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> Pre-Islamic Persia barely appears at all in Western media Wait, you’re talking about Hollywood/ PostWW2 Western media, right? Because if we look back at how
by pm90 4y ago
> Pre-Islamic Persia barely appears at all in Western media
Wait, you’re talking about Hollywood/ PostWW2 Western media, right? Because if we look back at how Western historians generally framed the events of the eighteenth century onwards, its almost always been of eastern and oriental cultures as being savages and it was the “White Mans Burden” to bring them the light of civilization.
- ch4s3 4y agoI was responding to a comment about Western media. Which is a 20th century affair. I also think 18th and 19th century we working from a much more limited set of historical information. Persepolis was first excavated in the 1930s. Old Persian Cuneiform wasn't fully deciphered until around 1850 and was the basis for decipherment of other languages using cuneiform. It wasn't until then tat any primary historical texts could even be studied. Whereas Greek never disappeared and ancient greek was studied from the classical era onwards. A lot of what we knew about old Persia prior to the 1850s came from people like Xenophon who had a particular ax to grind in contemporary (to him) Greece and used Cyruus and Persia as stand in for ideas he wanted to compare and contrast with Athens and Sparta.