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

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

0:09 of the greatest civilization of builders of ancient history.

0:13 The Persians.

0:16 They built here an architectural masterpiece.

0:19 Persepolis.

0:23 Until now, it was thought that this site was limited to its impressive

0:26 terrace used by the Persian kings only a few months of the year.

0:33 But recent findings reveal a different face of Persepolis.

0:38 That of one of the most opulent cities of the ancient world.

0:43 A paradise in the heart of the Persian mountains.

1:01 When you think of Persepolis, you think especially of this huge

1:05 artificial terrace on which stood sumptuous palaces.

1:09 And upon which we still see the impressive proportions.

1:17 The royal terrace demonstrates the excess of the Persian sovereigns.

1:21 Over 1,500 ft long and 1,000 ft wide.

1:25 Before reaching the palace,

1:27 the visitor had to use that entry flanked by two gigantic statues of bulls.

1:32 The entrance had a very symbolic name.

1:35 The door of all nations.

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

1:41 the Persian empire of Achaemenid dominates 23

1:44 nations represented on the reliefs of the terrace.

1:49 Here two different peoples from Anatolia.

1:53 The Ionians and the Lydians with their specific hairstyles.

2:00 There are the Nubians who came from today's Ethiopia.

2:10 When in 522 BC, Darius the Great, the most famous king of the Achaemenid Empire,

2:16 took power, his empire stretches from today's

2:18 Libya to the banks of the Indus River.

2:23 A vast territory which makes him one

2:25 of the most powerful kings in the ancient world.

2:32 Texts relate that to manifest the grandeur of his reign,

2:36 he built Persepolis in the heart of these arid plateaus.

2:45 He came here with his itinerant court during major seasonal ceremonies.

2:55 Delegations from all the peoples of the empire come here

2:58 to proclaim their allegiance to him in a procession loaded with gifts.

3:10 Until now, archaeologists thought that Persepolis was

3:14 therefore limited to a place of ceremony

3:17 installed on the terrace and occupied only a few months in the year.

3:24 Yet, Diodorus Siculus, a Greek author,

3:26 describes Persepolis as a veritable city, the richest of all Persia.

3:30 Today, from the terrace, we see absolutely nothing of it.

3:34 So, where is it?

3:37 Below, there are no elevations.

3:39 No remaining vestiges of the Persian city are visible.

3:47 Pierre Francesco Callieri has been digging at Persepolis for 8 years.

3:51 He and his Iranian colleagues have identified the shortcomings in the models

3:55 established by archaeologists who have studied this site since the 19th century.

4:03 The royal terrace dominates its surroundings by several meters.

4:06 What did they think existed below?

4:10 The first archaeologists who came here did not

4:13 give much importance to places around the terrace.

4:19 They showed no interest.

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

4:25 This area is enormous.

4:27 The terrace measures 12 hectares.

4:30 But it interested you.

4:33 Yes, because it's like a big ship on the ocean.

4:37 It's impossible for a ship to survive without supplies like food.

4:44 So we must change the perspective.

4:48 We must think that such a monumental terrace could only exist

4:52 with a great support structure in the plane below the terrace.

5:00 If archaeologists can now support this hypothesis,

5:03 it's thanks to a fundamental discovery.

5:09 It was made in the 1930s in the terrace's fortifications.

5:16 Ernst Herzfeld, a scientist from the University of Chicago,

5:20 uncovers thousands of clay tablets dated from the reign of Darius.

5:26 For the archaeologists,

5:28 these tablets are carrying key information for understanding Persepolis.

5:32 But there are so many that decades later, they are still not all decrypted.

5:41 Today, some of them are being studied in Tehran at the National Museum of Iran.

5:51 Wouter Henkelman are among the few researchers deciphering this treasure.

5:59 What they were able to read on these tablets

6:02 completely changes the vision we had of Persepolis.

6:08 I see it's a wedge, but it's written in what language?

6:12 These are written in Elamite.

6:15 Elamite was one of the administrative

6:17 and official languages of the Persian Empire.

6:20 So when it was discovered,

6:21 originally people were very fascinated and they thought maybe they have

6:25 found some political text from Persepolis from the time of Darius.

