Customer Reviews

The Culture and Social Institutions of Ancient Iran

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This is a very useful book for those with an intermediate level of knowledge and understanding of Ancient Persia. It is an excellent companion to their other book on the Political History on the same topic. Although it is well referenced, it is a smooth read.

This book is an extremely helpful collection of information regarding what we know of Achaemenid Persian institutions, their development across the dynasty's period, and how the empire was organized under the Achaemenids. Utilizes a variety of documents, Persian and Greek (with due caution), et al., in order to reconstruct the efficiency of an empire that has often been overlooked or under-appreciated in the West due to the unconscious assumption of Greek biases from Greek sources such as Herodotus.