Mark Gagnon

the nations of the empire paying tribute to the persian people and to the persian king and these reliefs or you know designs rather are some of the finest surviving examples of achaemenid art and they tell us something really crucial about how the persians saw their empire unlike the assyrians whose palace reliefs glorified conquest and brutality the persopolis reliefs showed people coming willingly

bearing gifts, giving stuff from their homeland, dressed in their own native clothing.

And the message here was that this is an empire that valued cooperation and diplomacy, not just domination and conquest.

Now, whether this was actually true or if this was propaganda that was created by Xerxes and his royal court,

to basically paint himself in you know a more diplomatic and enlightened light this is a different question but either way the art is extremely sophisticated and deliberate to try to present this image xerxes also built extensively in the cities of susa and at nakshi rostam where his eventual tomb was carved into the rock face of this massive cliff alongside the tombs of his predecessors including darius

Now, it's worth mentioning here that most of what we know about Xerxes as a builder doesn't come from written sources.

It actually comes from the designs and the archaeological excavations at these sites.

And the stones themselves kind of function as the best records.

The point is this.

If you know Xerxes from the Greco-Persian Wars, you're maybe only seeing like 10% of who this guy was.

Again, he did do these wars that...

You know, he won some battles, but ultimately lost these conflicts.

But that's only a few years out of over 20 years of ruling.

To his own people, he was a builder that was creating these massive cities and these giant structures.

He was a patron of art and architecture and a king who expanded the physical and cultural infrastructure of one of the greatest empires on Earth up until that point.

Now, at this point, you've probably heard of Xerxes from, you know, the movie 300, or perhaps you know him from another episode we did here on History Camp, or maybe you know him from a class you took in college.

But you might have also heard of him in the Bible.

Like the book of Esther, okay, in the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament, you probably have heard the story of Hazarus.

This was a great Persian king who ruled over 127 provinces from India to Ethiopia.

Now, in the story, Hazarus throws a lavish banquet, gets rid of his queen Vashti for refusing to come dance for him and his guests.