Mohsen Jaafarnia (2020). The Birth of the Persian Empire. The People Museum Journal , Volume 6, Issue 1,  ISSN 2588-6517


The Birth of the Persian Empire

 Mohsen Jaafarnia
Associate Professor, School of Design, Hunan University, China.

 

An overall review of the development of Iranian culture and art is beyond the scope of this article. We start this article with understanding about the word of “Arya” as it has mentioned in many ancient text, such as Inscription of Darius the Great at Naqsh-i Rustam “I am Darius ... son of Hystaspes, an Achaemenian, a Persian, son of a Persian, an Aryan, having Aryan lineage.“; this word literally means “noble”, “of noble stock”, “free-born”. It does not have a definite ethnic connotation but it includes that group of the Indo-European peoples who settled in Iran and India and who are sometimes called “Indo-Iranian”.

As yet no answer has been found to many of the basic questions concerning the ethnic characteristics, the original homeland and the date and routes of migration of the Indo-Europeans. Most scholars believe that the Aryans lived originally to the west of the Ural Moun­tains in the regions north of the Black Sea and the Caucasus. Those who came to Iran; however, from time immemorial, at least from the end of the third millennium down to the middle of the second (Christensen, 1943), inhabited the plains of the Oxus and the Jaxartes Rivers to the east of the Caspian Sea, Turkmenistan. This is the land called Eranvej in Zoroastrian literature. Today it is believed, as E. E. Herzfeld write that: from Eranvej “The main body of Aryans must have passed through East Iran in the beginning of the fifteenth century BCE., fol­lowing the only natural route, through the gates of the plateau at Sa­rakhs” (Herzfeld), and after a certain time they went through the Bolan Passes into the basin of the Indus (Nasr, 1974). Regarding to this point N. G. Berill says “The general desiccation that was already well underway reached a climax at about 2200 BCE. throughout Europe, Western Asia and Africa and probably elsewhere, and the dry conditions prevailed, with some ups and downs for several centuries at least. And once again those who felt the effects most were the ones to move, particularly as they had already specialized in the use of chariots now drawn for the first time by fast horses rather than asses or oxen ... The race which now started to move away from its Turkmenistan homeland ... had been living along the eastern shores of the Caspian Sea for many centuries ... and between 2200 and 1700 BCE., wave after wave in increasing power forced its way into neighboring lands, all of them speaking the mother tongue of the Indo-European language ... One of the earlier waves spread north of the Caspian and into Europe through the Danubian corridor and also down into the Greek peninsula where in the course of time they absorbed the old Aegean civilization. This is the Bronze Age, Indo-European period of Greek history so vividly left to us in Homer's epics. A later wave went slowly over the Persian plateau, where they founded the Medes and the Persians and descended on Mesopotamia and Egypt; while the Aryan branch went over the moun­tains into India and destroyed the Indus Valley civilization” (Berill, 1962).

The first traces of Aryans in Western Asiatic history appear in the middle of the fifteenth century BCE., when the kingdom of Mitanni was founded in Mesopotamia proper. The people of Mitanni spoke and wrote an aboriginal language and Mitanni seems to be an Aryan name.

The Sakas, after whom the province of Sistan is named, were the last group of Aryan immigrants. They entered Iran from the present Turkmenistan in the second century BCE.

The oldest historical record referring to the Iranian people is from the Assyrians and dates from 845 or 843 BCE. The Iranians settled first in the region of Parsua to the west of Lake Urmia and afterwards, from approximately 697 to 660 BCE., a number of them, the Persians, migrated to the south of Iran and gave their name to that area, Pars or Persia (Nasr, 1974).

At the time of the Achaemenians to be of Aryan lineage had a clearly distinct meaning and it was of sufficient importance to be included in their genealogy as that of Darius at Naqsh-i-Rustam we mentioned above. For H. Field, Iranians represent, ”a new racial type which does not fit into the regular divisions of the White Race, namely Nordic, Mediterranean, and Alpine. To this we have given the tentative name of Iranian Plateau Race” (Field, 1956).

