In an anecdote from the western classical educational circles widespread claims that when Harvard University in the end of the 19th century to build the classics department when, employed by the school teachers who obstinately requirements will be the name from "classics" changed to "the classics", the modified name a direct use ever since. The definite article add reflects at that time in the western academic circle in ancient Greek Roman civilization study of a superior mind and xenophobic, in their eyes, compared to the ancient civilization and Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, China, America, the achievements of the Greek and Roman civilization has is classic, or at least more worthy to be called classic. With a strong understanding and the western center on the color of the suit, the West from ancient Greece and Rome until mid twentieth Century in the study of the Renaissance has been permeated with a kind of teleology and Utilitarianism: in many western classics scholars' eyes, the study of Greek Luo Ma Wenming not only aims to restore the historical dust in Greek, Latin the historical truth, is from the Greek cultural heritage of Rome, from the political and military gains and losses of its essence, to demonstrate the uniqueness and superiority of Western civilization since ancient times, and modern western civilization out of "dark ages" after the cultural renaissance, political reform and the Colonial expansion provides brilliant ideas of nutrients and reference template. In such an old mindset influence, traditional western classical scholars often to Herodotus, Xenophon, Plutarch of Athens, Arrhenius, classical writer in the Persian Empire many vivid, detailed records and turn a blind eye or only the them as explained in the footnotes to the Greek world diplomatic relations, or is simply the theologian, archaeologists, anthropologists threw the these data. They rarely try in rich Greek and Latin historical records of build up a Persian its political, economic and cultural development history as the research object of knowledge - 19th century western classical scholar who really care about the "classic" the Greek and Roman world, and in their eyes to tyranny and cruelty, stupidity, and weak for the basic characteristics of the Persian Empire is not enough with Athens, Sparta, Corinth, bottom Beese the brilliant Greek city states in any one mentioned in the same breath.
As we all know, the ancient Persian in the middle of the 6th century BC, the rapid rise and become a across Europe, Asia and Africa three continents of the Empire, but in more than 200 years after (330 years ago), then, all of a sudden in Alexander launched a crusade to quickly apart. In this historical background, in addition to the Asia Minor area of Greek residents and the near east of Hebrews, the nations of the Persian Empire almost did not leave any history about the Empire records. Because of the ignorance of the Persian history, the research on the Persian civilization has gradually been divided into three directions: the Greek Persian diplomatic history, the "prison" of the Old Testament and the study of the ancient Persian language. Because of the above three types of research there is a huge difference in the data base and the guiding ideology of the Persian Empire, which had a profound impact in the history of the world countries know later turned into a full of fallacies and contradictions confusion: in the field of the history of the relationship between the Persian, Persian, Greek historical means of Latin writers the Persian invasion threat, and ultimately in the Greek world, interference Alexander had destroyed records and review of this process, the image of the Persian Empire is evil, cruel, brutal and in Biblical Archaeology outwardly strong but inwardly weak; the context, the most reliable materials about the history of Persia from the "Old Testament", its value lies in revealing the prophet period the Jewish life and God will dominate the world power ups and downs, and Cyrus the Persian regime is described as the founder of peace and happiness and achieve The political tool of God; and in the 19th century, the ancient Persian research aims to the old Persian inscriptions, mud board documents to decipher and linguistic analysis, intended to take up common and superiority of ancient Indo European languages, in a certain extent with at that time in Western Europe vogue of Aryan racial superiority on Zhang properties. Until after the end of World War II, with the rise of the trend of culture pluralism, anti racism and anti western center theory ", a number of western scholars began to try to break the barriers between the three research directions, integration of an objective, scientific and comprehensive Persian history research methods, so as to promote the rapid development of contemporary western ancient Persian history.
