empire,
but, like I said, the problemwith Herodotus is you really
have to take a lot of his stuffwith a grain of salt.
There might be some elements oftruth in it, or maybe there is
(37:00):
no truth, but either way, I findhis stories to be absolutely
fascinating and amazing and,like I said I said it prior is
Herodotus' tales are written tobe spoken orally, so they would
take a lot of liberties, becauseif you're speaking to people,
you want to grab their attention, and the story of the
(37:24):
beginnings of the AchaemenidPersian Empire is as good as it
gets.
It starts out with the Medianking, astyages, having a dream
in which his daughter, mandani,gave birth to a son who would
destroy him and his empire.
Now, many of these kings tooktheir dreams as prophecies, and
this dream absolutely scaredAstyages.
(37:45):
Fearful of the dream's prophecy, astyages married his daughter,
mandani, off to Cambyses I ofAnsan, who had a reputation for
being a quiet and thoughtfulprince, and therefore Astyages
probably thought he couldmitigate any kind of threat to
(38:05):
his rule if the father of thebaby was very thoughtful and
compliant, if the father of thebaby was very thoughtful and
compliant.
After the marriage he had asecond dream that warned
Astyages of his daughter's son,cyrus.
Now modern scholarship generallyrejects Herodotus' claim that
Cyrus was the grandson ofAstyages, but let's continue
(38:28):
anyway, because I love a goodstory.
So anyway, like any powerfulancient king, he thought it
would be a good idea to have hisgrandson killed right after the
birth.
So Astyages sent his trustedgeneral Harpagus to kill the
child.
Cyrus Harpagus didn't want tokill the child.
(38:49):
Cyrus Carpegas didn't want tokill the royal baby.
So he didn't have the heart tokill an infant and ask a
low-level herdsman namedMitrodates to take the baby into
the wilderness and leave it tothe wild animals or exposure
Around.
The same time, mitrodates andhis wife had a baby.
But let's not forget back inthese days, and even like 100
(39:11):
years ago, infant mortality wasmuch, much higher.
So, unfortunately, the babydied during birth.
Being heartbroken, the coupledecided that instead of killing
the king's grandson, they wouldessentially swap him out and
raise the royal baby as if itwas their own in a life of
poverty, not royalty.
(39:32):
The king was obviously notaware of this, as he was
informed that his grandson, hisfuture threat, had been
eliminated.
Mithridates raised the child andeverything seemed to go pretty
smoothly until the young boy wasa little older and was playing
games with a group of otheryounger boys.
(39:54):
Apparently, this game involvedsomeone choosing a king and,
wouldn't you know, they choseMithridates' son to play the
role of the king.
This was all well and fine, butapparently during the game the
king ordered a boy to be beatenfor disobeying him in the game.
Unfortunately, that little boyjust happened to be part of a
(40:17):
noble family.
The father of the little boywas incensed and was very much
offended that some poor boy bornto a herdsman would dare to be
a kid of noble blood.
The boy's father was so upsetby this that he brought this up
with the king Astyages anddemanded justice.
Astyages called Mithridates andhis son to stand trial.
(40:41):
But as soon as he saw the boyand the way he looked and the
way he carried himself, heimmediately could spot that this
boy was of royal blood and heknew, right then and there, that
Mandani's son was still alive.
The king demanded the truth and, of course, mithridates is
scared out of his mind, so heconfessed to the whole entire
(41:04):
story.
The boy who went by the name ofKaino at the time the boy who
went by the name of Kaino at thetime was given back to his real
mother and father, mandani andCambyses, and therefore they
were actually spared.
Now the parents had to come upwith some crazy explanation as
(41:29):
to why their boy just literallyreappeared in their lives, and
basically what they came up withis they created a version of
his background that would havebeen kind of similar to the real
background, in that they saidhe was left in the woods as
ordered by the king, but throughdivine intervention he was
raised by a female dog, which isreferred to as Kaino, hence the
previous name, and then theboy's name was changed to Cyrus.
(41:56):
Now, herodotus' story didn't endthere.
He actually had a follow-upstory as well.
While Astyages let the boy live, he was still really upset by
the fact that his original orderwasn't followed and he really
couldn't let that pass.
So Astyages invited his generalto a banquet.
(42:17):
So he had served him plenty ofmeats and soups and while the
general was eating, astyagesasked him how the meal was.
The general went on to call itthe best meal he'd ever had.
After he told Astyages howgreat the food was, astyages
informed him that he had killedhis son, cut him up into pieces
(42:39):
and cooked and served his bodyto Harpagus, his general.
Obviously Harpagus was not happy, but he realized that he just
had to take it and move on.
This was the king, after all,and he was a general.
But in the end it was theking's decision to do what he
did.
But Harpagus would not forget.
(43:00):
But either way, you might beasking yourself at least I ask
myself this is why wouldn'tCyrus be taken care of anyway?
Well, luckily for Cyrus,osteages' astrologers had done
their due diligence and cameback with great news Cyrus was
no longer a threat.
(43:21):
So Osteages returned hisgrandson to Cyrus, to his true
parents, the king and queen ofPersia.
If you remember, the Medes andthe Persians had enhanced their
union with a royal marriagebetween King Cyrus I's son,
cambyses of Persia, and Mendene,the Median king's daughter,
king Astyages.
(43:42):
Everything was working outgreat for Astyages.
Cyrus proved to be a loyal andsuccessful general for his
median grandfather's military.
Afterwards, cyrus ascended thePersian throne in 559 BCE with
the title of King of Anshan,when his father died, taking the
(44:09):
throne name of Cyrus II tohonor his paternal grandfather.
However, everything began tobreak down.
Eventually, conflict broke outbetween Cyrus and his
grandfather, osteages, who wasstill on the Median throne, the
issue being that Persia knew hisplace.
