Ancient Iranian Art

To understand Iran, its related societies and people, one must first attempt to acquire an understanding of their culture. It is in the study of this area that the Iranian people's identity optimally expresses itself. As prominent Iranologist Richard Nelson Frye writes, in the first sentence of his latest book on Persia, "Iran's prize possession has been its culture.”

The culture of what is Iran has evolved over thousands of years of recorded history and was among the first civilizations in the world. It held a strikingly complex and stable culture that didn't receive much influence from the outside over millennia. It did have extensive contact with many peoples in the course of the various empires and civilizations based in Iran. Owing to its own dominant geo-political position and culture in the world, it has directly influenced cultures and peoples as far away as Italy, Macedonia, and Greece to the West, Russia to the North, the Arabian Peninsula to the South, and South and East Asia to the East.