The Cambridge Ancient History Volume 4: Persia, Greece and the Western Mediterranean, c.525 to 479 BC [2 ed.] 0521228042, 9780521228046

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Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE CAMBRIDGE ANCIENT HISTORY VOLUME IV

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE CAMBRIDGE ANCIENT HISTORY SECOND EDITION VOLUME IV

Persia, Greece and the Western Mediterranean C. 525 tO 4 7 9 B.C. Edited by J O H N BOARDMAN

F.B.A.

Lincoln Professor of Classical Archaeology and Art in the University of Oxford

N. G. L. H A M M O N D F . B . A . Professor Yimeritus of Greek University of Bristol

D . M . LEWIS

F.B.A.

Professor of Ancient History in the University of Oxford

M. OSTWALD William R. Kenan, Jr, Professor of Classics, Swarthmore College, and Professor of Classical Studies, University of Pennsylvania

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

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PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CBZ 2RU, UK 40 West 2odi Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, vie 3207, Australia Ruiz de Alarcon 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa http://www.cambridge.org © Cambridge University Press 1988 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1926 Second edition 1988 Sixth printing 2006 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge Library of Congress catalogue card number: 75-85719 Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data The Cambridge ancient history. — 2nd ed. Vol. 4: Persia, Greece and the Western Mediterranean c. 525 to 479 B.C. 1. History, Ancient I. Boardman, John 930 D57

ISBN o 521 22804 2 (hardback)

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CONTENTS

List of maps

page xi

hist of text-figures

xii

List of chronological tables

xv

Preface

xvii PART I

1

2

T H E PERSIAN EMPIRE

The early history of the Medes and the Persians and the Achaemenid empire to the death of Cambyses by T . CUYLER Y O U N G , J R , Director of the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto i The dimensions of the subject II The sources in general in The Medes and the earliest Persians iv The rise of the Persians to imperial power under Cyrus the Great v Further imperial expansion under Cambyses

24 47

The consolidation of the empire and its limits of growth under Darius and Xerxes

53

i

i 4 6

by T. CUYLER Y O U N G , J R

1 Darius and the re-establishment of Achaemenid power 11 in iv v vi 3

The aftermath of the great rebellion Further expansion under Darius The reign of Xerxes: an end to expansion T h e reigns of Darius and Xerxes summarized Imperial organization and cultural achievement

53 63 66 71 78 79

The major regions of the empire

37ff) we find the king himself, along with the women of the court, embroiled in immorality and misbehaviour of the sort which provided the tittle-tattle from which later writers, such as Ctesias, created 46 He also (XDNb) had copied, almost word for word, the tomb inscription of his father (DNb); see B 71 and, subsequently, B IOI, 45—51. 47 B 170, 91—4; for a variant o p i n i o n , see B 186. Babylonian evidence for m u r d e r , B 318, 17.

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'a perfect farrago of incredible and senseless fables' (Plut. Art.1.4). The scene, in short, is of a court turned in on itself and caught up in its own petty jealousies and sillinesses: the kind of court which leads people into bloody assassinations, but which cannot lead an empire. V.

THE REIGNS OF DARIUS AND XERXES SUMMARIZED

Darius continued the patterns of growth and development begun under Cyrus and Cambyses. He was clearly a man and a king of great vigour. The seizure of the throne and the consolidation of power in his own hands attests to his manhood, and the expansion of the empire east into India and west against the Scy ths and into Thrace displays his powers as a proper king of the Persians. His one setback, at Marathon, was hardly decisive. The king had not led his troops in person, and when he did it should be possible to settle the troubles of the far western fringe of the empire properly. Surely, even though he did not live to make the attack, his son Xerxes, now the Great King, would carry through the father's plans. Xerxes, long chosen as Darius' successor, did his best to wear the mantle he was handed. He had been well groomed for the task, and in his swift reaction to troubles in Egypt and Babylon he seemed to demonstrate both a will and an execution similar to his father's. Yet the early promise faded. Just why we may not ever know. Xerxes perhaps was incapable of producing the kind of vigorous direction from the throne which would have kept the empire vital and expansive.48 On the other hand, perhaps even Cyrus himself could not have risen to the task. Greece was a long way from the central concerns of the empire, literally and metaphorically, and the Greeks fought exceptionally well. Then too, the demands of the empire were perhaps now greater and more complex even than Darius had ever experienced. Whatever the cause of the change, change there was with Xerxes. He was the first Great King who seems, in the end, mainly concerned with holding on to what had been gained. Indeed, the whole of Achaemenid history from 479 B.C. onwards could be described as just that — a holding operation in the face of challenges from rebellious subjects, ambitious satraps and external enemies. The centrifugal forces within the empire were finally at work. 48 In criticizing Xerxes in this way we should remember that we do so within a received tradition which has roots in antiquity. Plato, in the Lavs (694-5), moralizes about noble Cyrus, a man, contrasted with Cambyses, an offspring of the court with no knowledge of the real world. Similarly he compares Darius, the self-made strong man of character, with foppish, court-bred, Xerxes. The theme has been perpetuated by western scholarship to this day. One wonders how Xerxes would appear to history if we had better, particularly Iranian, sources for his reign.

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Yet, it is a tribute to the builders - Cyrus, Cambyses and Darius - that it took a century and a quarter after the death of Xerxes for the empire to fall, and then only after making a respectable stand against the most impressive military machine the ancient world ever produced. Much of the empire's continued strength can be attributed not just to the remarkable conquests of its founders — to its size and wealth — but also to their (mostly Darius') organization of those conquests. It is to this issue that we now turn in detail. VI.

IMPERIAL ORGANIZATION AND CULTURAL ACHIEVEMENT

When Cyrus overthrew Astyages, the Persians probably had little knowledge or want of government beyond the level needed to rule a clan or tribal confederation. When Xerxes ascended the throne he took control of a highly developed, complex and sophisticated imperial organization. Borrowing methods and ideologies of government from the Medes and the Assyrians, the Persians took over the ancient bureaucracies of Babylon and Elam, and moulded the whole into a new form and style of state organization. That organization perhaps became one of the most lasting Achaemenid contributions to the civilization of the Near East. While it is poor historical methodology to extrapolate backwards from Sasanian forms of imperial organization to those of the Achaemenids, it is nevertheless true that the foundations of the former are the latter, and the Sasanian Persians, in turn, so influenced the political and administrative structure and style of the Abbasid Caliphate of mediaeval Islamic times that governmental forms and systems which prevail today in large parts of the Near East might well be the evolved descendants of Achaemenid imperial organization. i. The central government

The Persians ruled from three, possibly four, capital cities. Susa, the ancient premier city of the Elamites in lowland Khuzistan, was clearly their most important imperial centre. It was the Persian city best known to the biblical authors, and whenever the Greeks thought of the Great King in his home territory, they thought of him at Susa. It is probable that the court usually tried to spend the winter months (November to March) at Susa, for the climate, while wet, is temperate. Earlier Achaemenid control of ancient Anshan (see above, Chapter i) would have brought them into fairly close contact with the Elamites even before their successful rebellion against the Medes, and so a close association with Susa and a co-opting of the Elamite scribal bureaucracy

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would have been a natural move after the empire was established.49 Ecbatana (modern Hamadan) provided a good summer residence for the court. At 2,000 m above sea level it remains today a favourite place for Iranians to spend July and August. While excavation here has yet to reveal any stratified architectural remains of the Achaemenid occupation, numerous small finds of the period are said to have come from Hamadan, and Achaemenid levels have been observed underlying some thirty or more metres of occupations dating to later times. We know from contemporary textual sources that Hamadan was an Achaemenid capital and, undoubtedly, the location of an important treasury and archive. Political logic, of course, would suggest that the Persians should take over and use for their own purposes the capital city of their former masters, the Medes. Pasargadae and Persepolis were the Achaemenid capitals in their homeland. Darius moved the seat of government to Persepolis (OP Parsa), but Pasargadae was not abandoned until after Alexander's conquest.50 It has long been argued that Persepolis was only a ceremonial site, perhaps used for a grand festival involving the bringing of imperial tribute to the king at the Persian New Year (20/21 March).51 While it may be true that from the time of Darius onwards Pasargadae was in part a ceremonial centre, traditionally the site of the king's coronation, it seems more reasonable to view Persepolis as simply the Achaemenids' capital city in their native country. That the court would want to be there in the spring (March—May) is logical, for both the weather and the verdure are magnificent in Fars at that time of year. We now know, however, that the king, and therefore the court, were sometimes in the region at other seasons of the year, and recent archaeological discoveries in the plain in front of the Persepolis platform make it clear that what we have long called Persepolis is probably only the royal citadel/palace area of a substantial city. The Treasury Tablets and the Fortification Texts from Persepolis, of course, demonstrate that this fortress was the administrative centre of a very large area. It is going too far, therefore, to move from the correct observation that much of the sculptured decoration on the buildings of Persepolis has symbolic meaning to the conclusion that the entire establishment was nothing but a great ceremonial symbol, infrequently occupied. Less certain is the extent to which the Achaemenids used Babylon as a principal imperial capital. They may have done so, for there is ample 49 T h e h i s t o r y o f t h e Susa/Elamite area after t h e d e s t r u c t i o n by A s h u r b a n i p a l in c. 639 B.C. is almost entirely u n k n o w n . A s a result w e are i g n o r a n t a b o u t early Elamite—Achaemenid contacts, even for as late as the reign of Cyrus. Discussions are based entirely on the archaeological evidence, which is hardly satisfactory; see B 226, 68-70; B 228, 33-4; B 192; B 137; B 138. 50 51 B 193, 146-59. E.g. B 160; for the definitive refutation of this position, see B 28.

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evidence of a considerable amount of royal construction there, and Babylon would be a logical seat of government, since it is centrally located within the empire and commands a rich agricultural hinterland. The city, however, may have served primarily as a temporary, but elegant, site for the court when it was involved with affairs in the more western half of the empire.52 In fact, our sources make it clear that the king was very often on the move, or temporarily resident in many different cities of the realm, and where the court went there also went the centre of decision making. Thus, in a sense, it might be argued that there was no real capital of the empire; there were simply certain cities where the king was more likely to be in residence for somewhat longer periods of time. The Achaemenid king carried his capital with him. If the court was the central government, the Great King was the central feature of the court. He was all powerful: his words were law, and even small details of government were often referred to him for decisions. He was surrounded by an elaborate ritual in which Louis XIV would have revelled, and which provided him with all the mystery of the oriental potentate. He remained in considerable seclusion a great deal of the time. Access to his person was tightly controlled, and when one was in his presence the rules of decorum were complex and rigidly enforced. He displayed an opulence of dress, toilet and surroundings which transcended anything available or permitted to other persons, regardless of rank or family. All of this was, naturally, anathema to the Greeks, who never tired of telling themselves, and posterity, what foolishness it represented. Yet, in its context it was not foolish. Rather it was a conscious technique of government — a method of structuring charisma into the office and role of kingship so as to enhance the power of the state, and, in part, to protect the function of kingship within the political system from the individual quirks and weaknesses of any given king (see further below, pp. io9ff, on the concept of khvarna). One might even view the intrigues of the Achaemenid court, which so caught the story-telling fancy of the Greeks, as an expression of the same style of governing that embellished the king and his royal person. European monarchs of later times often compelled their nobles to be at court, where they could be watched and controlled politically. So also, perhaps, the Great King made court politics of enough importance to limit the autonomy of satraps and other governing officers. When a nobility must spend time at court husbanding and advancing its political 52 Xen. Cyr. vm.6.i2 says seven winter months were spent by the king in Babylon. See also ABC Chronicle 9 for a text of Artaxerxes III, which reports prisoners from Sidon being sent to the palace of the king in Babylon. A royal treasury in Babylon is mentioned in Ezra (5:17,6:1); see below, pp. 83ff. on treasuries of the empire. On the royal palace at Babylon, see B 280 and p. 11 j n. 16 below.

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clout, it lacks the time to build strong power bases in the countryside. That such a system sometimes leads to excesses, including murder and violent attempts to grab the throne, does not mean that, in the main, it did not work most of the time as a method of keeping power and the powerful where they could be manipulated by the central authority. The substantive power of the monarchy lay in its control of patronage and finances. All of the high officers of the court and in the provinces served at the king's will, and most of the bureaucracy down to apparently quite low levels were financially hostage to the royal treasury. In some instances the king at times lost the power to replace certain satrapal officials but, in the main, our sources suggest that not only did the king do the appointing of high political and military officials, but he also fired them frequently. Such regular changes in the upper levels of government prevented opportunities for officials to gather too much power into their own hands by the long term exercise of a single office. Another form of protection for the government was for the king to appoint his kinsmen to office whenever possible - a good tribal method of rule. Surrounding the king and forming the central government was the court itself, of which we know remarkably little. Certain officials, such as the arstibara (spear-bearer), the vaqabara (bow-bearer),53 and the *ha^arapatis (commander of the thousand/chiliarch) performed governmental roles sometimes quite unrelated to the literal meaning of their titles, but it is difficult to establish just what those functions were. For example, one such official appears regularly on the reliefs at Persepolis, where we observe a Mede (or perhaps a Persian dressed as a Mede) carrying a staff. He is the 'Court-Marshal', but he is more than just an officer of ceremony, for he is also associated with the 'message carriers', who were an important part of the imperial system of communications.54 In a later period it is possible that the *ha%arapatis, who was either the commander of the thousand who formed the king's personal bodyguard within the ten thousand Immortals, or the commander of the famous cavalry group of one thousand (the Kinsmen), functioned as a kind of Grand Vizir at court, but we have no evidence for anyone in that role under Darius or Xerxes. What is clear is that regular salaries (and often very handsome salaries indeed) were paid to such officials, as well as to those filling the lesser ranks of the bureaucracy. There was also, of course, a large secretariat with the court, manned by numerous scribes. The king did not - could not have - made all the decisions of government singlehandedly. We know from Herodotus that he regularly consulted on foreign policy with foreigners who were resident at court, and he is often portrayed in extended discussion with his Persian kinsmen and officials of the empire before making his decisions. It has 53 On the various interpretations of terms for 'weapon-bearers', see B 105, 57-9. 54

A 35, 7 - 9 .

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been suggested that there was a 'Council of Seven', derived supposedly from the original nobles who assisted Darius in seizing and holding the throne, which provided the king with a formal advisory body, but this is unlikely. More probably the royal councils were ad hoc gatherings in the king's presence of such nobles and high government officials as were present at court at the time a particular decision was wanted.55 Finally, often at court, and having considerable impact on government, was the harem. An Achaemenid king would have several wives, one of whom would be his principal queen (for example, the famous Atossa, queen to Darius), and numerous concubines. While this system of polygamy and sanctioned promiscuity providedthe royal house with a large family from which to draw high officers of state, it also represented both a considerable drain on the treasury and, eventually, a natural breeding ground of social and political intrigue. Such politicking as took place in the harem was of a personal kind which would not have approached matters of state dispassionately and might be considered trivial. Nevertheless, women could be powerful in Achaemenid times; they sometimes controlled large estates and were, thus, presumably in part independent financially, and they could exercise a considerable influence on affairs of state, particularly when they had access to the king.56 The king, his court, and the empire's upper administrative echelons were supported and assisted by an elaborate and professional bureaucracy. This bureaucracy was centred in the imperial treasuries, and the evidence we now have from the Treasury and Fortification Tablets from Persepolis on how such an administrative unit worked dispels any notion we may once have had that the empire was run in some relaxed fashion, or like the feudal estate of the king.57 These royal treasuries were the loci of the financial administration of the empire. They were repositories of precious objects, gold, silver and coinage. They were also offices from which money and massive stores of government wealth in kind were administered; the stores themselves, to judge by the evidence from Persepolis, were held elsewhere, most probably at points convenient to the areas from which the goods had been gathered. It would be wrong to search for The Treasury, or a Central Treasury of the empire. To judge from the evidence at hand, there were almost certainly treasuries and treasury officials in each capital — Persepolis, Susa and Hamadan — and it is reasonable to assume, indeed there is some evidence to prove, that similar organizations were located 55

A 3j, 22-3.

56

See the book of Esther for some splendid details of harem and court life, and especially on h o w

useful it was to be able to get near to the king. For a treatment of Achaemenid women, see B 3 28. 57 For the Treasury Tablets, see B 34 (texts cited as PT) with additional texts in B 37, B 39; important changes in interpretation are provided by B 79, B 81. For the Fortification Tablets, see B 8 2 (texts cited as PF), with additional texts in B 87, B 125.

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in several important centres of the empire - for example, Babylon, Sardis and Memphis.58 Officials of court, therefore, could see to it that the king's command, or the wishes of the central government, were conveyed for implementation and action to whichever treasury bureaucracy was appropriate. The range of authority, the kinds of detailed transactions, and something of the personnel of these treasuries can be, in part, reconstructed from the data excavated at Persepolis. A careful delineation of the territory from which the Persepolis Fortification Texts are drawn indicates that this treasury was responsible for a region of considerable size. We hear of transactions taking place near Persepolis, near modern Shiraz, down on the coast of the Persian Gulf, and as far west as the borders of Khuzistan.59 Not only were the Persepolis treasury officials responsible for all imperial economic activity in this region, but they were also in charge of providing for and controlling any officials of the empire who passed through this region en route to business elsewhere. Once outside of the province of Parsa, however, such persons entered the territory of another treasury, for example Susa to the west, Hamadan to the north. The range of activities in which these administrative centres were involved is quite remarkable. The Fortification Texts, which report on transactions in kind only, tell us of monthly, and even daily, provisions issued to various kinds of work parties, craftsmen, travellers, treasury officials, members of the royal household and the king himself. For example, rations are issued to, amongst others, the 'elite guides', barrisdama, who are in charge of travel parties, and to couriers of the express service, pirrada^is.60 Payments are actually made usually through the hands of treasury officials who are out in the countryside in charge of various activities, such as maintaining supply stations along the royal road or trading one commodity for another. Annual detailed summary accountings of these individual transactions were also kept. The Treasury Tablets, on the other hand, deal primarily with the economics of construction work at Persepolis itself. The shape and structure of the bureaucracy which ran the treasuries is difficult to reconstruct. There is some evidence which suggests a definite hierarchy of officialdom and, in some cases, a confusing overlapping of 58 It should be noted in this regard that two fragments, so far unreadable, of tablets in Achaemenid Elamite were found in the Achaemenid fill in excavations at Kandahar (8573,13). This find suggests the use outside Fars not only of a Persepolis-like administration, but also of the Achaemenid recording system. For the treasury at Babylon, see above, n. 52. PT 85 is written in Akkadian and might have come from the treasury at Babylon, but it could well have been written at Persepolis, from which another Akkadian text has now been published; see B 45 o, and below, p. 117. For treasury operations in Egypt, see B 867, 58-61. 59 F o r a n i n t r o d u c t i o n t o t h e g e o g r a p h y of t h e tablets, see B 84, 595—8; see also B 85; B 86, 129; B 197. 60 Pirrada^is: e.g. P F 1320. Rather t h a n a title, w h i c h it sometimes is, t h e term m a y simply designate s o m e o n e w h o w o r k s for the 'express service'; see B 8 2 , 4 2 ; B 125. F o r barrisdama, P F 1363.

