Achaemenid,
World’s First Empire to Respect Cultural Diversity
Originally at: http://www.payvand.com/news/04/jul/1010.html
July 5, 2004
The Achaemenid dynasty was the first empire in the world that respected
the cultural diversity of its different peoples.
Achaemenids (550-330 B.C.) led by Cyrus II (also known as Cyrus the
Great or Cyrus the Elder) used to respect cultural values among the
various nations living in their empire, announced the China’s
official news agency, Xinhua in a story about the inscription of Pasargadae
on the World Heritage list. The first dynastic capital of the Achaemenid
Empire was founded by Cyrus II the Great, in Pars, homeland of the Persians,
in the 6th century BC. Its palaces, gardens and the mausoleum of Cyrus
are outstanding examples of the first phase of royal Achaemenid art
and architecture and exceptional testimonies of Persian civilization.
Particularly noteworthy vestiges in the 160-hectare site include the
Mausoleum of Cyrus II, Tall-e Takht or a fortified terrace, and a royal
ensemble of gatehouse, audience hall, residential palace, and gardens,
adds Xinhua.
Pasargadae was the capital of the first great multi-cultural empire
in Western Asia. Spanning the Eastern Mediterranean and Egypt to the
Hindus River, it is considered to be the first empire that respected
the cultural diversity of its different peoples.
This was reflected in Achaemenid architecture, a synthetic representation
of different cultures.
Iranian and Italian experts are working on a digital program to enlist
all inscriptions and manuscripts left from the Achaemenid dynasty.
The program aptly named Digital Achaemenid Royal Inscription Open Schema
Hypertext (DARIOSH) is the brainchild of Iran’s National Museum
and Italy’s L’Istituto Italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente
(ISIAO) and will be carried out at Naples University and Iranian National
Archeology Museum in Tehran.
Its design would help researchers including archeologists, inscriptions
experts and lexicologists in their online interdisciplinary studies,
because the program would collect all the dispersed data on the dynasty
(550-330 B.C.) from around the globe and categorize in one single place
for easier access.
The programmers are pursuing three major goals: 1) compiling an updated
list of the linguistic literature of languages spoken in that era, 2)
making a new analysis of the Achaemenids’ texts, 3) editing and
translating those texts
