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Document Details : Title: 'O Young Man ... Make Known of What Kind You Are' Subtitle: Warfare, History, and Elite Ideology of the Achaemenid Persian Empire Author(s): WU, Xin Journal: Iranica Antiqua Volume: 49 Date: 2014 Pages: 209-299 DOI: 10.2143/IA.49.0.3009243 Abstract : The political history of the Achaemenid Empire (ca. 550-330 B.C.) has been heavily informed by the contemporaneous Greek sources and their later interpretations. This article focuses on the central question of whether the Persians undertook any documentation of specific historical events that survive to the present day. It suggests that a class of warfare representations on seals and other elite objects from the Achaemenid imperial realm reflect a unique Persian perspective on the empire’s past, which could potentially serve as evidence for Achaemenid military/imperial history (including the history of the ideological component of that history). After providing an overview of warfare representations in Achaemenid art and the theoretical underpinnings for using warfare scenes as historical sources, the discussion touches upon crucial art historical issues and demonstrates that Central Asia may have presented the Achaemenid kings with problems different from but no less challenging than those from Greece and other part of the Empire such as Egypt. The article also highlights the possibility that there was a change of image policies in the middle of Darius I’s reign. Corresponding to such change were the rise and growing popularity of warfare images in art. These images could have reflected the new elite ideology and its corresponding social structure. Presenting collectively a social memory of the Achaemenid society, the warfare images should rightfully be considered as an important source of information for studying both political history and elite ideology of the Achaemenid Empire. |
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