https://www.europesays.com/dk/156481/ Five-year Iran-Poland study sheds new light on life in Iran before the Medes #Achaemenid #AncientCemetery #archaeology #farming #history #Iran #IronAge #MedesEra #MostafaDehpahlavan #Poland #QarehTepe #Qazvin #Research #TepeSagzabad #UniversityOfTehran #UniversityOfWarsaw #Warsaw
#achaemenid — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #achaemenid, aggregated by home.social.
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Five-year Iran-Poland study sheds new light on life in Iran before the Medes
TEHRAN – A five-year joint research project by the University of Tehran and the University of Warsaw has…
#Poland #Polska #PL #Europe #Europa #EU #Achaemenid #ancientcemetery #archaeology #farming #history #Iran #IronAge #Medesera #MostafaDehpahlavan #QarehTepe #Qazvin #research #TepeSagzabad #UniversityofTehran #UniversityofWarsaw
https://www.europesays.com/poland/23297/ -
Five-year Iran-Poland study sheds new light on life in Iran before the Medes
TEHRAN – A five-year joint research project by the University of Tehran and the University of Warsaw has…
#EuropeSays #Headlines #News #Europe #Europa #EU #Tehran #Achaemenid #ancientcemetery #archaeology #Farming #History #Iran #IronAge #Medesera #MostafaDehpahlavan #Poland #QarehTepe #Qazvin #Research #TepeSagzabad #UniversityofTehran #UniversityofWarsaw
https://www.europesays.com/iran/271311/ -
https://www.europesays.com/iran/271311/ Five-year Iran-Poland study sheds new light on life in Iran before the Medes #Achaemenid #AncientCemetery #archaeology #Farming #History #Iran #IronAge #MedesEra #MostafaDehpahlavan #Poland #QarehTepe #Qazvin #Research #Tehran #TepeSagzabad #UniversityOfTehran #UniversityOfWarsaw
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Iran, Italy to cooperate on restoring ancient gateway near Persepolis for site museum
TEHRAN – Cultural heritage authorities are moving ahead with plans to convert the ancient Tall-e Ajori archaeological site…
#Italy #Europe #Europa #EU #Achaemenid #archaeology #Excavation #Farsprovince #Iran #persepolis #sitemuseum #Tall-e-Ajori #UNESCO
https://www.europesays.com/italy/37281/ -
Iran, Italy to cooperate on restoring ancient gateway near Persepolis for site museum https://www.byteseu.com/2244817/ #Achaemenid #Archaeology #EXCAVATION #FarsProvince #Iran #Italy #Persepolis #SiteMuseum #TallEAjori #UNESCO
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Achaemenid column base, other relics unearthed in UNESCO-listed Hegmataneh
TEHRAN – Iranian archaeologists conducting the 25th season of excavations at the UNESCO-listed ancient site of Hegmataneh in…
#EuropeSays #Headlines #News #Europe #Europa #EU #Tehran #Achaemenid #Ancient #archaeology #Bu-AliSinaUniversity #Ecbatana #HegmatanehHill #Iran #UNESCO
https://www.europesays.com/iran/168028/ -
https://www.europesays.com/iran/168028/ Achaemenid column base, other relics unearthed in UNESCO-listed Hegmataneh #Achaemenid #Ancient #archaeology #BuAliSinaUniversity #Ecbatana #HegmatanehHill #Iran #Tehran #UNESCO
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#Frankfurt's #Archaeological #Museum offers a fascinating glimpse into the #AncientWorld through its collection of #antiquities. From #Luristan bronzes to #Achaemenid metalwork, the exhibition highlights the interconnectedness of #ancient cultures and the material traces of human life, practice, and exchange. I've summarized my visit in this blog post:
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Tehran Times – Iran eyes UNESCO status for ancient circular city of Darabgerd
TEHRAN – Authorities in Iran’s Fars province have announced a comprehensive plan to pursue UNESCO World Heritage status…
#EuropeSays #Headlines #News #Europe #Europa #EU #Tehran #Achaemenid #ancientcity #Darabgerd #farsprovince #Iran #UNESCO
https://www.europesays.com/iran/87971/ -
https://www.europesays.com/iran/87971/ Tehran Times – Iran eyes UNESCO status for ancient circular city of Darabgerd #Achaemenid #AncientCity #Darabgerd #FarsProvince #Iran #Tehran #UNESCO
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Achaemenid Persian goblet depicting horse and rider, Armenia or Iran?, 6th-3rd century BCE
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Greeks and Persians in combat at the Battle of Marathon, 490 BCE
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https://www.europesays.com/2535559/ Iran, Tajikistan seek UNESCO label for Cyrus Cylinder, famed as world’s first charter of human right #Achaemenid #Babylon #BritishMuseum #Conflicts #CyrusCylinder #dushanbe #HassanFartousi #Iran #Tajikistan #Tehran #tourism #travel #Unesco
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Ancient DNA indicates 3,000 years of genetic continuity in the Northern Iranian Plateau, from the Copper Age to the Sassanid Empire https://www.byteseu.com/1006656/ #Achaemenid #AncientDNA #Conflicts #GeneticAncestry #Genetics #HumanitiesAndSocialSciences #Iran #MolecularBiology #multidisciplinary #Parthian #PersianPlateau #Sassanid #Science
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@mzedp
They look remarkably similar to this...