It knew that the Medes weretheir overlords, but they
generally wanted to receivelocal autonomy on how they ran
(44:30):
their kingdom.
They only needed to pay tributeand supply men to serve in the
military.
This actually worked out wellfor the Persian soldiers, as
they could enrich themselvesthrough plunder.
Arpagus was still really mad byAstyages killing and serving him
, his son, and as such, heplotted for years to get back at
(44:53):
Astyages.
Arpagus wrote to Cyrus andreminded him of how he had
secured his life as an infantand, according to Herodotus, he
said To me you owe me yourdeliverance.
Do I as advise, and Astyages'kingdom will be yours.
Convince the Persians to rebeland march against the Medes, we
(45:16):
will desert Astyages and comeover to your side.
Now, apparently, cyrus tookthat advice because he rebelled
against his grandfather, kingAstyages.
Of course the king wasn't goingto just against his grandfather
, king Astyages.
Of course the king wasn't goingto just let his grandson take
control of his kingdom.
So Astyages tried to reform hisarmy and defend his crown.
(45:37):
His first course of action wasto go on the offensive and lead
an army against Cyrus to conquerAnshan, persia's capital.
Unbeknownst to Astyages, anshan, persia's capital.
Unbeknownst to Astyages, hisarmy turned on him, took him
captive and turned him over tohis grandson, cyrus.
(45:57):
Cyrus then marched to Akbatana,the capital city of the Median
Empire, and plundered itsvaluables, including its silver
and gold, and then carried itback to his capital of Anshan.
So, in the end, it back to hiscapital of Anshan.
So, in the end, asiagi's fearscame true His grandson Cyrus was
, in fact, the threat and endedup taking his crown from him.
Now, this is the part of thestory that has the beginnings of
(46:20):
Cyrus the Great, and this iswhy he is one of the few leaders
that truly deserved to be namedthe great.
Now, if Cyrus was an Assyrianor Babylonian king, you would
expect that Cyrus would have hadhim killed in some kind of
dramatic fashion and would haveleft his head on a pike or would
(46:41):
have put his skin on the wallas a form of wallpaper.
Nope, not Cyrus, he pulled a180 on the ancient world.
Cyrus treated his grandfatherwith a great deal of respect and
compassion.
He wasn't killed or even sentoff into exile.
(47:02):
Now, according to Herodotus,astyages was given an
appointment as Parthia'sgovernor, and he even lived in
the palace with his grandson,cyrus.
So the next phase of the storyhas a bit of disagreements,
because Herodotus said thatCyrus ruled over both the Medes
and the Persians almostimmediately, whereas Xenophon
(47:25):
said that Syaxares II, astyages'son, led the Medes in an
alliance with his nephew Cyrusuntil the fall of Babylon.
It was at that point thatSyaxares II gave his daughter in
marriage to Cyrus, with theMedian kingdom as her dowry, and
Cyrus gave his uncle a place inBabylon and, apparently, the
(47:48):
kingship over Babylonia.
But either way, persia was nowa dominant player in the region.
So basically, the Medes and thePersians just swapped roles and
, to give you an idea of thesize, at the time, the Persians
ruled over all of modern dayIran, tajikistan, uzbekistan and
(48:11):
Armenia.
And that was just the start.
I want to thank you for takingyour time to listen to this
first episode of the PersianEmpire.
If you like what you hear andwant to donate to the show, you
can visit us at patreoncom slashhistory of money banking trade
(48:33):
or you can visit our website atmoneybankingtradecom.
Also, you can help out the showa ton by leaving a five-star
review and telling a friend ortwo.
Thank you very much.
Talk to you soon.
Welcome podcast listener.
I am Mike D, and this is theHistory of Money, banking and
Trade podcast.
My goal is to expand yourknowledge of the history and
evolution of trade, along withmoney, banking and credit, from
ancient civilizations all theway to the present.
I truly hope you find theseepisodes to be informative and
entertaining.
Now, I'm not a historian, but Iam a fan of history.
(00:31):
There have been numerous peoplethroughout history that have
taken up the title the Greats intheir name, and, yes, there
have been some truly greatpeople, but only a handful of
people probably really deserveto be referred to as the great.
Out of those handful of peoplewho truly deserve that
description, one of them isprobably the most
(00:53):
underappreciated out of thatgroup, and that one person that
I'm referring to is Cyrus theGreat from the Achaemenid
Persian Empire.
Although his life was somewhatcut short, his impact can
possibly be felt to this veryday, because if it wasn't for
him, there's a small possibilitythat the Jewish population
fades out of history, and if theJewish population went away,
(01:17):
then there's no Christianity orIslam.
The Achaemenid Persian Empirewas much more than just Cyrus
the Great.
It was one of, if not the Great.
It was one of, if not thelargest empires ever made.
And to give you an idea of thesize, they ruled about 44% of
the global population at onepoint.
But who were the Persians?
(01:37):
Where did they come from?
And, more importantly, how didthey get so big and powerful and
how did their empire transform,trade money and speed up the
use of coinage?
Unfortunately, like a lot ofother ancient societies, it's
really hard to fully understandand appreciate who these people
(01:59):
were.
The reason being is, like somany societies before and after
them, a lot of information getslost after the chaos that
follows the destruction of theempire, and in reality, what it
is a lot of times is there's somuch natural decay, and then
there's other materials orresources are really buried
(02:19):
beneath thousands of years oftime.
Then you factor in modernproblems such as the Iran-Iraq
war, and then modern Iranessentially chose to isolate
itself from the internationalcommunity.
So there's been a lot lost, orthere just really hasn't been as
much information unearthed aswe probably would like to see
(02:49):
unearthed, as we probably wouldlike to see.