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responsibilities. The Elamite texts specifically name an official with the title 'treasurer' (OP gan^abara, transliterated as kan^abara into Elamite, which also uses, interchangeably, kapnuskira), as do the Aramaic ritual texts which also mention a vice-treasurer, upagan%abara.bx A sequence of such officials is traceable from Darius' 27th year onwards. The expectation that an official of this name is the chief or highest official of the treasury is not warranted. There are higher personages above him, though they bear no titles. In the Fortification Texts one Pharnaces (OP Farnaka, Elamite Parnaka) is clearly the most important official concerned with the treasury (Darius years 16 to 2 5). This is so partly, one assumes, because of his talents and the functions he performs, but also because his seal proclaims him son of Arsames, who may be Darius' grandfather; he may also be the Pharnaces who was father of Artabazus, who commanded the Parthians and Chorasmians in the army of Xerxes (Hdt. vn.66). In the period of the Treasury Texts, other well-known persons, including Aspathines (PT 12, 12a, 14), give orders to the treasurer. Pharnaces has an assistant, Zissawis (perhaps Tithaios in Greek), who is often associated with him in various transactions, but who is clearly, to judge from the amount of his pay (in the form of rations in kind), a lesser official. He outlives Pharnaces and continues to function in the treasury until year 18 of Xerxes' reign. More confusingly, the title 'treasurer' is in use outside the main sequence. Some people thus designated seem to be very minor officials,62 but the most serious problem is raised by the Aramaic ritual texts.63 It can be argued on the basis of them that an official named Data-Mithra was the 61 On gan\abara see B 34, 33—4; B 18, 28-32; on the philological aspects, see B 69, 172-3. Our translation of the term gan^abara as 'treasurer' prejudices the concept in the same way as we may have done in translating databara as 'judge' (see below, p. 95 and n. 81). Literally, gan^abara means something like 'bearer of treasure' or 'carrier of treasure', perhaps 'holder of treasure'. Would that it were more clear just what the gan^abara did. For the sequence of treasurers, Cameron's list has been modified by B 81, 90-1; B 103, 262. 62 E.g. PF 866:9, '947:I9> 2070:26. The treasurer Mannuya, moving from Susa to Matezzis (PF 1342), may have nothing to do with Persepolis at all. 63 Bowman's first publication of these texts (B 18) must be used with caution and only in conjunction with B 121; B 146; B J I; B 109; B 106. No consensus has formed on how they are to be translated, and several critical issues are involved. The key term srk is translated by Bowman as 'the haoma-crushing ceremony' and by Levine (B 121) as 'administration'. Others, beginning with Cameron (ap. B 178,5 j), see this as a geographical term; see especially B 12; B 70. As for the geography involved, there is no agreement on whether the objects came from and were inscribed and used at Persepolis, or whether they come from Arachosia. Sometimes the treasurer, Data-Mithra, and the vice-treasurer, Baga-Pata, are clearly designated as 'the treasurer who is in Arachosia' (B 18, 28). On these grounds, it has been argued (B 178, J J; B 12; B 146; B 106) that Data-Mithra and Baga-Pata were actually resident in Arachosia and must have been the treasurers of that satrapy. Bowman and Gershevitch (B 70) argue, with perhaps equal force, that the objects come from Persepolis and were inscribed there. There is a certain logic on their side, for it is hard to come up with an explanation that would provide for a consistent group of objects being brought regularly from Arachosia (and only Arachosia) for deposit in one collection within the Persepolis treasury. For a brief summary of the matter, which will not be settled without further evidence, see B 187, 198-9. See also n. 102 below.

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'treasurer' at Persepolis for years 7 to 19 of the reign of Xerxes, whereas the Treasury Texts name the treasurer for years 11 to 20 as Vahus. If we can have two administrators designated as treasurer at the same time, then it is clear that we cannot understand the title in the usual sense of the term. Thus both the title and the role of the highest official of the treasury continue to elude us. Two other functions within the system which have been identified are the assigning of work to groups of people or individuals, and the apportioning of rations. Whether these are titles of functionaries is problematical. Pharnaces himself appears as a 'work assigner', when dealing with scribes (PF 1807,1808,1828), and even the king performs this function (e.g. PF 1946). It is more likely, however, that people who are 'apportioners' of rations are lower treasury officials, for, though sometimes one person performs both duties (assigning work and rations), 'apportioners', in general, are officials of relatively low rank. Still further down in the system are administrators, who might be called 'agents' and 'chiefs'. The latter are usually in charge of working groups and apparently perform a function something like that of a foreman. It is not clear in all cases that they are treasury officials. Then, of course, there were the myriad of Elamite and Aramaic scribes, whose literacy made the system possible.64 Finally, one might note that there is some slight evidence that a man could work his way up in the system. The argument depends on what the hierarchical relationship might have been between 'apportioners' and 'treasurer^]'. A person with the name Baratkama appears several times in the Fortification Texts functioning as an 'apportioner'. The 'treasurer' for the first years of the reign of Xerxes (and possibly even earlier) has the same name. Perhaps it is the same person in both functions, and thus it might be that a man with lower status under Pharnaces came himself in time to be the most powerful official in the system.65 The publication of the remaining Fortification Texts from Persepolis, and the continuing study of this entire corpus of documents — one of the larger and richer archives from the ancient world — will undoubtedly permit us in time to form a much sharper picture of Achaemenid administration. What is certainly clear now is that the imperial government kept a tight control and a very close watch over its financial affairs. Apparently, no transaction was too small to go unrecorded, and great care was taken to be sure that only persons authorized to receive M

Summary in B 84; see also A 35, 9-12. On Baratkama as an 'apportioner', see PF 864, 865, 866, 879, 1120; for his tenure as treasurer, B 34,3 3. Hinz argues, in a long and useful article on Achaemenid officialdom (B 103, which should be used with some caution) that Baratkama, contra Cameron, was treasurer by year 27 of Darius (B 103, 65

262).

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support from the state got it. It is clear that the treasury officials, even so exalted a personage as Pharnaces, were responsible to persons of higher authority for how they carried out the government's business, and so such detailed records had to be kept. Indeed, it should be noted that all of this remarkable bureaucracy was one of record, not one used for policy generation or even the conduct of such business of the empire as did not involve expenditures. It was strictly a treasury administration. Thus, we still lack much evidence on how the empire was administered. We know that royal decrees and decisions were written down, but probably because such were usually in Aramaic and on perishable material they have been lost.66 It is possible that one reason our financial records for Persepolis come to an end in the seventh year of Artaxerxes I is that Elamite cuneiform, written on clay tablets, had by then been supplanted by Aramaic on parchment, even for the recording of mundane financial transactions. 2. The satrapies or peoples

Herodotus is our only good source on the provincial organization of the Achaemenid Empire (Hdt. 111.893"). He tells us of how Darius divided the realm into twenty provinces, or satrapies, each with a governor (OP xsaqapavan = satrap = 'protector of the kingdom/kingship'), and each with a fixed annual tax or tribute (Table 1). It would appear at first glance, and has been argued, that we also have catalogues of the provinces in several Old Persian inscriptions (Table 2), but it is almost certain that these are rather lists of some of the subject peoples, which the king felt were of sufficient importance to be named as representative of the multinational polity of which he was King of Kings.67 They are not lists of official administrative units. Thus, we can safely set aside scholarly efforts both to reconcile the evidence of Herodotus with the Old Persian sources and also to argue that the changes in the list in the Old Persian sources represent evidence for ongoing reorganization of the empire's provincial divisions.68 It is clear that while the satrapies were the principal units of imperial 66

See Ezra 3-6: the story of the exchange of letters and royal decrees regarding the reconstruction of the temple in Jerusalem and the finding of the original decrees of Cyrus (not in the treasury at Babylon, but in Ecbatana). Treasury officials were, in this case, used in decision-making to the extent that they searched out records which were needed by the king in order to pass judgement on a situation. The documents were in Aramaic, of course; on the use of Aramaic in the empire, see B I; B 30, 698-713. Records of this type - royal decrees and the like, and memoranda on government decisions — have yet to be found in excavation. «

B

40.

68

Most recently, B 29. Toynbee (B 205) has offered one of the most stimulating and informative efforts to summarize and reconcile the sources. Our tables are based on his, but our difference in principle is marked by the fact that we have two tables where he has one.

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Table i. Herodotus' taxation districts (m.89—97) The Heartland

Persai Excluded Outioi and Mycoi 14 Agbatana and the rest of Media [and the Paricanioi 10 and Orthocorybantioi] Caspioi, Pausicai, Pantimathoi, 11 Dareitai Sacai, Caspioi •5 18 Matienoi, Saspeires, Alarodioi Susa and the rest of the 8 country of the Cissioi The South East Thamanaioi, Sarangai, Sagartioi, islands in the Persian Gulf Paricanioi and Asiatic Aithiopes The North East Parthoi, Chorasmioi, Sogdoi, Areioi Bactrianoi as far as the Aiglai

14 17

16 12

The South West

Babylon and the rest of Assyria The whole of Phoenicia, Philistine Syria, Cyprus Egypt. Libyans, Cyrene, Barce The North West [Pactyice], Armenioi, adjoining peoples as far as Black Sea Moschoi, Tibarenoi, Macrones, Mossynoicoi, Mares Cilices Hellespontine Hellenes, Phryges, Asiatic Thracians, Paphlagones, Mariandynoi, Syrioi Mysoi, Lydoi, Lasonioi, Cabalioi, Hygennees Iones, Asiatic Magnetes, Aiolees, Cares, Lycioi, Milyai, Pamphyloi

9 5 6

13 19 4

3 2

1

The Indus Basin

Sattagydai, Gandarioi, Dadicai, Aparytai Indoi

7 20

(Adapted from A. J. Toynbee, A Study of History vn, Table V)

organization, not all peoples who owed allegiance to the king, or who were possibly even 'subject' to his authority were included within a satrapy. The Ethiopians and the Arabs, for example, regularly presented 'gifts' (a euphemism for tribute?), but are apparently not included as taxpayers within a province.69 Their involvement in imperial affairs, however, is such that they both provide military units to the army of Xerxes in 480 B.C., and both are included in Old Persian lists of peoples within the empire. There are also client, but nominally independent states, such as Cilicia, which it would seem do not owe anything financially or militarily to the empire, but with which the Great King must have had a working relationship of some kind. While Herodotus says that it was Darius who created this provincial 69 Herodotus (in.91) claims that the Arabs were not taxed and, therefore, had a special status, but the OP inscriptions make no distinction between the Arabs and other subject peoples. On the Arabs during the Achaemenid period, see B 485, 192—214 and below, pp. 162-4.

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Table i. Lists of peoples in Achaemenid Royal Inscriptions (the numbers indicate their order in the texts). DB DPe DSab DSe DNa

XPh

The Heartland

Parsa Mada Uvjiya

1

1

1

1

1

1

10

3

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

22

22

16

8 9

10

14 23

14 26

23

12

13

•5

5

The South East

Harauvatiya Zraka Asagartiya Maciya The North East Parthava Daha Uvarazmiya Haraiva Bakhtrish Sugda Saka Saka haumavarga Saka tigrakhauda Saka of the marshes, Saka of the plains

9

4

10

9 29

4

4 6 20

7 25

16

20

M

17 18

17 18 20

19 25

11

4 6 7

8 5 6 7

11

15

14

26

16

M

27

8 5 6 7

8 9 10

12

The Indus Basin

Gadariya Thatagudiya Hiduya

19

24

13

12

22

21

21

10

11

11

23

24

14

13

14 23

4 6 5 7

13 18

17 18

The South West

Babiruviya Athuriya Arabaya Mudraya Putaya Kushiya

3 4 5 6

The North West Arminiya Akaufachiya Katpatuka Spardiya Yauna Karka Those in the sea (Yauna takabara) Those beyond the sea (Saka beyond the sea) Skudra

11

12

8 9 7

8

16

12

17 18

13 21

•9

"9

20

20

'9

16

21

28

3°

22

29

27 28

14

21

20

52

5 29 24 15

9

16

22

21

10

15

23 24

22

5°

3°

'7 3'

26

18

24 25

28

11

12

25 26

13 17

27

23

(Adapted and revised from A. J. Toynbee, A Study of History vn, Table V; the fragmentary hieroglyphic evidence of DZd has been replaced by the complete DSab.) Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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organization in order to bring rigorous method to tax collecting, the system as such must date at least to the reign of Cyrus (above, Chapter 1). Darius' father, Hystaspes, may well have been satrap of Parthia under Cyrus, and during the great rebellion under Darius there were a number of satraps in place who were called upon by the central government for military assistance. It is possible, however, that Darius extensively reorganized and tightened up an existing structure. Such an action would form a logical part of that king's effort to gain a firmer grip on the vast empire which he had constructed with such trouble. Probably the satrapies themselves were often not precisely defined geographically, nor were they completely contiguous districts; the whole structure at times appears to have had a kind of vague looseness about it which would be unacceptable in modern political geography. The satrap, often a close relative of the king, was in the best of times appointed and removed by the king. He was the centre of a provincial court modelled on that of the Great King. He apparently had command over royal or central government resources within his satrapy, but, usually being a wealthy man in his own right, could and did spend of his own resources in the service of government. It has been argued that a major check by the court on satrapal power was provided by the separation of the military and civil authority within a satrapy. While this may be the case with major fortresses and their garrisons, whose commanders seem to have reported directly to the king and not to the local satrap, there are enough instances of satraps clearly in command of armed forces in and outside of their satrapies to suggest that it was not a regular policy so to divide authority. The central government, however, did have at hand various means of independently monitoring the activities of satraps. We know of 'king's scribes', who are sent to report back to the court on affairs in a satrapy, and the famous, though difficult to document, officials called the 'king's eyes' and 'king's ears' are assumed to have provided the central government with yet another means of checking on events in the provinces.70 While the famous system of royal roads, which Herodotus rightly found so remarkable, was no doubt, in part, developed for economic and commercial reasons, it also performed a vital role in the functioning and the controlling of the provincial system. A clear picture of how these roads worked is found in the texts from Persepolis. There we learn of the regular provisioning and maintenance of way stations along the road. We also meet the 'elite guides' and the 'express couriers'. The former are 70 'King's eyes'are only known from Greek sources (Aesch. Pen. 980, Hdt. 1.114.2, Ar. Acb. 923). 'King's ears' are better documented; see B 156; B 389, 22-3. On scribes, see A 35, 25. For a particularly stimulating discussion of various 'modules of political control' within the Achaemenid empire, see B 23, 181—211.

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clearly government officials who know the roads of the empire well, and who are in charge of guiding and provisioning official travel parties, one of which arrived at Persepolis having come from Sardis (PF 1404). Herodotus speaks of the government messengers who could carry the royal command or the questions of a satrap for the king rapidly over the length and breadth of the empire. It was, no doubt, the existence of such a remarkable communications system that encouraged and made possible the referral of much satrapal business to the king for decision. At times we can observe questions of even relatively minor importance not being decided by the satrap, but being sent on to the king for his judgement. Satraps were, nevertheless, powerful figures with considerable resources available to turn that power into action. One suspects that the taxes which Herodotus lists as being paid by each satrapy, if his figures have any reality at all, may represent only such payments as were due from the province to the central government. To judge from the Persepolis treasury evidence, there may well have been further taxes, this time asked for and paid exclusively in kind, which stayed in the region where they were collected and were used by the provincial treasurers to pay for the governmental, economic and military activities of the satrapy, and to cover the costs of implementing royal decrees touching that province.71 Such resources could be a great temptation to an ambitious provincial governor, and it required a strong king at the centre, who knew his mind, to keep such a system functioning as it should. In the later years of the Empire, of course, when there was weakness at the centre, rebellion by the satraps became endemic, and great hereditary governorships, such as that of the House of Phamaces in Dascylium, could, and sometimes did, act with little reference to the needs or commands of the central government. 3. The armed forces

We have little direct evidence on the armed forces, but by extrapolation we can develop something of a picture as to how they were organized, and how they fought. There wasfirstof all a fairly clear division between the army and the navy, and within both those divisions a distinction between standing forces and the levy only brought forward in time of major conflict. The standing army had at its core the 10,000 Immortals. Persians, Medes and Elamites served in this infantry unit,72 whose elite was the one 71

There are incidental references to satrapal revenues in Nehemiah 6:18, Hdt. 1.192. Contra B 144, 101. The reliefs at Susa and Persepolis show Elamites, Medes and Persians, and one must assume that the troops depicted are the Immortals. On army organization, see A 62, 21 J - I 7; B4, 17. 72

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thousand troops (the Kinsmen) who provided the bodyguard for the king, probably under the command of the *ha%arapatis. Armed with spears, bows and arrows, and short stabbing swords, either singly or in various combinations, these troops sometimes wore scale armour in battle. They were further protected by shields, which were wicker or skin on a frame. It is also possible that there was a corps of 10,000 cavalry in the regular standing army. It was these troops who were properly trained, and who formed the cadre around which the levy and irregular troops could be organized, and it was the control of this force which gave power to the central government. There were also standing army forces in the satrapies. Herodotus' story of Oroetes of Sardis, and how the troops stationed to guard him remained loyal to Darius, clearly implies that these troops were regular standing forces (Hdt. 111.126fF); and we noted above how there were garrison troops in the provinces who manned the king's fortresses and were independent, at times, of satrapal authority. Native troops were also sometimes used in the standing forces and long-term mercenaries, such as the Jewish troops who manned the frontier on the Nile at Elephantine, should also be considered regular army. Finally, we know of Persian and Median infantry in the army of Xerxes above and beyond those who served with the Immortals, but whether they were part of the levy or were standing troops of a rank and quality below the Immortals is not clear. The levy was raised and used only at times of intensive mobilization, such as the invasion of Greece in 480/79, though there were undoubtedly troops in the satrapies who served only irregularly as local need arose.73 All peoples of the empire apparently contributed troops, some infantry, some only cavalry, and some both arms. These troops were organized in command units often, one hundred, one thousand, and ten thousand (if needed) and, combined with the standing forces, formed six army corps with individual Persian commanders in 480 B.C. Each contingent was armed and armoured in its native fashion and, one may assume, fought with the tactics with which it was familiar. The navy must also have had standing units and a levy of ships and sailors called to the colours only when needed, but our sources fail to provide us with a clear picture. Turning to the muster of 480 B.C. once again, we might suggest that the ships representing the standing navy were those of the Phoenicians, Egyptians and, perhaps, the Cypriots. These groups made up about half the fleet Herodotus says fought at Salamis, while the other half of the navy came from various Aegean nations and, perhaps, formed the naval levy. The loyalty of some ships 73

F o r a l e v y i n B a b y l o n i a in 423 B.C., s e e A 3 5 , 7 9 n . 185.

