• Gemelli Careri’s Description of Persepolis

    Author(s):
    Henry Colburn (see profile)
    Date:
    2020
    Group(s):
    Ancient Near East, Archaeology, Assyriologists, Classical archaeology
    Subject(s):
    Middle East, Archaeology, Iran, Italian literature, Travel writing
    Item Type:
    Article
    Tag(s):
    Persepolis, travelogue, Near Eastern archaeology, Persia, Travel narratives
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/ttxg-za22
    Abstract:
    This article examines the description of Persepolis, one of the capital cities of the Achaemenid Persian Empire (ca. 550–330 BCE), by Giovanni Francesco Gemelli Careri (1651–1725) in his illustrated travelogue Giro del mondo (1699–1700). Gemelli Careri’s extensive description of the site—some twenty pages of text accompanied by two plates engraved by Andrea Magliar (fl. 1690s)—is compared with the accounts of contemporary travelers and with present-day archaeological knowledge. Gemelli Careri’s visit to and description of Persepolis are now largely forgotten in the modern study of Achaemenid Persia, but they shed light on a transitional moment in the development of a more scientific approach to travel writing about archaeological sites: his work straddles the more imaginative approaches of earlier travel writers and the more scientific approaches of subsequent ones.
    Metadata:
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    Published as:
    Journal article     Show details
    Journal:
    Getty Research Journal
    Volume:
    9
    Page Range:
    181 - 190
    ISSN:
    1944-8740
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    4 years ago
    License:
    All Rights Reserved
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