Achaemenid Empire

I

Introduction

Achaemenid Empire, first Persian empire, lasting from c. 560 to 330 bc, named after Achaemenes (Hakhamanish; fl. 7th century bc), a minor ruler of Anshan (now in Iran). The royal dynastic family, the Achaemenids, reigned for over 200 years. The Achaemenid Empire included the former kingdoms of Media, Lydia, Babylonia, and Egypt, as well as the kingdoms of the eastern regions, including Central Asia and Bactria, reaching to the River Indus. In the north the empire bordered on the Caucasus Mountains and the Russian steppes, and in the south extended to the Persian Gulf.

This first world empire was multicultural and multilingual, with numerous different peoples and societies, each with their own political and cultural background. The lands of the empire were divided into satrapies, or provinces, headed by a satrap, literally meaning “protector of the realm”, who represented the king in the provincial capitals. Apart from the satraps, local dynasts and city-kings ruled in the Ionian cities of Asia Minor, in Cyprus, and in the Phoenician city-states. The acceptance of the linguistic, cultural, religious, and political diversity of the lands of the empire served politically as a means of social inclusion and appeasement of the peoples of the empire.

II

Early Persian Empire

The Achaemenid Empire, or Persian Empire, emerged from a region in south-western Iran called Parsa or Persis (now known as Fars). Groups of Persian peoples had migrated to the Iranian plateau from the first millennium bc onward, settling in different parts of the country: south-west of Lake Orūmīyeh, in the central Zagros Mountains in north-western Iran, and in the plain east of the Zagros, in Persis. The Persian peoples here settled peacefully alongside the indigenous Elamite population.

The former kingdom of Elam extended across the Zagros Mountains, their kings controlling the region through two capital cities, Susa, now known as Shūsh, in Khuzestan, and Anshan, in Fars, and accordingly called themselves “Kings of Anshan and Shushan”. Around 1000 bc Anshan was abandoned, leaving a power vacuum in Persis that eventually allowed the rise of a new political power headed by the Persian nobility. The earliest Persian record, dating from the 7th century bc is a seal impression on clay, which bears the Elamite inscription: “I am Cyrus of Anshan, son of Teispes.” This Cyrus has been identified as Cyrus I, the grandfather of Cyrus II, who was also known as Cyrus the Great. It is possible that Cyrus I, and his father Teispes before him, had been able to accumulate political power in Persis, possibly in the form of being a primus inter pares (Latin, “first among equals”) of the leading Persian noble families.

In the 8th and 7th centuries bc the Persians and Elamites were surrounded by different kingdoms, most notably the kingdom of Media, located in north-western Iran and centred on the royal city of Ecbatana (now known as Hamadān); the kingdom of Urartu, around Lake Orūmīyeh in eastern Turkey; the Lydian empire, with its capital Sardis; the Phoenician city-kingdoms along the Levantine coast; the empires of Assyria and Babylonia in Mesopotamia; and Pharaonic Egypt. North and east of Persis were the kingdoms of Central Asia, Bactria, and India. The northern part was inhabited by nomadic tribes, among them different Scythian tribes, who controlled the regions north of the Black Sea and along the southern borders of the Russian steppes. Persian culture had contact with all these realms and was also influenced by them.

Cyrus the Great was the actual founder of the Persian Empire. Like his grandfather Cyrus I before him, he considered himself to be the successor to the Elamites, and took the title “King of Anshan” in the first historical inscription, the famous “Cyrus Cylinder”. The title may have been a formal recognition of the Persians’ legacy from Elam, since the city of Anshan shows little evidence of actual habitation in the 7th century bc.

Cyrus established his vast empire in 20 years of conquest and campaigning. He first subjected the kingdom of Media, defeating king Astyages in battle in 550 bc. Cyrus may have been a tribute-paying vassal-king of Astyages who rebelled to gain independence, but he may equally have arisen from an independent kingdom in Persis, and set out to conquer rival kingdoms. The decisive battle against Astyages took place on the plains of Murghab, in Persis, and the royal city of Pasargadae was built on the battle site to commemorate the event. The name “Pasargadae” may be derived from the name of one of the Persian tribes. Apart from a residential palace and an audience hall, the tomb of Cyrus the Great now dominates the site. It is a small single-chamber structure with a gabled roof, and built on six steps made of massive blocks of stone. Cyrus’ residential palace was set within a royal garden, a rectangular space divided into four parts, reflecting the four corners of the world.