Contemporary western ancient Persian historical science emerged in the historical background of cultural pluralism advocacy, it receives a will be the ancient Persian Empire as a independent and worthy of respect of the civilization system of the spirit of scientific research, efforts to eliminate the disturbance of the backward ideology of imperialism and colonial history, western center theory, racial superiority theory, active use of cross disciplinary research methods and open thinking, has made considerable achievements in aspects of objectively and accurately recover the true face of the civilization of the Persian Empire. The establishment of ancient Persian historical data is not a simple superposition or piece together, which means the fundamental reform of the value concept and a major breakthrough to the traditional subject boundaries. Ancient Persian historical study starting from the Persian as a with the Greek world, the Roman Empire in the status of full equality of individual civilization to be concerned about, and tries to combine the Persians themselves position and Greek, Hebrew, modern external perspective to an objective analysis of the Persian monarchy characteristics and existing historical rationality, but try to avoid preconceptions of Persian civilization and political system of negative evaluation. In the specific research ideas, research results of Orientalism theory of seyyid (Edward W.Said) and stressed the "other" concept and contemporary post colonial theory and folklore, symbol of are widely used in Persian historical areas of sociology, broaden the scholars's visual field, enrich the research methods. In the contemporary western academic context, although the overall study atmosphere of the humanities has long been a secular, but many western scholars of the traditional disciplines of classical science, biblical archaeology will still pay attention to avoid some of the conflicts with the fundamental doctrine of the Bible in the Bible. At this point, the study of ancient Persian historical data often show more courage and more thorough exploration spirit, and put forward a lot of subversive ideas about the nature of the book and the source of material in the book.
In addition, the ancient Persian historical data is not a traditional sense of history or literature, which is determined by the unique nature of the ancient Persian literature. The existing historical data in the ancient Persian content of more than 80% from Greek and Latin literature, about 10% from the old Persian, aka German and new Elamite inscriptions materials, in addition to a small amount of Hebrew, Aramaic Bible literature and inscriptions, and Assyrian archaeology material evidence also tend to in the Persian historical textual criticism and interpretation process play a crucial role. This basic situation means that the ancient Persian history any high quality of organize, edit and interpretation must continue to break the classics, Assyria studies, archeology, religious studies between barriers and barriers, must also be based on the division of labor between experts in various disciplines is the basic premise. In contemporary ancient Persian historical data with outstanding international renowned scholars, cloth, a French scholar, Pierre Briant Lyon, an American scholar balcer (Jack Martin Balcer) and British scholar Lloyd Llewellyn Jones (Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones), basically follows the classical science and history of historical analysis method, the British scholar Kurt (AM) lie Kuhrt) is distinguished Assyrian scholar, and the famous Persian civilization studies. Olmsted (A.T.Olmstead) is to "Old Testament" for lifelong study. But these scholars all have a broad perspective, their personal practice shows that the creation and development of the Persian historical data is a powerful challenge to the traditional humanities disciplines division system and bold innovation.
In combing the history of Persia itself, Persian historiography researchers through on the collation of data and comprehensive analysis of various aspects, it is concluded that the mentioned among the Greek historians, was replaced by the Persian Empire of meters at the end of Empire does not exist, Cyrus the great is not pure the Persians, the Achaemenid Dynasty named wrong, Cambyses Egyptian policy and unlike Herodotus says that extreme, Darius life by usurper way made the throne and the eastern conquests of Alexander the great on the eve of the Persian Empire had no obvious decline signs of new insights. In classical historical materials of editing and collation and study of Persian history has important value but in the past are often subject to overlook some of the writers and their works have the excellent quality of Greek and Latin revised the and precise modern language translations. 1 in the promotion of Greek history and the Old Testament archeology research, theory of historical materials of the Persian new results deepen the understanding of people of Herodotus, Xenophon, Tai Xi aspen and recorded the Persian affairs Greek historians, deepen the classical economists of Plato, Aristotle, and to the Persian Empire as the basis or sample to elaborate the understanding of his theory of political thinkers, also inspired the researchers of the Old Testament of the Bible the "kings", "Chronicles" and contains valuable historical important chapter placed the Persian Empire and Persian Literature the creation background research. In these concrete conclusions and research perspectives, some of them have been widely accepted in the academic world, and some of them are still controversial. But in any case, these achievements and ongoing exploration have played an active role in the academic atmosphere and inspire the scholars. It is helpful to break the tradition of classical science and the Bible study.
