THE ACHAEMENID EMPIRE
Simsar, Mehmed A.
The Achaemenid Empire Reviwed by MENMED A. SIMSAR HISTORY OF THE PERSIAN EMPIRE: (Achaemenid Period). By A. T. Olmstead. Chicago: The University of Chicago Pre**. 971 pages,...
...His people areflependent on no one...
...They will not even engage in the essential political bookkeeping of elections...
...There is the over-all suggestion of a mermaid dabbling in a technicolor brook of the soul...
...As horseman and bowman X proved myself eupeeaasf to ail ethers...
...between his sense of order' and anarchy, or the world of known symbols and free play...
...In the third stage, in England, Olivero kills the Green Child's husband, the miller Kneeshaw, who was trying to teed her blood...
...The barracks of the palace guards, the treasury of Darius and Xerxes, and their harem were laid bare and gradually restored...
...In western books, deriving from these early sources, the Persians were often represented as barbarian* and the Greeks as heroes and defenders of western civilization who, through their courage and insight, had saved the world from the inroads of these destructive Orientals In the absence of documentary evidence from the Persian side, it took centuries for the western world to recognize how incomplete and false was their knowledge of ancient Iran...
...971 pages, plate...
...as was to them by me commanded, so they did...
...In these edicts, issued in the languages of the subject peoples, Cyrus does not boast of his victories, but proclaims peace...
...He has created or invented a myth-woman, the Green Child...
...and later, after another series of accidents, he finds himself the leader of a revolution and proceeds to set up an anarchistic (democratic) "State...
...Within this Intercourse of symbols Read, in musical nuances, plays all the minutae that oppose reality, the upper-realm of time, value, place and being...
...10.00...
...He became a model for his successors...
...When the archeological expeditions of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago unearthed magnificient reliefs, buildings, and thousands of tablets at Persepolis the world was amazed...
...We may safely assume that the late Professor Olmstead's colleagues inspired by his scholarship and his students trained in the tradition of his scientific method will continue the research for which this volume has provided such great impetus...
...Eminent scholars and their students at the Oriental Institute devoted much time to the preparation of an up-to-date card catalogue dictionary of Old Persian...
...where even the walls of the body are considered prisons of the spirit In this way, almost tactilely, are both words contrasted as Read expands between crystalline philosophies and our own spiritual doom: In the underworld Olivero "had acquired that final wisdom, which sees the soul a disturber of the peace of the body...
...Olivero and the Green Child then enter into a pool and descend...
...The chapter of Cambyses and his conquest of Egypt is followed by one on Zoroaster, the Prophet of Iran...
...of his colleagues on the faculty of tha University of Chicago edited the volume...
...The decipherment of the Old Persian inscriptions at Behistun, their interpretation and analysis, and the linguistic and archeological studies which followed, added much to our knowledge.- Excavations, discoveries of other inscriptions, business documents, contemporary payri, and a copy of the autobiography , of Darius in the Aramaic language convinced the scholars that an adequate treatment of the history of the Achaemenid Empire was long overdue...
...At this point Read reaches, by cryptic metaphor, the condemnation of man's worldly habits...
...Becoming Involved accidentally InShe affairs of the world, his leading character, Olivero, an English lad, travels abroad and exiles himself for many years...
...The remainder of the book traces the downfall of the empire from Xerxes to the conquest of Alexander and the sack of Persepolis...
...He refers with great pride to his exploits in his inscriptions and boasts of his origin and power in his autobiography...
...But the only satisfactions are physical, measured and immutable...
...Olivero now becomes the ec"centric specie, since he is man, human, pale — and is dressed...
...The next nine chapters deal with the reign of Darius, who is no doubt the most fascinating and colorful figure in this great drama...
...READ: The Pastoral Morality Reviewed by HARRY ROSXOLENKO THE GREEN CHILD...
...He discusses the nature and the contents of his royal proclamations addressed to the conquered nations...
...He awaits petrification, materialization and permanence instead of the usual human rot and dissolution...
...for his people, in their pastoral morality, have grown beyond his own blue-print of Utopia...
...With this echo, and amid the chimes of bells, Olivero dies, having lived through various stages of simplicity...
...COMPOSED as an allegory on the several psychological planes of the involved spirit and its simpler catechisms of politics, the novel enters its second stage —a 19th Century adventure into liberalism and revolution, which gives Read sn opportunity to examine various modes of social orders...
...and there is no ambiguity regarding her mora primal integration...
...He devoted the fifth volume of his Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World to the history of the Achaemenid period...
...In the world of the underground, nature has its own sublimity...
...With the help of these tools, in the preparation of which he undoubtedly had a great share himself, and with the experience of a lifetime of study and scholarship devoted to the history of the ancient East, tiw late Professor A. T. Olmstead of'"the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago produced his monumental volume on the history of the Achaemenid Empire...
...As horttarnaai I praTatfad...
...His state is too happy...
...Valuable infoimation is also given about the organization of thesatrapies, their social anckeconomic life, and building and real estate conditions among the subject peoples...
...She is more like a luminous mushroom despite her very feminine shape...
...For we become lost in symbols that do not expand as in our gaseous universe, but are contained, imaginatively...
...195 pages...
...He was a ruthless conqueror, and able organizer, a great lawgiver, and an ambitious builder...
...The soul it is that incites the senses to seek spiritual satisfactions...
...We learn that he does not only offer them freedom of religion but prostrates himaetf before their gads and orders that their destroyed temples be rebuilt and their gods restored to their shrines...
...Bead engages in his forte, the meaning of the State and the Individual, While describing the workings of early Jesuitical cooperative ventures in Christianity...