In the early 540s bc Cyrus the Great marched against Croesus, king of Lydia. Croesus was defeated in battle at the River Halys (now Kizil). Croesus, who reputedly was the first king to mint coins, and whose wealth was legendary, thought himself invincible, and interpreted an oracle who predicted that if he crossed the River Halys he would destroy a great empire to mean victory for him, but in fact it announced his own downfall. The royal treasury of Sardis supplied Cyrus with considerable wealth, while the conquest of Lydia, which included the Ionian cities in Asia Minor, ensured rich revenues and tributes. Cyrus then probably turned eastward to campaign in Central Asia, Bactria, and southern Iran, but no records have come down to us that provide a detailed account of his eastern conquests.

In 539 bc Cyrus subjected Babylonia. He took the city of Opis by force, massacring its inhabitants. As a result, the neighbouring cities of Sippar (near modern Baghdad) and Babylon surrendered without a fight. This allowed Cyrus to present the takeover of Babylon as a peaceful event, in which he was welcomed by the inhabitants during a ceremonial entrance into the city. According to his own version of events described in the Cyrus Cylinder, Cyrus had been guided by the city-god Marduk to rescue the city from its king, Nabonidus, and to restore its gods. To legitimize his reign Cyrus claimed that his kingship was anchored in the historical past of the Assyrian kings as his royal ancestors. Cyrus was proclaimed king of Babylon, and the heir to the throne, Cambyses II, born from a marriage to Cassandane, the daughter of the Persian noble Pharnaspes, was proclaimed co-regent.

In pursuing his policy of appeasing the peoples of the conquered lands, Cyrus not only restored the city-gods of Babylon and Uruk, but also ordered both the restoration of the temple in Jerusalem, and the return of the Jewish captives from Babylon who had been deported from Judaea in the 7th century bc by the Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar II. While these actions seemingly attest to Cyrus the Great as a benign and tolerant king, the motivation behind such actions was political expediency: acceptance of other cultures and religions meant less disruption for the population in the political takeover, and therefore less possibility for resistance and revolt. By allowing the different peoples of the empire to continue practising their own religion, rather than imposing his own on them, Cyrus avoided the appearance of a wilful conqueror, and instead promoted the image of a peace-loving ruler. It was part of his successful policy to control these former kingdoms, which now formed the core lands of the Persian Empire.

Cyrus the Great died in 529 bc while campaigning against a nomadic tribe, the Massagetae, on the northern border of the empire. The accession of his son Cambyses II was smooth and uncontested. Cambyses continued the period of Persian expansion, as well as his father’s policy of conquest and political tolerance. In 525 bc he brought Pharaonic rule in Egypt to an end. Following their tradition, the Egyptians regarded the Persian kings as pharaohs, or god-kings. Cambyses, whose Egyptian name was Mesuti-Re, accepted his political and religious duties in Egypt, ensuring the appropriate respect for Egyptian religious cults such as that of both Apis and the goddess Neith at Sais.

Persian control over Egypt probably extended as far as the first cataract of the Nile, and the island of Elephantine, where a Jewish garrison was stationed in the service of the Persian kings. Contrary to the account by Herodotus of a disastrous campaign into Nubia, Cambyses conquered at least part of the country, since it was listed as a Persian province in an early inscription of his successor, Darius I.

The negative propaganda about Cambyses as a deranged and sacrilegious king probably stems from Egyptian temple priests who suffered economic loss when Cambyses reformed their economy and prohibited most temples to generate income through the collection of taxes. The gravest accusation made against him was the sacrilege committed against the sacred Apis bull—the embodiment of the god Osiris—whom he first mocked, stabbed to death, and then refused to provide with a proper burial in accordance with the traditional funerary rites. Written and archaeological evidence from Egypt has shown, however, that this account is fictional, and that in fact the Apis bull died of natural causes in 524 bc and received the appropriate funerary honours and burial gifts, including a sarcophagus dedicated by Cambyses. Cambyses died in 522 bc without leaving a male heir, causing a hiatus in the succession of the Persian kings. After the brief rule of Bardiya, Darius I succeeded to the throne in c. 521 bc.