At the same time, because of the complexity and particularity of the Persian historical data itself, the modern Persian historical materials are also faced with some difficult problems in the methodology and system construction. First, the history of the Persian Empire including Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Aramaic, Egyptian hieroglyphs pictographs, the ancient Persian, Akkadian, new Elamite and a variety of text, related theory that use modern languages, English, French, German, Russian, Persian, Arabic, writing, also relates to cross the complex issues of history and archaeology, literature and religion, with a typical international and interdisciplinary characteristics. The Persian history scholars in the modern world are only able to master the skills and methods of the research, and the results of other fields have to be understood by the translation and the secondary literature. In the traditional classical education, the history of research and Study on the history of ancient Chinese language and the history of the study of ancient Chinese language and methodology have great differences, but the study on the history of ancient Persia in the history of the study of ancient Persian history is a great difference, and the study of the ancient Persian history is often not recognized by the scholars in the history of ancient Persia. The controversy in this method has greatly hindered the construction and development of the Persian historical data, and it is not conducive to the extensive dissemination of the research results in the world. II. Secondly, although Persian historiography itself with the progress of the times and to introduce new features, but Syed scholars have criticized the "Orientalism" cultural mindset and not overnight can be overcome. In some specific problems of the research, some western scholars deep-rooted prejudice "western center theory", the cold war and post Cold War things tense tense political background and contemporary Iran, the Arab world of extreme nationalism still on the objectivity of academic study constitute a threat. For example, in today's Iran spread far and wide, and reflects the modern extreme nationalist ideology "Cyrus cylinder inscription" versions almost entirely from forged, and the history of Persia literature aka German original content and spirit of the far. But under the influence of the contemporary Iran nationalism, this text has great influence and appeal, even in the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Shellorin Ebadi (Shirin), a famous Iran female writer (Ebadi) also cited and praised the inscription in his speech. Thirdly, such understanding differences and incorrectly relay an erroneous message resulting in local studies of ancient civilization of contemporary western scholars and the Arab world in communication on this issue from a start at least a dialogue based on the lack of. With the "9 - 11" incident in Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries in political turmoil and in recent years, Iran, Turkey and other countries with the United States and Europe and the United States, the diplomatic relations between the United States and Europe has become increasingly tense, Western archaeologists in the core areas of the Persian Empire to explore the work of almost a stop. This situation has seriously hindered the further development of the ancient Persian historical data.
In order to get rid of these difficulties as soon as possible, the research of the modern Persian historical data is making unremitting efforts. In terms of language and literature, a large number of scholars were in different languages and Persian documents editing, translating and publishing work, of which the most important results is British Assyrian school scholars Kut in 2007 to compile published detailed notes the Persian Empire: Achaemenid period data set "(the Persian Empire:A corpus of sources from the Achaemenid period). These basic work for the different disciplines in the field of Persian civilization researchers to understand and communicate with each other to create a convenient condition. At the same time, the international society for the history of Persian also in active use of the Internet, the media, will be a large number of newly completed Persian history data consolidation results free of charge to the public, to change the data of classics professional and strong, not easy to obtain, the high price of our, to encourage research and use of Persian history original materials related to the field of academics and amateurs. In order to ease the differences of ideology, the exchange of the western and Iran historians and the museum has become more and more frequent in recent years, so as to make a positive effort to eliminate the misunderstanding and hostility between each other. Some western scholars have put forward that the study of Persian history so far is to look west, trying to explore the relationship and interaction between the Persian Empire and the Greek and Hebrew cultures, and to the Persian civilization and the India, Arabia and the ancient Chinese area may exist between the communication and mutual concern is not enough. The Persian Empire in the eastern provinces of the Persian and other Eastern countries communication on historical research may, therefore, will further expand the theory of historical materials of the ancient Persian view of heaven and earth. In this regard, China's historians and archaeologists have entirely potential to play their own advantages, in the Persian historical data on this international chemical Kone occupy a place, and in the process of promoting ancient Persian civilization in the world to make a unique contribution to the process.