W. Durant has summarized the description of the Persian as found in various ancient documents as follows, ”The Persians were appa­rently the handsomest people of the ancient Near East. The monuments picture them as erect and vigorous, made hardy by the moun­tains and yet refined by their wealth, with a pleasing symmetry of fea­tures and almost Greek straightness of nose,and a certain nobility of countenance and carriage. They adopted for the most part the Median dress and later the Median ornaments. They considered it indecent to reveal more than the face; ... Men as well as women made much use of cosmetics; creams were enjoyed to improve the complexion and coloring matter was applied to the eyelids to increase the apparent size and brilliance of the eyes. A special class of ‘adorners’, called Kosmetai by the Greeks, arose as beauty experts to the aristocracy. The Persians were connoisseurs in scents, and were believed by the ancients to have invented cosmetic creams.” (Durant, 1728).

The name “Iranian” is derived from the term “Aryanam Khshath­ram”, meaning The Empire of the Aryans, or in modern Persian «Iran». The languages of the Indo-European peoples have a common root and the languages of the Indo-European peoples of Iran and India are closer than that of any other two Indo-European people (Nasr, 1974).

Among the Iranian of the Medes and the Persians were quite similar to each other. The Medes were the first people to establish an independent state in Iran. In 612 BCE., the Medes under king Huvakh­shthra conquered Nineveh, the ca­pital of Assyria, and, from there ruled for more than sixty years over a vast empire which extended from the Lyddian frontiers in Ana­tolia to Parthia, Herat and maybe even farther east. Thus the Medes established the complete freedom and independence of the Iranian people, as attested to in an inscription in stone which is still extant.

Therefore, some historians hold that the year 612 BCE., should be considered as the beginning of the Iranian Monarchy (Pour Davoud, 1346). Hakmata­na or Hakmatan (today’s Hamadan), the Median capital, was one of the largest and most beautiful cities of the ancient world and the royal palace of the Medes was extremely elaborate and luxurious.

The oldest extant Achaemenian document is a gold tablet dating to the period of Ariarman (Ariaramenes) 640-590 BCE. and Achae­menian king of Pars prior to the establishment of the Iranian Empire. In this tablet it is written that, ”This land of the Persians, says the King, which I possess, is provided with fine horses and good men, it is the great God Ahuramazda who has given it to me. I am the king of this land.”

But centuries before the Medes and the Persians other Iranians had established separate kingdoms in the north east and eastern parts of the Iranian plateau. Firdawsi has immortalized the kings and heroes of those kingdoms in his epic history of Iran. The Sassanians considered references to them, as found in ancient legends and Zoroastrian writ­ings, as being true history. Very little however, has been found as yet about those kingdoms outside of the writings based on old legends and Zoroastrian mythology.

According to these writings the first Persian Dynasty, was that of Pishdadians and Zoroaster preached his religion under Kavi Vishtaspa, a king of the following dynasty, that of the Kavis. Some authors estimate that Yishtaspa lived toward the end of the eleventh and into the tenth century BCE. (Nasr, 1974). In continue R. N. Frye says “Before the extensive Soviet excavations in Central Asia our con­ception of Eastern Iran and Central Asia was of a land mainly without cities and inhabited mostly by nomads. Excavations in the large oases of Merv, Bukhara, Khwarezm, and elsewhere have changed this view, for we learn of the existence of great irrigation canals and large settle­ments in the first half of the millennium BCE.”(Frye, 1962). A. Christensen completes it in his book as “The immigration of those tribes who come from the north took place, no doubt, by two streams, one direct toward the South-East and the other toward the South-West. The Zoroastrian religion after hav­ing spread over all the occupied eastern territory, penetrated over Me­dia proper and the Caspian Area.” (Christensen, 1943). E. E. Herzfeld also has mentioned that “The Aryan immigration changed every aspect of the cultural life of the country [Persia]. Before the end of the second millennium urban life had not been adopted anywhere on the plateau except in Tan, later Atropatene. All the rest of the plateau had remained, since the Stone Age, at the stage of village life. With the Aryan immigration large towns,First Echbatana, then Pasargadae and Persepolis, were founded, then Rhagae (Rayy) near Tehran, Tausa near Meshed, and various others and not only did history began for Iran, but within a hundred and fifty years an empire was established which under Cyrus and Darius comprised the whole of the civilized world.” (Herzfeld).

