Ancient Persia: A Concise History of the Achaemenid Empire, 550-330 BCE

by Matt Waters

  Achaemenid Royal Ideology

  Darius I expressed a cohesive ideology in his inscriptions, his construction works, and his sculptural program – in part to legitimize his newly won throne. This program was so pervasive and effective that it persisted for the remainder of the Achaemenid era, so much so, in fact, that even subtle differences in the formulae attract scholars’ notice. Because Achaemenid royal ideology remained virtually unchanged for the next two centuries, it has been at times viewed as static or even stultifying. More recent interpretations of Darius’ program, however, focus on its impact, the resounding success of its application.

  The Bisitun Inscription served as the blueprint for a new Achaemenid royal ideology. Darius’ royal titles and lineage (DB §1–4) give his descent, with emphasis on Achaemenes, for whom the dynasty is named. Darius does not provide his full lineage in subsequent inscriptions. Although he often mentions his father and occasionally his grandfather, he is always an Achaemenid. He also placed great emphasis on being Persian, which is somewhat curious. What else would he be? In two of his inscriptions from Naqsh-i Rustam and Susa (DNa and DSe) there is emphasis on being Iranian (from OP Ariya) as well; this emphasis also occurs once in one of Xerxes’ inscriptions from Persepolis (XPh). A king’s titles and epithets may vary in given contexts, but their use is never random. Some scholars have suggested plausibly that the marker “Iranian” serves to distinguish Iranian speakers from non-Iranian as, for example, when both Persians and Medes are frequently mentioned together in the Bisitun Inscription. This phenomenon is on par with the ethnocentrism one finds in the Greek world and is hardly unique. What is striking about Darius’ emphasis is that it differs so markedly from Cyrus’ use of the title “King of Anshan,” which recalls an Elamite tradition. Darius’ emphatic inclusion of his ethnicity may have served to distinguish his heritage, but the data sample is small. We are comparing Darius I’s inscriptions from mainly Iranian sites with Cyrus’ inscriptions from strictly Babylonian ones. Further, as discussed previously, after decades (even centuries) of Elamite-Persian acculturation, attempts to strictly delineate between the traditions oversimplifies many complex issues.

  Cyrus’ capital Pasargadae was not complete when Cyrus died or during Cambyses’ reign. Darius added many finishing touches and in doing so took full advantage to co-opt the founder’s legacy and to strengthen his own legitimacy. Evidence for this comes mainly from two curious inscriptions found there. It is highly unlikely that Cyrus himself commissioned them, as they were installed near the end of the construction work sometime in the 510s BCE. Multiple copies of the two inscriptions were found on column remains of Palace S and Palace P (Figure 8.8). These trilingual inscriptions were originally attributed to Cyrus because of their content, and they are labeled in the scholarly literature CM for “Cyrus, Murghab” (i.e, a modern name for Pasargadae) with a lowercase letter designating the individual inscriptions.5

  CMa: I am Cyrus the King, an Achaemenid

  CMc: Cyrus the Great King, an Achaemenid

  CMc is extant only in Elamite and Akkadian versions, on the garment folds of one of the figures from Palace P, but it is generally assumed that there was an Old Persian version as well, on parallel with CMa, which is inscribed in all three languages.

  Figure 8.8a Anta from Palace P, Pasargadae, with CMa at top. Courtesy of David Stronach.

  Figure 8.8b Close-up view of CMa, inscribed in Old Persian, Elamite, and Akkadian. Courtesy of David Stronach.

  These two short inscriptions have caused no end of controversy within the field. On their face, they label Cyrus an Achaemenid, of the same dynastic heritage as Darius. Darius indirectly made the same implication in the Bisitun Inscription, by his assertion that Cambyses was of his family (DB §10). Darius also claimed to create the Old Persian writing system (DB §70), a claim that is irreconcilable with Cyrus having used Old Persian in any inscriptions at Pasargadae. Most scholars take Darius at his word on this particular issue, that is, that he was the one who first inscribed in Old Persian and thus was, in effect, its inventor. Old Persian inscriptions that purport to date before Darius, including CMa and CMc from Pasargadae, are all suspect.