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was perhaps not as certain as the Great King's admirals might have wished, for apparently all of the marines serving afloat were Persians, Medians and Scythians - hardly sea-going peoples. The effect of this military organization on strategy and tactics must have been devastating, and one wonders to what extent Greek success at Marathon, Plataea and Salamis was, in part, the result of their comparative uniformity of armament, tactics, language and training. The Persian army would have been a linguistic babel, and, armed with a variety of weapons and protective gear, trained (if at all) in as many different tactics as there were ethnic groups in the empire; without any experience in large unit manoeuvres, and of variable loyalty, it must have been a nightmare to command.74 The simple decisions of which units to use where, when, and in which situations must have taken a good deal of a Persian commander's time. And pity the poor quartermaster, for such a varied force would have created logistical problems of gargantuan proportions. Different weapons, different clothing, different likes and dislikes in foods must have thoroughly tested the supply system; indeed, one wonders if individual contingents may not have each had their separate quartermaster units, though there is no evidence that such was the case.75 In short, though the empire could at times muster an amazing and seemingly overpowering military force in terms of sheer numbers, we can question how effective those numbers were when confronted by serious, trained, organized and united opposition. One suspects that the military brilliance of Darius in crushing the rebellions that broke out on the death of Bardiya in large measure may have been made possible by his use of only regular army troops — those with whom he had served, and who were loyal to him after the death of Cambyses. Perhaps his son Xerxes would have been better off in 480/79 B.C. had he invaded Greece with such troops and such sailors only. 4. haw and economics

In a personal testament inscribed on his tomb at Naqsh-i Rustam (DNb) Darius stresses his interest in good law and justice: I am of such a sort that I am a friend to right, I am not a friend to wrong . . . 74

The problem of the linguistic babel was noted by Diod. xvn.;3.4. Herodotus (vn.61-88) is our main source on the nature of the massed Persian army. His description of the various national contingents reads a bit like an ethnographic catalogue of the empire, and one cannot help but wonder to what extent it is based on actual observation; use of his predecessor Hecataeus has been suggested (B 5; B 126). It is, for example, difficult to match Herodotus' description of the clothing of the contingents with the dress of the imperiaj peoples on the Apadana reliefs at Persepolis. For the latter, use, with caution and some scepticism, B 214 (reviewed B 140); see also B 101, 95-114. 75

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Who does harm, him according to the damage thus I punish. It is not my desire that a man should do harm; nor indeed is that my desire, if he should do harm, he should not be punished. . . What a man says against a man, that does not convince me until I hear the testimony of both.76 Earlier, in the Bisitun inscription, he had written: . . . by the favour of Ahura Mazda these countries showed respect toward my law; as was said to them by me, thus it was done. (DB para. 8) Much has been made over the years of Darius as a law reformer and law-maker. It has even been suggested that he was the Hammurapi or Solon of his time and place.77 While it is true that the Persians (and the Medes) had something of a reputation in the ancient world for their law, which, if not always necessarily praiseworthy, was firm and 'unalterable'78 nevertheless, convincing evidence for major legal reforms and codification under the Achaemenids, and particularly in the reign of Darius, remains elusive. Darius apparently did order a codification of Egyptian law,79 but our evidence on Persian law for the rest of the empire, mostly from Babylonia, is subject to various interpretations. Attention has focused on the appearance in Semitic languages of the time of the words datu, 'law', from the OP data, and databara, the OP word meaning 'bearer of the law' or 'judge'. This terminology, it is suggested, is evidence of the introduction in the empire, particularly in Babylonia, of a specifically Persian form of law. Both words clearly are borrowed from OP, and both appear in the Persian period. Thus, at a minimum, they do represent some kind of change in the legal and/or economic system of Babylonia, presumably resulting from Babylon's being part of the Achaemenid empire. In two texts (Dar. 5 3 and VS in 15 9) the phrase '. . . according to the king's datu' is used in connexion with trials involving a presiding judge or judges, and one might have interpreted the word as having to do with law which affects the judicial behaviour of courts. In a third text (UETiv 101), however, we are dealing simply with the problem of a partial payment of grain which is due, and are perhaps not involved in a court situation at all. Thus, on the one hand, a datu might be a law code which forms the basis of a court's behaviour and action, or, on the other hand, it might just be a royal edict - dictum, if you will - which, in these cases, appears to deal with payments due in which the crown has an interest. 76

B

For the n e w version o f the last lines as quoted here, see n. 46 above. O n D N b in general, see

98. 77 78

T h e argument is most thoroughly developed in B 155, 119-34. 79 E.g. Daniel 6:8. B 873, 175-6. See below, p. 262.

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Hence, the preferred translation of datu as 'decree, royal command'.80 Turning to the word databara, one observes that to translate 'judge' is to pre-judge the argument. A 'bearer of the law' might just as well be rendered into English as 'law officer' or 'constable'. In our texts where such officials appear, they function more as witnesses than as judges.81 In the time of Artaxerxes I such persons appear as representatives of a provincial governor. Thus, to suggest that a databara is a judge who presides over a royal court is to force the issue. In sum, most of our evidence from Babylonia indicates that older Mesopotamian forms of judicial restraint and law continued into the Persian period, but that some form of new administrative arrangements were certainly imposed by the Achaemenids, most probably by Darius. These new developments were based on royal decrees which, no doubt, had the force of law. In this regard, one has in mind the Bisitun passage quoted above: Darius appears to equate the law with what he has said his law and the empire's respect for it being immediately juxtaposed with what the king says and the people doing it. Whether one can move from these observations to the position that Darius established throughout the empire a new code of imperial, Persian law which was to function sideby-side with the traditional laws and legal forms of the people of the empire is doubtful. From his tomb inscription, however, we may conclude that Darius seems to have been interested in his subjects' avoiding doing wrong to one another. He says he believed in fair play and that he was interested in the rule of law, as expressed through proper forms of testimony and judgement. To what extent these desires were implemented infiscaland administrative reform, as opposed to strictly legal reform, remains a crucial question. Herodotus does not describe Darius as a great lawgiver. Instead, he says that the king's concern with the financial and tax structure of the empire earned him the title of 'royal huckster' (Hdt. in.89). This is, of course, in part at least, an unfair judgement, for it is entirely reasonable that the government should want to put the finances of the empire on a sound administrative footing. Given the remarkable attention paid to fiscal details of expenditure which characterize the known treasury documents, it cannot be surprising that an equal degree of care should be taken in establishing and administratively controlling imperial income. Nor should the king be faulted for doing so. It is in considering this issue that our discussion of the law and legal reform 80 CAD D , 122, which includes citations from all relevant texts. It is noteworthy that biblical references to the famous laws of the Medes and the Persians usually involve a situation in which the king is t o make a decree, preferably in writing: e.g., again, Daniel 6:8. 81 CAD D , 122. The translation suggested is 'a high judicial official', but the worthy involved (the same person in all references) is consistently described as witnessing the transaction.

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blends directly into a brief examination of the economics of the Achaemenid empire. Herodotus claims that the Persians paid no taxes because they were not a subject people (Hdt. in.97). Modern scholarship has at times suggested that the basis for all taxation within the empire was the proposition that the Persians, or, if you will, the king, owned all the land and that, therefore, taxes were nominally rent. Both statements are probably incorrect. On the first point, one might ask Herodotus: 'Which Persians?' Certainly there were Persians living on estates outside of Parsa who paid taxes, so it is not the ethnic or genealogical group Persians who paid no taxes. And the Persepolis tablets make clear that plenty of people living in Parsa were paying into the royal coffers. On the second point, it would seem that the argument is based on extrapolation backwards from Sasanian legal forms. Monies were, in fact, collected within the empire in a variety of ways and, it would seem, almost everyone had to pay up in some form or another. Actual rents were collected from state properties. Monies were collected in lieu of obligations (such as with the 'bow-houses' in Mesopotamia). Specific tax obligations were set on each satrapy, if one is to believe Herodotus (Hdt. in.90-6). Outright tribute was collected from some subject peoples. And various taxes — custom duties or sales taxes — were collected on commodities and commodity transactions. In regard to the latter one might note two administrative developments in Achaemenid Babylonia which are perhaps as meaningful in this context as the introduction of the concept behind the words datu and databara. OP *karahmara (reconstructed on the basis of the Elamite) appears in Achaemenid Mesopotamia as karammari, kalammari and karri ammaru, and a translation 'registry' has been suggested.82 This office would appear to be an Achaemenid innovation under Darius with the apparent purpose of keeping government records on slave (and perhaps other commodity) sales. Such records, of course, would be a necessary first step in collecting taxes on such transactions. Somewhat later (Artaxerxes) such slave sales are registered in the office called bit miksu sa sarri or 'the royal miksu-tax house'.83 Once again, it would appear that detailed governmental records were kept of such transactions in order to collect either sales or commodity taxes. Relating these observations to law and legal reform, it might be argued that the datu of the king were the royal edicts which provided the legal basis for such taxes, and the databara might be the imperial officials responsible for witnessing or seeing to it that such transactions took place. In sum, law and taxation, legal reform and administrative reorganization were almost certainly two sides of the same coin or coins. The 82

B 343, 259-66.

83

ROM CT 2, 35 (B 420, 44-7).

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government had a variety of ways to collect revenue, some were no doubt clever innovations of Darius, 'the huckster', and later kings, which may have involved legal change; some were certainly tried and true methods of tax collecting which represented the established fiscal and legal traditions of the conquered peoples. It is fair to say, however, that the government was not just a collector of monies. There is good evidence that the state was deeply involved in the role of stimulating agriculture, industry, trade and commerce throughout the empire. Whether the Achaemenids were fully aware of the economic advantage of the 'Common Market' which came naturally with so large and so comparatively unified an empire is unclear. What is clear is a considerable concern for the economic health of the realm. Agriculture provided the foundations of the empire's wealth. While, in the main, most land remained in the hands of native peoples, Persians (and possibly other Iranians) also owned much land and large estates in various parts of the empire. We are best informed about such holdings in Babylonia, Egypt and western Anatolia. In one case, that of Arsames (Arsam), satrap of Egypt, we know that he controlled lands not only in Egypt, but also in Babylonia. At times, given the number of officials and great landholders, it may have been somewhat difficult to distinguish sharply between a private and a government estate. Many such estates were perforce managed by agents in the name of absentee landlords (Arsames could hardly have been resident on all his lands at one time), but to judge from the Persepolis tablets, managed they were whether private or state owned. A number of Fortification Texts deal with the issuing of grain, apparently seed grain, for use on estates in Parsa. Both royal or government estates and private estates are mentioned and, since the issue is always coming from the state treasury, one must suspect some kind of governmental subsidy was being given to private agricultural enterprise.84 In other texts we learn of large numbers of seedlings (?), possibly of fruit trees, being issued for planting: 6,166 in one text.85 That such efforts were being made elsewhere in the empire is known from the famous letter (M—L 12) in which Darius commends Gadatas, a governor, for having arranged for the transplanting of fruit-trees from Syria to western Asia Minor. Taken as a whole, these texts make it quite clear that the government was deeply concerned with, and involved in, agricultural activity throughout the province of Parsa and elsewhere. 84

For example, P F 437, 440, 454. Another interpretation of the evidence would argue that the

'estate of so-and-so' was not actually a private holding, but rather a unit of government land. Thus, these outlays would be interpreted simply as state investments in government land, and not as subsidies from the state to the private sector. 85

B

87, 116.

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Water, particularly for agricultural purposes, also appears to have been a government concern. While the story in Herodotus of how the Great King controlled all the waters offiveeastern nations of the empire in order to make money is no doubt a fantasy, nevertheless, the hydraulic technology described was available to the Achaemenids, and there is reason to suppose that state-backed efforts at improving irrigation for agricultural purposes were undertaken (Hdt. in. 117). Indeed, such is the underlying point of the Herodotus story. There is certainly considerable evidence in Fars, in the neighbourhood of Persepolis and Pasargadae, of large hydraulic works of various types — rock-cut channels, dykes, irrigation ditches and dams which, in some cases at least, are Achaemenid in date.86 So also the gradual resettlement and agricultural development in Mesopotamia, which begins in Neo-Babylonian times and accelerates in the Achaemenid period, testifies to a Persian concern for governmental husbandry which is involved with land and water.87 Certain of the Fortification Texts suggest that this kind of state involvement in the economy was not confined to agriculture, but also was concerned with the development or maintenance of industries, at least with what might be called cottage industries. Such texts are common (Regular Monthly Ration Texts). Typical are those (PF 919—20) which describe the issuing of regular rations to a single work force of 134 individuals, of whom the vast majority are women, girls and boys. One strongly suspects that either cloth-weaving or rug-making is involved. Other such groups, often with different proportions of women, men, boys and girls, range in size from as few as four individuals to more than 300 (e.g. PF 866 with 311(?) workers). It is possible, of course, that these groups were working exclusively for the court, but the sheer quantity of such activity suggests otherwise. We may here have evidence of the state directly encouraging, and even running, industrial activity groups (and, no doubt, collecting revenue as a result). Finally, there is good evidence that the government was interested in improving its geographical knowledge and in increasing the ease with which the distant parts of empire could communicate. Sea voyages of exploration are commissioned.88 Ports along the Persian Gulf are developed. Darius completes a canal through the Wadi Tummulat linking the Nile with the Red Sea (a project which the kings of Egypt had started, but could not finish).89 And the famous royal roads, already discussed, were as open to caravan traffic and economic travel as they were to the king's messengers and troops. With good communications, it 86

B IJO; B 197. 87 B Z j ^ j 185-92. See t h e v o y a g e of Scylax of Caryanda, as recorded in the Perip/ous(CGM 709), a n d H e c a t a e u s , FGrH 1 F 295-6. 89 B 8 7 3 , 4 8 - 8 7 . F o r t h e O P , see B I 10, D Z a - c . See also B 819. 88

115-96; see also FCrH

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was possible for the empire to reap the maximum economic benefit from its size, diversity of commodities, stability of government and central control. Thus, in sum, though the government most certainly did take from the subjects of the empire, it also gave. Good laws, properly enforced; an organized, albeit heterogeneous, system of taxation; government involvement in attempts to improve both land and industry; and improved communications, may have been thought by many to be a fair return for Persian rule and taxes. As with good satrapal government, however, these benefits would have obtained only when the central government was strong and under control. A flourishing economy was based on the king's peace. Without such peace the economy of so vast a territory could not function, and the breakdown of prosperity, in turn, then contributed to increased political weakness within the empire and, hence, in more frequent interruptions of the peace. 5. Religion

There is little scholarly consensus on the religion of the Achaemenids. The sources are few, rather enigmatic, and often seemingly contradictory, and their interpretation has consistently been corrupted by the efforts of some savants to extrapolate backwards from the religion of Sasanian times to explain the beliefs of Cyrus and Darius. The religious situation on the Iranian plateau in the sixth to fifth centuries B.C. was confused. Three main streams or traditions can be documented in the sources. First, we find the old Indo-Aryan beliefs and practices which formed the foundation for the religion of the Iranians, including the Persians and the Medes, amongst others.90 Second, we can recognize ideas and rituals which were rooted in the religions of the peoples who had occupied the plateau before its Iranianization, such as the Hurrians, the Elamites, the Guti, or the Urartians. Third, we note, and must consider, the impact and influence of the teachings of the sixthcentury ethical prophet, Zoroaster, one of the great figures in religious history.91 The history of the faith founded by Zoroaster divides into four main phases. First, the period when the prophet himself was alive and 50 For an unusually sober recent summary of the early Iranian-Indo-European religions, see B I 9, 1 S-W791 The date of Zoroaster and the milieu in which he preached are issues of considerable scholarly contention. Widely divergent positions are taken: compare B 94, where it is argued that Zoroaster's first royal patron was Vishtaspa, father of Darius, and that the prophet was a court functionary in the reign of Darius, with B 151, who argues that Zoroaster was a central Asian shaman who lived some time in the second millennium B.C. B 91 argues convincingly for the traditional view of a sixthcentury B.C. date. See also B 198. Boyce(B 19,1 189-91) argues for a date in the last half of the second millennium B.C., but this seems too prehistoric.

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preaching, and the first few years after his death when the pure form of his doctrine was still fresh in the minds of his followers. This phase has its geographic focus in the north-east quadrant of the Iranian world, in Khorasan and northern Afghanistan. The second phase would cover at least the later sixth and all of the fifth centuries B.C., and represents a period in which considerable compromise was being struck throughout the Iranian world between, on the one hand, the older pagan forms of Aryan and non-Iranian religion and, on the other hand, a new religion based on the teachings of Zoroaster. This was the critical formative period in the history of ancient Iranian religion. The third phase is in Sasanian times, when Zoroastrianism becomes the established religion of the Iranian state. The fourth period covers the history of Zoroastrianism since the coming of Islam to Iran.92 Thus it is that the Zoroastrianism of Achaemenid times, that of the second phase, will be a religion undergoing considerable change in a world of many other faiths and practices. Compromise and syncretism will be characteristic features of the age. No developed orthodoxy will have evolved to provide the historian with a base line against which to measure documented religious beliefs and practices. Thus, the urge to argue backwards from such an orthodoxy — that of the third phase of later Sasanian times — will be a great temptation, but a scholarly trap to be avoided. Given this disorderly and complex situation, we should not be surprised when the description of Iranian religion given us in Herodotus (Hdt. 1.13 iff) is at complete variance with what we know of the religion from our primary documents. Both sources probably provide accurate information on different aspects or versions of Iranian religion as practised in the Achaemenid empire.93 What then was the religion of the Achaemenid kings? Were they some kind of Zoroastrians? Or did they practise a religion which would have been condemned as entirely pagan by Zoroaster and his followers? Did they perhaps practise several different religions as a further means of expressing their imperial tolerance?94 To answer these questions one must first sketch out what a person of the time who would have called himself a Zoroastrian might have believed and practised in his religious life. 92 The name Zarathustrianism is a useful way to label the second of these stages in order to distinguish the religion of that time from later Zoroastrianism. On the Sasanian phase, see B 236, ch.8, for an authoritative and brief summary; on the more modern situation, see B 20. 93 Our best primary evidence comes from Persia proper in the form of inscriptions, monuments and objects. Herodotus, of course, never visited Iran, let alone Parsa. His description of Iranian religion is probably based on what he saw in Asia Minor and could be quite accurate for its time and place. For what is still an excellent summary of the Greek sources, see B 7. 94 The best recent discussions of Achaemenid religion are: B 56, 52-7; B 236, 154-61, and now B 19, 11. See also B 57-9; B 30, 664-97.

