"What Colour For Persian Skin?" Topic

As I am wrapping up painting my Greeks, my attention is turning to my Achaemenid Persians. What skin color should be used? Much modern art suggests white folk the same as the Greeks, but older art shows a variety of skin colors, often limited by the media used. Were the Persians white like the Greeks, or brown like the modern inhabitants of the Middle East?

Thank you for any and all relevant comments and answers.

As for most middle eastern armies, the nobles would be less in the sun so lighter skin, similar to Greeks would be likely, the soldiery would be well tanned. I think the western asian component would be lighter than the western provinces like Bactria.
I think modern Iranians are a good guide!

Thats just my guess anyway!
There is only pottery and wall paintings to go on, which may be coloured by artistic conventions.

White they are and were Aryans.

Any Mediterranean tone looks the part.

True enough, most any Mediterranean skin tone is acceptable.

Having said that, the poorer, militia-type units would likely tend to be a darker hue, more tanned, as it were, because they were primarily levies called up for the campaign, and almost exclusively from the laboring classes. Farmers, builders, etc.

Plus, you'd have the odd foreign mercenary unit, etc. The Persians had an empire and drew from all over. So a variety of skin tones, maybe by unit at these small scales, would be worth considering.

Definitely brown.

White they are and were Aryans.

"Aryan" does not equal "white", unless you're talking about the (completely fictional) "Aryans" from Nazi and White Supremacist ideology.

Take it up with those well known Nazis and white supremacists Drews and Vidal they will put you right in history or literature as suits.

Actually Drews devotes sometime to the political polution of the term Aryan due to Nazi propoganda and its potential to skew recent scholarship. I suppose I should have anticipated someone making a Nazi connection but its the Ancients Board and for Persians a correct use of the word.

Iranians are Indo Europeans so sun tanned maybe but not brown. Many Iranians of my aquantance have been as pale skinned as me others looked more Mediterranean none could be described as brown. As other have said some subject peoples back then would have been darker than their Persian overlords.

If it's of any help, I've met many modern Persians (including a beautiful 36 year old pharmacist who looks about 20, and seriously considered me a marriage prospect!). Their skin tone varies from a dark olive to quite fair (such as the lady in question), but probably averages out at a medium olive. Anyway, the ladies are generally very easy on the eye.

I'd paint them the same as you'd do Greeks.
Unless you paint them as albinos I can't imagine anyone quibbling.

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Oh BUgger, read my post again. I'm not saying there isn't any legitimate use for the term "Aryan". It's properly used as a linguistic term, referring to a group of languages, or the people that speak/spoke them.

You, however, use it in reference to skin color, and that's what I'm objecting to. I also seriously doubt that Drews and Vidal agree with you there.

Iranians are Indo Europeans so sun tanned maybe but not brown.

Again. "Indo-European" is also a linguistic term, not a racial one. What language you speak doesn't say much, if anything, about your skintone.

Sun-tanned? Sure. All soldiers are sun-tanned after a few weeks of campaign. Persians, Greeks, even Vikings. I'd suggest that that observation is not going to be terribly helpful for the OP.

I would think that for the most part ancient Persians would not look much different than this (with the exception of modern attire and weapons of course.)

But being that Persia was a large empire you would see a greater range of skin tones than today.

I would say paint them like you paint the Greeks. The Greeks never commented on them being dark, unlike say the Phoenicians, Egyptians, or Libyans, or for that matter the Ethiopians.

Just remember that modern the modern Persian has as much Arab and Turk in his ancestry as the modern Greek has Sarmatian and Italian in his.

AcrylicNick,

If we are to use the glazed tile images as accurate for skin tone, then we should probably be painting all of our Egyptian minis with a red skin tone, since that's what was used in the extant contemporary paintings.

"You, however, use it in reference to skin color, and that's what I'm objecting to. I also seriously doubt that Drews and Vidal agree with you there."

Read them and get back to me. The impact of white skinned Aryans upon the Indian sub continent reverberates today in Indian marriage adverts. I know Indo European is properly a linguistic term but in the time we are talking of its speakers were white and the question was about Archaemenid skin tone.

Drews has a great physical description of beer swilling, cow loving Aryans from the Rig Verda. I'm sure you would enjoy it.

Any how as we can see brown is not the correct answer to the question.

" cow loving Aryans "

yikes!!! we're just good friends, no really……

Oh has the right of it.

If you are talking about the 'Medes and Persians'.

The various subject races would be a different matter though I suspect the Bactrians would have the same skin tones as the Persians.

Thanks,

Pat

Thanks, guys. White for cavalry and Immortals, brown for other units (presumably subjects.)

Remember that the Saka/Scythians/Parthians/Yuechi/Kushans etc were all Indo-Europeans not Turks or Mongolian (they entered the steppe from the Eastmuch later)and are recorded in many Chinese accounts as having members with red hair and blue or green eyes.

I use ModelColour's "Tanned Flesh" then inked over with Games Workshop "Ogryn Flesh" (now retitled "Reikland Fleshshade") Why GW keep renaming these things is beyond me.

Tanned mostly:

Sadly most of the internet photos of the Shah's parade are small and not clear…but show a lighter skin than on the Persepolis reliefs.

The guard figures on the coloured tiles are from Susa and ar Elamites rather than ethnic Persians. The Greeks noted that when the Persian prisoners were stripped they had pale and fleshy bodies unlike the Greeks who exercised in the sun and covered themselves with olive oil. For the Greeks to point out the paleness of the Persians when naked shows that the faces and hands of the Persians were probably the same as the Greeks.
Persians are quite fair skinned , olive complexion is probably about right.

Is that a guard unit, rvandusen? They certainly stand out from the crowd in those unusual hats. I'm wondering if they're derived from traditional ethnic costume.

Those are based on either the Immortals or the Royal Spearbearers, so yeah elite units. Though the unless the group at the back is wearing very dark green, I don't think that would be an accurate color. Black is really expensive.

"Is that a guard unit, rvandusen? They certainly stand out from the crowd in those unusual hats. I'm wondering if they're derived from traditional ethnic costume."
No smiley, so not sure if you are joking.
It's NBC gear.

Joke about guard units? Are you kidding me? And I don't care which corporate media outfit supplied the silly hats.