  There are other problems with taking the Pasargadae inscriptions at face value. A comparison with Cyrus’ inscriptions from Babylonia reveals major differences. Variation in style may be attributed to the different, Babylonian context. Variation in the dynastic line and royal titles are harder to reconcile. In the Cyrus Cylinder, Cyrus traces his descent in the Cyrus Cylinder from Teispes. Achaemenes is not mentioned. Cyrus uses the title “King of Anshan” in his inscriptions in Babylon but never the label “Achaemenid.” It defies imagination why Cyrus would not use the title “king of Anshan” in the region of Anshan itself (the older name for Parsa), at his capital Pasargadae in that very region. The implications are clear enough. Darius not only finished the work at Pasargadae but he also added inscriptions in Cyrus’ name that identified Cyrus as an Achaemenid. Darius thus retroactively transformed the illustrious Cyrus into one of his own ancestors and strengthened his own legitimacy.

  Darius’ main emphasis at Bisitun and thereafter is his special relationship with Ahuramazda, which provided him the legitimizing factor so central to all kings in Near Eastern history. The name of the deity is new to our eyes. Ahuramazda does not occur in any earlier written sources. That phenomenon is closely bound with questions about early Persian religion, which will be taken up later in this chapter. It is from Darius also that we find the first enumeration of certain qualities that the Persian king had to possess. These qualities are frequently emphasized in the royal inscriptions, and the foremost expressions are the inscriptions at Darius I’s tomb: DNa and DNb, the second essentially copied by Xerxes at Persepolis (XPl). Reading these inscriptions is tantamount to reading a guide book on Achaemenid royal ideology. The King is the guardian of order as the divine agent, created by and supported by Ahuramazda (who created all else). Those who respect and support the will of Ahuramazda, and by extension the King, will prosper; those who do not will be destroyed. The King creates order out of chaos, and wars must be fought to do this, especially if it is a matter of protecting the King’s integrity. The King places fundamental importance on what is right and, by extension, he is the antithesis of what is wrong.

  The proper display of “kingly qualities” as relayed in DNb may be condensed, at the risk of oversimplification, to one word: balance.

  Darius the King proclaims: By the favor of Ahuramazda, I am the type who is pleased by what is right. I am not pleased by what is wrong.

  (DNb §2)

  And that is only the beginning. Darius continues with a long list of the appropriate royal attributes and behaviors. The King must respect the interests of all his subjects, strong and weak; he must protect what is right and thus strive actively against the Lie (drauga). The King controls his impulses and his temper, because he models intelligence, good thought, and calm in the face of threats. He is a paragon of order; he must reward good behavior and faithful service as well as punish disloyalty and wickedness – those things that are a threat to order. Beyond these attributes of good character and intelligence, the King himself is also effective in combat; this involved being an accomplished warrior on horse and on foot, with both bow and with spear. These qualities also appear in descriptions of the Persian kings in non-Persian sources, especially Greek. Xenophon’s lengthy encomium of Cyrus the Younger relays the exact qualities mentioned above (Anabasis 1.9). Herodotus (1.138) emphasizes how important it was to the Persians to tell the truth, though later (3.72) he has Darius, of all people, advocate an outright lie when necessary.6

  Achaemenid Religion

  Any overview of religious traditions and practices – with emphasis on the plural – in the Achaemenid period must begin by setting parameters.7 An overview of the wide array of religious practices across the scope of the entire Empire is one that would fill volumes by itself, because of the number and diversity of the peoples in it. In t
his book, the phrase “Achaemenid religion” (or “Persian religion”) refers to the Achaemenid Persians themselves, especially the religious sentiments expressed in the royal inscriptions. As discussed earlier, Parsa (Fars), by the Achaemenid period, had undergone several centuries of Elamite-Iranian acculturation. This phenomenon is critical, but not always easily visible, to contextualizing numerous aspects of Persian culture, including cultic practices and ritual traditions. The persistence of Elamite practices and sacred places testifies to a rich and complex heritage, one that is especially traceable in both text and image of the administrative documentation from Persepolis. Study of the administrative documentation in particular is changing our understanding of Achaemenid religion in significant ways, a process yet at the nascent stages.