III

Reign of Darius I

With Darius I a new phase of Persian rule began. He established the lineage of the Persian royal house back to Achaemenes, whom he presented as a common ancestor of both Cyrus’ and his own family lines. From now on, Darius I and his successors regarded themselves as Achaemenids, designating the dynastic family of the empire.

However, it is a question of much debate whether Darius I was indeed a member of the royal family or a usurper to the throne claiming legitimacy to the throne through this common ancestry.

Darius had been a member of the Persian aristocracy and had served as a spear-bearer to Cambyses II in Egypt. His father, Hystaspes, had been satrap of Hyrcania under Cambyses, and his uncle Pharnaka was the highest official of Persepolis. Following the death of Cambyses II, Bardiya, who was Cambyses’ brother, succeeded to the Persian throne, reigning for seven months. According to Darius’ own account of his succession to the throne—the trilingual inscription carved into the rock face of Mount Behistun in northern Iran—Bardiya was killed by Cambyses before he left for the Egyptian campaign (see Behistun Inscription). Greek sources, however, state that Bardiya had been left as regent in Persis during Cambyses’ absence, and that Cambyses, fearing that Bardiya might usurp the throne, ordered his brother to be killed. In both versions, Bardiya’s murder remained secret, allowing an impostor to rise to power. This man, whom Darius refers to as Gaumata, came from Media and was a magus, or priest. He pretended to be Bardiya, taking his name and even resembling him. Bardiya/Gaumata thus was able to rule for seven months before being discovered by members of the royal court, and overthrown by Darius and six other Persian nobles at a Median fortress called Sikayuvatish. The heads of the six Persian noble houses—Intaphernes, Otanes, Gobryas, Hydarnes, Megabyxus, and Ardumanish—together with their families, were to enjoy special privileges from the Achaemenid kings for their support in the overthrow of Bardiya/Gaumata.

Darius’ rule was not uncontested, however, and it took 13 months for him to establish his rule over the empire, having in the process to fight 19 rebellions, mostly in the core lands of Media, Elam, and Babylonia. Once his power was secured, a period of consolidation of the empire begun. After c. 519 bc building work began in Susa, one of the former capitals of Elam. Darius built a palace and treasury there, with an entrance gate leading to the site. It was a political move to claim a former capital, but also a preventative measure to avoid the reclaiming of an ancient seat of royal power by an Elamite contestant to the throne. Construction of his own royal city began in Persis, the city itself bearing the name of the region, Parsa, but known in Greek sources as Persepolis, the city of the Persians. On an artificially constructed terrace Darius built a small palace, a treasury, and a vast audience hall (Apadana), with two sets of double staircases, decorated in stone relief, depicting the peoples of the empire bringing gifts or tribute to the king, and a seemingly infinite number of Persian guards, probably representing the 10,000 Immortals, the king’s bodyguard.

Darius probably undertook a reform of the tribute payments made by the peoples of the empire. He also introduced coinage into Persia, minting gold coins, called darics, and silver coins, called sigloi. The coins depicted a running archer in Persian dress, holding a bow. A new script, known as Old Persian, was invented on the order of Darius, allowing the Persian language to be written down for the first time.

At an unknown period during his reign, Darius I conquered parts of India, which was included in his lists of lands in later inscriptions and representational depictions of the peoples of the empire. In c. 517 bc Darius campaigned north of the Black Sea against the Scythians, but was unable to incorporate the nomadic tribe into the empire. Expeditions led by Artabazus to the north coast of the Aegean Sea led to the subjection of Thrace and Macedonia. These countries offered earth and water to the king, symbolic tokens expressing the acceptance of Persian supremacy.