6:30 But when they studied them, they realized that these are very important

6:34 texts which are actually from behind scenes.

6:37 They say something which usually are not

6:40 told by the royal inscriptions and the kings.

6:42 So they contain very important information.

6:46 Wouter, what is written on these tablets?

6:50 For example, this tablet talks about a priest who

6:53 receives quantities of flour and it's a significant amount, 360 liters of flour.

7:02 The tablets are usually acts of a vast bureaucracy that distributes food.

7:09 Flour for example.

7:11 To teams of workers.

7:13 Priests.

7:16 Men with official duties in Persepolis' economy.

7:21 This archive talks about 10,000 workers and that means that Persepolis

7:25 is not just a ceremonial center used occasionally by the kings.

7:30 It's a real city.

7:31 Yes, absolutely.

7:34 Thanks to the translations of these tablets,

7:37 Pierre Francesco and his Iranian colleague Alireza

7:40 Sajjadi began their quest to discover the city

7:42 of Persepolis and its tens of thousands

7:45 of residents in the valley below the terrace.

7:52 The city we see over there is

7:53 certainly stretched across the plane all around us.

7:58 We know that there was an administration.

8:01 There were laborers, artisans, all these people lived permanently in the city.

8:12 Persepolis was a royal city.

8:14 The king received delegations from throughout the empire.

8:17 He had to impress them with opulence.

8:20 We must look for a city that's like no other city.

8:31 But where to start searching?

8:34 Around the terrace, there are only fields and arid lands.

8:39 The dwellings, the more modest workshops were built of mud.

8:43 They disappeared with time.

8:50 To find this ghost town in such a landscape,

8:53 Alireza and Pierre Francesco called in geophysicists.

8:58 The Iranian Kurosh Muammar Irani and the Frenchman Sebastian Gondet.

9:04 Seb, we've got something.

9:07 Thanks to this portable instrument, they measured the soil's magnetism.

9:11 Geophysical survey is a method particularly suitable for a field such as this.

9:16 Yes, first of all, human activities have

9:18 the property to increase the magnetism of the soil.

9:21 Magnetism which we measure with geophysical exploration.

9:25 With this method, we managed to do about 1 hectare per day,

9:28 allowing us to map large areas.

9:30 It's perfectly suited to a case like Persepolis.

9:33 We know the city was probably spread out over several hundred hectares.

9:39 Kourosh and Sebastian completed this work by direct observation of the ground.

9:46 Look, concentrations of pottery.

9:49 Here, too.

9:49 Here's an example, a piece of a big jar.

9:53 And there.

9:55 And here, too.

9:56 These fragments have been dated to the Achaemenid period.

10:00 Decades of plowing have brought them up to the surface.

10:08 Yes.

10:08 But, they've been moved by farming, so they're out of context.

10:12 In fact, on geophysical maps, we don't find a detailed plan of the buildings.

10:17 That's why we also map concentrations of ceramics on the surface.

10:21 And if we have a superposition

10:23 of concentrations of ceramics and magnetic soil zones,

10:27 that's when we can start to say, "Yes,

10:30 there really was a permanent occupation here." The two

10:36 scientists were able to identify zones of occupation,

10:39 certainly the old quarters of the city.

10:45 Archaeologists then began excavating these areas.

10:52 And soon, the first signs were brought up.

10:57 Here, an oven.

11:01 There, a neighborhood of artisans.

11:06 Or even large buildings, perhaps aristocratic residences.

11:17 Around the royal terrace,

11:18 researchers began to see emerging the city desired by Darius,

11:23 organized in specialized areas.

11:26 Some occupied by workers and craftsmen,

11:29 others by officials and aristocrats who administered the region.

11:35 But the excavations have also led to an unexpected conclusion.

11:39 Persepolis was not a very dense city.

11:42 Its different neighborhoods are widely spaced from each other.

11:45 Between them, vast areas appear to have been deliberately left empty.

11:55 Mapping it with their sensing device,

11:57 geophysicists have identified traces of ancient furrows in the soil.

12:04 What do they represent?

12:17 To answer this question,

12:19 Sebastian gave me an appointment 30 miles from Persepolis.