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While the basic dualism of Zoroastrianism is later expressed in terms of the conflict between Ahura Mazda and Ahriman, the devil, in those Gathas which preserve the teachings of the prophet himself the dualistic conflict between good and evil is much more in terms of Justice (Asa) versus the Lie (Drug), with the two concepts almost personified.95 By building on his personal devotion to the concept Asa or Arta (Truth) Zoroaster brings to life the whole ethical and moral side of his teaching and his theology, an element which had been conspicuously absent from more primitive Indo-Iranian religions. In the spirit of this theology, Zoroaster attacked the ancient religious practices of animal sacrifice and the drinking of the intoxicant, haoma (Indian soma). On the positive side, he emphasized the purity and value of fire, and attempted to make the use offirecentral to ritual practice. Finally, the basic beliefs of an early Zoroastrian would have had to include: (i) a belief in the ahuras, or the good spirits of the universe; (2) a hatred and rejection oidaevas (daivas), or evil spirits; (3) a belief in the prophet Zoroaster as true teacher of the word of God; and (4) a belief in the supreme power of the god Ahura Mazda. In Iranian terms one would have to be: (1) ahura-tkdesa, (2) vidaeva, (3) %arathustri, and (4) ma^dayasni.96

To a considerable extent, with some notable exceptions which are no doubt, in part, a reflection of the eclectic religious times, the Achaemenid kings can be shown to be Zoroastrians, given these definitions. Of Cyrus we can say nothing for the record is too sparse. Darius, on the other hand, was theologically a good Zoroastrian in his insistence on the evil nature of the Lie, or Drug, and on the virtue of Truth and Justice. His moral tone, and that of the later kings who copied him in this regard would have suited Zoroaster well (e.g. DB and DNb).97 Furthermore, Ahura Mazda was the supreme god of the Achaemenid pantheon, and under Darius was the only deity actually named in official inscriptions. Thus, Darius, Xerxes and their successors were certainly ma^dayasnians.98 And Xerxes, in his daiva inscription, displays his belief in the negative aspects of Zoroastrianism by being vidaeva, or against the evil spirits. In their theology and basic beliefs, therefore, Darius and Xerxes were Zoroastrians. (That they never mention Zoroaster in their inscriptions is not necessarily an argument that they were not ^arathustri given the political purposes of those writings.) As with theology, speaking broadly, so also with ritual practice: with one exception the Achaemenids were good Zoroastrians of their day. 95 It is only in post-Achaemenid times that the dualism of Zoroastrianism comes to be expressed in terms of Ahura Mazda (good) against Ahriman (evil). Thus, the failure of the Achaemenids to % mention Ahriman does not argue against their being Zoroastrians. B 256, 154. 97 On the strong religious and Zoroastrian elements in the inscriptions of Darius, see especially B 19, 11 118-24. 98 The word appears as a proper name, Masdayasna, in several Fortification Texts, e.g. PF 960.

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Fire was clearly the central element in Persian royal religious practice. The principal religious ritual in which the king is depicted involves fire, and such scenes appear on all the royal tombs. The only structures in Achaemenid Fars with a certain religious function are the great fire-altar and the platform facing it, on which the king stood, in the sacred precinct at Pasargadae (the three-dimensional setting for the two-dimensional scene on the tomb reliefs).99 This centrality offirein the Achaemenid royal ritual is entirely Zoroastrian. So also is the apparent absence of animal sacrifice. Not one of the many texts from Persepolis which refer to priests and their rations mentions the issue of an animal for sacrifice, and no scene in Achaemenid art depicts religious animal sacrifice.100 Perhaps still more telling, it is clear from the texts that libations of wine, beer, wheat, or flour are a common ritual act, and such, as a substitute for the old animal sacrifice, would meet with Zoroaster's hearty approval.101 The practice of the haoma cult at Persepolis, however, as is well attested by ritual vessels and other objects and by seal impressions, would not have pleased the prophet.102 On this score, court religious ritual was more in tune with earlier Indo-Iranian practice than with that advocated by Zoroaster. In sum, therefore, we can argue that Darius and Xerxes, at least, may well have been good Zoroastrians of their times. That there was, nevertheless, much room for tolerance of the beliefs and practices of others is undoubtedly a reflection both of a lack of royal fanaticism and of the eclectic, syncretistic and compromising religious atmosphere of the time. On the latter score, one notes the return to pre-Zoroastrian polytheism in Xerxes' mention of the deity Arta alongside of Ahura Mazda (XPh), and in the more thorough lapse of the later kings, who mention in their inscriptions the goddess Anahita, and the god Mithra, as well.103 Note, however, that Arta, Anahita and Mithra are all ahuras in Zoroastrianism - good spirits of the universe. The number of 'pagan' deities who were worshipped, or at least served, by someone at Persepolis, and who are named in the Fortification Texts, is shocking by Zoroastrian standards, and some of those gods are not even Indo99

B 1 9 3 , 1 3 8 - 4 5 ; s e e also B 206. The king is depicted in reliefs at Persepolis slaying an animal with a short sword, e.g. a lion in B 177, pi. 115. The scene, however, is part of the iconography of kingship, and in no way represents a religious act of animal sacrifice. 101 The Ki text series in PFT. Flour or grain appears to be most common, but figs and dates are also used; PF 768-9. 102 A seal (B 178, 26 no. 20) certainly depicts what must be an Achaemenid period form of the haoma ceremony (contra B 19,11 146). Use with haoma is still the best explanation for the fine mortars and pestles found in the treasury. For contrary conclusions, B 19, n 148-9; B 12, 174-5. 103 The Zoroastrian calendar is adopted by the Achaemenids in the reign of Artaxerxes 1 (441 B.C.); B 59, 89-5)0, contra B 19, n 243-5; some qualifications, B 30, 775—7100

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Iranian.104 One also notes the prominent role of the Magi, a priestly class of Medes, in Persepolis rituals, yet at this time the Magi are probably anything but good Zoroastrians. What this proves, of course, is that the personnel at Persepolis were as different in their beliefs as the age and the tolerance of the king permitted. It is clear that whatever form of Zoroastrianism Darius and Xerxes followed they apparently did not do so with a single-mindedness which precluded other beliefs. On the other hand, that the message of Zoroaster, at least as understood in the late sixth and fifth centuries, may have been legitimized and preserved by its reception at the Achaemenid court is a major cultural achievement of the first Persian empire. 6. Political philosophy and social organisation

As we noted above in Chapter i, Persian power and rule were from the start apparently tempered with leniency and tolerance. Persian systems of social organization, customs or religious beliefs were not imposed on the conquered peoples. Local forms of government, economic organization, political structure and law were left undisturbed, as long as their workings did not conflict with imperial needs. This policy was established in the reign of Cyrus and is best exemplified in that king's political treatment of the Medes and the Ionians, and his religious attitude toward the Babylonians and the Jews, to whom he granted permission to return to their homeland and to rebuild their temple. We have no evidence that the policy changed under Darius; even though he did introduce new measures of organization and legal structures into the empire, he still, for example, ruled in Babylon and Egypt as the legitimate choice of Marduk and as descendant of the Pharaohs respectively. That style of rule — claiming sovereignty in the name of the local deities and political traditions — may have changed under Xerxes in Egypt and Babylonia in response to rebellion. Yet we have no clear evidence that the established imperial philosophy of government was uniformly discarded by Xerxes, and there is nothing in the record to suggest that a relatively relaxed and tolerant style of imperial rule did not remain characteristic of the Achaemenids to the end of the dynasty. Such a policy of tolerance was pursued for two reasons. First, it was good Kealpolitik: good, practical politics under the circumstances. Given the enormous size and astounding ethnic diversity of the empire, probably no other policy would have worked. The Assyrians, in 104

For example, Humban, mentioned more times by name than any other deity, and Adad. For the religious evidence of the tablets, see B 112.

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attempting to manage a much smaller polity, had used fairly rigid methods of central political control and calculated terror, the latter often expressed in the form of the slaughter of captured enemies and massive deportations of people from one part of the empire to another, but there is cause to suggest that even on that smaller scale such heavy-handedness did not work. While there is evidence for a limited use of deportation as a control method under the Achaemenids, in the end their only choice was for a rule of tolerance.105 In short, it is probable that a large empire has little choice but to use tolerance cleverly as a form of rule. On the other hand, such an approach to imperial government may have appealed to the ideological proclivities of the Achaemenids, in part, because it fitted with their own traditions and political organization. In fact, some of the Persians' rather original concepts of empire, and thus their contributions to political science, may have been deeply rooted in their own forms of idealised social structure.106 The Persians - and in this regard they are probably only typically Iranian — had a vertical view of society which began, at its base, with the family, and then progressed upwards through the ever broader social and political concepts of clan, tribe and country until eventually it reached the notion of a People or a Nation.107 Thus, in giving us his biography at Bisitun, Darius tells us in the following order that he is: the son of Vishtaspa (family), an Achaemenid (clan), (tribe — Pasargadae — is missing), a Persian (country), and finally, an Aryan (Iranian — people/nation). The ideal horizontal division of Iranian society, however, was fourfold. In the east of the plateau the priests, warriors, artisans and peasants were the classes into which society was divided; in the west we find priests, warriors, scribes/bureaucrats and artisans/peasants.108 Politically and socially at the summit of this structure was the king, enveloped in the concept of kingship. This latter formulation was of particular importance, for the khvarna, or 'kingly glory', was an aura that attached itself both to the office and position of king and to the individual who became the king.109 Originally, the ruler had been elected by the warriors and was a person with the right charisma and from the right family. (Note Herodotus' assertion (i. 12 5) that it was the noble family of 105 Achaemenid kings did order deportations, e.g. those of the Paeonians (Hdt. v. 12) and of the Milesians (Hdt. vi.20), but the method was used sparingly, and never on the scale practised by both the Assyrians and the Babylonians. Cf. A 3 5,6-7, on dependent populations in the area of Persepolis. 106 M u c h ink has been spilled, often t o little p u r p o s e , o v e r t h e subject of early I r a n i a n / A r y a n social structures. Dumezil's writings have provided a focus for much of the argument. For a summary of his position, with extensive bibliography in the notes, see B 60. 107 108 B 92. B 6 4 , 49—52. 109 See B 64,40; B 65; B 66. It has been argued (B 185) that the winged symbol on the reliefs, usually understood as an image of the god Ahura Mazda, is in fact a representation of the king's kbvarna. This is unlikely.

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the Pasargadae which supplied the kings of the Persians.) While in Achaemenid times the king was something of a priest and a sacrificer, as well as the political and military head of state, he was not a divinity.110 In assuming the throne, however, he took unto himself the mystique, spirit and glory of kingship: tradition has it he was crowned on his birthday, at which event he was thought to be reborn and, thus, assumed a throne name. The concept khvarna, in short, contained elements which at least brought the king and kingship in touch with the mysterious, if not the divine. It was not difficult, therefore, for the Great King, King of Kings, to view himself, and by extension, his government and empire as someone and something which functioned only at the highest social and political levels. He was king of countries, peoples and nations, and it was larger units such as these that formed the empire. Hence, in the Old Persian inscriptions, and on reliefs at Persepolis, when the task was to define the empire it is, as we have seen, dahyava, countries or peoples, who are listed and depicted, not land-masses or geographic and administrative units, such as satrapies.111 Therefore, it would be a natural imperial policy to interfere as little as possible in the affairs of tribes, clans and families. As long as peasants, artisans, priests and warriors tended to their proper roles within society, their styles and methods of functioning at lower levels of the vertical social order need not concern the state; as long as the king and the central government retained control of affairs at the highest levels the imperial cause was sufficiently served. In sum, a policy of tolerant rule, which was characteristic of the Achaemenid empire, not only made good practical sense, but it perhaps also fitted well with ancient, albeit ideal, Iranian concepts of social and political organization. 7. Art and architecture

Achaemenid art is one of the great creations of the ancient Near East. In part, it had its roots in the Iranian past on the plateau; in part, it was a syncretistic summation, in an entirely Persian form and with a Persian purpose, of the arts of Mesopotamia and Egypt. Like the empire itself, it 110 For example, Darius is depicted on his tomb relief (B I 79, pi. 19) in the role of a priest/sacrificer confronting the sacred fires. 111 At both Persepolis and Naqsh-i Rustam the peoples of the empire are depicted as supporting and holding up the king, on his throne at Persepolis (e.g. B 177, pis. 107, ic>9;cf. Pis. Vol., PI. 31), and on a platform while he stands in front of the sacred fire at Naqsh-i Rustam (B 179.pl. 20; cf. Pis. Vol., pi. 38). Both scenes are entirely peaceful, and the message conveyed is of the people as the support of the government. Only at Bisitun do we have a relief showing the king in a position of conquest or victory, and there Darius is standing in triumph, not over peoples of the empire, but over the individual rebel kings of year 1. On the tomb reliefs in particular, see B 27; specifically on the platform at Naqsh-i Rustam, B 26.

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stands at the end of the ancient world and at the beginning of something new. Prior to the time of Cyrus, the Persians had little want of, nor could they probably have afforded, monumental art. As we noted above, in Chapter i, however, Cyrus the Great was suddenly confronted with the need to build and to decorate on a scale commensurate with the size, power and wealth of the polity which he had assembled, and to do so he marshalled the arts of the subject peoples in the imperial cause. Thus it is that Achaemenid art, particularly architecture and architectural sculpture, has appeared to many to be something thrown together at the last minute by a relatively uncultured people forced to borrow styles, motifs, ideas and artists from around their empire and to create, as a result, a highly derivative art.112 Appearances, however, are once again deceiving. The Iranians had been resident in the western half of the plateau which bears their name for well over half a millennium when Cyrus came to power. They had long had contact with the high cultures of the Greater Mesopotamian world - Assyria, Babylon, Elam and Urartu - and beyond, including Syria, Phoenicia and even Egypt. The art and architecture of Iron Age Iran witness to the breadth and depth of these contacts and the extent to which much of ancient Near Eastern art was known to the inhabitants of the plateau.113 For that matter, Persian and Median craftsmen had even joined artisans of other nations, such as Ionia, Lydia, Byblos and Egypt, to work at the court of Nebuchadrezzar in Babylon. Thus, Babylonian practice provided a precedent for the bringing together of craftsmen from around the empire by Darius when he built his famous palace at Susa.114 In short, the Iranians had already made an active contribution to the development of Near Eastern art before the mid-sixth century. So it is reasonable to assume that the Medes and the Persians (and other Iranian peoples) of that century were familiar with, and appreciative of, the great artistic traditions of the ancient Near East. Therefore, when they gained the power and the wealth needed to be themselves grand patrons of the arts, they were not ignorant nouveaux riches entirely dependent for their taste and their aesthetic vision on borrowed artists and artisans. Instead, they brought to the task of creating a new imperial art a highly developed Persian taste and conception, one which, it can be argued, fitted well with their own sense 112 Most recently B 44, 162-3. F° r a n overview of the issue, particularly in terms of Persians borrowing artistically from the Greeks, see B 153. 113 Most revealing in this regard are the remarkable remains of Period IV at Hasanlu in Azerbaijan. For specific examples of the extent to which this art was in contact with and influenced by the great contemporary arts of the Near East, see, for example, B 142; B 225. 114 DSf (for the Elamite text see B 96) and now also DSz; see B 207; B 208. On Iranian craftsmen in Babylon, see B 354.

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of social and political organization. So it is that, however much we may point to specific elements within their art as, for example, Babylonian, or Egyptian, or Ionian, the totality remains distinctively and distinctly Persian. Looking first at the small or smaller arts, we notice at once that excavations at royal Achaemenid sites, such as Pasargadae, Persepolis and Susa have produced relatively few objects simply taken from another culture. This is striking, because the Persians had an empire of objects to choose from, yet seem to have preferred, in the main, their own products. For example, hardly a single potsherd from a Greek vessel, even of the then world-famous fifth-century Attic ware, has been found at an Achaemenid site in Iran in pre-Hellenistic levels. The Persians clearly chose to use their own undecorated pottery. Indeed, stone and pottery vessels were one of the great aesthetic achievements of the Achaemenid period, particularly when bowls and relatively shallow vessels were called for. Emphasis was on shape: sharp, clean lines and carinations were preferred, possibly because in many cases metal prototypes were being copied.115 Three-dimensional bird and animal heads were used for decoration, particularly as handles on cups, goblets and trays. It was, however, in metalwork and jewellery that the Achaemenid craftsman excelled, though the seal cutters displayed just as much dexterity and technological skill. A common characteristic of the metalworker's art, one shared across the Iranian world, was an emphasis on decoration which was intricate, often repetitive, and at times Baroque in its complexity. Animalfiguresand animal motifs were commonly used as decorative elements, which was the continuation of a plateau tradition going back to the fifth millennium B.C., but which had been particularly characteristic of Iranian metalwork in the centuries just prior to the rise of the Achaemenids (for example, the bronzes of Luristan of the eighth and seventh centuries).116 The characteristic monumental quality of many of the smallest of Achaemenid objets d'art is best seen in some of the jewellery and tableware; the hoard from Pasargadae is perhaps the outstanding example of the genre.117 In it were found delicate gold ear-rings displaying in their fine wire mesh and globules metalworking of outstanding quality and skill. A silver spoon with a delicately curved handle, which ends in a duck's head facing back towards the ladle (see Pis. Vol., pi. 92), demonstrates that the silversmith was as skilled as the goldsmith. And the balanced use of metal and finely cut stone - carnelian 115

E.g. B 193, fig. 106 no. 13. On Attic pottery in the Achaemenid world, see B 53. E.g. B 139. B 195,168-77 and figs. 85-8. Seal cutting was, of course, also a great 'small' art in Achaemenid times; see B 2 for an introduction. On the use of seals at Persepolis, see B 86. 116

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and onyx — which can be reconstructed in some of the bracelets displays an equally impressive combination of artistry and craftsmanship. It is, however, in monumental architecture and the sculptured relief work with which the Achaemenid kings decorated their buildings that we can experience the full impact and message of truly imperial Achaemenid art. Persepolis, founded by Darius, modified and much added to during the reign of Xerxes, and essentially completed by Artaxerxes I, is the example par excellence of this Achaemenid achievement. The site (see Pis. Vol., pis. 7,8) is situated on a large platform, partially artificial and partially carved from the native rock at the westernfootof the Kuh-i Rahmat (Mountain of Mercy). The platform, the cistern, an elaborate system of drains, the central part of the Apadana (or large audience hall) and several sections of the Treasury are founded and, in the main, brought to completion by Darius I. Late in the reign of Darius, and in the first years of Xerxes, the platform was expanded to the west and Darius' private palace (the Tacara), a second phase of the Treasury, part of the fortifications, and the main stair and Gate of All Nations were built. Xerxes himself undertook the construction of a new, larger private palace, the central building (or Tripylon), and the Harem; reorganized and enlarged the Treasury; and laid the foundations for, if not completed, a new audience hall, the Hall of a Hundred Columns. All remaining construction can be dated to the reigns of Artaxerxes I and his successors, but that work represents little more than a completion, or enlargement, of the plans laid down by Darius and modified by Xerxes.118 Taken by itself, the Persepolis platform is a remarkable artistic and architectural statement. Yet its true monumentality cannot be appreciated except in terms of a larger setting. It probably was, as the Treasury and Fortification Texts record, only the 'fortification', or the citadel, of a much larger complex. We know of several palaces down on the plain to both sides of the platform, and there are no doubt more awaiting excavation.119 Thus, it is perhaps reasonable to visualize the elaborately decorated royal tombs at Naqsh-i Rustam across the plain to the north west as not actually distant but as an integral part of a larger 'City of the Persians'.120 118 B 169, 150—9. Changes during the reign of Xerxes radically altered the layout of Darius. With the construction of the grand west stairway and the Gate of All Nations the whole axis of the site plan was changed. The stairs at the south-east corner from the time of Darius may, of course, have been temporary, and the grand west entrance might well have been part of Darius' plan which Xerxes finished on his behalf. The excavation reports on Persepolis are B 177—8. For a dramatic reconstruction of the site, see B 116, but also B 141. 119 For the recent revealing work on Persepolis and its environs, see B 199-204. 120 B 179. For a recent, but not entirely convincing, discussion of the dates of the Achaemenid royal tombs, see B 111.

