Persepolis: The Lost City of the Persian Empire I SLICE HISTORY | FULL DOCUMENTARY

0:07 On top of Iran's plateaus is the cradle

0:09 of one of the greatest civilization of

0:11 builders of ancient history, the

0:14 Persians.

0:16 They built here an architectural

0:18 masterpiece, Percepilus.

0:23 Until now, it was thought that this site

0:25 was limited to its impressive terrace

0:27 used by the Persian kings only a few

0:30 months of the year.

0:33 But recent findings reveal a different

0:36 face of Procepilus, that of one of the most opulent cities

0:41 of the ancient world, a paradise in the

0:44 heart of the Persian mountains.

1:01 When you think of Pipilus, you think

1:04 especially of this huge artificial

1:06 terrace on which stood sumptuous palaces

1:09 and upon which we still see the

1:11 impressive proportions.

1:17 The royal terrace demonstrates the

1:19 excess of the Persian sovereigns over

1:22 1500 ft long and 1,000 ft wide.

1:25 Before reaching the palace, the visitor had to

1:28 use that entry flanked by two gigantic

1:31 statues of bulls.

1:32 The entrance had a

1:33 very symbolic name, the door of all

1:36 nations.

1:38 Between the 6th and 4th centuries BC,

1:41 the Persian Empire of Akimeid dominates

1:44 23 nations represented on the reliefs of

1:47 the terrace.

1:49 Here, two different peoples from

1:51 Anatolia.

1:53 The Ionians and the Lydians with their specific

1:57 hairstyles.

2:00 There are the Nubians who came from

2:03 today's Ethiopia.

2:10 When in 522 BC, Darius the Great, the

2:13 most famous king of the Akimmined

2:15 Empire, took power, his empire stretches

2:18 from today's Libya to the banks of the

2:20 Indus River, a vast territory which makes him one of

2:25 the most powerful kings in the ancient

2:27 world.

2:32 Texts relate that to manifest the

2:34 grandeur of his reign, he built

2:36 Procepilus in the heart of these arid

2:39 plateaus.

2:45 He came here with his itinerant court

2:48 during major seasonal ceremonies.

2:55 Delegations from all the peoples of the

2:57 empire come here to proclaim their

2:59 allegiance to him in a procession loaded

3:02 with gifts.

3:11 Until now, archaeologists thought that

3:13 Pipilus was therefore limited to a place

3:15 of ceremony installed on the terrace and

3:19 occupied only a few months in the year.

3:24 Yet Deodoris Sicilus, a Greek author,

3:26 describes Procepilus as a veritable

3:28 city, the richest of all Persia.

3:30 Today, from the terrace, we see absolutely

3:33 nothing of it.

3:34 So, where is it?

3:37 Below there are no elevations.

3:40 No remaining vestigages of the Persian city

3:42 are visible.

3:47 Pierre Franchesco Kalieri has been

3:49 digging at Procepilus for 8 years.

3:51 He and his Iranian colleagues have

3:53 identified the shortcomings in the

3:55 models established by archaeologists who

3:57 have studied this site since the 19th

3:59 century.

4:03 The royal terrace dominates its

4:04 surroundings by several meters.

4:06 What did they think existed below?

4:10 The first archaeologists who came here

4:13 did not give much importance to places

4:15 around the terrace.

4:19 They showed no interest.

4:21 I think that was because there was so much to

4:23 excavate here.

4:25 This area is enormous.

4:27 The terrace measures 12 hectares.

4:30 But it interested you.

4:34 Yes.

4:34 Because it's like a big ship on the

4:36 ocean.

4:38 It's impossible for a ship to survive

4:40 without supplies like food.

4:44 So, we must change the perspective.

4:48 We must think that such a monumental

4:50 terrace could only exist with a great

4:53 support structure in the plane below the

4:55 terrace.

5:00 If archaeologists can now support this

5:02 hypothesis, it's thanks to a fundamental

5:05 discovery.