Sometime in prehistory, whichessentially means it was before
the advent of written records, agroup of people who have been
referred to asProto-Indo-Iranians lived in
Central Asia, which would be inmodern-day Afghanistan,
uzbekistan, turkmenistan, alongwith other places such as
China's Xinjiang province andeven part of the Indian
(03:12):
subcontinents, where they beganto migrate.
This group of people is oftenreferred to as the Aryans, which
translates into free or noblepeople, and even the modern name
Iran means land of the Aryans.
I discussed the Aryans brieflywhen I was talking about the
(03:34):
Indus Valley, and it's worthnoting that you should not
confuse the anglicized termAryan.
That had developed into apurely racist meaning
implicating the Nordic racialsuperiority, a purely racist
meeting implicating the Nordicracial superiority.
The Aryan wave of migrationessentially happened in three
separate waves.
Each wave more or less settledinto different regions and some
(03:55):
would have settled in modernplaces such as Uzbekistan,
afghanistan and places like that.
Other places would have beenfurther south, to the plains
between the mountains of Iranand Afghanistan, and the last
wave would have moved into theIranian plateau, but that would
have taken place in two separatewaves.
(04:16):
The first group of people wouldhave been arriving sometime
around 1100 BCE and settled inthe region of northern Iran.
This group would eventuallybecome known as the Medes.
The second wave would havemoved further south, into
modern-day southwestern Iran,and these people would have been
known as the Persians.
Why did all these groups move?
(04:38):
Well, we really don't know, butit could have been for a number
of factors.
If I were to guess, I wouldprobably say that it was
probably due to climate change,the same reason that the people
of the Indus Valley had to leave.
But maybe it was somethingdifferent.
We just don't know.
But either way, there wouldhave been people from other
(05:00):
tribes living in these regionsfor hundreds, if not thousands,
of years.
By the time we get to this point, you would have had the nomadic
people known as the Gudians inthe region.
The Gudian people were thepeople whom the inhabitants of
Sumer and Akkad originallyfeared the most, as they were
nomadic shepherds who plunderedconstantly and basically at free
(05:20):
will, and when I say plunder, Imean they would burn villages,
steal cattle and kill people.
So these were the types ofpeople that the Indo-Iranians or
the Aryans were running intowhen they migrated into the
region.
In the end, the people ofMesopotamia had reason to fear
(05:41):
the Gudian people, as they wereeventually able to overthrow the
Akkadian kings and rule theland.
This was known as the Gudiandynasty, which would have lasted
from about 2141 to 2050 BCE, sothis is well before the Aryans
were coming into the region, butthis kind of gives you an idea
as to how powerful they couldbecome and what kind of
(06:04):
potential foe that they could berunning up against when they
moved into the region.
Eventually, the Gutian rulerswere overthrown by Utu Hangal,
who was a Sumerian ruler whomysteriously died when he was
inspecting a dam.
That was probably more or lessfoul play, but that's for a
(06:24):
previous episode, not thisepisode.
Another group of people thatwould have also been in the
region would have been known asthe Hurrians.
The Hurrians were the peoplethat lived in northern
Mesopotamia and Iran.
Not a lot is known about them,but they spoke a language called
Hurrian, and this was alanguage isolate, meaning it
(06:46):
wasn't an Indo-European orSemitic language.
However, they eventuallydeveloped a writing system using
the Akkadian script, and it'squite possible that they had
come from the north in theCaucasus, but they were
relatively independent peoples.
But the primary player in theregion were the Elamites.
(07:08):
The people of Elam probably hadthe most complex and dominant
culture in the region, and whenI say region, I'm more or less
referring to the Near East ingeneral, as the Elamites were
early adopters to writing andeven using the wheel, and became
wealthy traders in the NearEast.
In fact, their ancient city ofSusa, which was founded around
(07:32):
4400 BCE, is one of the oldestand most impressive cities in
the ancient Near East.
The thing about Elam is theirrelationship with Mesopotamia
and the kingdoms, becausesometimes they had great
relations and other times theywere at each other's throats.
So while the Elamites wereprimarily in western Iran, the
(07:56):
Persians were expanding fromsouthwestern to central Iran
around 1000 BCE, to central Iranaround 1000 BCE, but they
really weren't independentbecause at the time they would
have been basically living underthe rule of the Assyrian kings,
along with the Elamites, forthat matter.
And since Elamites were more ofa dominant player and the fact
(08:22):
that the Persians initially didnot have any written languages,
they would have adopted anElamite script for their writing
.
In addition, I get the sensethat the Elamite language may
have been an upper classlanguage, if that makes any
sense, because it appears thatthe higher level of government
officials would have spokenElamite, not the Persid dialect.
(08:44):
Now, if you know much aboutRoman history, you will know
that the upper class of theRoman society often would have
studied Greek, not Latin, andspoke Greek, not Latin.
Now, all in all, it appearsthat the Elamites and the
(09:05):
Persians had a pretty goodworking relationship because
they did live peacefully neareach other for hundreds of years
and there really wasn't anymajor reports or incidents of
any kind of severe conflictsbetween the two different
ethnicities.
The only time that there wasany kind of reports of conflicts
between the two groups was whenthe Persians began to settle
(09:29):
down and form settled, notnomadic, societies, and
therefore it sounds likePersians would have come into
the settled cities and kind ofdisrupted the local populations,
but that didn't appear to be amajor problem between the two.
I get the sense that there was alot of similarities between how
(09:49):
the Akkadians and the Sumerianslived side by side.
This peaceful relationship mayhave been part of their culture
and also kind of bled into howthey viewed women.
Women in ancient Persia wereoften viewed as equals to men,
so therefore they could have hadthe ability to buy and sell
land, they could have conductedbusiness for themselves without
(10:13):
the need of a husband or afather, they received equal pay
for equal work and they werefree to travel about on their
own.
