Inside the Glorious Art—and Fierce Rivalry—of Ancient Persia, Greece, and Rome

In ancient times, people couldn’t use smartphones and social media to share glimpses of their lives with the rest of the world, or travel by airplane to far corners of the globe.

But they were far from isolated—and more connected to other cultures than many 21st-century people may realize.

Now, visitors to the Getty Villa can discover how the major powers of the ancient world influenced each other in Persia: Ancient Iran and the Classical World. The exhibition focuses on ancient Iran, historically known as Persia, a nation that dominated western Asia for over a millennium (about 550 BCE–650 CE). Royal sculpture, spectacular luxury vessels, weapons, jewelry and other objects of gold and silver, as well as religious images and historical documents, reveal the artistic and cultural connections and influences between Persia and the rival powers of Greece and Rome. An interactive website depicting the grand, ancient Persian city of Persepolis accompanies the exhibition.

The exhibition, curated by Timothy Potts, Maria Hummer-Tuttle and Robert Tuttle Director of the J. Paul Getty Museum; Jeffrey Spier, Anissa and John Paul Balson II Senior Curator of Antiquities; and Sara E. Cole, assistant curator of antiquities, is the second in the Getty Museum’s Classical World in Context series, which investigates the interconnections of Greece and Rome with other important cultures of the ancient Mediterranean and western Asia. The series began in 2018 with Beyond the Nile: Egypt and the Classical World.

Potts and Spier recently joined Ali Mousavi, adjunct assistant professor of Iranian archaeology at UCLA and consulting scholar, for a virtual conversation about Persia’s rich and multifaceted engagement with the Classical world. They explain how it’s impossible to fully grasp the history and culture of powers like Greece and Rome without exploring Persia’s spectacular art and empire.

Tim Potts: Perhaps I can start by taking us back to the origins of the Classical World in Context series. The Getty Museum’s collection of antiquities is fairly well-defined: it’s the ancient “Classical world” of the Greeks, Romans, and Etruscans and their near neighbors. It is these cultures of the Mediterranean world that were the focus of J. Paul Getty’s collecting, and since he died in 1976, they continued to be the core of the Villa’s collections up until today. So the Getty Museum doesn’t have a comprehensive collection of the ancient world in general, because we really haven’t acquired in any depth artworks from ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, the pre-Classical cultures of Anatolia, or places further east, including Persia, Central Asia, and others.

This presents, I think, a challenge for some of our visitors, because to understand how Greek culture was so influential, you really do need to look at other cultures beyond the strictly “Classical” world. You cannot understand that world without understanding the broader context of other cultures that it interacted with, nor can you understand those cultures without taking into account the influence through conquest, trade, and so on, that the Classical world had on places like Persia.

So why mount an exhibition on Persia, and why now? Because after Egypt, Persia is the nation that had the most profound and sustained influence and impact on the Classical world. And by the same token, Persia was very much influenced by Greek and Roman culture, most notably when the Achaemenid Empire of Persia (550–330 BCE) was conquered by Alexander the Great; and later in its sustained rivalry with Rome for domination of the known world. This long and eventful interaction is critical to understanding ancient history, and seemed a natural second step in our sequence of exhibitions.

Jeffrey Spier: Just to put what Tim said in a slightly different context, you have to understand that all the cultures interacted very closely, with Greeks and Romans living in the East and with plenty of foreign traders living in Greece. They shared art, religion, myth, and culture. We’re trying to develop these exhibitions to show that. It’s not always the easiest thing, because you have to choose objects that survived and can travel. And we have to find themes that can be communicated to our visitors effectively. Persia was a challenge. I don’t think people know the history quite as well as the history of Greece and Rome. So we do have to show that in fact, Persia was a great power for over a thousand years. Greece, Rome, and Persia were the superpowers of the time. And there were border lands, and often, military clashes, between them. We’re looking at all these areas and where and how they interacted.

Ali Mousavi: What I like about this exhibition is that it begins with ancient Greece and goes all the way to ancient Rome. It gives a good overview of the whole region and the whole period of ancient Persia, which interacted with both. Yes, as Jeffrey mentioned, these civilizations clashed, but they also exchanged a lot of other things, like artists who moved from one region to another, and we have examples of this phenomenon in the exhibition.

TP: One of the challenges of this exhibition was that we knew we would not be able to bring objects on loan from Iran itself. It is a pity of course, but there is enough material from ancient Iran in museums around the world, like the British Museum, the Louvre, the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago, that we were able to represent the art very well. And I would like to add that art from the Achaemenid period of the Persian Empire really is the culminating high point of artistic achievement in the ancient Near East. It draws on a number of the earlier cultures—notably the earlier Assyrians and Babylonians in Iraq, as well as the nearby Elamitos, all of whom were absorbed into the Achaemenid Empire. When the Persians were building the capital city of Persepolis, craftsmen from Greece, Egypt, Turkey, Afganistan, and many other far-flung regions participated in the construction and adornment of the palaces.

JS: And it’s very deliberate. There are wonderful inscriptions that show how they brought craftsmen in from all over the empire. So it’s clear that they wanted to incorporate all of these traditions.

AM: I think the whole space of the Achaemenid Empire was a meeting place. The monumental capitals of Persepolis and Susa were meeting places of all those nations’ craftsmen, stone cutters, brick makers, etc. who all contributed to the beauty of the place and to the empire.

TP: Ali, you shouldn’t be too modest. You should explain that you’ve worked on archaeological sites of Pasargadae and Persepolis.

AM: My father was an archaeologist and he participated in the last large-scale excavations at Persepolis between 1968-72. He introduced me to those ruins. So I’ve always been fascinated with the site of Persepolis.

There are misconceptions about Iran because of the past 40 years of political tension. Cultural relations have suffered because of political tensions and problems. I think this exhibition is wonderful because it shows not only the history of ancient Iran and its contribution to the ancient world and human civilization, but it also brings in a large number of artworks that originally came from Iran, a country that has not been visited frequently in the past 40 years. It’s great to have this exhibition here in the US.

TP: It wasn’t that many generations ago that in universities, schools, and books about ancient art, Greece and Rome represented the pinnacle of artistic achievement. Other cultures like Egypt and Persia, although interesting, were considered less sophisticated, less important. If there are any lingering prejudices of that kind still around, and they were even when I was a student, I think one of the things this exhibition can do is disabuse people of any idea that places like Persia, Egypt, and others haven’t created equally important art and traditions. Their art and cultures were every bit as sophisticated and intriguing, and in some cases as influential, as Classical art was in its day.