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The characteristic architectural feature of the Persepolis building complex is the columned hall. While other individual elements, such as the Mesopotamian-inspired winged bulls which guarded Xerxes' Gate of All Nations, are clearly borrowed from other cultures, the columned hall is rooted in the experiences of the Iranians on the Iranian plateau. The distant prototypes of the great halls, such as the Apadana and the Hall of a Hundred Columns, can be found in the columned structures of Hasanlu V and IV (1400-800 B.C.) and in the columned halls of Median sites, such as Nush-i Jan and Godin II (eighth-seventh centuries B.C.).121 It is, in fact, the extensive use of the column in architecture that is one of the elements which makes the whole of Persepolis (and Pasargadae) ultimately Iranian or Persian.122 Yet it is the sculptures which adorn these buildings which reveal that in this art 'the genius lies in the calculated articulation of the visions behind it, not in the inventiveness of the artisans who ultimately executed the visions'.123 Imperial Achaemenid art was created with a political and ideological purpose, and in it we can catch a glimpse of what the Achaemenids felt their empire should be and how ideally they felt it should be perceived. Here is art in the service of the state, and while it must be admitted that the art commissioned by the Athenians of the fifth century B.C. was also, at least in part, an art of the state, nevertheless the Achaemenids made a more concerted programmatic effort with their art than did the Greeks. (In this regard, they were in a strong Near Eastern tradition.) Two things can be noted at once about this imperial art, particularly as we find it at Persepolis and in the royal tombs at Naqsh-i Rustam. First, the reliefs are entirely unhistorical; they tell no developing story, as did many reliefs of the Assyrians and the Egyptians. Instead they give us a static picture of something that is already done, that already exists, that is accomplished (tribute brought, monsters slain, fire honoured, dignitary received). Second, the king is everywhere and is the focus, in one way or another, of almost all of the reliefs {the worshipper on the tomb facade, the principal figure in the reception scenes toward which all the tribute bearers proceed, the ruler on the throne supported and held up by figures representing the peoples/nations of the empire). Yet this king is not an individual; we have no portrait of Darius, of Xerxes, or Artaxerxes. Instead we have a dynastic image, almost perhaps oikhvarna, the 'glory of kingship', rather than an image of a king. The whole of even a complex composition such as the Apadana reliefs presents us with a planned, spiritual, abstract and almost cosmic composition of static totality. Viewed this way, it becomes clear that the creative person in this art is 121 For Hasanlu, sec B 62 and also B 227. For Nush-i Jan, B 195,6-7; B 194. For Godin II, B 229, 27122 123 9 andfig.41. B 93, 32-3. B 170, 309.

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not the stone carver, or the individual sculptor, however skilled he may be. The artist is the person who planned the whole thing. So we should not be surprised when a careful and detailed study of stone carving at Persepolis reveals that the relief sculptures were done by teams of artisans: a master working with several lesser artists and apprentices, each doing a special aspect of the carving.124 The Praxiteles of this work is the man who made the plan and the drawings which captured that plan, not the men and boys who did the cutting of the stone. It has been argued, and with much force, that the ultimate goal of this monumental architectural art was to present to the world the concept of a Pax Persica or a kind of imperial cosmos — an harmonious, peaceful empire ruled over by a king who was a devout worshipper of Ahura Mazda, and who contained within his person and his office the welfare of the empire.125 This view of imperial ideology as expressed in art is one valid interpretation of the facts. Yet how the people at the top of the Achaemenid/Persian empire viewed their world, and how they wished others to see it in its ideal form, is one thing. How it may have been seen is another. For example, one might interpret several Achaemenid concepts and practices — the centrality of the king in Achaemenid art, the emphasis on khvarna as a spiritual attribute of kingship, the elaborate rituals and court decorum which surrounded the royal person, the societal view which vertically divided mankind strictly according to birthright and horizontally into fairly fixed classes based on origins and occupation, and the central authority which surrounded itself with a court-oriented aristocracy — as evidence of a political reality the main purpose of which was to make it clear who was in charge and where the power lay. As Darius says in an inscription on his tomb: these are the countries which I seized outside of Persia; I ruled over them; they bore tribute to me; what was said to them by me, that they did; my law — that held them firm. (DNa 3) And further on: If now thou shalt think that 'How many are the countries which King Darius held?' look at the sculptures [of those] who bear the throne, then shalt thou know, then shall it become known to thee: the spear of a Persian man has gone far . . . (DNa 4) The king is the emperor, and the empire belongs to the Persians.126 124

B 169.

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One must remember that this inscription was on a rock face in Parsa, and might be addressed specifically to Persians. Whether such an inscription would have presented the same text, were it on public view in, say, Babylon, is another question. To judge from the words and tone of the Cyrus Cylinder, it well might not have. Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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Yet it remains true that much of the conscious ideology of the Achaemenid empire was also apparently more than just propaganda designed to put a smiling face on to what was nothing more than a continuation of Assyrian and Babylonian forms of conquest and rule. The Achaemenids did rule their empire in a new way. Calculated frightfulness was not their practice. Deportations were relatively few. Tolerance of local forms of religion, social organization and even government was policy.127 Documented and orderly provincial government was an imperial goal (witness the treasury system). And many peoples of the empire were involved in its governance and functioning: Elamite and Babylonian scribes, Iranian and non-Iranian priests, Jewish and Greek mercenaries, Babylonian bankers and real estate dealers, Ionian tyrants and democrats, and Spartan and Athenian exiles — to name a few. Such policies and actions are integrative, and as such were perhaps something rather new in the history of Near Eastern attempts to create polities which transcend ethnic and national boundaries. The polity in this case was the Persian empire. The peoples, the dahyava, were not to be seen as separate nations held enslaved by one nation, but as integral parts of the empire, the one real polity, over which the king and the Persians admittedly ruled. There is here an ideal of empire which is at least attempting to be different. One senses that some kind of a struggle is going on to break out of old moulds and to create new ways of ruling large, multinational, many-peopled territories. It could be that the effort to do so began in the first year of Darius, when the king was forced to operate with power which was personal, genealogical and military only and was not geographically or nationally fixed. It is fair to say that, in the main, the struggle was successful. Darius and his successors ruled a large land mass containing a bewildering variety of ethnic groups for almost two hundred years. They did it with very little violence and without the need for the almost annual military activity characteristic of the smaller Assyrian empire. Rebellions were comparatively rare, and most involved political and dynastic party efforts to grab power at the centre of government rather than attempts by parts of the empire to break away from the centre. Thus, Persian imperial philosophy, however much its ideological expressions may have covered over grimmer realities, was effective. The conqueror of the empire, Alexander, incorporated much of this new thinking into his own idealistic vision of empire, and thus the Achaemenids made a direct contribution to the political and social concepts of the Hellenistic world. 127 So much so that possible variations from that policy, such as Xerxes' treatment of Egypt, Babylonia and the 'daiva' worshippers, stand out from the record and receive attention from historians perhaps out of proportion both to the actual data available and to the impact of these events themselves.

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CHAPTER 3b

SYRIA-PALESTINE UNDER ACHAEMENID RULE I. EPH C AL

I.

INTRODUCTION

In 539 B.C. Cyrus overcame Nabonidus, the last king of Babylonia; as a consequence, Syria—Palestine fell into the Persian king's hands, and thus began the period of Persian rule in the history of these countries, a period that was to last more than two hundred years. To the best of our knowledge, Cyrus fought no battles in this region; neither was his domination of Syria and Babylonia achieved in stages.1 In view of the way in which a transfer of imperial power is usually effected - a single, decisive battle (sometimes two or three battles), with the administrative system remaining intact and only the actual reins of government changing hands - it is a reasonable assumption that Cyrus' chief concern was to ensure a decisive victory over Nabonidus in Babylon (where the Persian king apparently enjoyed considerable local support). His success in this enterprise made him master of a territorial complex which, under the Chaldaeans, had extended 'from Gaza at the border of Egypt (and) the Upper Sea (= the Mediterranean) beyond the Euphrates up to the Lower Sea ( = the Persian Gulf)'.2 Until 525, Palestine marked the farthest limit of Persian rule; beyond Sinai lay Egypt. However, as a result of Cambyses' conquest of Egypt in that same year,3 the entire region west of the Euphrates took on a unique geopolitical significance in the context of the Persian empire, which was to increase in time as the conflict between the Persians and the Greeks gained momentum. SyriaPalestine was now to be a vital bridge - both by land and by sea - for the maintenance of Persia's power in Egypt and for her struggle with Greece, much of which took place at sea. The area extending from the Euphrates to southern Palestine is designated in the Eastern sources from the Persian period by the 1 Cf. B 267, 84-7. 2

B302,220,Nabonidno. i.i 39-42;Cf. Nab.H,Bi42—4;Nab.H2A&Biii 18-20(8270,48,52,64). Polybius (xvi.22a) lauds the heroism of Gaza: whereas all the cities had surrendered to the Persians (not to Cambyses!), Gaza surrendered only after a siege. This information is not corroborated by any other source. 3

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Mersih^d Tarsus

Map ;. Syria—Palestine. Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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territorial term 'Beyond the River' (Akk. ebir nari, Aram. Zabar nahar3'\ natural), Hebr. ceber hannahar), which is Mesopotamian in origin. The term also occurs in a Babylonian chronicle of the first years of Chaldaean rule (the reign of Nabopolassar and the first years of Nebuchadrezzar's reign), and it is already used in Assyrian inscriptions dating from the end of the eighth century and from the seventh.4 Greek sources employ the general appellations 'Syria', 'Coele-Syria' and 'Syria and Phoenicia'.5 In Persian (or in Elamite) there is no special designation for Syria—Palestine; when scribes writing in these languages had to refer to 'the people of Beyond the River', they had recourse to the term 'Assyrians' (OP Aduriya; Elam. As-su-ra-ap).6

In conformity with the plan of this volume, this chapter will survey the history of the region in the general context of the Achaemenid Empire — from the standpoint of the imperial authorities. The detailed internal history of the province of Judah and its neighbours in the Persian period will be discussed in Volume vi. The history of Syria—Palestine in the Persian period is extremely difficult to reconstruct, primarily because of the paucity of our information concerning the region - compared with the previous, Assyrian period and, even more, with the later, Hellenistic period. Moreover, what little information we do possess is unevenly distributed, in respect of both territorial extent and chronological span: the Persian royal inscriptions provide little if any data about the region; the Greek historians describe Persian contacts with the Greeks in Greece, Asia Minor and the Mediterranean, with all their references to Syria-Palestine limited to the coastal strip; finally, the relevant biblical material deals mainly with Judah, though touching indirectly upon her neighbours, in the first generation of the Restoration (c. 538-516) and the time of Ezra and Nehemiah (second half of the fifth century). Archaeological research, too, with its epigraphical and material finds, has focused hitherto on Palestine and - to a lesser degree - Phoenicia. In the historical picture derived from these data, most of Syria (up to the Euphrates) is shrouded in almost complete darkness throughout the period surveyed in this chapter (one might say that the beginnings of this 'dark age' date 4

Cf. B 320, 116; CAD E, 8. The territorial extent of these three terms is identical in the pre-Hellenistic sources; see B J07. On the derivation Assyria> Syria, see B ;OJ. 6 Compare the trilingual (Persian, Elamite and Babylonian) inscription from Darius' palace at Susa(DSf;on its different versions see B 110, 143; B 96,3; B 17), 8). The fact that it mentions Mount Lebanon as the source of the cedarwood brought to Susa indicates that 'Beyond the River' in the Babylonian version is a primary geographical term, whereas the designation 'Assyr(ians)' in the Persian and Elamite versions is secondary, necessitated by these languages' lack of a special term for the region in question. It is doubtful, therefore, whether anything can be inferred concerning the administrative relation between 'Beyond the River' and Babylonia from the proximity of Adura and Babirus in the inscriptions of Darius 1 and in an inscription of Xerxes (XPh). 5

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back to the completion of the Assyrian occupation of Syria in the second half of the eighth century); we have some basic knowledge of Phoenicia and its city states; while events in Judah and the neighbouring countries are relatively well documented. Under these conditions, our idea of the political and military events that took place in the region, based on the available written evidence, is meagre indeed. Nevertheless, the variegated information that can be gleaned from epigraphic finds in Palestine, Phoenicia, Babylonia and Egypt, and from the Bible, illuminates our picture of the empire's administration and of the status of various ethnic and demographic groups during the Persian period; various details of this chapter can undoubtedly be applied to other parts of the Persian empire. II.

OUTLINE OF POLITICAL HISTORY

By the time 'Beyond the River' came under Cyrus' dominion, the imperial system had already taken complete control of the entire western part of the 'Fertile Crescent', a process that lasted more than 150 years. Indeed, Syria and northern Palestine (the Kingdom of Israel) had been absorbed into the Assyrian provincial system in the second half of the eighth century. The semi-independent kingdoms in southern Palestine (Judah and the Philistine kingdoms of Gaza, Ascalon, Ashdod and Ekron) and Transjordan (Moab and Ammon), whose political existence as vassal entities continued until the sixth century, were dissolved during Nebuchadrezzar's reign and they too were incorporated* into the Chaldaean provinces (there are no records of the circumstances attending the collapse of the Kingdom of Edom, but it must have occurred during the Babylonian period). Only in Phoenicia did the city states of Tyre, Sidon, Byblos and Aradus continue to exist throughout the Persian period. It may well have been due to these specific political conditions — the lack of ready-made political structures or of well-entrenched local leadership cadres — that the region experienced few uprisings during the Persian period. In fact, the only incontrovertible evidence for local hostilities comes from Phoenicia, in the last generation of Persian rule. Under these circumstances, it appears that the military and political events known to have occurred in Phoenicia and Palestine during the Persian period (as stated previously, we have no information relating to other parts of Syria and Transjordan) are reflections of external phenomena, much broader in scope, whose roots lie mainly in Egypt, rather than independent undertakings of local elements. The sources relating to Darius I - in particular, the Bisitun Inscription — which report revolts and serious disturbances at the beginning of his reign (522) in various parts of the empire (including Babylonia, Persia, Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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Media, Elam and Egypt), provide no evidence of unrest in 'Beyond the River'. Concerning Judah, one may indeed discern echoes of messianic hopes centred on Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel in Haggai's prophecy (2:20—3), g i y e n in the winter of 'the second year of Darius' (521),7 concerning that scion of the House of David, who was then serving as 'governor of Judah'. However, these hopes never reached fulfilment. In fact, it has been suggested that Zerubbabel's disappearance from the stage of history after 521 was due to his deposition by the Persian authorities, who were concerned lest such authority entrusted to the representative of a local dynasty inspire unrest, as had happened in other districts of the empire. In the year 487/6, some time before Darius' death, Egypt revolted, to be put down two years later by his successor Xerxes. Not long thereafter Babylonia also rebelled, first under Bel-shimanni and subsequently under Shamash-eriba. Xerxes, preoccupied with intensive preparations for his great campaign against Greece, quashed the rebellion with an iron hand, destroyed the city of Babylon and abolished its special status as an imperial centre. In Ezra 4:6 we find a brief statement to the effect that 'in the reign of Ahasuerus ( = Xerxes), in the beginning of his reign, they ['the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin'] wrote an accusation against the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem', presumably emphasizing the seditious nature of the latter (compare the letter addressed to Artaxerxes in connexion with the restoration of the walls of Jerusalem, Ezra 4:1216). It has even been suggested that the passage in Nehemiah 1:2-3 concerning the ruined wall of Jerusalem and 'the Jews, the remnant who have survived the captivity' - and possibly other passages too - hint at anti-Persian activities in Judah in those critical years, activities that forced the authorities to take stern action, possibly with the willing participation of Judah's neighbours.8 However, this suggestion is hardly tenable, if only for the reason that the biblical passage in question seems to be referring to an event much closer in time to Nehemiah's arrival in Jerusalem. The surviving sources are silent as to the influence exerted on 'Beyond the River' by other events in the Persian empire — above all, by the failure of Xerxes' great campaign against Greece, in which Phoenician ships played a prominent part (see below, pp. 144, 156). Phoenician ships continue to be attested in the struggles with Athens which followed, at the battle of the Eurymedon (Thuc. 1.100.1), in the Athenian expedition to Egypt (M-L 34), and in Cimon's last expedition to Cyprus in 450, when the Athenians fought the battle of Cypriot Salamis against the Phoenicians, Cypriots and Cilicians (Thuc. 1.112.4). The importance to the Persians of the Phoenician fleet is also evident 7

»

And not 520, the generally accepted date. On this method of calculation see B 478. 498.

B

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from the sarcophagus inscription of Eshmuncazar II, king of Sidon. In this inscription, Eshmuncazar reports the annexation to Sidon of 'Dor and Joppa, the great corn lands in the field of Sharon', which he had received from the king of Persia ('the Lord of Kings') as a reward for 'the important deeds which I did' (KAI14.18-20). Opinions are divided as to the precise dates of Eshmuncazar II's reign. According to scholars who place him around the mid-fifth century, the inscription is referring to the above-mentioned events in the 60s of that century. On the other hand, if one dates his reign a few decades earlier, the reference to 'important deeds' recalls the prominent role of the Sidonian fleet in Xerxes' Greek campaign (in 480), cf. Hdt. vn.96, 99; vni.67.9 One clear piece of evidence shows an impact of Athenian imperialism on our area. The gravestone of those Athenians of the Erechtheid tribe who died in the first year of their Egyptian expedition - 460 or 459 names among the places where they died Cyprus, Egypt and Phoenicia (M-L 33). Nothing more need be involved than a skirmish at a landing on a coasting voyage from Cyprus to Egypt, and it would be wild to guess from the order of the names at a raid from Egypt up the Palestinian coast. More substantial claims have been made from a weaker piece of evidence. Craterus, the early third-century collector of decrees, quoted the name of A cbpos under the heading of'Carian tribute' (KapiKos 6pos) (FGrH 342 F 1). That this is a reference to an Athenian tribute-list seems certain, and there is something of a case for attributing it to an Athenian assessment of tribute for 454.10 A Carian Doros is unknown, and some authors identify this city with the port of Dor, south of the Carmel coast, on the assumption that it served the Athenian fleet as an important station en route to Egypt to help Inaros (and perhaps also Amyrtaeus) and during the fleet's sojourn there. However, this hypothesis, based as it is on toponymic identity alone, raises difficulties and should probably be rejected, on the grounds that it implies a far-reaching conclusion, namely, that the Athenians maintained a foothold for several years at a point quite far up the Palestinian coast, in a hostile region, under undisputed Persian domination and in close proximity to the main bases of the Phoenician fleets. The 'Peace of Callias' (449) debarred the Athenians from acting in the Eastern Mediterranean, a provision that undoubtedly facilitated the Persians' control of Egypt, Cyprus and 'Beyond the River'. Hints of tension in Palestine during the reign of Artaxerxes I - but before Nehemiah's advent to Judah (i.e. between the years 464 and 445) may be discerned in Ezra 4:7-23, concerning the letter of accusation despatched to the king by Rehum the commissioner, Shimshai the scribe 9 10

Concerning the date of Eshmun'azar II's reign, see B 485; B 499. c 43, 1 203—4, 483, 496, i n 9 - 1 1 , 174—7, 260-2; B 487; A 38, 420-1.

