The earliest Persians (after the fall of Assyria in the 6th century BC) lived in the area south of Shiraz in southern Iran (Persepolis, the capital of Persia at that time, was here).
In the era spanned by Imperial Age 2, Persian civilization began to flourish in the third century A.D., not because ES misinterpreted Persian history. In fact, Persia in the imperial era also included the predecessor of the Persian Empire (which began in the third century AD).
From the third century, this civilization appeared on the historical stage in the name of Persian Empire until the seventeenth century.
In previous centuries, this land was ruled by many forces originating from the Mediterranean, but it finally became an independent kingdom, restored its freedom and glory, and developed into an empire spanning Mesopotamia and India.
Now Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan once belonged to the territory of the ancient Persian Empire.
However, successive wars weakened the strength of the Persian Empire. In order to seize the control of Syria, Turkey, Palestine, Israel, Egypt and the whole peninsula, they fought against the powerful Roman Empire for several years.
It was not until 364 AD that the Romans signed a peace treaty with the Persians.
Later, when the Roman Empire was divided, the Persians put their powerful military forces into a series of new wars.
Their new enemy is the successor of the Eastern Roman Empire: the Byzantine Dynasty.
Persians began to attack from the Byzantine border areas-Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Turkey.
The most glorious moment in Persian history finally came in AD 6 19.
The Persian Empire completely conquered Egypt and the Caucasus Mountains.
In 626 AD, the Persians suffered a crushing defeat when they besieged the Byzantine capital.
Byzantines took advantage of their own advantages and began to invade the territory of the Persian Empire.
Years of endless war have actually sounded the death knell for these two originally powerful civilizations.
In 628 AD, when both sides were exhausted, the ruler finally agreed to sign a long-delayed peace treaty.
After that, the Persian Empire, which was greatly weakened by the war, was captured by the * * * Legion from the east.
In 65 1 year, the forces of * * * conquered the Persian Empire in just ten years and completely occupied the territory of the Persian Empire.
This new kingdom is called-Iran.
However, in this hot land, it seems that peace will never be achieved. In the following hundreds of years, new invaders appeared constantly.
First of all, the ancestors of the Ottoman Turks, the Seljuks, conquered the whole of Iran.
Then came the terrible Mongols, and then the Turkmen.
The new dawn did not appear until16th century.
Like the ancient Persians 1300 years ago, the Iranians finally regained their territory.
The ancient Persian civilization has been lost for more than two thousand years, and the cuneiform writing in ancient Persia has already become a "language of death". For most people, it is quite strange. How can we see through the fog of the Millennium? In the western part of the Persian Plateau, near the border between Iran and Iraq, there is a commercial city called Kermansha, and 2 ~ 3 kilometers east of the city, there is a small village called Beston.
For more than two thousand years, it has been quietly away from the hustle and bustle of the city, forgetting the past and being forgotten by people in the corner of memory.
Today, however, the name "Ci" not only goes out of Kermansha, but also out of Asia and into the world.
This should be attributed to a cliff near it, because there is an ancient text on it, which makes people find the lost civilization; This is also due to an Englishman named rawlinson.
1835, British major rawlinson was ordered to go to Iran to serve as the military adviser to Governor Courdie.
Shortly after the amateur archaeologist arrived, he got wind that there were stone carvings nearby.
Of course, he won't turn a deaf ear. He ran to have a look, and sure enough, he found a large cliff stone carving near Bethesda village.
I saw that the cliff stone carving is about 100 meters from the ground, and the stone carving itself is about 8 meters high and 5 meters wide.
The upper part is a relief, and the lower part is an inscription written in three cuneiform characters: ancient Persian, Elamite and Akkadian.
Cuneiform is an ancient script in West Asia with a history of more than 5,000 years.
This kind of writing is written on the clay tablet with a stick or reed as a pen.
The clay tablets with words written on them are dried in the sun or dried with fire and saved as "books".
If it is a letter, put a layer of powder on the outside of the clay tablet document, and then put it into an "envelope" made of mud for transmission.
Archaeologists call this kind of writing "cuneiform" because its strokes are cuneiform.
Why write in three languages? Because ancient Persian cuneiform is not a historical script, but a purely artificial script, and its use is limited, and few people know it.
Therefore, when using it to issue imperial edicts, it is necessary to translate them in Elamite and Aramaic commonly used at that time.
This is why the inscription is written in three cuneiform characters.
However, with the demise of Persia in 330 BC, the cuneiform characters in ancient Persia gradually became an unknown extinct language, and the other two cuneiform characters have long been lost.
Therefore, people don't know what these words are telling people.
Rawlinson is determined to solve this mystery! He risked his life to climb the cliff, carefully and abnormally extended the inscription, and began the arduous interpretation and translation work.
Where there is a will, there is a way.
Following in the footsteps of predecessors, after 12 years' research, rawlinson finally successfully decoded the ancient Persian in 1845, and the contents described in the other two languages are estimated to be consistent with Persian.
Since then, this puzzling thing on the cliff is no longer a mystery, and people know the little-known story behind it.
In March 522 BC, the Persian emperor Cambyses Ⅱ led an expedition to Egypt.
A monk named Gomeda took the opportunity to pretend to be Baldia, the younger brother of the emperor who was executed by Cambyses, and launched a rebellion in Persia and Medea.
The rebellion lasted for half a year.
Emperor Cambyses died suddenly on his way back to Persia from Egypt.
Gomeda became emperor in the name of Baldia.
But he never summoned ministers and lived in seclusion every day.
It's not like what an emperor did. Ministers were full of doubts, and rumors spread everywhere for a time.
Some people say that this Bardia is actually a Zoroastrian monk Gomeida, but he has no conclusive evidence.
Later, a princess in Cambyses discovered that the new emperor had no ears and told her father Otanes about it. Otanes immediately concluded that the new emperor was not Baldia, but Gomeda, a monk.
Because when he was emperor in Ju Lushi, this Gomeda was ordered by Ju Lushi to cut off his ear because of negligence.
Otanes immediately told the truth to six other Persian nobles, including the later emperor Darius I.
They decided to launch a coup, kill Gomeda and regain power.
They succeeded, but there is controversy about who is the most qualified to be emperor.
Persian nobles were once leaderless.
Later, Otanes quit, but the remaining six remained uncompromising.
Finally, they agreed that the next morning, six people were riding horses in the suburbs, and whose mount screamed first was the emperor.
Darius made his groom play a trick to make his horse cry first and become emperor.
Darius was a resourceful man. He took advantage of the lack of contact between the "rebels" to break through one by one and finally put down the rebellion for a year.
Bethesda's cliff carvings record Darius' great achievements and are full of praise.
The inscription, written in the first person, reads: "I, Darius, the great king, the king of kings, the king of Persia, the king of provinces, the son of Hystad Spa, the grandson of Al Shama, Ahmennied ... According to Ah Fu Rameze, I am the king." It turned out that after the country was firmly established, Darius felt successful and returned home in triumph in September 520 BC.
When he traveled in a small village called Besidun near Akbatana, the capital of Mites (now Hamadan, Iran), he was filled with a very heroic mood. Recalling the ups and downs of these years, he was deeply touched, so he ordered people to engrave his great achievements, especially the deeds of suppressing the rebels, on the cliff near the village in order to leave a name for future generations.