5:09 It was made in the 1930s in the

5:12 terrace's fortifications.

5:16 Ernst Heritzfield, a scientist from the

5:18 University of Chicago, uncovers

5:20 thousands of clay tablets dated from the

5:23 reign of Darius.

5:26 For the archaeologists, these tablets

5:28 are carrying key information for

5:30 understanding Procepilus.

5:32 But there are so many that decades later they are

5:35 still not all decrypted.

5:41 Today some of them are being studied in

5:43 Thran at the National Museum of Iran.

5:52 Shar Ramu and Wter Henkelman are among

5:55 the few researchers deciphering this

5:57 treasure.

5:58 an exclamation mark.

6:00 What they were able to read on these

6:01 tablets completely changes the vision we

6:04 had of percepilus.

6:08 I see it's a wedge but it's written in

6:10 what language?

6:12 Uh these are written in uh Ilumite.

6:15 Ilumite was one of the administrative

6:17 and official languages of the Persian

6:19 Empire.

6:20 Mhm.

6:20 So when it was discovered originally

6:22 people were very fascinated and they

6:24 thought maybe they have found some

6:26 political texts from Pepilolis from the

6:28 time of Darius.

6:30 But when they studied them they realized

6:32 that these are very important texts

6:35 which are actually from behind scenes.

6:37 They say something which usually are not

6:40 told by the royal inscriptions and the

6:42 kings.

6:42 So they contain very important

6:44 information.

6:46 What is written on these tablets?

6:49 For example, For example, this tablet talks about a

6:52 priest who receives quantities of flour,

6:55 and it's a significant amount, 360 lers

6:58 of flour.

7:03 The tablets are usually acts of a vast

7:05 bureaucracy that distributes food,

7:09 flour, for example, to teams of workers,

7:13 priests, men with official duties in precipilus

7:18 economy.

7:21 This archive talks about 10,000 workers.

7:24 And that means that Precipolis is not

7:26 just a ceremonial center used

7:28 occasionally by the kings.

7:30 It's a real city.

7:32 Yes, absolutely.

7:34 Thanks to the translations of these

7:36 tablets, Pierre Franchesco and his

7:38 Iranian colleague Aliascotti began their quest to discover the city

7:42 of Percepilus and its tens of thousands

7:45 of residents in the valley below the

7:47 terrace.

7:52 The city we see over there certainly

7:54 stretched across the plane all around

7:56 us.

7:58 We know that there was an

8:00 administration.

8:01 There were laborers, artisans.

8:03 All these people lived permanently in the city.

8:12 Proce was a royal city.

8:14 The king received delegations from throughout the

8:16 empire.

8:17 He had to impress them with

8:18 opulence.

8:20 We must look for a city that's

8:21 like no other city.

8:31 But where to start searching

8:34 around the terrace?

8:35 There are only fields and arid lands.

8:39 The dwellings, the more modest workshops

8:42 were built of mud.

8:43 They disappeared with time.

8:50 To find this ghost town in such a

8:52 landscape, Alireetsa and Pierre

8:54 Franchesco called in geoysicists.

8:58 The Iranian Kuro Muhammad Rani and the

9:01 Frenchman Sebastian Gonde.

9:05 Seb, we've got something.

9:07 Thanks to this portable instrument, they

9:09 measure the soil's magnetism.

9:11 Geoysical survey is a method particularly suitable

9:14 for a field such as this.

9:16 Yes.

9:17 First all human activities have the

9:18 property to increase the magnetism of

9:20 the soil.

9:21 Magnetism which we measure

9:22 with geohysical exploration.

9:25 With this method we managed to do about

9:27 one hectar per day allowing us to map

9:29 large areas.

9:30 It's perfectly suited to a

9:31 case like precipilus.

9:33 We know the city

9:34 was probably spread out over several

9:36 hundred hectares.