 

A turning point in world history

In the sixth century BCE. the Iranians founded the Persian (Ira­nian) Empire by uniting together under Pax Achaemenica all the civilized people of the Western Asia and the Near East; Zoroaster’s teaching spread. The precise date of the birth of this Aryan pro­phet is not known; Buddah and Mahavira were born in India and the Indo-Aryan civilization of India began to gain its distinctive charac­ter; Confucius formulated the definitions which, later on, set the pattern of Chinese thought, social life and government; Taoism developed and the Chinese traditions were organized into a set of writings; the Greeks of Asia Minor (Ionia), finding satisfaction neither in their own religious beliefs nor in those of their Middle Eastern neighbors began to wonder about the laws of nature and produced the first Greek philosophers.

All of these diverse phenomena seem to have some inter-relationship. It was as though the civilized people of the world had lost faith in concepts, religions, and institutions, which had changed little from the very beginning of civilization. Old myths and superstitions could no longer explain to their satisfaction the secrets of creation, the be­havior of natural forces and man’s position in the universe and his des­tiny. People had become weary of barbaric wars and oppressive social structures inherited from past millennia. They were longing for a safer and more prosperous life and a more wholesome relationship with one another.

The extensive contacts had developed between the inhabitants of different areas, whether in the course of military campaigns or by travel and trade, most probably was an important factor in bringing about these changes in people’s outlook (Nasr, 1974). Gordon Childe says “in intervals of peace the kings of Babylon, Assyria, Mitanni, Hatti and Egypt interchanged ambassadors and wives, presents and deities, physicians and soothsayers. The foreign office archives of the Egyptians and Hittites which have been recovered present a picture of the Near East in the 14th and 13th centuries BCE., as a veritable ‘concert of powers’ or society of nations quite comparable to Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries CE.” (Childe, 2016).

The spiritual and political leaders of the sixth century BCE. did not satisfy all the expectations of their people. Still today, is not man­kind beset by weariness, suffering and anxieties? The remarkable origi­nality and value of the sixth century was that these problems were recognized and considered remediable, a series of new principles and practices were proposed and at least in part implemented in the attempt to remedy them. To what extent those new principles and practices influenced the radical changes that took place afterwards in the transfer of centers of power and leadership is worth studying.

It is certain that from the sixth century on, first Iran and later India, China and Greece - the lands that produced the new intellec­tual, political and spiritual movements gained in power and leadership while the old centers of civilization, Egypt and the states of Mesopo­tamia and Western Asia, lost their position, and gradually all but Egypt disappeared from the list of living nations.

Among the great events which set the sixth century apart and changed the course of history more quickly than all others was the establishment of the Achaemenian Empire, which is considered as the starting point of the history of the Iranian Monarch.

The founder of this Empire was Cyrus the Achaemenian (550 - 529 BCE., and the commencement of the Empire was the day that Cyrus, king of the Persians, defeated Astyages, king of the ‘mighty Medes’ and took possession of his capital, Echbatana (550 BCE.). After this great event Cyrus conquered all of the lands between the city of Susa the Persian capital, and the Mediterranean Sea, and all the areas extending to the Oxus River in Central Asia. After his victory over the Medes, his conquest of Lydia and Babylonia are two of Cyrus’ greatest military accomplishments. Lydia is famous in the West since it was inhabited by Greeks and was ruled by Croesus, a king of legendary wealth. Babylonia was the most powerful kingdom of the day and along with Egypt represented the highest cultural level that had been achieved by the civilized world of the time (Nasr, 1974).

After Cyrus the expansion of the empire continued apace. Cam­byses ( 529-522 BCE.), Cyrus' son and successor, and Darius the Great (521-475 BCE.), added Egypt, Lybia and Abyssinia to the Persian realm. In the East they advanced as far as the Hindu Kush Mountain and beyond the Indus river. In Europe, Persian control was established over the straits of Bosphorous and the Dardanelles, the islands of the Aegean Sea, Thrace, Macedonia and major part of what is today Rumania and Bulgaria. Darius also crossed the Danube River and proceeded north to the plains of the present European Soviet Union in order to put an end to the dangers facing Iran from the Western Seythians.

