Lecture by Dr Claudia Sagona - "From Cunaxa to the Black Sea. Xenophon and the 10 000"

In 401 BC, Xenophon and 10, 000 Greek mercenaries found themselves stranded deep in the heart of hostile Persian held territories, north of the ancient city of Babylon. Winter was almost upon them and yet they had little alternative but to trek north through the most unforgiving highlands of eastern Turkey. For centuries, the path they took in their desperate flight home had not been known.

In 1999, in the course of fieldwork in eastern Turkey, my survey team came upon a road. Not just any road, but one paved with massive stone slabs. Research has since shown that this was none other than the fabled high way of the Median and later Achaemenid Persian Empire. It was also the path that Xenophon and his cohorts took. This is not where the story ends, but rather it has begun an unprecedented understanding of the Iron Age period in the region.

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