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and 'the rest of their colleagues, who dwell in Samaria'; this letter prompted the authorities to halt the building of the wall 'by force and power'. It would appear, too, that the text of Nehemiah 1:2-3; 2:3» J 7 refers to the events of that period.11 In the second half of the Persian period, particularly during the reign of Artaxerxes II (404—358), the empire was weakened by strife both within and without. The salient features of the history of 'Beyond the River' at this time are Egypt's independence (404—342, XXVIIIth to XXXth Dynasties) and the extension of that country's domain of influence and military might in Palestine and Phoenicia, on the one hand, and Persia's abortive attempts to re-subjugate Egypt, on the other. Full narrative is reserved for Volume vi, but various points relevant to our general understanding of the region must be noted here. In the attempt on the throne by the younger Cyrus in 401, the route of his march — from the Syrian Gates at Mount Amanus to Thapsacus, where he was to cross the Euphrates — led him past the palace and 'paradise' of Belesys (= Belshunu, Bel-sunu), 'the ex-governor of Syria' (concerning this title see below, p. 154), which he destroyed (Xen. An. 1.4.10); mysteriously, the immense army of Abrokomas (the new governor? his title is not specified12), the Persian commander in Phoenicia, played no effective part in the campaign.13 Once Egypt had thrown off the Persian yoke at the end of the fifth century, it quickly turned its attention to Asia. In fact, it would appear that the Egyptians seized control of the entire coastal strip of Palestine and Phoenicia for a time. That this is the case follows from Diodorus' account (xv.2.3—4) of the alliance between Evagoras, king of Cypriot Salamis, in rebellion against the Persians, and Pharaoh Achoris (393— 380), in whose name Evagoras seized Tyre and other Phoenician cities, and from inscriptions of Pharaoh Nepherites I (399—393), found at Gezer, and of Achoris at Acre and Sidon.14 But in 373 we find Acre once again under Persian control, serving as the main base for an attack on Egypt by the Persian commander Pharnabazus (Diod. xv.41.3; ? [Dem.] 5 2.20). A further invasion of Phoenicia was made by Pharaoh Tachos in 361 (Diod. xv.92.3—5). Under Artaxerxes III (3 5 9—3 3 8) there was a major rising in Phoenicia, not surprisingly backed by Egypt. According to Diodorus (xvi.40—5), the immediate cause was provocative behaviour on the part of senior Persian officials towards the Phoenician delegates - natives of Aradus, Sidon and Tyre - who had convened at Tripolis. The revolt was led by 11 12 13

•

14

B 155,313. On the assumption that Abrokomas was the new satrap of Syria, see B490, 311-17 [155-61]. For speculation about the role of Abrokomas' force, see B 155, 375; B 824, 76-7. B 870, 374, 382, 384.

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Tennes, king of Sidon, and Sidon's wealth ensured speedy acquisition of the mercenaries, ships, equipment and provisions necessary for the war. The insurgents destroyed the 'King's Paradise', set fire to the grain stored for the Persian cavalry, and took vengeance on the offending Persians. Artaxerxes eventually took the field himself. Tennes betrayed the cause, and the Sidonians proceeded to seal off their besieged city and set it on fire, together with themselves and their families. According to Diodorus, 40,000 people died at Sidon and the king sold treasure-seekers the privilege of searching among the ruins for melted gold and silver, going on himself to a successful reconquest of Egypt.15 There is no doubt that this story of the city's destruction is exaggerated, since Sidon is mentioned as a city of some importance when Alexander arrived in Phoenicia in 332 (Arr. Anab. 11.15.6, 20.1; Curt, iv.i.ijff). According to accounts by late authors (Eusebius, Solinus, Syncellus; and cf. Josephus, citing Hecataeus of Abdera, in Ap. 1.194), Artaxerxes III, on his way to regain Egypt, exiled rebellious Jews, some to Hyrcania near the Caspian Sea district and others to Babylonia; he also subdued Jericho. These data may well be connected with Tennes' rebellion; if so, they tell us something of its extent.16 The political and military pendulum that swung back and forth over the region for the last sixty years surveyed above could not but have left its mark on the pattern of human habitation in Palestine and Phoenicia; it therefore provides a major basis for interpreting various salient archaeological phenomena. Thus, destruction levels in many cities along the coast and'coastal plain of Palestine, dating in general to the years 400380, may be attributed to the Persian—Egyptian struggle for hegemony in the area in those years.17 Similarly, the destruction evident at such sites as Hazor, Megiddo, Athlit, Lachish and Jericho has been associated with the Persian reaction to the revolt of Tennes.18 However, since our historical picture of this stormy chapter in the history of Palestine lacks adequate detail, one cannot accurately determine the circumstances which brought on the destruction or the identity of those who wrought it. The last stage in the history of Persian domination of 'Beyond the River', unlike the first, was one of major military activity. Although the rulers of Aradus and Byblos surrendered to Alexander on his arrival and the people of Sidon welcomed him with open arms, Tyre refused him entrance and resisted a siege for seven months. The war on Tyre was accompanied by military and political measures 15

ABC Chronicle 9 reports the arrival of Sidonian prisoners in Babylon, apparently in October 345, but there is some doubt about the year; see Sollberger ap. B 479. 16 Cf. B 511, 1 43, 11 421-2. " B 510, 245-5, a n d. ' n detail, B 509. 18 B 474; see, however, B 510, 255.

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in other parts of the country: Parmenion fought the 'Syrians' (south of Damascus?), who were opposed to Macedonian rule, and Alexander invaded the Anti-Lebanon, waging war on its 'Arab' inhabitants (Curt, iv. 1.5; Arr. Anab. 11.20.4). Josephus relates that at that time the Samaritans ( = the residents of the province of Samaria) submitted to Alexander, and their leader, Sanballat (III), put an auxiliary force of 8,000 men at Alexander's disposal during the siege of Tyre. On the other hand, Alexander's appeal to the Jews to provide auxiliary forces and food supplies for his army was denied by the high priest, who declared that the Jews' oath of allegiance to Darius was binding as long as the latter was alive (A.J xi.317—21). By the time Alexander left Tyre, he was already in control of 'all the rest of what is known as Syrian Palestine' (Arr. A.nab. 11.25.4). The only city still resisting him was Gaza. This city was led by a (Nabataean?) eunuch named Batis, at whose disposal stood 'Arab' mercenaries and sufficient supplies to sustain the city during a lengthy siege. Gaza was overcome by storm after a two-month siege. Its defenders fought to their deaths, the women and children were sold as slaves, and the city was resettled with people from the neighbouring (Bedouin?) tribes. It is noteworthy that the opposition to Alexander at Tyre and Gaza, which delayed his final victory over the Persian king and cost him considerable military effort, came from local elements (the reasons for this behaviour on their part are unknown and can only be conjectured), rather than from the political and military might of Persia. It would seem that by this time Persian rule in Syria—Palestine was at the most nominal. III.

DEMOGRAPHY AND PERSIAN POLICY TOWARDS ETHNIC GROUPS

The administrative and territorial subdivision of 'Beyond the River' under Persian rule was conditioned by two principal factors: (1) the diversity of ethnic and national groups, exhibiting various patterns of relationship vis-a-vis the Persian authorities; (2) considerations of administrative efficiency, with allowance for the interests of the local groups. The official recognition of ethnic-national units — as distinct from political-territorial units - as a significant factor in the delineation of imperial policy and administrative practice, an innovation in the history of Syria-Palestine, emerged for the first time under the Persians and was to reappear in later periods. It became possible largely because most of the local political entities in the area had been obliterated by the Assyrians and the Babylonians, and also because the Persian authorities tended to base their control of the multinational empire on existing alternative frameworks. Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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Among the various appellations for population groups in 'Beyond the River', we find certain general terms: 'Syrians', 'Phoenicians' and 'Arabs'. The first two derive from territorial definitions. The broadest of them, 'Syrians' (which does not figure in Hebrew or Aramaic sources), is applied in the Greek sources to the population inhabiting most of 'Beyond the River' (with occasional references to subgroups such as 'Syrians of Palestine'; Hdt. 11.104; vn.89) and even farther afield: northern Sinai, on the one hand, and the left bank of the Euphrates and Cappadocia in Asia Minor, on the other.19 The term 'Phoenicians', which is also unique to the Greek sources, encompasses the inhabitants of the coastal region of Lebanon and northern Palestine — the people of Aradus, Byblos, Sidon and Tyre. As to the 'Arabs', this term is merely a general noun, applied from the mid-ninth century onwards to various 'Bedouin' groups within the limbs of the 'Fertile Crescent'. Reckoned among the 'Arab' groups in the area of Syria-Palestine in the Persian period we find the Kedarites (cf. the inscription of 'Qainu son of Geshem, king of Kedar' from Tell el-Maskhuta, fifth century);20 some of them were apparently the '(Arab) Nabataeans', first explicitly mentioned in Diodorus xix.94—100, in connexion with the year 312, and well known since the beginning of the Hellenistic period in Transjordan, southern Palestine and northern Sinai. The 'Arabs' in the Anti-Lebanon, mentioned as the target of one of Alexander's operations (Arr. Anab. 11.20.4), may possibly be identified with the Ituraeans, who figure in the classical sources for that region from the end of the second century B.C. and onwards; they are also known from the Bible (Gen. 25:15;! Chron. 5:19). More specific designations of ethnic groups occur in the book of Nehemiah: in addition to the Jews, we find - in the middle of the fifth century - Tyrians, Sidonians, Ashdodites, Ammonites and Moabites. One question of paramount significance for the history of Palestine in the Persian period concerns the ethnic composition of the population of the province of Samaria. One possibility is that they were mostly descended from the original inhabitants of the area, prior to the destruction of the kingdom of Israel by Tiglath-pileser III and Sargon kings of Assyria, while only a relatively small group, mainly the ruling class, was descended from the exiles who were settled in Samaria during the Assyrian period.21 Alternatively, the bulk of the population may have consisted of the descendants of those exiles. In actual fact, this question 19 On the Syrians of Northern Sinai see, e.g., Hdt. in. 5; of the left bank of the Euphrates, Arr. Anab. m.8.6; and of Cappadocia, Hdt. 1.7a, 76, 11.104, in.90, v.49, vn.72. 20 S e e P i s . V o l . p i . 9 3 ; B 8 7 5 ; TSSI11 n o . 2 5 . 21 On deportations from the kingdom of Israel, see II Kings 15:29; 17:6; I Chron. ;:6, 26; A NET 283-).

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should be extended to include the whole of Syria-Palestine. The Assyrian policy of mass deportation (which actually continued into the Babylonian empire, though based on different principles and more limited in extent) affected the ethnic-demographic make-up of the entire region;22 quantitative evaluation of the changes it wrought is of crucial importance in defining the ethnic character of the population of SyriaPalestine in the Hellenistic period — the next point at which our knowledge of the history of the region begins to fill out again. It is quite evident that the members of Sanballat's family, which provided the governors of Samaria from the mid-fifth century until the end of the Persian period, worshipped Yahweh, as did the Jews in Judah. However, the authors of the letter of accusation to Artaxerxes, the purpose of which was to prevent the reconstruction of the Jerusalem wall, describe themselves as 'the men of Erech, and of Babylon, and of Susa - that is, the Elamites - and other peoples whom the great and glorious Osnappar (= Ashurbanipal) deported and settled in the city of Samaria, and the rest of the province of Beyond the River' (Ezra 4:9—10), in an obvious effort to emphasize their distinctness from Judah and its people. Clearly, then, there was in Samaria some kind of ethnic-religious stratification, the details of which lie beyond our ken. Conclusions may sometimes be drawn with regard to ethnic and related questions by examining the structure of proper names, and particularly of their theophoric components. Thus, for example, the Arab and Idumaean names occurring in the dozens of fourth-century ostraca discovered at Beersheba and Arad23 testify to the infiltration of southern Palestine by a population group from Transjordan which was to constitute the majority of the inhabitants of the eparchy of Idumaea in the early Hellenistic period. Now, it is presently known that the Wadi Daliyeh papyri and seal-impressions (dating to 375/365-335) contain names with theophoric elements that testify to Idumaean (Qos), Moabite (Chemosh), Aramaean (Sahar), Babylonian (Sin, Nabu) and Jewish (YHW) origins;24 however, as long as the names have not been fully published and the statistical frequencies of their different elements remain unknown, it would be premature to draw unequivocal conclusions concerning the ethnic make-up of the population of Samaria. Although the general correlation between the provincial administrative units in 'Beyond the River' and the territorial span of the ethnic blocs is clear, it should be emphasized that, during the Persian period, these two forms of organization did not always imply territorial coincidence. That is because the territorial demarcations characteristic of the ethnic 22 On deportations to the province of Samaria, see II Kings 17:24; Ezra 4:2,9; ANET 284, 286. On Assyrian deportation policy, see B 310; on some features of Babylonian deportation policy, see 23 24 B 267. B 502—4. B 480, especially 52.

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groups, though fluid, generally shifted slowly and gradually, whereas an administrative unit could be expanded or contracted in the brief time required to issue a government decree. Thus, for example, one can infer from the book of Nehemiah that there were Jewish settlements between Hebron and Beersheba in the mid-fifth century (Neh. 11:25—30), while the Jewish population of the area to the south of the Tekoa—Beth-zur— Keilah line, in the southern part of the Judaean Hills, was in a state of decline and retreat during the Persian period. By dint of this progressive decline, the ethnic-demographic character of Idumaea - the district to the south and west of the above-mentioned line — had, as we have already stated, stabilized by the fourth century. Similarly, it follows from the Periplus of Pseudo-Scylax that, around the middle of the fourth century,25 Phoenicians were occupying the entire coast south of the Thapsacus ( = Orontes) River26 in northern Syria, as far as Ascalon in southern Palestine. A comparison of the information gleaned from this source with that conveyed by the inscription of Eshmuncazar, king of Sidon, might tempt one to suppose that, during the century prior to the composition of the Periplus, one of the Phoenician city states had extended its domain to the south, from Joppa to Ascalon. However, the picture outlined by Pseudo-Scylax is different; we find Tyrian and Sidonian settlements alternating along the coastal region south of Phoenicia proper: Adarus ( = Athlit?), Dor and Joppa are inhabited by Sidonians (as we know, Dor and Joppa are also mentioned in the Eshmuncazar Inscription); Crocodeilonopolis and Ascalon by Tyrians. It would seem, therefore, that the pattern is not one of a complex subdivision into relatively numerous, small, territorialpolitical units,27 but rather one of colonies — perhaps only quarters or emporia — distributed alternately between Tyrians and Sidonians, depending on the exigencies of coastal shipping and trade. If this approach be accepted, the Periplus cannot be seen as reflecting the administrative-territorial organization of the coastal region, but only an arrangement - involving no demarcation of boundaries - whereby the Tyrians and Sidonians benefited from various (extra-territorial) economic privileges.28 25

O n this s o u r c e , s e e B 4 8 6 , 185-210; B. 4 9 0 , 356—8; [ 2 0 0 - 2 9 ] . The name of this river bears no geographical relation to the North Syrian city of Thapsacus, near which Cyrus the Younger and Alexander the Great crossed the Euphrates. The west Semitic toponym tipsafy is derived from the root psfy, 'to cross, pass', and it denotes a ford or crossing-place of a river; cf. B 491, 286—8. Hence it may well have been the name of numerous places, among them the mouth of the Orontes. 27 T h e territorial pattern becomes even m o r e complex if o n e locates the province of Ashdod t o the n o r t h o f Ascalon. 28 In this c o n n e x i o n , cf. the term karu(m) in Neo-Assyrian d o c u m e n t s , particularly those relating 26

to the Phoenicians and the Palestinian coast (such as N L \i;ABl-y)i;vi4i, 483, 101-2, nn. 339—40.

108 iii 18-30). Cf. also B

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Our information concerning the policy of the Persian authorities vis-avis the people of the satrapy 'Beyond the River' relates mostly to the Jews and the province of Judah, mainly up to the middle of the fifth century (owing to the nature of the available sources). Nevertheless, as it is rather improbable that the Jews received preferential treatment, one can assume that other ethnic-national groups were dealt with similarly. Cyrus' Edict (in both its versions, Ezra 1:2—4; 6:3—5)29 and the biblical accounts of several waves of Jewish returnees, from the issuing of the Edict until Ezra's journey to Jerusalem in the time of Artaxerxes I, indicate that Cyrus and his successors maintained a policy of repatriation for some eighty years. Babylonian legal documents discovered at Neirab in northern Syria - the latest of them date from thefirstyears of Darius I's reign - imply that members of other ethnic groups, such as the Neirabaeans, were allowed to return home from their places of exile.30 The restoration of the Temple at Jerusalem and the resumption of worship there were sanctioned by royal decree. First, Cyrus granted permission to rebuild the Temple — and even returned the holy vessels pillaged by Nebuchadrezzar. And Darius and Artaxerxes I went even further, commanding that the expenses involved in building the Temple and maintaining its cult be defrayed from 'the resources of the king derived from the taxes of the province of Beyond the River'; the Temple personnel would be exempt from payment of the taxes (tribute, poll tax and land tax) to which all citizens of the province were liable; sacrifices would be offered up in the Temple to 'the God of Heaven' and prayers uttered for the life of the king and his sons (Ezra 6:8—12; 7:20—4). The honour rendered 'the God of Heaven', his Temple and his priests accords well with what we know of the attitude of Cyrus and his successors to other central temples in their realm, such as the Temple of Apollo at Magnesia. Those of the governors of provinces whose names we know were members of the local ethnic groups. Thanks to the names occurring in the Wadi Daliyeh finds, combined with previously known data, culled from the Bible, Josephus and the Elephantine papyri, it is possible to reconstruct a local ruling dynasty, the House of Sanballat, who served as governors of Samaria from the mid-fifth century until the advent of Alexander.31 There was no ruling dynasty in Judah (it will be recalled 29

R e g a r d i n g t h e historical authenticity of this d o c u m e n t , see B 477. B 267, 84—90. A legal d o c u m e n t was recently discovered at Tell Tawilan in s o u t h e r n T r a n s j o r d a n ( E d o m ) , which was written at H a r r a n in ' t h e accession year of D a r i u s K i n g o f t h e L a n d s ' ; see B 383. It follows from the k i n g ' s title that t h e d o c u m e n t dates from t h e time of D a r i u s II 30

(423) or III (335). Accordingly, any attempt to draw conclusions from it about the policy of restoration in the first generations of Persian rule is extremely dubious. More probably, the document testifies to internal mobility within the empire, in the second half of the Persian period. 31 B 480; B 481, especially 15-18.

