ArtaA Compendium of the Achaemenid World
A scholarly, searchable encyclopaedia of the Achaemenid Persian Empire (Cyrus the Great to Alexander, 550–330 BCE): its people, places, peoples, institutions and ideas; the primary sources and their evaluation; the material record; and long-form thematic surveys. Primary sources are cited precisely; modern scholarship is represented honestly, with debate and uncertainty kept visible rather than smoothed away.
Survey essays
- Religion & the Lie: the Achaemenid religious worldA survey of Achaemenid religion: the worship of Ahura Mazdā and the ideology of Truth against the Lie; the Magi and their rites of fire, oath and the dead; the toleration of subject gods and its limits; and the vexed, still-open question of the kings' relationship to Zarathustra.
- The Sources & How We KnowA survey of all the evidence for the Achaemenid empire and its problems: why no Persian wrote its history; the kings' own propaganda in stone; the Greek writers and Janett Morgan's "looking glass" (their Persia reflects Greek concerns as much as Persian fact); the Near-Eastern documents, each with its agenda; the unpropagandised administrative tablets; the material record; and the modern method of triangulation that reads through the Greek mirror while keeping the uncertainties visible.