With the conquest of Egypt, the other richest center of ancient civilization, and with the occupation of Sind, the center or at least one of the main centers of Indian civilization came under Iranian control. Of the civilized areas of the ancient world only China did not become part of the Persian Empire.

Herzfeld is not quite accurate in stating that the Achaemenian Empire did not include Greece:

1. “The more populous, wealthier and more cultured part of the Greek world” were under Persian control (Olmstead, 1963).

2. The destiny of the Greek inhabited cities in Europe was in fact to a large extent in the hands of Iran, and this situation was for­malized by the “King's Peace” in 386 BCE..

3. Greek civilization was based on the civilization of the Middle East and continued to be influenced by it during the whole period of its growth as will be illustrated later on.

For the Iranian people themselves, and for those acquainted with Iranian civilization, the existence of Iran in itself is the testimony to the importance of the Achaemenians. Commanders, philosophers and scholars have appeared in great numbers throughout the world. But there were very few among them whose creative genius bestowed the mark of eternity upon their deeds. In this respect probably no one has been equal to Cyrus and Darius. But, the establishment of the Achaemenian Empire had also extraordinary significance on a world-wide scale for several reasons.

A. Toynbee says “The founding of the first Iranian Empire is an event of major importance, not only in Iranian history, but in world history. The first Iranian Empire was the world's sole superpower during the period of its existence, and its posthumous effect on human affairs has been lasting. Nor is this Empire merely an important landmark in mankind’s past; it also has a relevance for the future ... All the peoples of the world will have to unite each other in some form as the only alternative to mutual destruction ... The first Persian Empire is one of those ( past empires) that came near to success [in the unification on a worldwide scale] ” (Toynbee, 1987).

In Egypt can be found another example of the Iranians' respect for the identity and institutions of the subjugated peoples. In 519 BCE. Darius instructed his representatives in Egypt to assemble together the wise men of the Egyptian army, clergy and bureaucracy and to ask them to compile their country’s law “Laws of the Pharaohs, of the tem­ples and of the people.”(Vaux, 1936). Xenephon, the Greek soldier historian, tells us that Cyrus’ name was on everyone's tongue and in every song and legend; he treated his subjects as his children and they respected him as father. On Persian laws, he writes that “They seem to begin with a provident care of the common good.”(Xenophon,1914) Aeschylus, in his play the ‘Persians’ says that Cyrus is the happiest man in the world ... He is merciful and Gods are not offended by him. For the Greeks the capitalized word Basileus, King, meant the king of Iran as they recognized the Iranian kings as the only rulers of a world empire (Nasr, 1974). And H. Lamb says “[Cyrus] had brought into being the navel concept of a ruler res­ponsible to all his subjects, what Clement Huart terms a new idea in the East with principles of government unknown before him.” (Lamb, 1976).

About the Darius the Great,  W. Durant says “Darius became one of the wisest administrators in history and set himself to re-establish his realm in a way that became a model of imperial organization till the fall of Rome. His rule gave western Asia a generation of such order and prosperity as that quarrelsome region had never known before.”(Durant, 1728). Le Comte de Gobineau tells about him also “Darius instituted a powerful organization ...not before the Pe­riod of the Roman principal are similar concentration of forces and means for achieving it to be found.” Also mentioned “What it [Rome] never had until the century of Augustus, was an intellectual development of equal value to what determined the forma­tion of the Mazdean religion and animated the philosophy and arts of antiquity; all that the Greeks learned ... had its centre and model in Western Asia at the time of Darius. But what the Romans never learn­ed or practiced, even under the rule of the celebrated Antonins, was this systematic moderation, applied to the administration of peoples, which became the general rule after Cyrus and toward which Darius showed himself as regularly faithful.”(Gobineau, 2018). Then R. Grousset point it out that “The Persians as they appear to us during this first phase of their history are unquestionably one of the noblest races of the ancient world. Their sense of honour and humane and chivalrous character are a re­lief after the odious vices and savage cruelty of Assyro-Babylonian or Punic society. From the very moment when they enter history, it seems that they are men of our own race.”(Grousset, 1931). W. G. de Burgh mentions “The Persians of history present a noble type of character; they were born rulers of men, proud and stately in demeanor, lovers of the banquet and the chase, humane in war, magnanimous to their subject peoples, ready to tolerate and even to absorb foreign ideas…Com­merce they scorned as unworthy of a free man; arms, agriculture and husbandry were their traditional tasks. The most heinous of crimes was falsehood; and the training of the youth is thus summed up by Herodotus, to ride, to shoot with the bow and to speak the truth.”(Burgh, 1960).