Furthermore, women in the royalcourt could have, and often did
hold councils for the meetingson policy.
Now, this appears to have comedirectly from the Elamite
(10:35):
culture, which was the oldestculture in Iran, but this would
have also been applied to theMedian empire as well.
Now, it's also not much of asurprise to imagine that, if
women were provided equal rights, that the Persians would have
also been very tolerant of otherreligions, but there still
(10:55):
needed to be some certain levelof respect for the dignity and
autonomy of women, regardless oftheir class.
So ultimately, this toleranceand open-mindedness probably
played a major part in the waythe culture saw things, and
therefore they would become someof the world's great engineers,
(11:16):
because ultimately, theirculture allowed for free
thinking.
They were allowed to drive newideas, test them out, and this
ultimately led to them to thrivein general.
Now, because of all this, it'squite possible that this
resulted in the Persians beingadvanced aquatic engineers, as
(11:39):
they had developed thetechnology for accessing water
in their arid lands by buildingunderground water tunnels called
canuts.
What they did is they wouldbuild these long underground
tunnels that used a naturalslope of the land by starting
from one endpoint, and then theywould dig a tunnel that was
(12:01):
slightly sloped until it hit theunderground water aquifer.
Since the slope of the tunnelwas slight, water would be
transported naturally for manymiles or kilometers.
All along these canots, thePersians built these vertical
shafts that allowed people tobring water above ground for
(12:23):
regular use and farming.
Since these water tunnels werewell below the Earth's surface,
water wouldn't be lost due toleakage or, more importantly,
evaporation.
The Mesopotamians and theEgyptians were at the mercy of
the rivers, which ultimately,were unpredictable.
(12:44):
The Persians didn't have thesegreat rivers, but because of
these canats, the Persians wereable to have a reliable water
source in the region of theworld that was typically very
hot and very dry.
Therefore, they didn't have toworry about prolonged droughts,
the same way other civilizationshad to worry about it.
(13:05):
I mean, I would imagine that ifthis technology were known by
the people of the Indus Valley,for example, then the population
may not have had to move awayfrom the region.
So this is the reason why agroup of people can emerge from
a place that doesn't appear tobe conducive to population
(13:25):
growth.
Now, keep in mind the time framethat we're talking about here.
This is some 2,000 years beforethe Roman aqueducts were being
built.
Now, despite this greattechnology, the Persians were,
for the most part pretty obscure.
People really just didn't knowabout them for centuries.
(13:45):
In fact, the first writtenmention of them was from the
Assyrian king Shalmaneser'sobelisk that inscribed tribute
from 27 Persian kings in 836 BCE.
Persian kings in 836 BCE.
(14:07):
The idea that there were kingsmight be a bit of a stretch as
they were probably localwarlords, but either way, it's
the first time that we hear ofthe Persians in any kind of
historical written records thatwe know of right now.
I mean, I say right now becauseyou know, in the very near
future we could find some buriedtablets somewhere.
That gives us a little bit morehistorical records regarding
the Persians.
(14:27):
Before this point, despite thislittle bit of information, the
Persians begin to be vital tradepartners for the people of
Mesopotamia and I say tradepartners a bit loosely, because
it could have been the casewhere it was more about plunder,
not so much trade.
But either way, these traderoutes would have secured
(14:50):
animals from the region, such ashorses and camels and sheep.
But also the people ofMesopotamia had an open trade
route that ran through Iran.
That would have made it mucheasier to import tin from modern
Afghanistan, because that'swhere the bulk of the tin was,
and if you did not secure thattrade routes and bring tin into
(15:13):
the region, well, your kingdomand the people probably would
have been ruled by someone else,because you wouldn't have had
the ability to make bronze.
Now, in order to make bronze,you had to have a mixture of 88%
copper and about 12% tin, buttin was very rare.
In fact, I would say it wasmore valuable than gold or
(15:37):
silver throughout the Bronze Age, which would have lasted until
approximately 1200 BCE.
So each region would haveentered the Iron Age at
different times.
Also, too, I would look at tinthe way we look at oil.
In modern times, any countrythat has any kind of military
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would absolutely have to secureoil reserves, or at least oil
supplies, if they wanted todefend their region or become an
offensive player.
Tin and oil, I think, have alot of similarities in the way
they would have been viewed fornational defense.
So, ultimately, as a lot ofthese countries or states were
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entering the Iron Age, thepeople of Persia were still
somewhat quiet, in the sensethat for a few hundred years we
just don't really hear muchabout them at all.
To be honest with you, theAssyrian king, well, he annexed
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Persia in around 744 BCE andfrom there he would have
received tributes of horses,camels, sheep and cattle from
the Medes and the Persians.
Then, in 737 BCE,tiglath-palasser recorded
obtaining over 1700 horses fromvarious Median cities, 1,700
horses from various Mediancities.
One of the more notoriousAssyrian tactics was when the
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Assyrians came to dominate aregion, they often instituted a
system of resettlement.
So if a territory had beenconquered and they weren't
playing ball with the Assyrians,such as paying their required
tributes, or they were rebellingagainst the crown, the
Assyrians would simply invadethe region again and take the
people from the region, such asIran, and move them somewhere
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else, say to Anatolia, and thensomeone else would move into
that region.
So the Assyrians weren't goingto leave a region empty.
They were going to more or lessput people in a region that
they felt would be morecompliant and therefore they
could extract any kind ofresources that that particular
region had.
This is one of the big mistakesthat the Babylonians made.
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Years later, they would try tocopy the Assyrian tactic.
They would move people that arerebellious from one region and
put them in another region, butthey failed to bring people back
to that region.
So then you have a territorythat was rich in certain kind of
resources that were notexploiting the Assyrians.
At least they had the sense tomake sure that they had people
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there that they could getwhatever resources were valuable
to the particular crown.