  The Achamenids are often described as Zoroastrians. This is perhaps an apt characterization on the surface – especially if one focuses only on the ideology as expressed in the royal inscriptions – but one that does not do justice to the variety of evidence. Zoroastrianism is an age-old religion in its own right that reached its floruit during the Sassanian period (c. 250–700 CE), and it was never static. Based on teachings of the prophet Zoroaster (the Greek name of Zarathustra), over time Zoroastrianism became strongly dualistic – light against dark, good against evil – with emphasis on the cosmic struggle between Ahuramazda and Ahriman (or Angra Mainyu). Zoroastrianism, like its Indian counterpart Hinduism, has Indo-Iranian origins, but the development of Zoroastrianism took place in an Iranian milieu. Zoroastrianism’s most central texts – among them Zoroaster’s hymns, the Gathas – were passed down orally for centuries before they were written down: chronology therefore is not an insignificant problem.

  The Gathas form the core of a much longer work, the Avesta. The Avesta is a complex collection of works of which the earliest extant copies date several centuries after the Achaemenid period. There is no evidence that Avestan – the language of the text – was used outside the religious context, and the language (and wider tradition, for that matter) was thus one transmitted mainly by the Zoroastrian priesthood, the magi. Because of the manifold problems in assessing this material’s relevance to the Achaemenid historical period, it is difficult to use it as a source. On the other hand, there is much relevant material gleaned from Achaemenid royal inscriptions, iconography (both monumental and personal), Classical sources on the Persians, and, as indicated earlier, the administrative documents from Persepolis.

  The date of Zoroaster himself is still debated, with estimates ranging from c. 1800 to the sixth century BCE, the latter contemporary with Cyrus the Great. Thus Zoroaster’s relevance to Achaemenid history as a living person is dependent on one’s assessment about when he lived. The early dating is based on Zoroaster’s surviving hymns, the Gathas, and their presumed age based on linguistic analysis of the words in their Indo-Iranian context; written copies date centuries later than the hymns are assumed to have been composed. The late date for Zoroaster stems from a Greek tradition that dates Zoroaster 258 years before Alexander the Great, which could mean 258 years before Alexander’s birth or before his overthrow of the Persian Empire. The last option, which has achieved acceptance by many scholars, has significant ramifications for our understanding of Zoroastrianism and the early Persian Empire. For many other scholars, such questions of date are meaningless; they doubt that Zoroaster ever existed, or see him as a literary creation that lent credibility to an evolving belief system.

  Another approach to dating Zoroaster essentially splits the difference: locating Zoroaster circa 1000 BCE by incorporating the linguistic arguments into a historical context and setting Zoroaster in the wave of Iranian migrations into northeastern Iran at the turn of the second millennium. Later Zoroastrian tradition locates Zoroaster’s homeland and activity in that region. The Achaemenids’ ubiquitous references to Ahuramazda in the royal inscriptions obviously provide pieces to the puzzle. But a central problem in establishing a mid-first-millennium historical context for the Avesta is that none of the texts therein contains clear reference to the Medes or the Achaemenid Persians. However one defines a Zoroastrian stream of tradition, the Achaemenid kings were instrumental in shaping it. Instead of forcing the Achaemenids into a preconceived Zoroastrian system, we should consider the Achaemenids’ impact on a still nascent and evolving tradition.

  There are many Zoroastrian, or Mazdean, elements to be found in the religious traditions of the Achaemenid period.8 Among others, these include the ubiquity of Ahuramazda in the royal inscriptions, especially as a creator god; the antipathy toward the Lie (see discussion earlier in this chapter); and the central place of fire in certain rituals. Greek writers emphasize that the Persians did not have temples. Remnants of what are presumed to have been fire altars have been found in excavation, and they are also identified in sculpture, for example on Darius I’s tomb facade.

  Herodotus’ brief survey (1.131–132) of Persian religious practices has served for a long time as one of our main sources, and it is a mixed bag.

