The World of Achaemenid Persia: History, Art and Society in Iran and the Ancient Near East

Anyone who want to educate themselves on some of the latest finds regarding the ancient Persian Empire would do well to pick this book up. It is packed full of great information. More importantly, biblical or secular scholar to include historians will be left scratching their head as to the utter lack of the archaeological evidence for Ptolemy 205 year timeline of this period. After Xerxes (Darius the great's son) archeology evidence supporting Ptolemy canon falls off the map. His timeline for the reign of Persian kings is nothing more then complete guesswork as all the known evidence to include this book stands against it.Here is some food for thought, I can say Ptolemy's canon is 82 years too long from Xerxes to Alexander the Great and the Archeological evidence as it stands would agree 100% with me. Let's hope Iran will unmuzzle their archeologist so this great work can continue.Breakout your highlighter you will need it!!

This book is simply indispensable for the study of Achaemenid Persia. The essays are well written, well considered and will deepen the knowledge and understanding of those who are already expert in the field. Highly recommended

This heavy book consists of the proceedings of a conference at the British Museum in 2005, so it is interesting that it only was published in 2010.Its 51 papers are arranged on 563 pages (plus bibliography and index) into 8 groups:- History, containing some reflections on European historiography, - Religion,- Gender Studies (some of which are more thrilling than I expected), - Architecture, - Archaeology, - Seals & Coins (as usual, very important sources), - general arts and crafts, and, finally, - Regional Studies, including some interesting essays on (non-Greek and non-Persian) areas governed by the Archaemenide empire. The papers usually encompass between ten and thirty pages, some of the most auspicious, however, unfortunately are only one-page abstracts. (Probably in the long period since the conference took place the authors have lost their manuscripts.)As it should be expected, the readability of these studies originating from so many different authors range from good to, er, not so good.But I defintely deem the 40 pages bibliography awe-inspiring.This book is certainly not meant to be read in one go, but one can pick those essays one is most interested in (I personally think a lot of them really are interesting) or use the book just for reference.After all, it looks quite impressive in the bookshelve.