So, with all that being said,it appears that Tiglath-Balasar
may have resettled over 60,000Medes from the northwest of Iran
all the way to the Levant, andthe people of the Levant would
have been sent back to theMedian territory.
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Luckily for the Persians, theywere spared from this relocation
program, but they weren't letoff too easily, because the
Persians, who were disruptive,had their right thumbs cut off
so that they couldn't throw ajavelin or wield a sword.
But they could still pay theirtribute, would know who the
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people that weren't playing ballwere, and they would see that
they don't have a thumb.
They couldn't really contributeto society the way they had in
the past.
So you might look at that andsay you know what?
It's probably just not worthrebelling against the Assyrians.
I'm just going to pay mytribute, my taxes and live a
normal life.
However, despite all this andthe threats that were imposed by
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the Assyrians, diocese, apowerful Median king, was
growing stronger and stronger,and he unified the Medes and
other surrounding tribes in thisregion.
Well, that wasn't going to work, as it would have been a direct
threat to the Assyrian kingSargon II, who ruled from 722 to
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705 BCE.
So he seized diocese and exiledhim to Syria as part of the
Assyrian resettlement program.
But it wasn't just the Medesthat were unifying, it was also
the cousins to the south, thePersians, who were also unifying
under the leadership of KingThesebes, who would have been
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Cyrus the Great'sgreat-grandfather.
Darius the Great claims thatThesebes was Achaemenid's son,
whom we get the name of theaccumulated or Achaemenid Empire
.
The interesting part for me isit's nearly impossible to find
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out any information regardingAchaemenid's life, so it's quite
a mystery at this point.
In fact, it might be a greatmystery, because it's quite
possible that Achaemenid's wasmade up entirely by Darius the
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Great.
So at this point I don't knowfor sure if Darius the Great is
telling the truth or if it isjust a made-up story or not.
But one of the persons that wassupposedly deported to the
Levant was the founder of theMedian kingdom, who was
supposedly the lineage thatCyrus the Great's mother came
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from.
Now, this is a bit ofinformation that came from
Herodotus, so who knows if thatis true, but where we are in
this story is.
Elon was still the dominantplayer in Iran, and really was
for hundreds, if not thousands,of years before this period.
But the thing is is they mayhave gone a little too far with
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the Assyrians, and I went intothis a little bit when I was
discussing the Assyrian episode.
But long story short, elon kepton getting involved with
Babylon's desired independencefrom Assyria.
The first major incident wouldhave happened when Snokrib
installed his son and heir asthe king of Babylon, but he was
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assassinated by a group ofElamites and an Elamite king was
placed on the Babylonian throne.
As you can imagine, theAssyrians weren't going to let
this slide.
So in 691 BCE, according toSnakir, thousands of Persians
upwards of 20,000 to 30,000 ofthem joined in a coalition of
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Aramanians, babylonians,chaldeans and Elamites to fight
the Assyrians.
It was said that the Persianwarriors were the sons of the
men whose thumbs had been cutoff.
A little bit dramatic, but itstill sounds not great
nonetheless.
Now it's quite possible thatthis may have been the only time
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that the Persians took the sideagainst the Assyrians.
The Assyrians sieged Babylon in690 BCE, and this is when
Sennacherib may have gone alittle too far, because he had
destroyed the temple to the godof Marduk.
And to make matters worse, hetook the statue back to Nineveh
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and he put it on trial.
The people of Babylon andAssyria were outraged by this.
So by the time Ashurbanipaltook the throne of Assyria, he
was dealing with rebellions tothe east and the west.
He was probably more concernedabout Egypt, but Elam was always
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the thorn in their side.
Ashurbanipal had weighedsuccessful campaigns against the
Medes and fought off severalrebellions in Egypt, but his
biggest concern was probably hisolder brother, who he feared
would attack him and takecontrol of Assyria for himself,
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and take control of Assyria forhimself.
This revolt by the Babylonianswas quite large, as it included
Arabs and the Chaldeans.
But more importantly for thisepisode, the Elamites thought it
would be a good idea to dealwith their Assyrian problem once
and for all.
They all ganged up and foughtthe Assyrians.
On a side note, the Egyptianstook this opportunity to declare
its independence from Assyria,but they did not choose a side.
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This war between the brotherslasted approximately four years
and caused massive disruptionsthroughout the region.
It finally ended in 648 BCE,when the Assyrian troops
apparently surrounded and setfire to the Babylonian palace
where Ashurbanipal's brother hadcommitted suicide.
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Ashurbanipal's first actionafter his brother's suicide was
to make sure that he took careof all the people that took his
brother's side.
Ashurbanipal invaded the Arabpeninsula and killed the Arab
kings.
Ashurbanipal then lookedtowards Elam.
In 646 BCE, ashurbanipaldestroyed Susa quite easily.
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Ashurbanipal then installed thepuppet king, but this new
puppet must not have been wellvetted, because the puppet
turned on Assyria due toAssyria's continued plunder of
Iran.
The last Elamite king wascaptured in 640 BCE by
Ashurbanipal, who just simplyannexed Elam, after massive
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destruction, to Susa and othertowns in and around the region.
In a tablet that was discoveredin 1854 that was written by
Ashurbanipal, he said Susa, thegreat holy city, abode of their
gods, seat of their mysteries, Iconquered.
I entered its palaces.
I opened their treasuries wheresilver and gold goods and
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wealth were amassed.
I destroyed the ziggurats ofSusa.
I smashed its shining copperhorns.
I reduced the temples of Elamto knots.
Their gods and goddesses Iscattered to the winds the tombs
of their ancient and recentkings.
I devastated, I exposed to thesun and I carried away their
bones toward the land of Ashur.