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that the House of David lost its leading role during the first years of Darius I's reign, with the disappearance of Zerubbabel); however, what we know of the activities of the governors — and even some of their names (Nehemiah, Yehizkiyah) — indicates that they were Jews. Accordingly, it is reasonable to assume, on the basis of the Elephantine Jews' appeal to Bagohi, governor of Judah, in the year 408, requesting that he intercede for the restoration of 'the Temple of YHW the god which is in Elephantine' (Cowley, AP 30), that the same Bagohi was also a Jew, despite his Persian name. Among the local leaders who certainly enjoyed some official status vis-a-vis the authorities we find Nehemiah's adversaries, Geshem the Arab and Tobiah 'the servant, the Ammonite'. Nehemiah's derogatory epithet for the latter (2:10, 19) implies that Tobiah had an official title ('servant of the King'?), and it seems logical to associate him with the dominant dynasty of the 'Land of Tobiah' in Transjordan during the third century B.C.32 Another indication of the significance of ethnic-national groups in the political life of the Persian period is the presence in Judah of leadership bodies whose authority clearly stemmed from their position among their own people rather than their backing from the authorities. Thus, at the beginning of the Persian period we find an executive body known as the 'elders of the Jews', the 'heads of fathers' houses', negotiating with the 'adversaries of Judah and Benjamin' and with the Persian authorities, in connexion with the rebuilding of the Temple and the completion of the work. Towards the end of the Persian period we have evidence of the enhanced political standing of the high priest, as against the declining prestige of the governor. There is literary evidence for this process in the traditions concerning Alexander the Great's negotiations with the Jews, and, in particular, in the emergence of the high priest, at the beginning of the Hellenistic period, as the leader of Judah and its exclusive political representative. Decisive testimony to this effect comes from a recently discovered small silver coin, dating from the end of the Persian period, which bears the inscriptionjwhn\ri\ hkwhn ( = 'Yohanan the priest') (Fig. 2).33 This coin is similar to those struck by Yehizkiyah, one of the last governors of Judah; however, in place of the well-known inscription jh^qyh hphh ('Yehizkiyah the governor') we have, as just stated, the name of the high priest. It is clear from this exceptional find that Yohanan the high priest also wielded secular authority. By way of conjecture, one might associate this situation with one of the grave crises experienced by the Persian authorities in 'Beyond the River' in the last generation of its existence — e.g. the revolt of Tennes, or perhaps Alexander's siege of Tyre — during which Persian rule in Judah collapsed and its representative, the governor, could not maintain his position. 32

B

492.

« B 475.

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2. Coin of Yohanan the priest. Fourth century B.C. Obverse, owl and inscription; reverse, mask (?). (Israel Museum, 8790; after B 475. '67-)

IV.

IMPERIAL G O V E R N M E N T AND

ADMINISTRATION

The title 'Governor ({"pihatu, belpihati) of Babylonia and Beyond the River' as applied in Babylonian legal documents from the years 5 3 5—486 (see below, p. 154), indicates that in the early days of Persian rule SyriaPalestine were subsumed together with Babylonia under one administrative authority. 'Tattenai, governor of Beyond the River', who is known from the first half of Darius' reign, was subordinate, therefore, to the 'governor of Babylonia and Beyond the River'. According to Herodotus (in.89—95), Darius I organized his empire for taxation purposes into twenty districts (vo/xoC), called satrapies. The fifth satrapy in Herodotus' list includes Cyprus, Phoenicia and 'that part of Syria which is called Palestine', from Posideum (present-day el-Basft, south of the mouth of the Orontes) to Lake Serbonis (Sabkhat Bardawil) on the Egyptian border, omitting the 'Arab district' in the south, which was 'exempt from tax' (111.91; on the delineation and administrativeeconomic status of this territory see below, pp. 161—2). The tax (/«.rofPseudo-Scylax;seeB486,191-2, 204.

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2. The provinces

The provincial subunit of a satrapy was known in Aramaic and Hebrew as medtnah, generally translated as 'province'. The only provinces of 'Beyond the River' - these constituted the bulk of the area of the satrapy mentioned in our literary and epigraphic sources are Judah and Samaria (the term 'sons of Pahath-moab', lit. 'the governor of the province of Moab', used in the lists in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah to designate a certain group of persons — see Ezra 2:6; 8:4; Neh. 3:11; etc. - refers apparently to some pre-Exilic title; it can hardly be invoked as proof for the existence of a province Moab in the Persian period). The conjectural existence of other provinces, such as Ammon and Idumaea, is based on the situation in the Hellenistic period, coupled with the assumption that the Hellenistic rulers in general adopted the administrative and territorial system that they found when they took over the country. Besides the names of the provincesyhd and smryn ( = Judah and Samaria) (Fig. 4), silver coins from the fourth century also display the names 3sdd and c£ (Ashdod and Gaza).47 Permission to strike local coinage testifies to the economic and administrative standing of the two last-named cities; however, it seems preferable to await further finds for a more accurate determination of their official status.48 The West Semitic designation of the ruler of a province is pehdh (pi. pahot, pa^wata^), the same title as that of the governor of a satrapy (though the latter is also called, following the Old Persian xsaqapavan, Akk. Itiahsadrapannu, Hebr. ^ahasdarpan, Gr. aaTpdnr/s); compare, for

example, 'Tattenai, the governor of Beyond the River' (Aram, pahat ^abar naharahy (Ezra 5:3); 'Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel governor of Judah' (Hebr.pahatyehudati) (Haggai 2:2); []yhivbn [sn^b/tphtsmr[n\, '[]yahu son of [San]ballat, governor of Samaria' (Wadi Daliyeh, Papyrus 5). Whereas the Assyrian empire reserved the title '"pThatu/belplhati (Hebr. pehah) for provincial governors alone, Persian imperial terminology applies it not only to satraps but also to governors of provinces and apparently to even less senior officials.49 A similar development may be observed in the title lu}aknu, specific during the Assyrian period to governors of provinces, which in time came to designate relatively low-level officers and officials; cf. 'the prefects (Heb. hastfgamm)' in Neh. 5:7; 12:40; 13:11; and cf. the Aramaic title sgr? in the Wadi Daliyeh finds. The taxes imposed on the subjects of a province were 'tribute tax' 47

B 493, sj-8. Similarly, we cannot accept the assumption that the naming of'Sanballat and Tobiah and the Arabs and the Ammonites and the Ashdodites' in Neh. 4:1 indicates that each of these bodies enjoyed the status of a province (cf. below, pp. 161-4, on the 'Arabs'); contra, B 471. w Concerning the lexical and administrative problems raised by the Aramaic term />£»', and its relationship to the Akkadian and Hebrew terms discussed here, see B 472, 6 n. 5.

T i l l j a T e p e ^ v C. C E N T R A L A S I A A N D E A S T E R N

IRAN

were fitted with straps under the feet. They were shod with moccasins (Parthians, Saka, Sagartians, Sogdians and, sometimes, Bactrians) or with boots (sometimes Bactrians, and Arians, Drangians and Arachosians). They wore a knee-length tunic, which was either straight and closed or open with lapels, cut like a frock-coat (Sogdians, Chorasmians, Saka haumavarga and tigrakhauda), but was always fastened by a belt at the waist; sometimes a cloak with long, narrow sleeves was added. They wore a cap which covered the ears and which generally had a drooping point (bashlyk), though the Saka had caps with upright points141 and a simple hairband is also found. This was the costume of the steppe horsemen, also known by the Issyk and Pazyryk finds, adorned with gold and embroideries. Gandarans, Indians and Maka, who were not among them, wore simple kilts. All soldiers carried the akinakes or Scythian dagger, picks, cane or Scythian bows, and for the Saka and Sogdians there was the war-axe {sagaris). The excavation of tombs of the Aral, Kazakhstan, Altai and the Pamirs has brought confirmation of this description142 and has produced evidence of parts of the breastplates143 and scale armour (Cirik Rabat)144 which must have completed the panoply of the cataphracts of Central Asia.145 Various items of jewellery, such as ear-rings, bracelets and metal ornaments (belt buckles, etc.) in the animal style, will have enhanced the appearance of some of these fierce warriors.146 Some fought on foot, though precise details are lacking, but mostly they fought on horseback. Their horses belonged to breeds of repute, and were harnessed and decked out in style, as is amply demonstrated by tomb materials and artistic representations. They rode without stirrups, seated on rugs, and either charged the enemy with spears or harassed them with showers of arrows.147 The religion of the peoples of Central Asia can be to some extent deduced from their funerary customs, from the archaeological evidence of a few cult centres, and the written evidence of the Avestan religious tradition. The Saka buried their dead, sometimes directly, sometimes after removing their flesh, or embalming or cremating them.148 Removal of the flesh without inhumation is attested textually (Strab. x.11.3) for Bactria of the late Achaemenid period, but we must once again stress the fact that no 'Achaemenid' necropoleis are known except in the Saka marches of Central Asia. The most ancient ossuaries (fifth to third centuries B.C.) have been discovered at Tarym-Kaja in Chorasmia.149 Among these Saka, horse burials, cannabis-smoking installations,150 and 141 143 146 148 150

142 B 628; B 516, 47. B 635, 8 3 - I I 9 ; B 590, 83-131; B 516; B 6lO. 144 l45 B 590, 115-31 (doubtful). B 626, 148-50. See B 567, 87. l47 B J I 6 , 43-53; B 610. A 6 1 ; the absence of stirrups makes the charge problematic. 149 B 626; B 633, 64-6; B 590, 132ff; B 610. B 574, 6, 94—100. Hdt. iv.73-5; Pazyryk kurgam.

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various symbols are also known; this evidence is difficult to interpret in terms of solar, chthonic or shamanistic cults, and we only touch on it here. Not many cult centres are known: there is a stepped platform in Bactria, a fire temple at Dahan-i Ghulaman, and some structures which are, for convenience, dubbed 'temples' or 'fire-altars'.151 To these can be added the evidence of figurative art: the Oxus Treasure contains representations of figures in local dress decorated with beaded braid, who advance holding bundles of sticks (barsom?) (see Pis. Vol., pi. 42);152 a comparable scene appears on a piece of tapestry from Pazyryk V.153 Furthermore, Berossus (FGrH 680 F 11) records that Artaxerxes II erected a statue of Anahita at Bactra. Iranian texts give us an oral tradition, so far as we can reconstruct it from the slow Avestan accretions, according to which Aryanem Vaejah, Zoroaster's ancient Aryan homeland, was situated in Central Asia. From then onwards, all the old Iranian beliefs are to be found in Central Asia at one time or another. Unfortunately, representational art and textiles are so rare in Central Asia that we cannot demonstrate, in Achaemenid times, the existence of any definite religion, particularly Zoroastrianism, nor the presence of priestly castes. It is a fact that the whole of East Iranian mythology is linked to a concept of mounted warriors, but we cannot discuss it here, since it is too rich, complex, and so inextricably entangled with subsequent additions and borrowings foreign to Central Asia that it cannot easily be unravelled. This vague and heterogeneous information nevertheless seems to indicate the existence of a classical form of Mazdaism or even Zoroastrianism in the southern part of Central Asia,154 which, in the border areas of the north and east, existed side by side with a form of Iranian paganism or shamanism.155 The 'artists' of Central Asia belonged, like all their contemporaries, either to the nomadic or the sedentary communities. They did not shine in the major arts, as witnessed by the Susa charters (DSf, DSz) which mention craftsmen from Ionia, Lydia, Cappadocia, Babylonia, Egypt and Media, but none from further east. Their means of expression was through the minor arts, and, above all, in an oral literary tradition. The minor arts of the nomads are well known: the animal art of the steppes, in metal, and that of textiles, rugs, weaving, felt, wood and leather;156 the 151 At Kutlug Tepe in Bactria (B 61}), at Dzanbas Kala in Chorasmia (more recent), at At Chapar in Bactria (B 61 J). Religious and political centres probably existed among the Saka, B 576. 152

B 5 4 5 , 19—23, n o s . 4 8 , 5 1 , 7 0 , w i t h p i s . xiv—xv.

l53

B 6 1 0 , 297fig.1 3 9 .

154

B 223; B 58; B 19,1 166-7, 274"6- Characteristic are the absence of necropoleis, fire cults, cult platforms. " 5 Among others, see B 607; B 5 89. Characteristic are the mythological importance of animals and connexions between funerary architecture and mythology, B 587. 156

B J2j;B Jl8,4 ) - j i ;

B

6 3 3 , IO5 — I 9 ; B 5 9 0 , 3 0 - 8 2 ; B 6 l O ; B 5 7 5 ; B 5 6 9 ; B 6 1 9 .

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colourful compositions of the Altai and the numerous rock-engravings from Pakistan to Mongolia can be added to the gold and bronze plaques of the steppe art, which decorated dress and armour. The most 'monumental' Saka objects are the bronze cauldrons and the offering tables or stands.157 Once again, it is the sedentary people whose crafts are less well known unless we are prepared to accept that some, at least, of the objects in the Oxus Treasure were made locally,158 especially after the Takht-i Sangin discoveries.159 However, opinions differ as to the date and interpretation of the various pieces from this important chance find. Nevertheless, it should be noted that the Bactrians, on the Apadana reliefs at Persepolis, carry worked metal vessels, and we should therefore seriously consider the possibility of the existence of a Bactrian school of goldsmiths between the sixth and fourth centuries. The evidence for oral literature is both firmer and less precise. Everything does indeed combine to point to there having been a long and continuous tradition of oral literature in Central Asia, but proof of its existence in Achaemenid times is sadly lacking. The tradition is two-fold, and consists of religious and epic poetry. The Gathas of Zoroaster were created, it seems, about 900 B.C., possibly in Chorasmia. Subsequently the Yasht, of which certain parts were composed in eastern Iran (in Bactria?), were progressively added. These poems were committed to writing only at a much later date. They probably deeply influenced the thought and the moral and religious practice of the inhabitants of Central Asia, but in a way to which we have no means of giving precision.160 In the same way, the Saka epic, traces of which can be found in Herodotus and even exist among the Ossetians of the present, was known in sedentary Iran from a time which we cannot determine.161 The Iranian epic, in which there is a confrontation between Airya and Tuirya (Iran and Turan)162 which takes place in Central Asia, is to be found in the Avesta in the form of ancient fragments in which the heroic Kayanid kings appear.163 Local tradition was responsible for the transmission of this epic, over a period of centuries, to the courts of the Sogdians,164 Samanids165 and later of the Ghaznavids,166 still in Central Asia, where it was written and where it is still rooted in its country of origin by the toponyms which appear there.167 We may recall once again (see above, p. 168) the Mihr Yasht which described Central Asia as follows: 'the whole 157

B 5 3 4 ; B 5 7 5 , 178; d i s c o v e r i e s i n C h i n a . B JZ6;B J 88, holding that one seal (no. 105) represents Gopatshah with an inscription reading 'Vakshu' or 'Rakshan'; the cylinder seal no. 114 shows a fight between Persians and Saka. 158

159

See a b o v e n. 60 ( T a k h t - i Sangin).

162

B 1 9 , 1 104—7.

163 B

S4 2 I B 5 3 6 .

" ° B 19, 1 1 0 4 - 7 . l64

B 524.

165

161

B 550; B 5 3 5 , 5 7 - 6 3 .

With Daqiqi.

•« With Firdausi. 167 E.g. Takht-i Kobad, Takht-i Rostam, Afrasiab, Kej-Kobad-Sah, Shahr-i Zohak: B 598, 215 ft".

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'93

10. Cylinder-seal from the Oxus Treasure showing Persians fighting Saka. (?)Fifth century B.C. (After B 597A.)

land inhabited by Iranians where gallant rulers organize many attacks, where high, sheltering mountains with ample pasture provide, solicitous for cattle . . . " The Yasht is dated to the second half of the fifth century B.C.168 but nevertheless describes an earlier state of affairs when mounted warriors were probably settled in the fertile plains of the eastern satrapies of the Great King.169 It has been tempting to speak of an ethic of chivalry.170 In any case, the two oral literary traditions of Central Asia, the religious and the epic, became an integral part of Iranian literature. This process may well have started in Achaemenid times. Central Asia in Achaemenid times was thus a land with an ancient civilization, where a stable and prosperous economy, an important military potential and a rich and powerful oral literature were drawn on by the Persian court, using as intermediary a social hierarchy of 'feudal' type. 168 169

B 6 8 A , 3-22. N o text of the period proves it, but the epic must have been transmitted in this period too, and

historians agree on the existence of this aspect of the culture of ancient Central Asia. 170

B 225A; B J 3 5 , 5 0 - 3 ; B 5 8 3 .

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CHAPTER 3d

THE INDUS LANDS A. D. H.

BIVAR

During the sixth century B.C., northern India was divided between a number of local republics and kingdoms, traditionally reckoned as sixteen.1 Along the Ganges lay the four states most centrally placed, which at first had competed among themselves for dominance. To the north west, above the sacred river, was Kosala, with its cities of Sravastl, and Saketa/Ayodhya. South of the river, and towards the east, lay Magadha, centring around Rajagrha (Rajgir) and later Pataliputra (now Patna). To the south west was KasI, the country of Varanasi (Benares). To the north east lay Vrji, with the capital at Vaisall, the modern Besarh. Though in earlier times KasI, and later Kosala had enjoyed brief preeminence, it was finally Magadha which was to emerge as the paramount power, and impose a unitary administration on the sub-continent. More outlying janapadas (as these regional states are designated in Indian literature, on some coins, and in current historical writing) were, towards Bengal, the state of Ahga; upstream, along the River Yamuna (or J umna) lay Vatsa, with its capital KausambI, in recent years the site of excavations; and beyond, again, was Surasena, centred round Mathura. In present-day Malwa lay Avanti, with its centre at UjjayinI (Ujjain). This in turn was flanked to the east by Cedi in Central India, and to the north west by Matsya with its capital at Virata (Bairat) in present Rajasthan. Further to the north lay Pancala on the upper Ganges, and the region of the Kurus on the upper Jumna around Indraprastha (now Delhi). Away to the north west, Gandhara (non-Skt form Gandara) amongst the Indian borderlands apparently included at this period, east of the Indus, Kashmir and the city of Taxila; yet otherwise its principal centre was PuskalavatI, west of the Indus and above Peshawar. Also in the north west, but of debatable location, was Kamboja, to which some, as we shall see, have ascribed Persian connexions. Here we are hardly concerned with the short-lived state of Malla between Kosala and Vrji, 1 CHJndi 172 lists the sixteen nations (citing Anguttara Nikaya 1 213, iv 252, 256, 260) in their traditional order, and in their Pali forms, as follows: 1, Anga; 2, Magadha; 3, KasI; 4, Kosala; 5, Vajji; 6, Malla; 7, Ceti; 8, Vamsa; 9, Kuru; 10, Pancala; 11, Maccha; 12, Surasena; 13, Assaka; 14, Avanti; 15, Gandhara; 16, Kamboja. We shall here consider them in geographical order. See now B 66 J A.