  I know that the Persians employ the following customs. It is not their custom to dedicate statues, temples, or altars, but they assail as folly those who do so, and so it seems to me, that they do not think of their gods as humanized in the fashion that the Greeks do. They worship Zeus by ascending to the loftiest places to make offerings, they call the entire circle of heaven Zeus. They sacrifice to both the sun and to the moon, as well as to the earth, to fire, to water, and to the winds. At first they sacrificed to these only, but subsequently they learned from both the Assyrians and Arabs to sacrifice to Heavenly Aphrodite. The Assyrians call Aphrodite Mullissu, the Arabs call her Alilat, and the Persians Mithra. The Persians make sacrifice to these deities in this way. When they are about to sacrifice they neither construct altars nor light fire; they do not use libations, reed pipes, garlands, or barley.

  (1.131–132.1)

  The passage continues to describe, in some detail, the Persian procedure for sacrificing an animal and emphasizes that a magus must be present. Herodotus mentions fire altars, and we do have many depictions (e.g., on seal impressions) of worship before divinities. The name Zeus presumably refers to Ahuramazda, a Greek syncretism common not only in Herodotus. His descriptions of sacrifices to the celestial bodies and the elements are in some ways harder to reconcile with our knowledge of Persian religious practices. Worship of the sun may be equated with Mithra, and if one considers that the Persians sacrificed with fire and water instead of to them, Herodotus may be given some credit. Sealings from the Persepolis Fortification archives are replete with divinely-associated astral imagery.9 Worship of Heavenly Aphrodite (Ourania) is generally believed to refer to Persian Anahita – as later Classical writers noted – but many non-Greek female deities are associated with Aphrodite, so Herodotus’ meaning here is ultimately unclear. Assyrian Mullissu was at times synchronized with Ishtar, another deity with whom Anahita shares several attributes. Mithra is a male god in Persian and Indo-Iranian tradition.

  The plural magi comes from singular Latin magus, taken directly from Greek magos, which in turn is a loan word from Old Persian, magush. The word has broad application in Greek and Roman texts: from its primary usage to refer to the priests of the Persian kings to a pejorative used for charlatans of the sort who foretell the future; it is from this latter sense that we get the word “magician.” In the Achaemenid period, the magi are generally understood as priests, but that does not do full justice to the range of functions they fulfilled. Magi were the transmitters of Iranian lore and traditions, not just religious ones, and they both performed rituals as well as served as dream (and other omen) interpreters. For example, in Herodotus they interpreted Astyages’ ominous dreams about his daughter Mandane and the birth of Cyrus (1.107–108), and they recur as functionaries performing sacrifices and warding off evil omens, such as when Xerxes is marching against Greece (Hdt. 7.113, 7.191, etc.). Parallels to their function and influence may be found in the cadre of scholars that surrounded the A
ssyrian and Babylonian kings, the Persians’ predecessors.

  Herodotus names the Magi as one of six Median tribes (1.101). Historians still do not know what to make of this. Does it imply that these priests or learned men were exclusively from one Median tribe? That does not seem to be the case during the Achaemenid period, though it is impossible to confirm. As noted previously, the Medes seem to have held a special place in the Persian Empire’s hierarchy – politically, militarily, and culturally – more so than any other ethnic group besides the Persians themselves. Forging a connection between this and the presumed Median origins of the magi may make sense but is not definitive.10 Scholars are also divided on the extent to which practices and rituals attributed to the magi may be considered truly Zoroastrian or not, but attempts to delineate this run the danger of becoming circular, a caveat that applies to the entire study of Achaemenid religious beliefs. Some take the magi as the original Zoroastrian priests, others see them as the antithesis, as the daiva-worshippers attacked by Xerxes. That they were key state functionaries is beyond doubt, and they certainly left an imprint on the Greek imagination.

  Zoroaster himself is not mentioned in any extant Persian text from our period. The names of many Achaemenid elites clearly come from Zoroastrian tradition. Darius I’s father Hystaspes (Old Persian Vishtaspa), for example, shares his name with Zoroaster’s patron Vishtaspa in the Avesta. Few scholars think this is a coincidence, though fewer still uphold an exact correlation between the two. That is, few hold that Darius’ father was the same person as Zoroaster’s patron, a key assertion for supporters of a late (sixth century) date for Zoroaster himself.