Aspects of Empire in Achaemenid Sardis

The Achaemenid Empire (ca. 550-330 B.C.) was the first world empire, founded by Cyrus II in southwest Iran and lower Mesopotamia. Focusing on Sardis, a regional capital in western Anatolia, this book documents how the administration annexed the region and its populace into the Persian Empire. Elspeth R. M. Dusinberre proposes a fresh approach to understanding the Achaemenid Empire based on her study of the regional capital, Sardis. This study uses archaeological, artistic and textual sources to demonstrate that the two-hundred-year Persian presence in this city had a profound impact on local social structures, revealing the region's successful absorption, both ideological and physical, into the Persian Empire. During this period, Sardis was a centre of burgeoning creativity and vitality, where a polyethnic elite devised a fresh culture - inspired by Iranian, Greek and local Lydian traditions - that drew on and legitimated imperial ideology. The non-elite absorbed and adapted multiple aspects of this culture to create a wholly different profile of what it meant to be Sardian. As well as successfully bringing together information on the Achaemenids, this book is also an excellent contribution to empire studies.