https://ancientart.tumblr.com/post/98100911086/a-stag-shaped-parthian-drinking-horn-1-of-about-4
I'm pretty sure I've also seen similar looking ('modern') versions come up on Antiques Roadshow.
#archaeology #Pompeii #Achaemenid #Persian #Parthian -
A person who was very rich in earlier times and didn't have time to spend the money.
Or was stingy.https://arkeonews.net/pot-overflowing-with-persian-gold-coins-from-400-bc-discovered-in-turkiye/
#Achaemenid #Archaeology #Türkiye -
Name of Iranian city ‘Shiraz’ identified on 1800-year-old Sassanid clay seal
Archaeologists have identified the name “Shiraz” inscribed in Pahlavi script on a clay sealing dating back to the Sassanid era. This ancient city, located approximately 60 kilometers south of Persepolis, once served as the ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid Empire...
More information: https://archaeologymag.com/2024/04/name-of-iranian-city-identified-on-sassanid-clay-seal/
Follow @archaeology
#archaeology #achaemenid #AncientIran #Sasanian #qasreabunasr #shiraz #metmuseum
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Over on the #ISAWNYU News blog today: "ISAW Professor Dan Potts Co-Edits Oxford History of the Ancient Near East"
https://isaw.nyu.edu/news/dan-potts-co-edits-oxford-history-of-the-ancient-near-east
"With the appearance of Volumes IV and V, covering the #Assyrian and #Achaemenid empires, publication of the five-volume Oxford History of the Ancient Near East is now complete. Co-edited by Karen Radner (Ludwig-Maximilian University, Munich), Nadine Moeller (Yale University) and Dan Potts (ISAW), the five volumes cover the entire ..."
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some new listening in Bible and near east antiquity to mention
https://pdbowman.studio/briefs/31-jan-2023-new-bible-ancient-near-east-listening/
#blog #bible #yahwism #achaemenid #persia #israel #ancientNearEast #judaism #earlyChristianity #ShaulShaked #YonatanAdler #AntonioPanaino
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The #Hellenistic city of #AiKhanoum in #Afghanistan. Actually, it is the Hellenistic phase of a city that preceded and survived the Hellenistic city with the earlier and later phases encountered on the upper terrace and outside the city walls. While many focus on the #Greek culture including the possible #Aristotle papyrus, the site contains a lot of Baktrian and Indian influences, while the palace itself owes much to #Achaemenid architecture. A real gem of #Silkroad #archaeology #histodon
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CW: new publication
My first book is out. That's it, that's the toot https://bookandsword.com/2020/11/14/my-first-book-is-out/ #ancient #achaemenid
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Some Terrifying Numbers
St. Felix (probably not the bishop of Nola?) From a polyptych by Battista da Vicenza (b. ca. 1375, d. 1438), Vicenza, Museo Civico, inv. no. A 18-22. Photo by Sean Manning, 2020.So a lot of us have spent the past month or two staring at some scary numbers and working out their implications. These numbers are based on counts, even if the authors had to make some assumptions and do some arithmetic to turn something they can count into what they want to know. I spend a lot of time staring at Greek numbers for barbarian armies, and if they were based on counts they are hard to understand:
- If we have multiple sources, they give numbers which vary widely, even if they all drew on the same earlier writers
- The smallest Greek number for a barbarian army, 100,000, is as big as the largest army we can document in western Eurasia before the Napoleonic Wars, even if we are very generous about what counts as ‘documentation’ (hard-hearted historians would say we need archives so no army strength can be known until about a thousand years ago)
- The smallest Greek number for a barbarian army is about as many as the biggest army which any Near Eastern ruler claims to have commanded.