I devastated the provinces ofElam and on their lands I sowed
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salt While Elam was devastatedit was a bit of an exaggeration
by Ashurbanipal.
Elam was able to lean forwardand eventually Elamite kings
were able to retake theirthrones and they would have
ruled somewhat independently.
But the region was fragmentedinto smaller kingdoms that were
probably more like chieftains orwarlords that still would have
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had to deal with their Assyrianoverlords.
Persia, on the other hand, keptout of the fray by maintaining
peaceful relations with Assyria.
If Assyria wanted to plunder,the Persians typically pacified
the Assyrians by offering largesums of tributes and their royal
children as hostages.
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In other instances, they simplyabandoned their cities and
headed for the mountains untilit was safe to head back to town
.
Let us not forget that thePersians were originally nomadic
and great horsemen andshepherds, so leaving the city
for a period of time somewhatsuited their strengths.
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And I just want to circle backto the hostage thing.
I had mentioned it prior in myAssyrian episode, but this was
something that a lot of theancient societies used as a tool
to keep people in line.
What this entailed, thishostage taking, was kings would
have taken the royal children ofrival kingdoms that they had
conquered and were reigning themfrom either Nineveh or some
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other Assyrian city such asAshur.
This was designed to make surethat the rival kings didn't
attack Assyria or get out ofline because the Assyrian king
could have had the prince of therival kingdom killed.
This often worked as they wouldreturn to the homeland to
become the next king or assumesome kind of eminent position.
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The long-term goal was you wouldbuild some kind of loyalty to
Assyria, right.
So you're a prince from Elam.
You've been held hostagebasically since you're a toddler
or a young child, so you kindof grow up in the Assyrian ways
of life.
So you're almost becomingAssyrian at that point.
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So when you're much older andyou're ready to retake the
throne of a far off kingdom, youwould have some kind of
Assyrian sympathies or almostview yourself as Assyrian.
So you're most likely not goingto get out of line because you
kind of almost view yourself aspart Assyrian, part Elamite, for
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example.
So this is great in a sensethat it can build long-term
peaceful relations.
But there are potentialdrawbacks in that a prince of a
rival kingdom could learnvaluable inside information and
kind of figure out where all theweaknesses are and the tactics
they use in battle.
This was notoriously the casewhen Philip of Macedonia was
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taken hostage by thieves, and weall know how that turned out,
because eventually his son wouldhave turned around and
conquered the known world.
So that's the idea of hostagetaking in a nutshell.
But getting back to the Persians, one thing that's interesting
is if you know much about theMongols and their history, their
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upbringing is similar to howthe Persians' upbringing was.
By the time a Persian boyreached the ripe old age of five
, he would have began histraining.
That would have started withlearning how to ride a horse and
then would have advanced intoarchery and even riding and
shooting at the same time.
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Similar to that of the Mongols,this training would have lasted
from age five to 20, but alsothey would have been trained how
to speak the truth.
Now, this is probably one ofthose more unique
characteristics of the Persiansociety, because being accused
as a liar is probably one of thebiggest insults that you can
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accuse someone of.
So for them, one of the biggestdisgraces a man could commit is
to lie.
In addition, another greatoffense is to be in debt,
because the Persians believeonce a person is in debt, they
are more likely to start lying,and lying is probably their
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biggest taboo.
So obviously I'm getting aheadof myself a little bit here, but
the thing is this will kind ofreally show when the idea of any
kind of debt market or usury orlending of any kind of money
would be pretty much completelyprohibited within the Persian
empire.
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So really, the two main thingsthat the Persians were really
teaching their young ones was tobe great horsemen and to not
lie.
And the whole idea of being agreat horseman is interesting
because even to this day it isbelieved that there are over a
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million nomadic horsemen in Iran.
So you can kind of see how thislegacy still lives on.
But we're talking ancient timeperiods here, so I want to
really stick to that.
But the thing is is within theancient Persian population they
wanted to be and they wererelatively peaceful because they
realized that war brought ontoo many problems and
destruction.
So they typically prefer tolive peacefully with their
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neighbors.
But they could be greatwarriors when called upon
because they were great horsemen.
But they could be greatwarriors when called upon
because they were great horsemenand their tactics allowed the
Persians to basically grow inpopulation and strength because
you're kind of, you know, inpeace and you're not getting
entire populations and citieswiped out.
You can obviously grow in sizeand strength without people
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realizing it, but there's adrawback to this growth.
The issue in growth inpopulation, in humans and also
don't forget cattle and horsesis more land is needed and at
some point constantly givingaway the store to maintain the
peace isn't going to work outanymore.
So while the Persian populationwas growing in size and
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strength, and without anybodyreally knowing it, assyria was
about to fall apart after thedeath of Ashurbanipal in 627 BCE
, and the whole world as theyknew it would be upended.
So while the Persians weregrowing in size and strength,
the Elamites made theirresurgence once the Assyrian
empire collapsed.
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Once the Assyrian Empirecollapsed, but the real growing
power wasn't the Elamites, itwas really.
It was after a Median king waskilled in battle, but his son,
syaxares the Great, took over in625 BCE and really kind of
reorganized the Median army andalso formed a large coalition
with other armies in an attemptto really take care of the
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Iranian plateau and ultimatelymake sure that the Assyrian
problem would no longer be anissue.
So Syaxares was growing theMedian kingdom, but he had
problems with his Scythiancousins who also derived from
Aryan nomads.
The Scythians spoke a variantof an Iranian language and
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followed the Vedic religion,just like other Iranian tribes.
Later, in 625 BCE, syraxeresinvited the Scythian lords to a
magnificent banquet.
The Medes drank wine which waswatered down significantly,
while the Scythian lords drankregular wine with regular
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amounts of alcohol.
While the Scythians were drunkand basically defenseless, the
Medes massacred the entireScythian nobility.
