History - Top Ten Places of Historical Interest (Part I)

I had mentioned in my last Blogmaster address that I would soon be posting a piece on this. However, as I have been writing it, I have realized that I have enough material for several blogs as far as places of historial interest are concerned. So this is Part I, where I cover the top three places of historical interest, which are Persepolis (Iran), the Parthenon (Greece) and Angkor Wat (Cambodia). There are many other places of historical interest I want to write about, and I will soon. They include Hagia Sophia (Istanbul, Turkey), Vijaynagar (Hampi, India), Carthage (Tunisia), Machu Picchu (Peru) and several others. Hope you like this one.

These are places that I have read a great deal about and would love to visit before I am summoned to that Great Gig In the Sky. So here goes:

• Persepolis (near Shiraz, Iran): Twenty-six hundred years after it was built at the foot of the Mount of Mercy in the Persian highlands and twenty-three hundred years after it was burned to the ground by the drunk Alexander the Macedonian, the mighty pillars of the Hall of a Hundred Columns still stand, bearing mute testimony to the greatest and richest empire the world has ever seen. The name still inspires awe among lovers of ancient history. Persepolis (Old Persian name ‘Takht-E-Jamshed” or “Throne of Jamshed”) was the center of the largest and powerful empire on earth – the Persian Achaemenid Empire (named after a mythical ancestor Hakamanush). It was the capital and nerve-center of an empire that stretched from the banks of the Indus River in modern-day Pakistan, to Thrace in modern-day Greece, from the Volga River in the Russian steppes to the Nile in Egypt. The King’s Royal Roads spread out from Persepolis to the far corners of the empire – to Taxila in India a thousand miles away in the East, and to Byzantium on the shores of the Mediterranean, a thousand miles to the West. The King’s Peace ensured that traders and travelers traveling across this vast empire were unmolested by bandits and thieves.

The first World Empire was not Roman, contrary to what most people think. It was Persian, and Persepolis was its capital, located high in the Persian highlands of the Zagros Mountains, in the south-west corner of modern-day Iran. It was built by Darius the Great and his son Xerxes, successors to the founder of the empire, Cyrus the Great. The palace complex on the mountain was quite simply an architectural marvel – the most magnificent collection of buildings in the world in its time (and for a millennium after that). The showcase of the complex was the Apadana Palace with its’ Hall of a Hundred Columns – a breathtakingly impressive building. The Apadana had a grand hall in the shape of a square, each side sixty meters long with seventy-two columns, thirteen of which still stand on the enormous platform. It was the only building in the world to have a portico on all four of its massive sides. The Parthenon built by Athenian leader Pericles on the Acropolis in Athens is but a pale imitation of the Apadana Palace, which was just one of many splendid buildings at Persepolis. Some of the other great buildings on the platform were the palaces of Darius and Xerxes and the Tripylon or Debating Hall.

Each of the seventy two columns of the Apadana Palace was nineteen meters high with a square Taurus and plinth. The columns carried the weight of the vast and heavy ceiling. The tops of the columns were made from animal sculptures such as two headed bulls, lions and eagles. The interiors of the palace were decorated with glittering jewels, silk curtains and intricate wall hangings.

And in the center of the great Apadana Palace, in the Hall of the Mountain King, sat the Great King himself on the Lion Throne, facing the rising sun and guarded by the Ten Thousand Immortals, receiving ambassadors from Mesopotamia and Egypt, from Sparta and India and dispensing justice to the subjects of his far-flung empire.

Unfortunately, the successors of Cyrus, Darius and Xerxes were not great philosopher warrior kings like their ancestors. When Alexander fought the last Persian Great King Darius III at Gaugamela in 331 B.C, he won when he should have lost. Darius III panicked just when the tide of the battle was turning and the formidable Persian cavalry led by the elite Ten Thousand Immortals was besting the Macedonian Companion cavalry. Darius III fled, Alexander suddenly became heir to the largest and richest empire in the world and in a fit of drunken rage and egged on by his prostitute friend, Thais of Athens, burned Persepolis to the ground.

And so the greatest and most sophisticated city in the world was destroyed by a bunch of drunken Macedonian goat-herders. Alexander was a great military tactician, but a poor administrator. The empire he inherited disintegrated into chaos and confusion within just fourteen years of his conquest, until the second Persian Empire of the Parthians came along a century later.