- Either there are no numbers for individual units, or the numbers given add up to a much smaller number than the grand total
- Usually, no source for the numbers is given: we are not told whether they are an estimate by scouts or by the enemy’s clerks.
- Such vast armies could not march, camp, and fight in the usual fashion or on the described battlefield.
If we assume that these numbers are based on counts, we have to chose one of the figures in our different sources, then ‘correct’ it by adding, subtracting, multiplying or dividing until it fits our expectations. As a fellow named Whatley said in 1920, these theories often sound convincing until you read the next article with another ingenious theory that contradicts the first one. So assuming that these numbers are based on counts has not lead to new knowledge that people with different perspectives can agree on, it has just lead to endless arguments and speculation.
So a few years ago, I asked myself what would we expect to see if these numbers are drawn from something other than counting. And instead of looking at different writers’ figures for the same army, I looked for the same number in stories about different armies. Have a look at the fifteen nineteen lines on this table and decide if you see what I see.
Text
Date
Summary
RIMAP A.0.102.10, iii:15-16
845 BCE
Šalmanessar III crossed the Euphrates with 120,000 men
Judges 8:10
Debated
Gideon and his 300 soldiers kill 120,000 Midanites
Hdt. 2.158.5
5th century BCE
120,000 Egyptians die building a canal for pharaoh Necho
Ctesias F. 13.28, 30 Lenfant
4th century BCE
120,000 Persians attack Plataea, 120,000 Persians die after Xerxes retreats from Greece
Xen. Anab. 1.7.11-13
401 BCE
Deserters claim that Artaxerxes II has 1,200,000 men
Xen. Anab. 3.5.16401 BCEThe Carduchi annihilated a royal army of 120,000 men which invaded their countryXen. Anab. 5.6.9400 BCEThe Paphlagonians have many cavalry and more than 120,000 infantryXen. Hell. 1.5.21
4th century BCE
An interpolator says that the Carthaginians invaded Sicily with 120 triremes and an army of 120,000 men
Xen. Cyr. 1.2.15
4th century BCE
“They say that the Persians are about 12 myriads”
Xen. Cyr. 6.2.104th century BCESpies report that the coalition against Cyrus includes 120,000 Egyptian infantryXen. Cyr. 8.6.19
4th century BCE
An elderly Cyrus commands 120,000 cavalry and 600,000 (5 × 120,000) infantry
2 Chronicles 28:6
4th century BCE?
Pekah of Remaliah slew 120,000 valiant men in Judah in a single day
Jonah 4:11
4th century BCE?
There are more than 120,000 persons in Nineveh, and also many cattle
Judith 2:15
2nd century BCE?
Holofernes gathers an army of 120,000 men and 12,000 cavalry
I Maccabees 11:45
c. 100 BCE
The 120,000 people of Antioch rise up against their king
Justin, Epitoma Pompei Troagi, 41.5.7
1st century CE (original 1st century BCE)
Arsaces, the second Parthian king, fought Antiochus with 100,000 infantry and 20,000 cavalry
Arrian, Indica, 19.5 2nd century CEWhen he prepared to return from the River Hydaspes, Alexander the Great had 120,000 men of all nations with himPlut. Vit. Sulla 22.4
2nd century CE
Sulla says that he defeated a Pontic army of 120,000 men at Chaeronea
Plut. Vit. Lucull. 7.4
2nd century CE
Mithridates trained 120,000 infantry in the Roman fashion and invaded Bithynia
Cassius Dio 62.2.3 (fragment)c. 200-222 CEBoudicca gathers an army of 120,000 Britons and urges them to revoltHistoria Augusta, Life of Severus Alexander 56.5c. 360-425 CESeverus Alexander tells the Senate that he defeated 120,000 Persian cavalry and killed 10,000 cataphracts2 Maccabees 8.19c. 161-70 BCE8,000 Maccabees once killed 120,000 enemies and took much booty2 Maccabees 12.20c. 161-70 BCEMaccabaeus defeats an army of 120,000 infantry and 2,500 cavalryThese texts span a thousand years, three languages, and even more cultures and religions, but the figure of 120,000 (2 × 60 × the largest named number in most Semitic languages) or 1,200,000 (2 × 60 × the largest named number in ancient Greek) shows up again and again. Most of these sources are not ones which ancient historians find trustworthy for numbers, they are stories about long ago and far away. And I think stories is the key word. This number does not appear in documents about the actual strength of specific units on specific days, just in stories that someone might ask to hear for the sheer joy of hearing them.