Defenseless, the Medesmassacred the entire Scythian
nobility.
I feel like RR Martin got theidea of the Red Wedding scene
directly from this, rr Martinbeing the writer of Game of
Thrones.
This basically left the commonforces of the Scythians
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leaderless and, as a result,they figured it's a good life
decision to join up with theMedes.
This new force was used toattack the limping Assyrian
empire.
So now the Medes and theBabylonians, along with the
recent addition of theleaderless Scythians, all joined
forces to once and for alldestroy the Assyrians.
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To make matters worse forAssyria, the Bactrians from
eastern Iran and Afghanistandefected to the Babylonians.
Upwards of 400,000 soldierswere all in.
The Babylonians furtherenhanced this union when
Nebuchadnezzar, the king ofBabylon, arranged a marriage
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between his son, the heirpresumptive Nebuchadnezzar II,
to Princess Amedis Syaxares'daughter.
So, with all these unions andalliances.
The Assyrians were pretty muchtoast by this point.
The sacking of Nineveh washorrific.
People were massacred, andtemples and holy places were
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destroyed.
It was said that Nebuchadnezzarwas distraught by the holy
site's desecration, so much sothat he resorted to an unkempt
appearance and slept on theground to signal to the gods his
mourning for the desecrations.
While this was all happening,the Persians were led by Cyrus I
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, the grandfather of Cyrus theGreat.
So now Assyria is basically donewith, and the question is what
do we do with the lands that theAssyrians had conquered?
So ultimately, what they cameup with is they divided the
lands up with the Babylonians,the Medes and the other Iranians
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, with the Babylonians, theMedes and the other Iranians.
So with the destruction ofAssyria and the divvying up of
lands, peace was re-establishedin the region.
The Medes and the Persiansfurther enhanced their union
with a royal marriage betweenKing Cyrus I's son, cambyses of
Persia, and Mandani, the Medianking, estagi's daughter and
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Syaxares' granddaughter.
Media remained the dominantkingdom, with Persia as its
vassal.
So it kind of gives you an idea.
Don't think that Persia is thisgrand empire at this point.
No, they're actually kind ofreally under the thumb of the
Median kingdom at this point intime, kind of really under the
thumb of the Median kingdom atthis point in time.
So the question is well, wheredid this accumulated Persian
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empire begin?
Can you point to a specificspot or points in time that you
could say oh okay, that's reallythe beginning of this empire?
Herodotus attempts to give ussome color as to the beginnings
of the empire, but, like I said,the problem with Herodotus is
you really have some color as tothe beginnings of the empire,
but, like I said, the problemwith Herodotus is you really
have to take a lot of his stuffwith a grain of salt.
There might be some elements oftruth in it, or maybe there is
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no truth, but either way, I findhis stories to be absolutely
fascinating and amazing and,like I said I said it prior is
Herodotus' tales are written tobe spoken orally, so they would
take a lot of liberties, becauseif you're speaking to people,
you want to grab their attention, and the story of the
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beginnings of the AchaemenidPersian Empire is as good as it
gets.
It starts out with the Medianking, astyages, having a dream
in which his daughter, mandani,gave birth to a son who would
destroy him and his empire.
Now, many of these kings tooktheir dreams as prophecies, and
this dream absolutely scaredAstyages.
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Fearful of the dream's prophecy, astyages married his daughter,
mandani, off to Cambyses I ofAnsan, who had a reputation for
being a quiet and thoughtfulprince, and therefore Astyages
probably thought he couldmitigate any kind of threat to
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his rule if the father of thebaby was very thoughtful and
compliant, if the father of thebaby was very thoughtful and
compliant.
After the marriage he had asecond dream that warned
Astyages of his daughter's son,cyrus.
Now modern scholarship generallyrejects Herodotus' claim that
Cyrus was the grandson ofAstyages, but let's continue
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anyway, because I love a goodstory.
So anyway, like any powerfulancient king, he thought it
would be a good idea to have hisgrandson killed right after the
birth.
So Astyages sent his trustedgeneral Harpagus to kill the
child.
Cyrus Harpagus didn't want tokill the child.
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Cyrus Carpegas didn't want tokill the royal baby.
So he didn't have the heart tokill an infant and ask a
low-level herdsman namedMitrodates to take the baby into
the wilderness and leave it tothe wild animals or exposure
Around.
The same time, mitrodates andhis wife had a baby.
But let's not forget back inthese days, and even like 100
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years ago, infant mortality wasmuch, much higher.
So, unfortunately, the babydied during birth.
Being heartbroken, the coupledecided that instead of killing
the king's grandson, they wouldessentially swap him out and
raise the royal baby as if itwas their own in a life of
poverty, not royalty.
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The king was obviously notaware of this, as he was
informed that his grandson, hisfuture threat, had been
eliminated.
Mithridates raised the child andeverything seemed to go pretty
smoothly until the young boy wasa little older and was playing
games with a group of otheryounger boys.
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Apparently, this game involvedsomeone choosing a king and,
wouldn't you know, they choseMithridates' son to play the
role of the king.
This was all well and fine, butapparently during the game the
king ordered a boy to be beatenfor disobeying him in the game.
Unfortunately, that little boyjust happened to be part of a
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noble family.
The father of the little boywas incensed and was very much
offended that some poor boy bornto a herdsman would dare to be
a kid of noble blood.
The boy's father was so upsetby this that he brought this up
with the king Astyages anddemanded justice.
Astyages called Mithridates andhis son to stand trial.
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But as soon as he saw the boyand the way he looked and the
way he carried himself, heimmediately could spot that this
boy was of royal blood and heknew, right then and there, that
Mandani's son was still alive.
The king demanded the truth and, of course, mithridates is
scared out of his mind, so heconfessed to the whole entire
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story.