The Achaemenid Persian Empire bequeathed the world many things, including great engineering works, art and sculpture, an administrative system that was copied by the Romans right down to the last detail, a system of governance that was based on religious tolerance, the first Charter of Human Rights, a sophisticated irrigation system that is still used today, and the first monotheistic religion in Zoroastrianism – a religion from which the Old Testament borrowed heavily. Zoroastrianism played a significant role in the evolution of Judaism, and later Christianity and Islam.

But the ruins of Persepolis including many of the towering columns of the Apadana Palace still stand, a reminder of empire and greatness. Someday, I would like to walk through the Persian highlands and upto the gates of Persepolis.

On a cool spring day in the highlands when the skies are blue and the wildflowers are in bloom, I would like to sit at the foot of the Mount of Mercy and try and imagine what it must have felt like to watch Darius the Great seated in the Great King’s Sun Chariot on the ceremonial New Year’s Day of the spring equinox (“Navjot”), passing under the monumental Gateway to All the Lands at the head of the Ten Thousand Immortals, their lances raised in salute, their armor glittering in the sun, the trumpeters heralding the approach of the Awesome Royal Glory, and the Palace Guards Commander Hydarnes announcing “All hail the Achaemenid, the King of Kings, Lord of All the Lands”, with the Golden Eagle Standard of the Empire catching the sun and fluttering in the spring breeze.

The Awesome Royal Glory (as the Achaemenid Persian line of Great Kings was known) is gone forever, but faint echoes of its majesty and grandeur can still be found in the ruins of Persepolis, that most magnificent of ancient cities.

• The Parthenon (Athens, Greece): It is not possible to talk about the Persians without mentioning their ancient rivals - the Greeks. Of course, the term “the Greeks” is something of a misnomer since there was no single Greek state at the time (circa 560 B.C to 330 B.C). There were several different Greek states such as Athens, Sparta, Thebes and Thrace who were usually at odds with each other, except when it came to battling the old enemy – the Persians. The Greek speaking population that lived in Europe were called “Dorian Greeks”. The part of the Greek speaking population that lived in what is now coastal Turkey (Asia Minor) were called “Milesian Greeks”. The Milesian Greeks were richer and more civilized than their Dorian counterparts. Also, they willingly became part of the ever-expanding Achaemenid Persian Empire because for them, it meant political stability, security and access to huge markets for their goods and services.

Eventually, this caused increasing tension between the Persian Empire and the European Greeks, who kept stirring up trouble across the Aegean Sea (that divides Europe and Asia). Finally, in 491 B.C, the Persian Great King Darius I (Darius the Great) had enough and ordered an invasion of Greece. The Persians crossed the Bosphorus at Byzantium and entered European Greece. The campaign went well at first as the Persians advanced step by step towards Athens, subduing the various Dorian Greek states in their way.

The Athenians and their allies were in a state of panic. The Spartans refused to come to their aid. The Greek oracles at Delphi and elsewhere predicted a complete Persian victory. The Athenians and their allies the Thebans made one last desperate stand at Marathon, 26 miles from Athens (now you know why the marathon race is so named). The Athenian forces had a natural advantage over the advancing Persians – they were camped up on a hillside and higher ground is always a critical advantage in any battle. Higher ground in this case also meant that the Greek hoplites (heavily armored infantry) could negate the Persian cavalry who were lower down on the slopes. The Persian cavalry was a formidable military force, but their infantry (kardachi) was lightly armored and equipped.

The Athenians charged and while the Persians broke through the Athenian center, they got caught on ground unfavorable for deploying their cavalry. The Athenians outflanked the Persians, circled back in a pincer move and caught them in the rear. The Athenians won, though not by the margin that so-called ancient Greek “historians” talk about. It was a hard-fought battle, not a rout. This battle also highlighted the contrasting fighting styles of the Greeks (and later the Romans) and the Persians. Whenever the ground conditions suited cavalry warfare, the Persians usually won. Whenever the conditions suited infantry warfare, the Greeks (and later the Romans) won. The Persians were superb horsemen, while the Greeks and Romans were excellent infantrymen (the heavily armored hoplites and later the Roman legions).

For the next two centuries, the Dorian Greek states and the Persians fought many famous battles with no clear victor. The Greeks staved off the Persians in Europe, and though the Persian Great King Xerxes sacked Athens twice during the second Persian campaign, he could not hold the Greek mainland for any length of time, as the Greeks repeatedly attacked his long supply lines leading back to Asia. The Greeks in turn were unable to break the Persian stranglehold on the Greek states in Asia Minor (Milesian Greece) and Egypt.

But what the Persians could not win through military conquest, they won through diplomacy. By the time the Peloponnesian War broke out in 430 B.C or so between Sparta and Athens, the Persians had become the chief power broker in the region, playing off one against the other and ensuring that Asia Minor remained a Persian province.

