Books : Ancient Persia
Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 935
EAN: 9781850439998
ISBN: 1850439990
Label: I. B. Tauris
Manufacturer: I. B. Tauris
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 400
Publication Date: July 15, 1998
Publisher: I. B. Tauris
Sales Rank: 2110225
Studio: I. B. Tauris
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Product Description:
Of all the great civilizations of the ancient world, that of Persia is one of the least understood. Josef Wiesehöfer, one of the most respected scholars of the ancient world, provides here a comprehensive survey of the Persian Empire under Achaeminids, the Parthians and the Sassanians. By focusing on the primary Persian sources--written, archaeological and numismatic evidence from Persia--he avoids the traditional Western approach which has tended to rely so heavily on inaccurate and sometimes prejudiced Greek and Roman sources. Part of the freshness of this book comes from presenting a historical discussion of Persia from a Near Eastern perspective. A comprehensive social, political and cultural history of ancient Persia, Wiesehöfer's book provides important new material for specialists while being fully accessible and appealing to general readers interested in the ancient world.
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
The story the book tells is interesting but the Author, in my opinion is, sadly politically motivated. For example he Claims, (and masks his opinion as historical fact) that Cyrus the Great was a vicious king, as violent and ruthless as all the kings of his time and that his legacy of the first Bill of Rights, is nothing but propaganda. That should raise red flags everywhere.
Rating:  -
"Ancient Persia" is a didactic account of military and political history of ancient Persia from the Achaemenid period up to the Sassanid defeat by the Califfs. The intention of the Author is to approach this often ignored period of ancient history through new or not well known documents, since a great defect of early Persian historiography depends on the almost exclusive use of Greek and Roman documents that depict Achaemenids, Partians and Sassanids as "barbarians" (not the Selgiuchids which were practily Greek!). Unfortunately most of the documents we have on this period are actually Greek or Roman, while the scanty remaining material is archeological. So despite the intentions, this book does not add much to what already found in literature and this is a pity since the Author comes from the best archeological study group on ancient Persia that started with Carsten Niebuhr, passing through Erns Herzfeld to the present days.
History books for lay-persons require a distinctive narrative capacity. The reader often has a birdview culture of the topic but lacks precise references and approaches the text with curiosity and great expectations. Unfortunately, Wiesehofer's "Ancient Persia" is not an engrossing read eventhough it is not difficult or excessively scholastic. The Authors nominates Herodotus, Xenophon, Themistocles, Strabo, Ammiano Marcellinus and others but never explains either who they are or in what period and why they wrote. To fully appreciate the book, the ... Read More
Rating:  -
This book is different than other books because Wiesehofer is not just discussing Achaemenids peroid. The author integrates other Iran's historical point.
Rating:  -
This is not a history of Ancient Persia but rather a set of essays on just a few topics: "The Testimonies" (i.e. the historical sources); "The King and his Subjects"; and "Everyday Life".
Basically, apart from the Bisutun relief (text available at http://www.avesta.org/op.htm) and the Persepolis Texts (R. T. Hallock, Chicago 1969), nearly all the sources are Greek or Latin upon which the author relies despite the contrary assertion given by the publisher on the flyleaf. It's not the ancient Greek and Roman writers that the author attempts to discredit but rather the modern writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Better to read "The Persian Empire" by J. M. Cook or "A Political History of the Achaemenid Empire" by Muhammad A. Dandamaev.
Rating: -
This book by J.Wiesehoefer, who is an expert especially on achaemenid and parthian history, tries to look at Persia in a different way than many earlier scholars did. He does this by questioning the information the Greek and Roman historians give about Ancient Iran - how realistic is the picture these sources draw? Where the Persians really nothing more but enemies? Were they really as decadent and despotic as most ancient authors indicate? This book is full of usefull information - go get it.
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