Between 499 and 493 bc an uprising occurred among the Greek cities on the coast of Asia Minor, triggered by a revolt on the island of Náxos. The tyrant of Miletus, Aristagoras, attempted to gain independence from the king with the support of other city rulers. Initially the revolt was concentrated on cities in Lydia, but eventually spread to the Hellespont (now Dardanelles). By 493 bc it was quashed by Mardonius, the son of Gobryas and son-in-law of Darius I. The revolt of the Ionian cities brought the Greek cities Athens and Eretria into play, and both sent a small contingent of ships—20 and 5 respectively—in support of the revolt, but which backed out after the burning of Sardis. The fact that Greek ships had crossed the Aegean, and had encroached into what the Persians regarded as their own territory, led to a punitive campaign against these cities. In 490 bc Darius sent a force under the command of the Persian generals Datis and Artaphernes to inflict punishment on the Greek cities that had been involved in the revolt. Náxos and Eretria suffered Persian repercussions, but the attack on Athens failed when the Persians were defeated at the Battle of Marathon.

IV

King and Court in Achaemenid Persia

The Achaemenid king, who bore the title “great king, king of kings, king of lands”, was the centre of royal power. The king was not a divine figure, but he ruled with the support, and under the protection, of the god Ahura Mazda, the “Lord Wisdom”. The king’s heir to the throne was chosen from among the king’s legitimate sons, but, as a rule, the heir had to be born “in the purple”, that is, as the son of the already reigning king. The accession to the throne was celebrated at Pasargadae, where the king performed rites commemorating the founder of the empire, Cyrus the Great. Royal fires burnt for the king, and were extinguished at the time of his death, before new fires were again lit for his successor. When a king died outside Persis, his body was returned to Persepolis, to be laid to rest in the royal tombs at nearby Naqshah Rustam, and later at Persepolis itself. Following Near Eastern customs, a mourning period of 40 days was observed to mark the death of the king, as well as that of other member of the royal family.

The king and his royal entourage moved between several royal residences, including Persepolis, Susa, Ecbatana, and Babylon. This migrating kingship served to demonstrate the omnipresence and omnipotence of the king within the empire. At the same time, the frequent migration of the royal court was a manifestation of the peaceful stability of an empire largely devoid of battles and war.

In art and architecture kingship was expressed through a number of royal motifs, such as the audience scene, in which the king was seated on his throne, his heir to the throne standing behind him, as well as the king’s axe-bearer and a magus, while an approaching figure stood before the king, expressing his deference by holding up his hand before his mouth. Depictions of the royal hero fighting a lion or mythical beast also propagated the image of the virtuous and courageous king fighting to avert evil and preserve peace. The style of Achaemenid palace architecture, consistently used from the time of Darius I onward, reflected the acute sense of historical awareness of the Achaemenid kings within the dynastic line.

The royal court surrounding the king consisted of the members of the royal family and the families of the Persian aristocracy who were tied to the king through political or familial bonds. To ensure the loyalty of the noblemen, the Achamenid king pursued a meritocracy, awarding individual noblemen with a variety of gifts, which themselves were classified hierarchically, in order to express the varying degrees of the recipient’s closeness to the king. They also created a hierarchy among the nobility, in which the gifts would signal their different status to one another. Gifts included the donation of lands or villages, horse trappings, bowls, vases, cups made of gold and silver, jewellery, specially woven cloaks, and even marriage alliances with daughters of the king. Gifts were granted for loyal services rendered, but more importantly they symbolized the commitment on the part of the recipient to remain loyal to the king.

Among the women at the court, the king’s mother and wife ranked the highest. Although the Achaemenid kings were polygamous in order to ensure a number of male offspring from which to select the heir to the throne, the king’s wife who was to become the next queen mother enjoyed the highest status among the wives. Other royal women were not secluded, but moved freely within the court and travelled throughout the empire. Their economic freedom was ensured through ownership of land, estates, and property, which enabled them to draw revenues from the proceeds. Such women had their own administrative personnel and controlled large workforces. In contrast to the king’s wives, these women were of non-Persian descent, but, although they were daughters of high-ranking foreign noblemen, their sons could not succeed to the throne.

Hunting was a royal privilege and a pursuit through which the king expressed the Persian pleasure of horse riding and archery, but also the virtues of courage, bravery, and willingness to fight. Hunts took place within the royal enclosures of the vast parks, the paradeisoi, where wild animals were kept and their chase prepared. As the king was accompanied by Persian noblemen, the occasion inevitably carried a political meaning, since it provided an exclusive opportunity to affirm the nobles’ position with the king and within the ranks of other nobles.