Now coming to the Parthenon (finally, you say). The Parthenon is a temple dedicated to the pre-eminent Greek goddess Athena – the mother goddess of the city of Athens. The temple was built after the Greco-Persian wars as a token of gratitude to the goddess for having saved the Athenians from Persian domination. The original Athena temple on the Acropolis (the hill on which the Parthenon stands) was burnt to the ground by Persian Great King Xerxes during the second Greco-Persian War in 479 B.C.

The new Parthenon was built in approximately 447 B.C. by the famous Athenian general Pericles. The Athenians signed a peace treaty with the Persians in 449 B.C. Having beating back the Persians over the last fifty years, the Athenians were confident and believed that they were the leaders of the European Greek states. The Parthenon represents the high point of Athenian and indeed ancient Greek civilization. The temple itself stands on the Acropolis, a hill from which the entire city of Athens is visible. Twenty-five hundred years after it was built, it still dominates the skyline of the city.

The sculptures and friezes inside the Parthenon signify the high point of Greek art. While the Persian art at Persepolis is very classical in nature, the Greek art on display at the Parthenon is very individualistic in nature, signifying the supposed triumph of individualism over monarchy. The relief sculptures on the sides of the temple illustrate various stories from ancient Greek history, myth and legend. The reliefs on the south illustrate the battle between the Greeks and the Trojans. Those at the west end depict the contest between Poseidon and Athena for the right to be the patron deity of Athens. The eastern friezes show the birth of Athena from Zeus' head. This structure suffered badly when the Parthenon was hit by a Venetian shell in 1687 and the powder magazine inside exploded.

Over the last two thousand years, the Parthenon has been witness to the rise and fall of empires and religions in Greece. In the 6th century AD it was converted into a temple. In 1456, Athens fell to the Ottoman Turks and was converted into a mosque. The Ottoman rulers were respectful of the monument’s history and heritage and left it untouched.

The Parthenon still stands, a testament to a time when Athens and Greece shaped Western thought, ideals and civilization.

• Angkor Wat (Cambodia): Even ardent lovers of history sometimes forget that South-east Asia has plenty to offer. Countries such as Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia have their own ancient Buddhist and Hindu history, culture and architecture that is fascinating. Tucked away deep in the jungles of Cambodia lies one such treasure – Angkor Wat. The word means “City Temple” in old Cambodian, which is similar to Sanskrit.

Imagine yourself as a character in an Indiana Jones movie, walking through a dense, thick, humid tropical forest only to suddenly chance upon a near mythical city full of exquisite art, sculpture and buildings –a magical ghost city deep in a tropical forest with bright eyed monkeys in the trees and many-colored tropical birds flying overhead. That is Angkor Wat. Would be fun, wouldn’t it?

Angkor Wat was designed as a temple complex dedicated to the Hindu God Vishnu. The construction of the temple complex was started in the middle of the 12th century A.D by the great Cambodian king, Suryavarman II, a member of the Khmer Dynasty. Unfortunately, the word “Khmer” has acquired an evil reputation because of the Khmer Rouge, a violent ultra-left political group that ruled Cambodia in the 1970s. The Khmer Rouge was headed by the psychopath Pol Pot, who in a decade of misrule, tortured and killed a quarter of his country’s population.

But the Khmer Empire itself was enlightened, erudite and sophisticated. The Angkor Wat temple complex is a feat of very sophisticated engineering. Angkor Wat combines two basic plans of Khmer temple architecture: the temple mountain and the later galleried temples. It is designed to represent Mount Meru, home of the gods in Hindu mythology. Within a moat and an outer wall nearly four kilometers long are three rectangular galleries, each raised above the next. At the centre of the temple stands a phalanx of towers.

One of the first Western visitors to the temple was Antonio da Magdalena, a Portuguese monk who visited in 1586 and said that it "is of such extraordinary construction that it is not possible to describe it with a pen, particularly since it is like no other building in the world. It has towers and decoration and all the refinements which the human genius can conceive of". It is generally agreed that the architectural design of the temple complex at Angkor Wat is as good as or even better than the ancient temples at Athens or Rome or the Sistine Chapel.

Unfortunately, in the last two decades, many of the exquisite sculptures have been plundered and sold to rich art dealers in the U.S. and other countries. Angkor Wat is a now world heritage site and a reminder of a great civilization and culture. A walk through a jungle to suddenly discover a magical, near mythical city that could keep me entranced for days? Oh yes, I could definitely do that.