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soon absorbed by its powerful neighbours. Nor yet, save for a moment, with Asmaka in the Deccan. In fact different authorities, ancient and modern, give slightly differing lists of the janapadas: occasionally including, for example, Kalihga, south of Bengal in Orissa, which anyway during the third century B.C. was to play an important role. Mentioned also is Mulaka, in what is now Hyderabad State. Numismatists indeed have made use of the names of the janapadas to provide attributions for some of the so-called 'single type silver coinages'. Concerning these the opinion is widely held that they represent issues of states existing as early as the second half of the sixth century B.C. Indeed as convenient labels, indicating the regions of India in which 'single type' coinages have been found, this use of the names ofthejanapadas serves a practical purpose. Yet the chronology of the issues, known only from isolated chance finds, is no less uncertain than that of the historical development of the janapadas themselves. It would therefore be misleading to conclude that the coin issues can be associated with specific epochs and events in the history of the states; or even that the extent of the states which issued them coincided precisely with the boundaries of the historicaljanapadas. Naturally, isolated hoards of silver coins may have travelled in trade, so that only by plotting such finds in substantial numbers could an indication of the true circulationareas be obtained, an analysis that the scantiness of the present evidence precludes. Even as labels, the current rather arbitrary use in numismatics of the names of the janapadas seems unsatisfactory. For example, silver coins of the 'pulley-wheel' type are known only, so it seems, from a single find near Wai, south of Bombay in Satara district. They have alternatively been ascribed to the Asmakajanapada2 and to Avanti.3 Yet though the evidence of the 'single type' coinages seems at present not well defined, with further and more detailed study they could shed useful light on the north Indian states of the sixth, and early fifth centuries B.C. With regard to the origins of these ingot-like Indian currencies, a case could be made that they derive from the same economic system that produced a currency of silver bar-ingots in the sphere of Assyrian control during the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. Bar currencies, of increasingly sophisticated shape and consistent metrology, evidently continued in use in the Iran of the Medes,4 and later in that of the Achaemenids. Especially informative in this regard is the carefully shaped bar-ingot at Kabul5 weighing precisely 8.34 gm, the Babylonian shekel of Darius' currency reform. There is a marked similarity between these straight Iranian bars, and the well-known bent-bar coinage of early Gandara, which has been thought to represent the standard of a double 2

B

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Achaemenid siglos (2 x 5.56 gm= n . 12 gm). Economic links between that region and the eastern plateau-lands might be expected, in view of their proximity. At the same time, the earliest sure dating evidence for the presence of bent-bar currency itself is the Chaman Huzuri find at Kabul (IGCH1830), fixed by associated Greek coinage towards 380 B.C. Attested finds of bent-bar coinage are anyway so few that one could not deduce from an absence of earlier evidence that this currency was unknown in Gandara already in the fifth century B.C. or even earlier. Sanskrit literary sources are quoted, in particular the A.stadhyayl of Panini, which seems to describe the use of metallic currency, possibly even a form of coin, as early as the fifth century. On account of these allusions, scholars in India have tended to ascribe very early dates to some of the single-type coinages, and by placing them in the sixth or even seventh century B.C., have been able to claim priority over the Lydian invention of coinage.6 At the same time, these early coins are devoid of legible inscriptions, and the meaning of their punch-marked symbols is still problematical. Thus their historical implications are no less open to debate than are the conflicting chronologies of early rulers suggested by the religious sources, Hindu, Buddhist and Jaina. The first rulers of Magadha to emerge prominently on to the historical scene were Bimbisara and his unfilial son Ajatasatru. Their importance in the records results as much from the fact that these two rulers were contemporaries of the Buddha Siddhartha, and of Vardhamana Mahavira the founder of Jainism, as from the powerful role played by both in establishing the centralized administration of Magadha. According to a Jaina tradition, the decease of Mahavira took place 470 years before the Vikrama Era of 5 8/7 B.C.: that is to say, in 5 27 B.C. On the other hand, another of their records7 maintains that Mahavira died 16 years after the Buddha. However, Buddhist sources consider that Mahavira predeceased the Buddha, whose nirvana is traditionally reckoned 218 years before Asoka's consecration; which, if placed in 265 B.C., would fix that event in (or about) 483,3 figure which has received the wide, but not universal acceptance of scholars.8 There is a further well-established tradition that the decease of the Buddha took place in the eighth year of the reign in Magadha of Ajatasatru, whose accession would consequently be placed in 491; and who is said to have survived the Buddha for 24 years, and thus reigned for 32 years in all, which would place his demise in 459 B.C. Reckoning back from Ajatasatru's accession therefore, the reign of Bimbisara is variously given by Buddhist sources as 5 2 years,9 or by Hindu records as 28 years,10 which would place the accession of Bimbisara either in 543 or in 519 B.C, depending on the 6 0

7 Recently B 658, 5-7. B 669, 23. 10 CHhdi 184. CHIndi 312.

> CUlnd 1 312; B 673, 15-14.

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calculation preferred. A degree of approximation therefore prevails as to the earlier chronology of the kings of this Saisunaga dynasty in Magadha. There is agreement, however, that during the reign of Bimbisara, Pradyota ruled as king of Avanti; and that Puskarasarin (Pali Pukkusati) was their contemporary as king of Gandara. It is hardly surprising that several historians of India11 have seen the rise of centralized government in Magadha as reflecting the inspiration of the rising Achaemenid monarchy in Iran. In 5 50 B.C. Cyrus the Great of Persia had united the kingdoms of the Medes and Persians, and was building up the greatest kingdom seen up to that time. The first decades of his reign were occupied with campaigns in the west: the conquest of Lydia and Ionia, soon followed by the overthrow of Babylon. By 5 3 8 B.C. Persia had become the paramount power of Asia, an empire of unparalleled resources and extent. In this and the following year, Cyrus appears to have been residing at Ecbatana (the modern Hamadan). With regard to his expeditions in the east, information comes from derivative and shadowy sources, yet the resulting picture is consistent. The Alexander-historians record that when the Macedonians were travelling eastwards from Prophthasia (presumably modern Farah in Afghanistan), they encountered as it seems upon the River Helmand the Iranian tribe of the Ariaspae, who had become known as the Benefactors on account of the services they had rendered to Cyrus during his expedition against the Scythians (Arr. Anab. 111.27.4, Curt. vn. 3.1). They had assisted his army, afflicted by cold and hunger, with warm clothing and supplies. On account of their services to Cyrus, and out of respect for their stalwart character and liberal customs, Alexander not only confirmed their liberty, but benevolently endowed them with some of their neighbours' land. The narrative thus suggests, if it does not explicitly prove, that Cyrus had been marching eastwards up the Helmand by the same route as Alexander. Of course, legends of Cyrus were common currency in Achaemenid Iran, and the Kur rivers in Persis (cf. Strabo xv.2, 6) and in Georgia recall such memories. Arrian's tale {Anab. vi. 24.2-3) of a retreat through Gedrosia by Semiramis, and later by Cyrus, is in the first case at least no more than a reminiscence by Greeks of the legend in Ctesias (FGrH 688 F I§2O); 12 and in the second (if not an episode from the same campaign as the story of the Ariaspae), a mere fable to flatter Alexander. Yet the Persian king's northward march through Arachosia is confirmed by the statement of Pliny (HN vi.92) that Cyrus destroyed the city of Capisa, the archaeological Begram near the southern flank of the Hindu Kush. Though the source for this statement is unknown, it must be 11

B 6 4 J, 47. Since Arrian clearly represents Nearchus (FGrH 133 F 5), the beliefs go back as far as Alexander's circle. On the Semiramis legend, see now B 144. 12

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allowed that Pliny had access to authorities lost today. What else Cyrus the Great might have accomplished in present-day Afghanistan, beyond attaching the country to the Persian empire, is nowhere stated. By 530 B.C. he had passed northwards to the Jaxartes and his death. Yet Arachosia was to remain a Persian province. Among thejanapadas of the Indus region we have already noticed that of the Kambojas. Many attempts have been made to locate this people with precision. According to the Mahabharata, the capital of the Kambojas was at Rajapura, which was once identified13 from Hsiian Tsang with the town of Rajaori, in the south east of Poonch district. Yet this position, eastward of Gandara, lacked confirmation, and disagreed moreover with other literary indications. Recently14 the Nirukta of Yaska (c. 300 B.C.) has been cited for the statement 'the word savati is a verb of motion . . . among the Kambojas', a statement that would be correct for speakers of an Iranian dialect. Other passages from the Mahabharata link the Kambojas with the Bahlikas 'Bactrians', the Yavanas 'Greeks', the Sakas '(Indo-)Scythians' and the Gandharans. Likewise in Asoka's Third Rock Edict the Kambojas are coupled with thcjonas 'Greeks' and thcgamdhdras 'Gandharans'. E. Benveniste,15 in his discussion of the Asokan Greco-Aramaic inscription from Kandahar, suggested that it may have been addressed to the Yonas and Kambojas in that region, though no mention of such peoples is made in the text. Others have sought to connect the name Kamboja in the Indian sources with Kambujiya, the Old Persian form of the name of the Achaemenid king Cambyses.16 One might infer that Persian colonists had been settled in parts of Arachosia, Gandara or Bactria, and perhaps even in all three, by Cambyses the son of Cyrus the Great, and the settlements named after him. This would have been a measure, perhaps, to consolidate the annexation of these provinces by Cyrus. Yet though this hypothesis would provide one explanation of the Iranian idiom ascribed to the Kambojas, any link with Cambyses is admittedly speculative, and only fresh archaeological evidence will provide a clear solution to the problem of the Kambojas. Not indeed until after the death early in 5 22 B.C. of Cambyses, a ruler who in eastern Iran will have been represented as viceroy by his brother Bardiya (Gk. Smerdis), and subsequently by the Magian impostors who supplanted him, does a clear historical picture emerge of events on the borders of India. On 29 September of that year, the future Darius the Great mounted his coup against the Magians, while on every side rebels 13

653, 148. B 645; for the older literature, see B 95,344—5 (recognizing the name in the 7an|3u£bi of Ptolemy vi.11); B 657, 271 and 183 n. 4. 15 B 667A, 4 ) . '« B 95, 344-5; B 657, 271. B

14

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arose to dispute his accession. In southern Persis at Tarava (modern Tarum) a certain Vahyazdata raised the flag of revolt, securing the adherence of local Persian forces. Though twice defeated by Artavardiya, the commander sent by Darius to Persis, the rebel had been able to detach an unnamed lieutenant with a force to Arachosia, with the aim of effecting the revolt also of that province. Vivana, the Persian satrap in Arachosia, remained loyal to Darius, and defeated the rebels at Kapishakanish within those provincial borders. It is tempting, of course, to identify that site with Capisa, a locality, however, not actually included in Arachosia according to the geography of later centuries. One could, none the less, contend that in the earliest period of Persian rule the Arachosian province had been regarded as extending further north into a thinly-held region; and that it was only later that the new province of Paropamisadae was organized, with its capital at Capisa. On the other hand, Herzfeld17 preferred an etymological identification of Kapishakanish with the later Qayqan in Baluchistan, a theory that would transfer the whole campaign to that area. The subsequent operations between Vivana and his anonymous opponent have thus received differing topographical interpretations. A battle at Gandutava (now known to have been in Sattagydia) was followed by another at Arshada in Arachosia. For Herzfeld the first was once more in Baluchistan at present-day Gandava. But a recent article develops the location of Kapishakanish at Capisa,18 and using evidence from the Babylonian version of the Bisitun inscription, places Sattagydia on the Indus west bank, with its capital possibly at Akra Dheri near Bannu. The reconstruction is naturally to some extent an argument ex absentia, since the terrain and possible alternatives are insufficiently explored. Thatagush has been explained as 'having hundreds of cattle', and could thus plausibly be located near the Rival Gomal (Gomati 'Rich in cattle'); though later (below, p. 204) we shall be considering a different etymology. Gandutava, in the Babylonian text gan-da-ta-ma-ki, was tentatively identified by von Voigtlander with Gandamak in Afghanistan, a location which is topographically conceivable, but depends on no more than a vague similarity of names. The Babylonian text shows that this place was in Sattagydia, a province therefore already under Achaemenid rule. By 519 B.C., therefore, when the Bisitun text was being drafted, Darius was in control of that province, besides Arachosia and Gandara. Whether, however, Puskarasarin, the king of Gandara contemporary with Bimbisara and the earlier years of the Buddha, survived as a feudatory 17

B 9), 334B656, 102-3, citing B 212,36,59'in the territory of Gandatamaki, by name, in Sattagydia, they fought a battle'. 18

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under Achaemenid overlordship or was replaced by a Persian satrap remains uncertain. However other indications soon confirm that Darius was systematically building up the Achaemenid position along the Indus. It was in 517 B.C., after the reconquest of Egypt by Darius, that the king put in hand a reconnaissance of his eastern frontier, now effectively defined by the River Indus, which so often in subsequent centuries was to represent the boundary between India and Iran. Among reliable agents to whom he entrusted this task was Scylax of Caryanda in Caria, the navigator whose story later became known to the Greek world, and was reported by Hecataeus and in the surviving text of Herodotus (iv.44). The narrative is straightforward enough, though a false reading in the transmitted text of the later historian long hampered precise understanding of the geographical situation: The greater part of Asia was explored by Darius. Wishing to know where the River Indus, which is one of the two rivers that harbour crocodiles, discharges into the sea, he sent with ships persons on whom he relied to discover the truth, and in particular Scylax, a man of Caryanda. They set out from Caspatyrus and the land of Pactyica, and sailed downstream to the eastward and the rising of the sun as far as the sea. Then across the sea sailing westward in the thirtieth month they arrived in the land whence the king of Egypt dispatched the Phoenicians, whom I mentioned earlier, to circumnavigate Africa. After [Scylax and his men] had made the transit, Darius subjugated the Indians and made use of this sea. Thus the rest of Asia, except the part lying to the east, was explored in the same way as Africa. The exact details of the voyage of Scylax have long been a subject of debate among historians in Europe, amongst some of whom the geography of the upper Indus may have been no better known than it must have been to the scribes who transmitted the text of Herodotus. It has first to be noted that no such place as Caspatyrus is known in ancient times along the Indus. A better reading of the name is however provided by Stephanus Byzantinus in his entry under Caspapyrus.19 'Caspapyrus is a city of Gandara, on the coastline of the Scythians. So (says) Hecataeus, in (his account of) Asia.' The allusion to the Scythians is likely to arise from a later gloss, referring to the period of the Indo-Scythian empire in India. That Stephanus used a source (presumably Apollodorus of Artemita, whom he cites by name) in which 'Scythia' had this sense is supported by his entry 'Pcvv, TTOXIS TTJS ravBapiKrjs ZKvdias, 'Rh6n, a township of Gandaran Scythia'. Although we cannot immediately locate 19 Kaoird-nvpos TTOXIS favhapiKT), ZKVBWV 8C aK-rrj. Jacoby (FGrH 1 F 29J) accepts the conjecture avri-q. Contra, B9), 338, who omits hi, and comments: 'CLKTT) must not be "corrected" . . . into avri-q, for it is in Hecataeus' idiom a kind of parallel running along a coast line, axr-q shows that Hecataeus' map put Scythia and Paktyike under the same latitude.' Both interpretations present their difficulties, but we prefer the reading of the MSS.

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a settlement of this name in or near Gandara in the Classical period, in Muslim times the ethnic of the Ghaznavid panegyrist Abu Dl-Faraj Runi has a similar form, and may be relevant, though its origin is subject to debate. But a passage of al-Biruni shows20 that Caspapyrus could well represent Kasyapapura, an early name of the city of Multan, which could very probably have been visited by Scylax. Multan, however, does not conform to the geographical characteristic specified by Herodotus for the starting-point of Scylax, since his voyage was said to have commenced towards the east, while at Multan the rivers flow south westward. Moreover, Maricq calls attention to a fragment from Scylax cited in Athenaeus,21 which describes the Indus passing between towering cliffs covered with wild forest and thorny plants. This description fits the river as it flows through the Attock gorge, but is inappropriate to Multan, which lies in the plain. Furthermore, according to Hecataeus Caspapyrus lay in Gandara, and according to Herodotus 'Caspatyrus' belonged to Pactyica, both upstream provinces. The decisive clue to the solution seems to be provided by a much later inscription, the Greek and Parthian version of the text carved by the Sasanian king Shapur I in about A.D. 260 on the Kacba-yi Zardusht near Persepolis (the text known in specialist literature as Shapur KZ).22 Here with reference to the Kushan empire of Central Asia, mention is made of a city pskbwr (in Greek script, and in the genitive case TlaaKifiovpojv), which can only refer to Peshawar, capital of the Kushans already under their second founder Kanishka I (c. A.D. 128-56). Clear documentation of this name enables us to re-examine the texts of Hecataeus and of Herodotus, and restore the true reading of Scylax's starting-point as Paskapyrus, an earlier spelling of the same name. The Kabul River, tributary of the Indus, is navigable to a point a little above Peshawar, a city which today lies only a few miles away from the main channel. Thence Scylax would have travelled eastward to the confluence with the Indus, and through the towering gorges below Attock into the Punjab plain. No doubt he may in due course have visited Kasyapapura (Multan), in Greek script Caspapyrus, a reading which a Greek scribe may have been tempted to substitute for Paskapyrus (a very similar outline in cursive Greek letters) earlier in the narrative. Thus we may conclude that Scylax began his voyage from the vicinity of Peshawar, a city which was either in Gandara, as Hecataeus claims, or else nearby in 20 Alberuni's India ( e d . S a c h a u , L o n d o n 1887) 149: Inna asma" al-bilid tataghayir wa-khajatanfialjugat,fa-inna Multan kjanat tastwima Kashpapur. . .; tr. S a c h a u 1 ( L o n d o n , 1910) 298 ' T h e n a m e s o f the countries change, and particularly in xhejugas. So Multan was originally called Kasyapapura . . .' 21 A t h . 7 0 c ( = FOrH 709 F 4) 'Evrcv&ev Sc opos TTaptretvc TOV noTa^iov TOV IVSOV Kaltvdcv K