9:39 Gurosh and Sebastian completed this work

9:42 by direct observation of the ground.

9:46 Look, concentrations of pottery.

9:49 Here, too.

9:50 Here's an example.

9:50 A piece of a big jar.

9:53 And there.

9:55 And here, too.

9:57 These fragments have been dated to the

9:58 Akimenit period.

10:00 Decades of plowing have

10:01 brought them up to the surface.

10:07 They're everywhere.

10:08 Yes.

10:08 but they've been moved by farming

10:10 so they're out of context.

10:12 In fact, on geophysical maps, we don't

10:14 find a detailed plan of the buildings.

10:17 That's why we also map concentrations of

10:19 ceramics on the surface.

10:22 And if we have a superp position of

10:23 concentrations of ceramics and magnetic

10:26 soil zones, that's when we can start to

10:28 say yes, there really was a permanent

10:32 occupation here.

10:35 The two scientists were able to identify

10:38 zones of occupation, certainly the old

10:40 quarters of the city.

10:45 Archaeologists then began excavating

10:47 these areas and soon the first signs were brought

10:55 up.

10:58 Here an oven there, a neighborhood of artisans

11:06 or even large buildings, perhaps

11:09 aristocratic residences around the royal terrace.

11:18 Researchers began to see emerging the city desired

11:22 by Darius organized in specialized

11:25 areas.

11:26 Some occupied by workers and

11:28 craftsmen, others by officials and

11:31 aristocrats who administered the region.

11:35 But the excavations have also led to an

11:37 unexpected conclusion.

11:39 Peripilus was not a very dense city.

11:42 Its different neighborhoods are widely spaced from

11:44 each other.

11:45 Between them, vast areas

11:47 appear to have been deliberately left

11:49 empty.

11:55 Mapping it with their sensing device,

11:57 geoysicists have identified traces of

12:00 ancient furrows in the soil.

12:04 What do they represent?

12:17 To answer this question, Sebastian gave

12:20 me an appointment 30 m from Pipilus

12:27 at Pasarod, another royal city of the Aimemened

12:31 Empire.

12:36 Amid Fadi is the curator here.

12:41 These canals are well preserved like

12:42 everywhere in Pasar God.

12:46 Yes.

12:47 The part where we are covers 12

12:48 hectares and its peculiarity is that

12:51 it's covered with over a half mile of

12:53 stone canals.

12:56 The engineering of these canal systems

12:58 is incredible.

12:59 Their shape, their slope,

13:02 their magnificent architecture with

13:04 stone basins and sections without any

13:06 joints.

13:07 This is very well planned.

13:12 Archaeologists have therefore understood

13:14 that at Pasar God, this arid area

13:17 normally uncultivable was equipped with

13:19 an ingenious irrigation system on a

13:21 large scale.

13:25 So if I understand well, the arid

13:26 landscape around us was green at the

13:28 time.

13:31 Absolutely.

13:31 Imagine gardens in which

13:33 many species were planted.

13:35 The kings were very fond of showing they could

13:37 dominate the landscape by building and

13:39 landscaping lush gardens.

13:41 This is what Greek authors called a paradise.

13:44 Paradesos in Greek.

13:45 And this term probably dates back to the Persian

13:48 period.

13:49 A paradise.

13:50 A paradise.

13:51 At Procilus we find this

13:52 type of landscaping of parks to the west

13:54 of the terrace.

13:57 And in Procilolis it might be even

13:58 larger.

13:59 Procilolis is based on the model

14:00 of Pasad.

14:02 They reproduced the model of

14:03 Pisogi but on a much larger scale.

14:05 And so these paradises, these parks

14:07 incorporated not only the palace, fields

14:09 and orchards, but also the common

14:11 dwellings, the town.

14:16 The power of these occumented kings is

14:18 measured by their ability to create

14:20 these earthly paradises in the desert.

14:23 Open gardens to be viewed by all to

14:25 affirm their prestige.

