Persepolis paper in window of Iranian delicatessen, Hillfields, Coventry

Image: © A J Paxton Taken: 19 Mar 2019

This is a detail from the window display of the Persian Mini Market delicatessen in Victoria Street that appears in this geograph Image], though from a photo taken over two years earlier; the paper has since become very faded. It was taken on the 19th March, and the shop and its customers were busy preparing for Nowruz, the Iranian New Year, which is celebrated at the spring equinox. The paper is printed with repeating patterns showing the ruins of Persepolis, the royal palace complex built by the kings of the Achaemenid dynasty of the 6th to 4th century BCE, and burned down by Alexander of Macedon ('Alexander the Great') during his conquest of Persia in 331BCE. Persepolis is the Greek name; it was known to Persians as Parsa, and is called Takht-e-Jamshid (the throne of Jamshid) by modern Iranians. The ruins still stand in the vicinity of the city of Shiraz and are an important non-Islamic symbol of Iranian identity, as is the figure on the winged disc in the centre of the pattern, known today as the Faravahar. At Persepolis this represented either kingly glory ('khvarenah') or the god Ahuramazda, and as a modern symbol of Zoroastrian religion and Iranian culture it is often identified with the fravashi or personal spirit. See Curtis J, Sarikhani Sandmann, I & Stanley, T, Epic Iran: 5000 Years of Culture, V&A Publishing, 2021, pp62-65, also the Wikipedia article on the Faravahar here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faravahar .

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