Lying in the middle of a plain in modern day Iran is a forgotten ancient city: Persepolis. Built two and a half thousand years ago, it was known in its day as the richest city under the sun. Persepolis was the capital of Achaemenid Persian Empire, the largest empire the world had ever seen, but after its destruction, it was largely forgotten for nearly 2,000 years, and the lives and achievements of those who built it were almost entirely erased from history. Alexander the Great’s troops razed the city to the ground in a drunken riot to celebrate the conquest of the capital, after which time and sand buried it for centuries.
It was not until the excavations of the 1930s that many of the relics, reliefs, and clay tablets that offer so much information about Persian life could be studied for the first time. Through archaeological remains, ancient texts, and work by a new generation of historians, a picture can today be built of this remarkable civilization and their capital city. Although the city had been destroyed, the legacy of the Persians survived, even as they mostly remain an enigma to the West and are not nearly as well understood as the Greeks, Romans, or Egyptians. In a sense, the Achaemenid Persian Empire holds some of the most enduring mysteries of ancient civilization.
Susa is located in what is today southwestern Iran, about 150 miles north of the Persian Gulf. It served as the capital of the Kingdom of Elam, and later one of the prominent capitals used by the Achaemenid Persian Empire. When Darius the Great established his rule over the Persian Empire, he set out to build the palace of Persepolis in his homeland. Later, he constructed an equally magnificent palace complex in his favorite city and winter capital, Susa. Archaeological findings indicate that Susa was already an ancient city at the time of the prophet Daniel, whose tomb was in Susa, and it has become one of the holiest sites in Iran.