14:27 To achieve such a

14:28 feat, it was still necessary to find

14:31 water.

14:34 Using satellite images, archaeologists

14:37 have found traces of an amazing canal at

14:40 Procepilus.

14:41 In the valley, Sebastian has followed

14:44 the route over several miles into the

14:46 mountain of Seedan, which we go to

14:49 visit.

15:02 We have good reason to believe that this

15:04 source you see here was exploited by the

15:06 Akimmed kings to supply Procipilus.

15:09 It's a real technological feat.

15:10 How many miles away are we?

15:13 We're 9 miles from the terrace of

15:14 Procipilus.

15:16 Meaning they had to build a

15:17 canal from these sources to the terrace.

15:21 A channel that crossed the plane,

15:23 reached the mountain of precipilus and

15:26 continued to the terrace.

15:28 And this explains the water used to

15:30 irrigate the gardens.

15:34 Exactly.

15:34 To irrigate the parks, gardens,

15:36 fields, and orchards.

15:37 They needed a lot

15:38 of water.

15:39 So they came here.

15:40 Why?

15:41 Because this is good quality water.

15:44 Other sources of the plane are often

15:46 very salty.

15:47 But here was great water for

15:49 agriculture and also for human

15:51 consumption of Procipilus' population.

15:59 So it's thanks to this pure water that

16:01 King Darius was able to make Percepilus

16:03 a Persian paradise.

16:06 But what could this Eden have looked

16:08 like?

16:12 A few months ago, a team of Iranian and

16:15 French scientists embarked on the track

16:17 of the essences of the past by diving

16:21 deep into the earth.

16:24 These cores have imprisoned the memory

16:27 of Procepilus' gardens.

16:39 Morta Jamali is able to interpret these

16:42 time capsules.

16:43 He's a palinologist specialized in pollen.

16:49 What we're observing is a section of a

16:51 carrot from Lake Marlo, not far from the

16:53 palace of precipilus.

16:56 This period between 78 and 86 in

16:59 corresponds to the Akimeid period.

17:01 The period between 550 to 330 BC.

17:07 The aimemented period represents only a

17:10 small part of this core sample that

17:12 includes sediment accumulated over 4,000

17:15 years.

17:17 These sedimentary layers can trap pollen

17:19 grains among other things and pollen

17:22 grains can reveal vegetation changes.

17:31 By observing these samples under the

17:32 microscope, Morta discovered that new

17:34 pollins appeared in the region when the

17:37 Aimemenids came to power.

17:43 Here is a platinous pollen.

17:47 What's most remarkable is the appearance

17:49 of cultivated trees.

17:53 One can find five species of planted

17:55 trees.

17:56 Walnut trees planted for their

17:58 fruit.

17:59 Olive trees obviously planted for

18:02 their oil.

18:04 Sycamore and cypress trees often planted

18:07 for shade in Persian gardens, but also

18:10 pine trees, walnut, olive, pine,

18:20 cyprus, and sycamore.

18:23 These species did not exist on Iran's

18:25 high plateaus before the Aimemenids.

18:29 They seem to have been imported from the

18:30 four corners of their empire and they

18:33 managed to grow them on these arid

18:34 lands.

18:35 Another way to express their

18:37 power.

18:41 an explosion.

18:43 Observing a leap in pollen quantities

18:44 from these trees, especially from items

18:47 planted in the Persian gardens like

18:49 cyprress and walnut, shows the aimid

18:52 significantly landscaped the area.

18:56 Here was something new.

18:59 It may be the invention of garden cities

19:01 or the large-scale development of

19:03 gardens throughout the area.

19:08 Thanks to the work of archaeologists

19:10 around the terrace and its palace,

19:12 Theeppilis, the Persian Eden, is

19:15 revealed.

19:17 A city with islands of housing spaced

19:19 from each other and embedded in lush

19:22 vegetation with fruit trees,

19:27 shade trees, and ponds.

