Living Worlds
A Royal Road station with fresh horses, and the half-built columns of Persepolis where workers of many nations collect rations.

2560–500 BCE · Persia, about 500 BCE

The Royal Road

Every traveller is fed at the next station.

The law of The Royal Road

Every traveller is fed at the next station.

Persia, about 500 BCE: a royal road crosses an empire, with fresh horses at every station. At Persepolis, workers from many nations are paid in silver and grain, as the palace's own tablets record.

A woman worker receiving a ration of grain at a storehouse at Persepolis.

A life in The Royal Road · composite, based on the record

A worker, thirty

She collects her ration of grain at the storehouse. Her name is written on a clay tablet beside it.

Meanwhile, in the same age

The first great works

The pyramid builders' town at Giza: mudbrick bakeries with smoke rising, workers in linen kilts, a boat unloading limestone, the unfinished pyramid behind.

The Builders' Town

Giza, about 2560 BCE

A double-hulled voyaging canoe with pandanus sails on the open Pacific at dusk.

Which world will you live in?

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