Elspeth R. M. Dusinberre – författare

Elspeth R. M. Dusinberre proposes a fresh approach to understanding the Achaemenid Empire based on her study of the regional capital, Sardis. This study uses archaeological, artistic and textual sources to demonstrate that the two-hundred-year Persian presence in this city had a profound impact on local social structures, revealing the region's successful absorption, both ideological and physical, into the Persian Empire. During this period, Sardis was a centre of burgeoning creativity and vitality, where a polyethnic elite devised a fresh culture - inspired by Iranian, Greek and local Lydian traditions - that drew on and legitimated imperial ideology. The non-elite absorbed and adapted multiple aspects of this culture to create a wholly different profile of what it meant to be Sardian. As well as successfully bringing together information on the Achaemenids, this book is also an excellent contribution to empire studies.

Elspeth R. M. Dusinberre proposes a fresh approach to understanding the Achaemenid Empire based on her study of the regional capital, Sardis. This study uses archaeological, artistic and textual sources to demonstrate that the two-hundred-year Persian presence in this city had a profound impact on local social structures, revealing the region's successful absorption, both ideological and physical, into the Persian Empire. During this period, Sardis was a centre of burgeoning creativity and vitality, where a polyethnic elite devised a fresh culture - inspired by Iranian, Greek and local Lydian traditions - that drew on and legitimated imperial ideology. The non-elite absorbed and adapted multiple aspects of this culture to create a wholly different profile of what it meant to be Sardian. As well as successfully bringing together information on the Achaemenids, this book is also an excellent contribution to empire studies.

The Achaemenid Persian Empire (550-330 BCE) was a vast and complex sociopolitical structure that encompassed much of modern-day Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Israel, Egypt, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan and included two dozen distinct peoples who spoke different languages, worshipped different deities, lived in different environments and had widely differing social customs. This book offers a radical new approach to understanding the Achaemenid Persian Empire and imperialism more generally. Through a wide array of textual, visual and archaeological material, Elspeth R. M. Dusinberre shows how the rulers of the Empire constructed a system flexible enough to provide for the needs of different peoples within the confines of a single imperial authority and highlights the variability in response. This book examines the dynamic tensions between authority and autonomy across the Empire, providing a valuable new way of considering imperial structure and development.