The boy who went by the name ofKaino at the time the boy who
went by the name of Kaino at thetime was given back to his real
mother and father, mandani andCambyses, and therefore they
were actually spared.
Now the parents had to come upwith some crazy explanation as
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to why their boy just literallyreappeared in their lives, and
basically what they came up withis they created a version of
his background that would havebeen kind of similar to the real
background, in that they saidhe was left in the woods as
ordered by the king, but throughdivine intervention he was
raised by a female dog, which isreferred to as Kaino, hence the
previous name, and then theboy's name was changed to Cyrus.
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Now, herodotus' story didn't endthere.
He actually had a follow-upstory as well.
While Astyages let the boy live, he was still really upset by
the fact that his original orderwasn't followed and he really
couldn't let that pass.
So Astyages invited his generalto a banquet.
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So he had served him plenty ofmeats and soups and while the
general was eating, astyagesasked him how the meal was.
The general went on to call itthe best meal he'd ever had.
After he told Astyages howgreat the food was, astyages
informed him that he had killedhis son, cut him up into pieces
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and cooked and served his bodyto Harpagus, his general.
Obviously Harpagus was not happy, but he realized that he just
had to take it and move on.
This was the king, after all,and he was a general.
But in the end it was theking's decision to do what he
did.
But Harpagus would not forget.
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But either way, you might beasking yourself at least I ask
myself this is why wouldn'tCyrus be taken care of anyway?
Well, luckily for Cyrus,osteages' astrologers had done
their due diligence and cameback with great news Cyrus was
no longer a threat.
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So Osteages returned hisgrandson to Cyrus, to his true
parents, the king and queen ofPersia.
If you remember, the Medes andthe Persians had enhanced their
union with a royal marriagebetween King Cyrus I's son,
cambyses of Persia, and Mendene,the Median king's daughter,
king Astyages.
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Everything was working outgreat for Astyages.
Cyrus proved to be a loyal andsuccessful general for his
median grandfather's military.
Afterwards, cyrus ascended thePersian throne in 559 BCE with
the title of King of Anshan,when his father died, taking the
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throne name of Cyrus II tohonor his paternal grandfather.
However, everything began tobreak down.
Eventually, conflict broke outbetween Cyrus and his
grandfather, osteages, who wasstill on the Median throne, the
issue being that Persia knew hisplace.
It knew that the Medes weretheir overlords, but they
generally wanted to receivelocal autonomy on how they ran
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their kingdom.
They only needed to pay tributeand supply men to serve in the
military.
This actually worked out wellfor the Persian soldiers, as
they could enrich themselvesthrough plunder.
Arpagus was still really mad byAstyages killing and serving him
, his son, and as such, heplotted for years to get back at
(44:53):
Astyages.
Arpagus wrote to Cyrus andreminded him of how he had
secured his life as an infantand, according to Herodotus, he
said To me you owe me yourdeliverance.
Do I as advise, and Astyages'kingdom will be yours.
Convince the Persians to rebeland march against the Medes, we
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will desert Astyages and comeover to your side.
Now, apparently, cyrus tookthat advice because he rebelled
against his grandfather, kingAstyages.
Of course the king wasn't goingto just against his grandfather
, king Astyages.
Of course the king wasn't goingto just let his grandson take
control of his kingdom.
So Astyages tried to reform hisarmy and defend his crown.
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His first course of action wasto go on the offensive and lead
an army against Cyrus to conquerAnshan, persia's capital.
Unbeknownst to Astyages, anshan, persia's capital.
Unbeknownst to Astyages, hisarmy turned on him, took him
captive and turned him over tohis grandson, cyrus.
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Cyrus then marched to Akbatana,the capital city of the Median
Empire, and plundered itsvaluables, including its silver
and gold, and then carried itback to his capital of Anshan.
So, in the end, it back to hiscapital of Anshan.
So, in the end, asiagi's fearscame true His grandson Cyrus was
, in fact, the threat and endedup taking his crown from him.
Now, this is the part of thestory that has the beginnings of
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Cyrus the Great, and this iswhy he is one of the few leaders
that truly deserved to be namedthe great.
Now, if Cyrus was an Assyrianor Babylonian king, you would
expect that Cyrus would have hadhim killed in some kind of
dramatic fashion and would haveleft his head on a pike or would
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have put his skin on the wallas a form of wallpaper.
Nope, not Cyrus, he pulled a180 on the ancient world.
Cyrus treated his grandfatherwith a great deal of respect and
compassion.
He wasn't killed or even sentoff into exile.
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Now, according to Herodotus,astyages was given an
appointment as Parthia'sgovernor, and he even lived in
the palace with his grandson,cyrus.
So the next phase of the storyhas a bit of disagreements,
because Herodotus said thatCyrus ruled over both the Medes
and the Persians almostimmediately, whereas Xenophon
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said that Syaxares II, astyages'son, led the Medes in an
alliance with his nephew Cyrusuntil the fall of Babylon.
It was at that point thatSyaxares II gave his daughter in
marriage to Cyrus, with theMedian kingdom as her dowry, and
Cyrus gave his uncle a place inBabylon and, apparently, the
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kingship over Babylonia.
But either way, persia was nowa dominant player in the region.
So basically, the Medes and thePersians just swapped roles and
, to give you an idea of thesize, at the time, the Persians
ruled over all of modern dayIran, tajikistan, uzbekistan and
(48:11):
Armenia.
And that was just the start.
I want to thank you for takingyour time to listen to this
first episode of the PersianEmpire.
If you like what you hear andwant to donate to the show, you
can visit us at patreoncom slashhistory of money banking trade
(48:33):
or you can visit our website atmoneybankingtradecom.
Also, you can help out the showa ton by leaving a five-star
review and telling a friend ortwo.
Thank you very much.
Talk to you soon.
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