12:27 At Pasargad, another royal city of the Achaemenid Empire.

12:36 Hamid Fadaei is the curator here.

12:41 These canals are well preserved, like everywhere in Pasargad?

12:45 Yes.

12:46 Yes, the part where we are covers 12 hectares and its peculiarity

12:51 is that it's covered with over a half mile of stone canals.

12:56 The engineering of these canal systems is incredible.

12:59 Their shape, their slope, their magnificent architecture with stone

13:04 basins and sections without any joints.

13:06 This is very well planned.

13:12 Archaeologists have therefore understood that at Pasargad,

13:15 this arid area, normally uncultivable,

13:18 was equipped with an ingenious irrigation system on a large scale.

13:25 So, if I understand well, the arid landscape around us was green at the time?

13:29 Toutà fait.

13:30 Absolutely.

13:31 Imagine gardens in which many species were planted.

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

13:37 dominate the landscape by building and landscaping lush gardens.

13:41 This is what Greek authors called a paradise, paradeisos in Greek,

13:45 and this term probably dates back to the Persian period.

13:49 A paradise?

13:50 A paradise.

13:51 At Persepolis we find this type of landscaping

13:53 of parks to the west of the terrace.

13:56 And in Persepolis it might be even larger.

13:59 Persepolis is based on the model of Pasargadae.

14:02 They reproduce the model of Pasargadae but on a much larger scale.

14:05 And so these paradises, these parks incorporated not only the palace,

14:09 fields, and orchards, but also the common dwellings, the town.

14:16 The power of these Achaemenid kings is measured

14:18 by their ability to create these earthly paradises in the desert.

14:23 Open gardens to be viewed by all to affirm their prestige.

14:27 To achieve such a feat, it was still necessary to find water.

14:34 Using satellite images,

14:36 archaeologists have found traces of an amazing canal at Persepolis.

14:41 In the valley, Sebastia has followed the route

14:44 over several miles into the mountain of Seydan, which we go to visit.

15:02 We have good reason to believe that this source you

15:04 see here was exploited by the Achaemenid kings to supply Persepolis.

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 Persepolis,

15:15 meaning they had to build a canal from these sources to the terrace.

15:21 A channel that crossed the reached the mountain of Persepolis,

15:25 and continued to the terrace.

15:28 And this explains the water used to irrigate the gardens?

15:33 Exactly.

15:34 To irrigate the parks, gardens, fields, and orchards,

15:37 they needed a lot of water, so they came here.

15:40 Why?

15:41 Because this is good quality water.

15:44 Other sources of the plain are often very salty.

15:47 But here was great water for agriculture

15:50 and also for human consumption of Persepolis' population.

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

16:01 Darius was able to make Persepolis a Persian paradise.

16:06 But what could this Eden have looked like?

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

16:15 scientists embarked on the track of the essences of the past.

16:20 By diving deep into the earth.

16:24 These cores had imprisoned the memory of Persepolis' gardens.

16:39 Morteza Jamali is able to interpret these time capsules.

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

16:49 What we're observing is a section of a carrot from Lake Maharlu,

16:52 not far from the palace of Persepolis.

16:56 This period between 78 and 86 inches corresponds to the Achaemenid period,

17:01 the period between 550 to 330 BC.

17:07 The Achaemenid period represents only a small part

17:10 of this core sample that includes sediment accumulated over 4,000 years.

17:17 These sedimentary layers can trap pollen grains among other things,

17:21 and pollen grains can reveal vegetation changes.

17:30 By observing these samples under the microscope,

17:33 Mortaza discovered that new pollens appeared

17:35 in the region when the Achaemenids came to power.

17:43 Here is a Platanus pollen.

17:47 What's most remarkable is the appearance of cultivated trees.

17:53 One can find five species of planted trees,

17:56 walnut trees planted for their fruit,

17:59 olive trees obviously planted for their oil,

18:04 sycamore and cypress trees often planted for shade in Persian gardens,

18:09 but also pine trees.

18:15 Walnut, olive, pine, cypress, and sycamore.

18:23 These species did not exist on Iran's high plateaus before the Achaemenids.

