Went to the British Museum today to see the Persian exhibition. It was striking to see some of the exhibits, but it was very crowded unlike the Sudan exhibition which used the same gallery space and was free.
The workmanship on some of the objects was incredible, mainly the seals either cylinder or stamp type, which needed very fine carving done on the stone they were produced from. The other impressive work was on some of the gold and silver objects, which showed the wealth of the persian empire.The carved statuary had very stylised elements, with the frequent use of a lion or bulls in the figures. In some ways there are many similar items from the babylonian and assyrian collections in the museum so I would not really class this as unmissable, but it is worth seeing.
I think the other thing that struck me was seeing distinct national styles of dress reflected for the different subject peoples from the Greeks, Babylonians, Egyptians and Sarmatians, though always seeming to be led by a Persian in their tribute giving.
There are a few inspirations that this gives me mainly back toward one of the first periods I ever looked at wargaming which was Alexander's wars of conquest and establishment of the Macedonian successor states across the near east to India.
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