PERIOD GUIDE · Iran (Persia)
The Met's timeline dates Achaemenid Iran to about 559-330 BCE, from Cyrus II to the defeat of the Persians by the armies of Alexander of Macedon. Its beginning overlaps the end of the two parallel tracks before it.
Approximately 559-330 BCEMove through the periods
The whole scheme with this period marked; the periods before and after are its neighbours in the row. Boundaries follow the sources and are not to scale.
Objects
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Object · ca. 4th century BCE
A small gold coin of the Achaemenid empire, assigned by the museum to Iran and dated to the fourth century BCE. The figure is a "king" per the record's title; more than that the record does not say.
Dated to this period by its source record.
Open the objectThe Met's timeline for Iran, 1000 BCE-1 CE dates the "Achaemenid (Persian) period" ca. 559-330 BCE. According to the same page, the Persian king Cyrus II (the Great, r. ca. 559-530 BCE) laid the foundation for the Achaemenid empire; under Darius I (the Great, r. 522-486 BCE) the realm stretched from Greece and Egypt to Central Asia and India, and the Persian Royal Road was built from Sardis in Anatolia to Susa. The site uses this timeline as the scheme for Iran in this row and in those that follow. Source 1.
The row does not simply follow a single earlier row. In the same list the Neo-Elamite period is dated ca. 1000-539 BCE and Iron Age III ca. 800-550 BCE: the site's two parallel tracks, Elam in the southwest and the Iron Age of the north and west, run on for some years into the Achaemenid period. At its end the list stops at ca. 330 BCE and begins the Seleucid period in 323 BCE; the years between are covered by the entry "331-247 B.C.", in which the armies of Alexander of Macedon defeat the Persians and, after his death in Babylon, his successors divide the empire. This row is not the site's Persian period of the Levant (539-331 BCE), which deals with Achaemenid rule in another region. Source 1.
Four items. Three articles on sites: "Persepolis: a royal terrace built under three kings", on the capital that, according to UNESCO, Darius I founded in 518 BCE and on which his son and grandson also built; "Pasargadae: the first dynastic capital of the Achaemenids", founded according to UNESCO by Cyrus II in the 6th century BC; and "Bisotun: the inscription of Darius I", the relief and trilingual inscription of 521 BC. Beside them, the object "Gold daric with a king", a gold coin the museum dates ca. 4th century BCE and assigns to the Achaemenid period. The coin's record gives only "Iran" as its geography, and where it was struck has not been checked; it adds a portable object from a museum collection to the period, not a find from a site. Sources 2, 3, 4, 5.
Source
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The Metropolitan Museum of Art · Checked
UNESCO World Heritage Centre · Checked
UNESCO World Heritage Centre · Checked
UNESCO World Heritage Centre · Checked
The Metropolitan Museum of Art · Checked
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A navigation group for Iron Age I, II and III in northern and western Iran, about 1450-550 BCE on the Met's timeline. It runs in parallel with the Elam track of the southwest, and its name marks a cultural change: iron objects appear in Iran only in the 9th century BCE.
The period that came before.
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