Tanya Stanley

March 23, 2008

Have We Forgotten about the Persian Empire?

I decided to research the Persian Empire because my previous knowledge of the subject was limited.  During my investigation, I asked myself what the Persian Empire had to do with the art of literature and colonial/postcolonial studies.  I began my search by viewing online maps of the Persian Empire in order to have a bearing on the present-day locations involved.  The Persian Empire connected the first two novels of the course, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Achebe’s Things Fall Apart—both novels set in Africa—with the third and fourth novels of the course, Forster’s A Passage to India and Singh’s Train to Pakistan—novels involving the Middle East—by connecting Africa to the Middle East.  Prior to my research, I had not read anything recent on the Persian Empire, which begs the question, have we forgotten about the Persian Empire?

The first facet of my research included looking at several maps of the Persian Empire then and now.  At the Google Images website, I typed in Persian Empire and finally found a map large enough for others to read without having to distort the image.  EDSITEment, a division of the National Endowment for the Humanities provided the map below.

http://edsitement.neh.gov/PersiaGreeceWars01.asp

The Persian Empire spanned from Africa to past the Arabian Sea—present day Iran.  After finding the map of the Persian Empire, I typed in “forgotten empire” jokingly into the Yahoo search bar, and amazingly the British Museum had hosted a showcase of the Persian Empire naming the showcase “Forgotten Empire.” 

http://www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/forgottenempire/index.html

According to the British museum, the Persian Empire “stretched from the Mediterranean to the River Indus” (“Forgotten Empire”).  The Persian Empire lasted from 550 B.C. to 350 B.C. starting with Cyrus the Great (Cyrus II) to Darius I.  Cyrus brought the Medes and the Persians together—both ancient groups who were mighty powerful (“Forgotten Empire”).  The British Museum offered an exquisite amount of information regarding the Persian Empire. 

I suggest following the link above to take a virtual tour.  When Darius led the Persian Empire, the empire soon “became the largest of its time” (“Forgotten Empire”).   The Persian Empire spanned 2,900,000 square miles, “making it comparable with the Roman Empire and the Chinese Han Empire” including the Persians, Medes, Egyptians, Greeks Scythians, Babylonians, Bactrians, Indians, and other groups (“Forgotten Empire”).

In ten years, Cyrus “united the Persians and Medes…and conquered Asia Minor and Babylonia in another ten” years (“Great Empires” 1).  According to “Great Empires Unite Classical World:  400 BCE – 400 CE,” Parthians commanded the eastern part of the Hellenistic world between 250 B.C.E and 229 C.E.” (“Great Empires” 1).  In order to link the Persian Empire to literature, I continued my research in the EBSCO online database.  Trades, religions, sciences, and art (including literature) developed out of great empires such as the Persian Empire (“Great Empires” 2).  Several resources and styles of the Persian Empire civilizations “were exploited to create a rich syncretic art” combining different systems of philosophies and religions together (“Great Empires” 1).  I did not find many articles linking the Persian Empire to literature, but I did find online websites containing general information.  In the online article, “Longevity of the Persian Empire,” the author suggests Parthians kept control until the Persian Sassanid dynasty—militant Zoroastrians—weakened the forces from within.  After four hundred years, Roman emperor Heraclius gained control, “which threw the Persian state into total chaos from which it never recovered.  Shortly afterwards, the Muslim hordes invaded and Persia lost its independence until the 16^th century when the Safavid dynasty came to power” (“Longevity”). 

http://ancienthistory.about.com/cs/persianempir1/a/persialongevity.htm

Some people may have forgotten the Persian Empire, but the British Museum certainly has not.  Many people probably remember the British Empire more than the Persian Empire because of the time periods both empires existed.  The website About.com gave me a small insight to the Persian Empire, which helped me understand the time period the empire existed.  Websites like About.com and Wikipedia can help students grasp a large concept to an extent, but scholarly articles and historical entities can enlighten the students’ knowledge to a larger degree.  I think I am going to continue my research on the Roman Empire and the Chinese Han Empire or on the people who were involved in the Persian Empire:  Persians, Medes, Egyptians, Greeks Scythians, Babylonians, Bactrians, and Indians. 

Works Cited

“The Forgotten Empire:  the World of Ancient Persia.”  The British Museum. 

March 22, 2008.  <http://www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/forgotten-

empire/index.html>.

“Great Empires Unite the Classical World:  400 bce-400 ce.”  World Almanac &

Book of Facts; 2008.  661-662.  28 February 2008.

“Longevity of the Persian Empire.”  About.com.  28 February 2008. 

<http://ancienthistory.about.com/cs/persianempir1/a/persialongevity.htm>.

“Persian Wars Resource Pages.”  EDSITEment.  March 22, 2008. 

<http://edsitement.neh.gov/PersiaGreeceWars01.asp.>.