In the opinion of most western historians the Pax Achaemenica which lasted over 200 years, was in itself one of the most valuable ser­vices which the Persians rendered to mankind and to the advancement of civilization. A. T. Olmstead says “Under the rule of the Achaemenids, the civilized world came nearer to being under one political control than ever before or since.” (Olmstead, 1963). R. N. Frye mentions “[In] the victories of the Persians ... What was different was the new policy of conciliation and together with this the prime aim of Cyrus to establish a pax Achaemenica.” Frye further adds that “If one were to assess the achievements of the Achaemenid Persians, surely the concept of ’One World’, the fusion of peoples and culture in one 'Oecu­men’ was one of their important legacies.” (Frye, 1993). Therefore, the title ‘empire’ which implies exploitation of sub­jugated nations, may be used only with reserve in the case of the Achae­menian realm. Neither is the phrase ‘Commonwealth of Nations’ , quite adequate, for it underrates the control of the central Achaeme­nian government and the cohesion of the different parts of their do­mains. The Persian ‘Shahanshahi Iran’ is the most suitable term to describe the Achaemenian state and the closest to the ancient ‘Aryanam khshatram, land or kingdom of the Aryans’, or the term, Eran­shahr, realm of the Aryans, as used by the Sassanians.

Almost 2500 years before the term ‘national economic policy’ came into being and achieving economic and social progress was accepted as a basic function of governments the Achaemenians were putting into effect such a policy through measures to create and maintain the prosperity and well-being of their Empire. His­torians speak repeatedly of the great public works, dams, reser­voirs, underground aquaducts, canals, roads and bridges built by the Iranians of the Achaemenian period; of the measures taken to expand and improve agriculture and propagate new species by transporting seeds and plant cuttings from place to place; of the establishment of libraries and universities; and of the groups sent to explore faraway places and seas. For example, the Iranians introduced the cultivation of a particular kind of grape in Syria, sesame in Egypt, rice in Mesopotamia and the nut of pontus in Greece. Darius built a large basin in the region of Herat to facilitate the cultivation of the steppe.

Also for the first time in history the Achaemenians built thousands of miles of roads equipped with caravanserais and post stations, along with an organization for keeping them in good repair and for the maintenance of security.

From Susa the road connected to Persepolis and India and intersected with other road systems leading to the ancient allied and competing kingdoms of Media, Bactria, and Sogdiana. A branch from Fars to Sardis crossed the foothills of the Zagros Mountains and east of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, through Kilikia and Cappadocia before reaching Sardis and another branch led into Phyrgia. The speed and the regularity with which messages were carried over those roads were witnessed to and described by Herodotus:”No obstacle prevents them (the couriers) from completing their missions with the most extreme speed; neither snow, rain nor heat nor even night.” (Herodotus, 2015). The motto used by the Arnerican postal service is based on this report. “An imperial letter could travel from Sardis in Asia Minor to Susa in seven days, a distance of 1,500 miles which the normal caravan took up to ninety days to co­ver.”(Hutchinson, 1958). The network might have been called "the Royal Road," but it also included rivers, canals, and trails, as well as ports and anchorages for seaborne travel. Darius Canal (Persian Suez Canal) built connected the Mediterranean Sea and the Nile to the Red Sea (Hirst, 2018). The Suez Canal is one of the amazing constructions of Iranian engineers, which was dug by Arte, the talented Achaemenid scientist, and recorded a permanent honor for Iranians. Darius, considering the importance of sea lanes, especially the sea between Iran and Egypt, which at that time was part of the Achaemenid Empire, ordered this canal to be dug so that Iranian merchant ships and navy could easily pass through it and a shorter route between Iran and Egypt be taken. The dug canal is slightly different from today's canal, which was dug in 1869 by Ferdinand Marie de Lesseps. At the end of the digging of the canal, a memorial plaque in Persian, Elamite, Babylonian, and Egyptian languages was erected to commemorate this great honor which the Persian text is as follows:

 

Figure 1. A. Persian Suez Canal (in blue line. 500 BCE.) contemprry Suez Canal (1859 CE.); B. 2500 years old document shows Darius carved the name "The Sea of Pars" (Persian Gulf) on the inscription of Suez, The Louvre Museum.