...la his autobiography, which was composed about 520 B. C. hi announces: "By the favor ef Ahuramazda, these lands walked according to my laws...
...His daughter...
...The following three chapters are devoted to the reign of Cyrus, founder of the Achaemenid Empire, and give a detailed account of the conquest of the Median Empire by Cyrus and of the downfall of Lydia and Babylonia...
...OLMSTEAD DEVOTES one of these chapters to an excellent character study of Cyrui and paints a vivid picture of his subtle propaganda methods...
...The result is this magnificient and unique study which has no parallel and which for many years to come will remain an authoritative work on the Achaemenid period...
...for there, between the lower and upper-blue-print, hi the division between man and his imagination...
...An archeological corpus 'of some three hundred thousand photographs and other, material was assembled...
...He ruled thirty-six years ofqr an empire which extended from India to Egypt...
...Many of the recognizable elements suggest that mtn is on nil way from birth to wisdom, or to ideal social modes and societies in the underworld of free adjustment...
...LESS than a hundred years ago our knowledge of the ancient history and culture of Iran depended primarily on Greek writers of whom Herodotus remained J our main source...
...but it is chiefly, despite its allegorical patterns, a rich appraisal of man's conduct toward his own ways of life and art, or to any other world he can conceive, create or attune himself to...
...4 THE WELL-KNOWN British historian, George Rawlinson, was the first to question Greek sources and to look for others...
...Similar dictionaries were compiled in Elamite and Phoenician, in which many inscriptions were written...
...In contrast to our psyche where time is Deity, one discovers the underworld state of clocklessness rubbing up against non-existence or merely living...
...It will certainly add to Herbert Read's stature as a poet of the imagination, and as a novelist, for the book has an immense newness that echoes through his beautiful style, In this best of all green worlds...
...From long ago, we are princely, from long ago, our family was royal...
...Along with the myths and literary practices running to each other's bitches, and the werewolf making the trek to Hollywood, Herbert Read in the interim has added a kind of moral mask to his eternal nature-girl...
...Soon after the death of Cambyses he made himself king...
...Oriental tales and romances are alluded to and the development of science and religious reforms are treated at length in these chapters...
...The tablets bore record of the building activities of Darius and Xerxes...
...Unfortunately he did not live to see the book through its final stages, but as a last gesture of friendship a few...
...She is not an animal and not all human, being devoid of most human vices, including subjective love...
...at the same time he gathers in aesthetic worth, like design, shape and color...
...THIS BOOK becomes all things...
...AN ENTIRELY new picture of the Achaemenid Empire emerged from these discoveries...
...Tha Aveata, a collection of ancient religious texts of Iran, and the Old Testament also threw some light on the subject, but few historians rea'ized the significance of these religious books as sources of material...
...In another inscription we read: "I was a friend to my friends...
...In this grotto-clvllizatlon where only Green Men and Women abound, the symbols are activated to reverse meanings...
...WITH EQUAL profundity and color the reign of Xerxes, son of Darius, U described in the next four chapters...
...This will be received with skepticism by some scholars...
...2.75...
...It is the reverse acclimation of nature as we know it, turned in...
...Thanks to a number of inscriptions and above all to his autobiography, we iearn more about Darius than any of his predecessors...
...For the solution of this and other questions, we shall have to await results of further examination of the Behistun inscriptions and the linguistic comparison of their text with the text of the Avesta...
...The book is divided into thirty-seven chapters and contains ten maps, two useful indexes, and seventy plates in black and white...
...For the first time valuable information on the system of Persian administration, on the life of the king, the nobles, and of the common people was ob^ tained...
...By Herbert Read...
...Cleta Margaret Olmstead Robbins, read the proofs, prepared the indexes and selected the illustrations...
...I could do everything...
...The first two chapters are introductory in nature and contain a recapitulation of ancient history, and of the pre-history of Iran with an examination of the Median Empire...
...THE THREE stages of the novel are neatly joined...
...Eschewing meat and carnality, she has daintier freshets of appeal...
...Long before the scientific archeological method had been evolved, he amazed his contemporaries by his skillful analysis of the art and architecture of ancient Iran...
...For instance, Olmstead identifies Zoroaster's patron, Vishtapsa, as none other than the father of Darius...
...It might well be the womb or the tombs of infancy, since they have traversed a stream that turned back from the direction it had been running in Olivero's youth...
...His father, Vishtaspa, was appointed satrap of Bactria and Hyrcania by Cyrus, end he himself entered the service of Cambyses, son and successor of Cyrus...
...Darius accompanied Cambyses to Egypt as his spear bearer...
...This large volume raises important questions...
...One finds here a series of cleverly written and interesting sketches of the royalty and of the intrigues of the harem...
...It is a crystal world of crystal depth, where the most important art is crystallography...
...For only stone is left in this crystal underworld planet, edged within the imagination...
...The inscriptions revealed the names of the workmen, the countries from which they came, and the wages they received...
...Imprisoned in Spain, be studies the classical test of democratic man...
...New York: New Directions...
...HERBERT READ, poet and critic, the author of various books on art and anarchism, sums up the spirit of man and Letters in this elaborate novel, conceived as an eloquent tour-de-force on man as a child of nature...
...She is camouflaged in all normal human relationships, but is very well dressed in the lofty ectoplasm of Herbert Read's clear prose and very superior story...
...It is a world of green in all metaphors and relationships...
...Tracing his descent to the founder, Hakhamanash, he says: "Therefore, we are called Achaemenids...
...where space does not exist, but only walls...
...From her unknown birth to her marriage to Knees haw the miller, the Green Child dwells but partly in our world...
Vol. 32 • January 1949 • No. 3
