By Abbas
Alizadeh
Reading Mr. Jonathan Jones’ article,
“The evil empire,” in your reputable newspaper (Guardian
- 9/10/05) one is left with the feeling that
Mr. Jones knows very little, if any, about history, art history, and
archaeology. In fact, on a par with the title of the article, he immediately
reveals his political agenda in his first paragraph and continues his political
ramble in a thinly wrapped critique of the
British Museum’s ongoing exhibition of Persian
Achaemenid “Forgotten Empire.” Lest readers may be ambiguous about
Persia, he duly reminds them that it is
the same as Iran.
This is unfortunate because at this
critical time when the polarization of the world is increasingly becoming nasty,
ugly, and dangerous, Mr. Jones’ article would simply serve as fodder to the
attitude that in part has been responsible for today’s geopolitical quagmire we
are witnessing now.
Mr. Jones’ primary source of
information to bash Persian Achaemenids—and by extension the East—seems to be
Herodotus. First, the Greeks, as Jones claims, did not invent history. History
is a process. In his monumental work, The Persian Wars, Herodotus invented
historical narrative, peppered with an attempt to explain historical events by
appealing both to divine intervention and logic.
It is important to remember that
Herodotus spent most of his time in Athens and wrote his book for the Greeks,
and certainly with Athenian bias. While Herodotus’ book has historical value,
most of his narrative consists of hearsay. To the Greeks, everybody was a
barbarian, including the Macedonians and their upstart leaders, Philip and his
son Alexander, who destroyed Greek city-states, robbed the Greeks of their
cherished freedom, and frustrated the rapid development of Greek
civilization.
Prior to the mid-fifth century BC,
the heart of Greek intellectual achievement was not in mainland
Greece but in their former colonies on the
eastern Mediterranean coast. These internally independent colonies constituted
the westernmost part of the Achaemenid Empire. What other colonial power could
claim the development of a superb civilization in its colonies on their watch?
This is not to an accolade for colonialism, which throughout history,
particularly from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries, caused unspeakable
atrocities around the world. The flourishing of Greek philosophy, mathematics,
and geometry, to name a few, was made possible perhaps because the Persian
Achaemenids, the “baddies” and “original villains” of Mr. Jones, were a tolerant
nation and civilized enough to appreciate and respect cultures and nations other
than their own.
While Darius I was busy improving
the infra-structure of his empire by building highways, establishing postal
service, digging a canal connecting the Nile to the Red Sea, regulating measures
and weight for commerce, to name a few, Alexander kept himself busy conquering
and plundering one nation after another until his death.
But the greatest contribution of the
Persian Achaemenids was the preservation and development of the millennia-old
ancient Near Eastern civilization they inherited. This brings us to Mr. Jones
childish criticism of formal Persian art. Mr. Jones does not understand that
ancient Near Eastern art is defined by a set of conventions that developed in
the course of thousands of years, and that the Persians preserved and improved
upon it. Movement, portraiture, frontal views and overlapping figures, as Mr.
Jones claims, are not necessarily strong criteria to judge formal, monumental
art and architecture. These characteristics can, however, be found in the minor
art of the Persian Achaemenids, particularly in the gold work and utilitarian
objects and glyptic.
While the
British Museum is admirably trying to acknowledge
the past achievements of a modern nation and thereby create an amicable
atmosphere of good will, Mr. Jones attitude in his article has blinded him to
deny the achievements of an empire that existed 2500 years ago. His political
agenda, on the other hand, has led him to vilify an ancient nation and by
extension the modern-day nation of Iran.
Abbas Alizadeh
(Ph.D.)
Senior Research
Associate
Director of Iranian prehistoric
Project
The Oriental
Institute
The
University of Chicago
1155 East 58th
Street
Chicago, US 60637
Telephone no.:
773-702-9531