 

"I am Darius, king of kings, King of the countries that have all the races in it. The king of this great land with wide borders, I am a Persian. I conquered Egypt from the land of Persia. I ordered the digging of this canal (branch), from a river called the Nile, which flows in Egypt to the Persian Sea. After that, the stream was dug, as I ordered, and ships sailed from Egypt through this stream to the Persian Sea [the Persian Gulf], as I wished."

This inscription was found in 1866 while digging the new Suez Canal, 33 km far from the current canal. On this stone tablet, the figure of two people is carved and the name of king Dariush is written between them. On the other side of the tablet, a more detailed inscription is engraved in the Egyptian language and the figure of king Darius is decorated like the Egyptian pharaohs. His face is engraved under a winged sun disk, and the gods of the two lower and upper halves of the Nile are connected under his feet, and the names of the countries subordinate to king Darius are written. In this way, they wanted to show that king Darius was superior to the eighteenth dynasty of Egyptian pharaohs, who was the most powerful of them (Roshandeli, 2008). ‌

In Greece they cut the ‘canal of Xerxes’ through Mount Athos. They carried out the world's first maritime explorations and promoted the use of astronomy in na­vigation. On one side, they explored the Indus River and the Indian Ocean and sailed around the Arabian Peninsula to the shores of the Red Sea, and on the other, sailed around Africa to Gibraltar - 2000 years before Vasco de Gama circumnavigated Africa from the west to the east.

The Achaemenians established the first medical college of the world in Egypt and there are some records of three more colleges built by them. The support they provided for the advancement of know­ledge can also be illustrated by the favors they bestowed on the Baby­lonian men of science, the most famous of whom was the great astro­nomer Nab U-Rimanni.

Regarding to Persian achievements E. E. Herzfeld says “The two hundred years of peace which the Persian Empire gave to the world carried an unequalled progress in human thought 一Zoroastrianism, and Buddhism, are the lasting witnesses,and no empire of Alexander the Great would have been established without the precedent of the Achaemenian Empire.”(Herzfeld).

The pax Achaemenica was partially disturbed several times by the necessity of confronting domestic rebellions or foreign raids. But such disturbances were insignificant when compared to the usual state of affairs before the Achaemenians or to the calamities that befell the Middle East after them.

In the administration of their vast domains the Achaemenians consolidated the power of the central government but, at the same time, they granted wide administrative latitude to the provincial go­vernors (Satraps, Khashathrapavans: Protectors of the kingdom) and respected the identity and culture of subject nations. In carrying out these objectives they created the first model for the division of a coun­try into administrative units.

Although old Persian, the language employed by Darius in the foundation tablet of Persepolis, was the official language of the Empire, the Achaemenians also promoted the Aramaic language, which was spoken widely from the Nile to the Sind Valley; they established an official standard for weights and measures, a uniform monetary system and a price for precious metals, took “an interest in the working class and, so far as the outlook of the day permitted ‘regulated’ both work and wages.”(Ghirshman, 1978). All these measures contributed to the rapid progress of relations between the various peoples and to the prosperity of the Empire as a whole (Nasr, 1974). In the same way R. Ghirshman had written in his book “With the creation of the Empire, the world entered on a period of great economic prosperity ... During the Achaemenian period the first steps were taken in the organization of a national economy.”(Ghirshman, 1978). Also G. Elgood says “So thorough was the destruction that Alexander the Great inflicted on Persia that there are not sufficient remains to allow one to estimate the mathematical knowledge of the early Medes and Per­sians.”(Elgood, 1949). The same thorough destruction has affected most other documents of ancient Persia. Nevertheless, the little that remains indicate that without any doubt art and culture advanced at an extremely swift pace during the Achaemenian period and attained, in the words of A.U. Pope, “One of the highest points in the whole history of mankind.” (Pope, 1945).

