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Sardes (547 BCE)
Unless otherwise indicated, pictures on this page © Marco Prins and Jona Lendering. Photos can be downloaded and used for non-commercial purposes, but you have to acknowledge Livius.
Tumuli at the Lydian royal cemetry at Bin Tepe. Photo Jona Lendering. Sardes was the capital of ancient Lydia, the kingdom of the proverbially rich Croesus. In 547, the Persian king Cyrus the Great defeated Croesus on the plains north of Sardes. The hills on the picture are the tombs of the kings of Lydia.
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An Arabian archer and his driver on a dromedary. Assyrian relief form the age of Aššurbanipal. British museum, London (Britain). He used a stratagem: the horses of the Lydians had never seen dromedaries and were afraid of them, so Cyrus placed these animal in the Persian front line. This picture shows Arabian archers fighting from a dromedary; it is an Assyrian relief from the age of king Aššurbanipal (668-631), and it is now in the British Museum.
Sardes, seen from the west. Photo Jona Lendering. After the victory on the plain of Sardes, Cyrus laid siege to the city, which was captured. From now on, the Persians ruled the Lydians and the Yaunâ, notorious pirates and clever salesmen from the west.
Vase painting of Croesus on the pyre. Louvre, Paris (France). King Croesus was executed. The famous story, told by Herodotus of Halicarnassus, that he was saved from the pyre by a rainshower, is contradicted by a contemporary source from Babylon, the Chronicle of Nabonidus. The picture shows an amphora from the Louvre: Croesus is seated on the pyre, poors a libation, and will in an instant be saved.
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