The Persian Empire

According to Herodotus, Cyrus the Great led the Persians to overthrow the Median dynasty and then by 539 BCE to defeat the Neo-Babylonians. Cyrus’s successor Cambyses II extended Persia’s control over Egypt and assembled a vast empire that stretched from the edges of India to the Nile River. When Darius I rose to power, he reorganized the empire into twenty districts called satrapies, each with its own governor or satrap, and oversaw a number of public works projects such as elaborate palaces and qanats for carrying fresh water over many kilometers. The kings of Persia were honored as the earthly representatives of the Persian god Ahura Mazda and commanded a large army of subject peoples from around the empire. The religion of the Persians was Zoroastrianism, which saw the world as the field of competition between the forces of good and evil and predicted a final judgment after evil had been conquered. But the empire included numerous ethnicities and followers of many religions, including the Judeans with their own unique monotheistic religious tradition. All images referenced in this podcast can be found at https://openstax.org/books/world-history-volume-1/pages/4-3-the-persian-empire Welcome to A Journey into Human History. This podcast will attempt to tell the whole human story. The content contained in this podcast was produced by OpenStax and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License. Access for free at https://openstax.org/books/world-history-volume-1/pages/1-introduction Podcast produced by Miranda Casturo as a creative common sense production.

Om Podcasten

Welcome to a journey into human history. This podcast will attempt to tell the whole human story. You may be asking yourself what is history? Is it simply a record of things people have done? Is it what writer Maya Angelou suggested—a way to meet the pain of the past and overcome it? Or is it, as Winston Churchill said, a chronicle by the victors, an interpretation by those who write it? History is all this and more. Above all else, it is a path to knowing why we are the way we are—all our greatness, all our faults—and therefore a means for us to understand ourselves and change for the better. But history serves this function only if it is a true reflection of the past. It cannot be a way to mask the darker parts of human nature, nor a way to justify acts of previous generations. It is the historian’s task to paint as clear a picture as sources will allow. Will history ever be a perfect telling of the human tale? No. There are voices we may never hear. Yet each new history book written and each new source uncovered reveal an ever more precise record of events around the world. You are about to take a journey into human history. The content contained in this podcast was produced by OpenStax and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License. For more information please review the links and resources in the description. Podcast produced by Miranda Casturo as a creative common sense production.