 

References

1- Berill, N.J. (1962). Man’s Emerging Mind, Conneticut, P. 203 ( 1 - 43).

2- Burgh, W. G. de (1960). The Legacy of The Ancient World, MacDonald & Evans; new, rev.&enl. Edition.

3- Childe, Gordon (2016).What Happened in History. Aakar Books. 

4- Christensen, A. (1943). Le Premier Chaptre du Vendidad et L’histoire primitive des tributs Iraniennes, Kobenhavn.

5- Durant, Will (1728). The Story of Civilization. Vol. 1. Simon & Schuster. P. 356 (1 - 34).

6- Elgood, G. (1949). Egypt, a Brief History from Ancient to Modern Times. P. 296 ( 1 - 4). Anglo Egyptian BookShop/Cairo; First Edition.

7- Field, H. (1956). Ancient and Modern Man in Southwestern Asia, 2 Vol., Miami Press, P. 130 (1 - 27).

8- Frye, R.N. (1962).  The Heritage of Persia, London, Weidenfeld and icolson, PP. 60 & 61, Published also as a Mentor book, 1966. Also Iran by R. N. Frye, London, George Allen and Unwin, 1960. also Frye, Richard N. (1993). The Heritage of Persia, PP. 10 & 151 (1 - 68). Mazda Publishers; First edition.

9- Ghirshman, Roman (1978). Iran. City of Westminster: Penguin Books.

10- Gobineau, Le Comte de (2018). Histoire des Perses, Paris, 1869 Vol. II, P. 143. Wentworth Press.

11- Grousset, R. (1931). The Civihzation of The East; The Near And The Middle East, Transl. from French by Catherine Alison, Phillipe, N.Y. Alfred A. Knopf, P. 113.

15- Herodotus,(2015).The Histories. VIII, 98. Penguin Classics; Reprint edition.

16- Herzfeld, E.E., article in A Survey of Persian Art, Vol. I, P. 55 ( 1 - 20).

17- Hirst, K. Kris (2018). The Royal Road of the Achaemenids: International Highway of Darius the Great. https://www.thoughtco.com/royal-road-of-the-achaemenids-172590

18- Hutchinson, J. Bowl-London (1958). The Concise Encyclopedia of World Historγ.

19- Lamb, Harold (1976). Cyrus The Great, N.Y. Doubleday, P. 273. Pinnacle Books; First Thus edition.

20- Nasr, Taghi (1974). The Eternity of Iran. Tehran: The Ministry of Culture and Arts publication.

21- Olmstead, A.T. (1963). History of the Persian Empire (Achaemenid Period), Page 151, The University of Chicago Press.

22- Pope, A.U. (1945). The Masterpieces of Iranian Art, The Dryden press, P. 5.

23- Pour Davoud (1346). in the Persian Magazine Sepid and Syah, No. 190, Azar 1347 and Zabihollah Safa in Ayin Shahanshahi-ye-Iran (The Tradition of the Iranian Monarchy), The University of Tehran, Iran.

24- Toynbee, Arnold J. (1987). A Study of History, Vol. 1: Abridgement of Volumes I-VI. Oxford University Press; New Ed edition.

25- Trever, A. (1939). A History of Ancient Civilization, Vol. 1. Ancient Near East and Greece, Vol. 2, Roman World, K.Y. PP. 114 to 120. See also McNeill: A World Historγ, N.Y. and London 1967, PP. 63-69.

26- Vaux, R. de (1936). an article marked Jerusalem, July 2.

27- Xenophon (1914). Cyropaedia, Transl. by J.S. Watson, P. 4. Harvard University Press.

28-

کاپیتان محمدرضا روشندلی  (۱۳۸۷)سه هزار سال دریانوردی ایرانیان، مجله صنعت حمل و نقل. ۲۰ آذر ۱۳۸۷

  © 2020 by the authors. Submitted for possible open access publication under the
terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).