The first excavator of the site, actually rebuilt a palace to live in. He got er a large amount of money to start excavating the site. A domestic house on the terrace which was the dig house and is continually in use. And there is still a library there, a study library. There is a garden that was developd by the second excavators a wife in the night in the mid 19 thirties. So it's a place, it's a twentieth century place as well as a ruin.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the role of the great 'City of the Persians' founded by Darius I as the ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid Empire that stretched from the Indus Valley to Egypt and the coast of the Black Sea. It was known as the richest city under the sun and was a centre at which the Empire's subject peoples paid tribute to a succession of Achaemenid leaders, until the arrival of Alexander III of Macedon who destroyed it by fire supposedly in revenge for the burning of the Acropolis in Athens.
The image above is a detail from a relief at the Apadana, the huge audience hall, and shows a lion attacking a bull.
With
Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones
Professor of Ancient History at Cardiff University
Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis
Curator of Middle Eastern Coins at the British Museum
And
Lindsay Allen
Lecturer in Greek and Near Eastern History at King's College London
Producer: Simon Tillotson.