• Rethinking the role of Persian and Greek luxury
• Investigating the transition to settled and farming lifestyles on the Konya Plain
• Exploring Persia’s northern defences in late antiquity
• The archaeological gems of Greece’s forgotten highlands
• Grama Bay: a crossroads in the Mediterranean
We all know that the finer things in life can transmit messages about wealth and status. In the epic struggles between the Persians and Greeks in the 1st millennium BC, though, luxury came to mean so much more, as Jamie Fraser told Matthew Symonds.
Persepolis paintings perfectly glorious’ was the verdict Prentice Duell cabled from Egypt to James Henry Breasted, founder of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (OI). He had just seen the work American artist Joseph Lindon Smith (1863-1950) created…
A major exhibition delving into 5,000 years of art and design in Iran is set to open in London in May. Lucia Marchini speaks to curator John Curtis for a preview of some of the ancient highlights.
Which king, crowned in 550BC, was the founder of the Achaemenid empire, the first Persian empire?
On the plain of Pasargadae, Cyrus the Great founded a spectacular garden palace. Nothing like it had ever been seen in the region before, raising questions about where the idea came from, how the garden was maintained, and even where the inhabitants lived. Recently, an Iranian-French team under Rémy Boucharlat went in search of the answers, as Andrew Selkirk reveals.