Tehran – A Persian translation of the book “Persians: The Age of the Great Kings” written by Lloyd Llewellyn Jones was released in Iranian bookstores.
Shahrbanoo Saremi translated the book, and Qoqnus Publishing House published it on 390 pages, Irna reported.
The Persian King of Achemenid ruled the largest ancient empire, stretching from Libya to Asian steppes and from Ethiopia to Pakistan. From the city of the palace of Persepolis, Cyrus the Great, Darius, Zerxes, and their heirs reigned for centuries until the conquest of Alexander of Macedon led the empire to a prompt and unexpected end in the late 330s BC.
In “Persians: The Age of the Great King,” historian Lloyd Llewellyn Jones, originally published in 2022, tells the epic tale of this dynasty and the world it ruled. He shows that the Persian Empire of the Akemen family is the world’s first superpower based on Iranian inscriptions, caves, art and archaeology.
Llewellyn-Jones has succeeded in the rarity of the subject’s source. Despite a wealth of information about the Achemenids of Greek historians such as Xenophon and Herodotus, he chose to deal with their accounts with a skeptical touch. Given the history of the Greco-Persian War, the Greeks may not have been an impartial narrator of Persian history.
Therefore, Llewellyn-Jones widely used non-Greek sources to explain the origins of Achemenid, and frequently rebutted Greek historians about the general expressions of King Achemenid. The author’s portrayal of Cambies, for example, differs from his general portrayal of him as an inappropriate king, portraying him as powerful and resilient, if not as competent as Cyrus.
The authors have eschewed the helenocentric approach and used extensively archaeological findings, such as Babylonian mucus-shaped tablets, and non-Greek text sources, to reconstruct what could instead become the “Persian version.”
This book is the defining history of the Akemenid dynasty and its heritage in modern Iran. It completely changes our understanding of the ancient world.
Lloyd Llewellyn Jones is a Welsh professor of ancient history and focuses on ancient Iran, particularly the period of Achemenid (550-330 BC). Before this, he specialised in research in ancient Greece. Since 2016 he has been Chair of Ancient History at Cardiff University. Prior to that, he worked in the Classics department at the University of Edinburgh and became a professor of research in Ancient Greece and Iran in 2015.
Llewellyn-Jones is also the director of the ancient Iran programme at the request of the Persian Institute in the UK. He regularly contributes to BBC history, today’s history, world history, and more. He has written numerous monographs, several books, and edited and co-edited many works.
SS/SAB