It is comforting to think that Greek and Roman numbers for barbarian armies are based on counts, because that makes them sound rational and empirical and lets us use those numbers to say something about the ancient world. But that assumption creates a lot of problems. If we assume that the numbers in one story are often based on numbers in another story, then suddenly we can explain some of the things that were hard to understand. And this would not make the ancients any more or less irrational than the moderns who give their own numbers for the Persian wars, multiplying or dividing ancient numbers until they have something they can believe in and that fits numbers they have read in stories about the Siege of Vienna or Napoleon’s invasion of Russia. Basing numbers for big frightening things on counts is not natural, it is one of the hardest things in the world to do.
After I wrote this post, I learned that my old sparring partner Patrick Waterson, who was a firm believer in the big armies in the Old Testament and Herodotus and an active member of the Society of Ancients, UK, died in the UK on 14 January 2020. SIT·TERRA·TIBI·LEVIS·COMILES
Further Reading:
- Whatley, N. (1964) “On the Possibility of Reconstructing Marathon and Other Ancient Battles,” The Journal of Hellenic Studies 84 pp. 119-139
- Skepdic ‘Anchoring Effect’
- John Gagné, “Counting the Dead: Traditions of Enumeration and the Italian Wars,” Renaissance Quarterly 67 (2014) pp. 791–840 (added 2024-01-25)
This is based on chapter 6.6.1 of my first book which is forthcoming from Franz Steiner Verlag in winter 2020/2021.
Edit 2023-02-14: added Cassius Dio
Edit 2023-02-21: added the royal army in Xen. Anab. 3.5.16
Edit 2023-03-08: addded Xen. Cyr. 6.2.10
Edit 2023-05-04: over on his blog, Andrew Gelman points to an article in The Atlantic with the phrase “These numbers are what we might call “decorative statistics.” Their purpose is not to convey an actual amount of money but to sound big and impressive. That doesn’t keep them from being added, subtracted, divided, or multiplied to yield other decorative statistics”
Edit 2023-05-29: see also Lock, F. P. (2012) The rhetoric of numbers in Gibbon’s History (Newark : University of Delaware Press)
Edit 2023-10-01: someone almost got it!
I’m sometimes embarrassed by where I have been forced to find my statistics … Often, the only place to find numbers is in a newspaper article, almanac, chronicle or encyclopedia which needs to summarize major events into a few short sentences or into one scary number, and occasionally I get the feeling that some writers use numbers as pure rhetorical flourishes. To them, “over a million” does not mean “>106“; it’s just synonymous with “a lot”.
Matthew ‘Atrocitology’ White http://necrometrics.com/warstats.htm#RecurringEdit 2023-10-24: added Arrian, Indica 19.5
Edit 2023-12-21: added Historia Augusta, Life of Severus Alexander, 56.5 (Lacus Curtius)
Edit 2025-03-07: add 2 Maccabees 8.19, 12.20 after a chat with Benjamin Scolnic https://www.attalus.org/translate/2macc_2.html
Edit 2025-06-06: TODO add the Tale of the Route of Mamai about the 1380 Battle of Kulikovo
Edit 2026-04-15: added Xen. Anab. 5.6.9
Edit 2026-09-04: into the postwar era!
#Achaemenid #ancient #armySize #disManibus #methodology“Leone said, ‘I wanted to show human imbecility in a picaresque film where I would also show the reality of war. I had read somewhere that 120,000 people died in Southern camps such as Andersonville. And I was not ignorant of the fact that there were camps in the North.'”
Christopher Frayling, Sergio Leone: something to do with death (Farber and Farber: New York and London, 2000) p. 205