19:31 Percepilus must have been the

19:32 most opulent city of the empire, the

19:35 Persian paradise.

19:39 This marvelous city was the work of

19:41 Darius the Great.

19:43 In any case, that's

19:44 what history retained until now.

19:49 But around the site, Pierre Franchesco's

19:52 team has made an unexpected discovery

19:54 that could change the history of

19:56 Percepilus.

20:08 What exactly made you search here?

20:11 It was by chance

20:13 because our palace in the city project

20:16 led us to conduct surveys over the

20:18 plane.

20:22 When we started digging, we found a

20:24 surprise.

20:28 This is a monumental gate which has a

20:30 rectangular plane.

20:32 It's very solid.

20:36 Brick walls 32 ft thick encircle a

20:39 corridor with an inner chamber.

20:42 What was this building's purpose?

20:46 Finding the answer perplexed

20:47 archaeologists

20:55 until in searching they discover these

20:58 decorative elements.

21:00 Some are decorated in reliefs, others are varnished.

21:05 Alias, the co-director of the

21:07 excavation, studies them as they emerge.

21:12 Look, that's an eye.

21:14 a beautiful eye.

21:17 We can see that it was painted with two

21:19 different colors.

21:21 And look, here's another engraved brick associated with

21:24 it and to which we attach great

21:26 importance.

21:28 This one, we believe this is part of a Babylonian

21:32 dragon called Mushu.

21:34 Here is Mushu's horn.

21:37 And when we place this brick next

21:38 to the other one, they become a part of

21:40 Mushu's head.

21:46 From these brick fragments, the

21:48 researchers have reconstructed the

21:50 animal.

21:52 The Mushu is a dragon with the front

21:54 paws of a lion, the hind paws of a

21:56 raptor, and a snake's head.

22:02 A mythological animal originating in

22:04 Babylon that archaeologists had never

22:07 before found in Persia.

22:14 Thus, in reconstituting this puzzle,

22:16 they made the connection with Babylon's

22:18 Ishtar Gate, which was one of the main

22:21 entrances to the powerful Mesopotamian

22:24 city located more than 600 m away.

22:28 Why reproduce this door at Percepilus?

22:32 When does it date from?

22:34 An inscription put them on the track.

22:46 This inscription in uniform is very

22:49 important.

22:51 It means king, but it's written in an ancient language

22:58 that was no longer used at the time of

23:00 Darius.

23:02 This allows us to affirm that this

23:04 Babylonian style door was built before

23:07 the arrival of Darius to power.

23:12 Thanks to the discovery of this gate,

23:14 archaeologists have deduced that a city

23:17 certainly existed here before the reign

23:19 of Darius.

23:22 Maybe founded by one of his

23:24 predecessors, Cyrus, who 20 years

23:26 earlier in 539 BC conquered Babylon.

23:32 It was he who would have built this door

23:34 to celebrate his victory.

23:39 He would have founded Procepilus before

23:41 Darius moved here with his palace and

23:44 transforms the city into a Persian

23:46 paradise.

23:50 With these new findings, a completely

23:53 new story of Procepilus is revealed

23:55 thanks to the work of these Iranian,

23:57 Italian, and French archaeologists.

24:02 How has your recent work changed the

24:04 vision we had of precipilus?

24:07 Now we've changed our perspective.

24:10 The aim of the study was transferred to

24:13 the outer city.

24:16 We realized that we cannot understand

24:19 the true precipilus without a

24:21 perspective of a city whose terrace is

24:25 only one part.

24:29 So we increased the limits of precipilus

24:31 much further.

24:34 In both space and in time,

24:41 this is an important part of Iranian

24:43 culture that was born here during the

24:46 reign of the Arkimenids.

24:51 That is why for us Iranians it is so

24:54 important to understand the civilization

24:57 that was built and thrived in this

25:00 beautiful city of precipilus.