18:29 They seem to have been imported from the four corners of their empire,

18:32 and they managed to grow them on these arid lands,

18:35 another way to express their power.

18:42 Observing a leap in pollen quantities from these trees,

18:46 especially from items planted in the Persian gardens like cypress and walnut,

18:50 shows the Achaemenids significantly landscape the area.

18:56 Here was something new.

18:58 It may be the invention of garden cities

19:01 or the large-scale development of gardens throughout the area.

19:08 Thanks to the work of archaeologists around the terrace and its palace,

19:12 Persepolis, the Persian Eden, is revealed.

19:17 A city with islands of housing spaced from each

19:20 other and embedded in lush vegetation with fruit trees, shade trees, and ponds,

19:30 Persepolis must have been the most opulent city of the empire,

19:35 the Persian paradise.

19:39 This marvelous city was the work of Darius the Great.

19:43 In any case, that's what history retained until now.

19:49 But around the site, Pierre Francesco's team has made an unexpected

19:54 discovery that could change the history of Persepolis.

20:08 What exactly made you search here?

20:10 It was by chance.

20:13 Because our palace in the city project led us to conduct surveys over the plain.

20:22 When we started digging, we found a surprise.

20:28 This is a monumental gate which has a rectangular plane.

20:32 It's very solid.

20:36 Brick walls 32 ft thick encircle a corridor with an inner chamber.

20:42 What was this building's purpose?

20:45 Finding the answer perplexed archaeologists.

20:54 Until in searching, they discover these decorative elements.

20:59 Some are decorated in reliefs, others are varnished.

21:05 Alireza Schedi, the co-director of the excavation, studies them as they emerge.

21:12 Look.

21:13 That's an eye.

21:14 A beautiful eye.

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

21:20 And look.

21:22 Here's another engraved brick associated with it.

21:25 And to which we attach great importance.

21:28 This one.

21:30 We believe this is part of a Babylonian dragon called Mushhushshu.

21:34 Here is Mushhushshu's horn.

21:37 And when we place this brick next to the other one,

21:39 they become a part of Mushhushshu's head.

21:46 From these brick fragments, the researchers have reconstructed the animal.

21:52 The Mushhushshu is a dragon with the front paws of a lion,

21:55 the hind paws of a raptor, and a snake's head.

22:02 A mythological animal originating in Babylon

22:05 that archaeologists had never before found in Persia.

22:14 Thus, in reconstituting this puzzle,

22:16 they made the connection with Babylon's Ishtar Gate,

22:20 which was one of the main entrances to the powerful

22:23 Mesopotamian city located more than 600 miles away.

22:28 Why reproduce this door at Persepolis?

22:32 When does it date from?

22:34 An inscription put them on the track.

22:46 This inscription in cuneiform is very important.

22:51 It means king.

22:55 But it's written in an ancient language that was

22:58 no longer used at the time of Darius.

23:02 This allows us to affirm that this Babylonian style

23:05 door was built before the arrival of Darius to power.

23:12 Thanks to the discovery of this gate,

23:14 archaeologists have deduced that a city certainly

23:17 existed here before the reign of Darius.

23:22 Maybe founded by one of his predecessors, Cyrus,

23:25 who 20 years earlier, in 539 BC, conquered Babylon.

23:32 It was he who would have built this door to celebrate his victory.

23:39 He would have founded Persepolis before Darius moved here

23:42 with his palace and transformed the city into a Persian paradise.

23:50 With these new findings, a completely new story of Persepolis is revealed,

23:55 thanks to the work of these Iranian, Italian, and French archaeologists.

24:03 How has your recent work changed the vision we had of Persepolis?

24:07 Now we've changed our perspective.

24:10 The aim of the study was transferred to the outer city.

24:16 We realized that we cannot understand the true Persepolis without

24:21 a perspective of a city whose terrace is only one part.

24:29 So we increased the limits of Persepolis much further in both space and in time.

24:40 This is an important part of Iranian culture

24:45 that was born here during the reign of the Achaemenids.

24:51 That is why for us Iranians it is so important to understand

24:55 the civilization that was built and thrived

24:59 in this beautiful city of Persepolis.