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Ancient History

2011-01-06T19:10:00.001-08:00

The Persian Wars

Map of Aegean Sea and region in 5th century (source: livius.org)

the Persian Ruler of Egypt (27th Dynasty) And His Lost Army

2011-01-06T19:08:00.000-08:00

In 525 BC the Persian emperor Cambyses II, son of Cyrus the Great, who had already named his son as king of Babylon though Cambyses II resigned that position after only one year, invaded Egypt and successfully overthrew the native Egyptian pharaoh, Psamtek III, last ruler of Egypt's 26th Dynasty to become the first ruler of Egypt's 27th Persian Dynasty. His father had earlier attempted an invasion of Egypt against Psamtek III's predecessor, Amasis, but Cyrus' death in 529 BC put a halt to that expedition. After capturing Egypt, Cambyses took the Throne name Mesut-i-re (Mesuti-Ra), meaning "Offspring of Re". Though the Persians would rule Egypt for the next 193 years until Alexander the Great defeated Darius III and conquered Egypt in 332 BC, Cambyses II's victory would bring to an end (for the most part) Egyptians truly ruling Egyptians until the mid 20th century, when Egypt finally shrugged off colonial rule.

We know very little about Cambyses II through contemporary texts, but his reputation as a mad tyrannical despot has come down to us in the writings of the Greek historian Herodotus (440 BC) and a Jewish document from 407 BC known as 'The Demotic Chronicle' which speaks of the Persian king destroying all the temples of the Egyptian gods. However, it must be repeatedly noted that the Greeks shared no love for the Persians. Herodotus informs us that Cambyses II was a monster of cruelty and impiety.

Herodotus gives us three tales as to why the Persians invaded Egypt. In one, Cambyses II had requested an Egyptian princess for a wife, or actually a concubine, and was angered when he found that he had been sent a lady of second rate standing. In another, it turns out that he was the bastard son of Nitetis, daughter of the Saite (from Sais) king Apries, and therefore half Egyptian anyway, whereas the third story provides that Cambyses II, at the age of ten, made a promise to his mother (who is now Cassandane) that he would "turn Egypt upside down" to avenge a slight paid to her. However, Ctesias of Cnidus states that his mother was Amytis, the daughter of the last king of independent Media so we are really unsure of that side of his parentage. While even Herodotus doubts all of these stories, and given the fact that his father had already planned one invasion of Egypt, the stories do in fact reflect the later Greek bias towards his Persian dynasty.

Regardless of Cambyses II's reason for his invasion of Egypt, Herodotus notes how the Persians easily entered Egypt across the desert. They were advised by the defecting mercenary general, Phanes of Halicarnassus, to employ the Bedouins as guides. However, Phanes had left his two sons in Egypt. We are told that for his treachery, as the armies of the Persians and the mercenary army of the Egyptians met, his sons were bought out in front of the Egyptian army where they could be seen by their father, and there throats were slit over a large bowl. Afterwards, Herodotus tells us that water and wine were added to the contents of the bowl and drunk by every man in the Egyptian force.

This did not stop the ensuing battle at Pelusium, Greek pelos, which was the gateway to Egypt. Its location on Egypt's eastern boundary, meant that it was an important trading post was well and also of immense strategic importance. It was the starting point for Egyptian expeditions to Asia and an entry point for foreign invaders.

Here, the Egyptian forces were routed in the battle and fled back to Memphis. Apparently Psamtek III managed to escape the ensuing besiege of the Egyptian capital, only to be captured a short time afterwards and was carried off to Susa in chains. Herodotus goes on to tell us of all the outrages that Cambyses II then inflicted on the Egyptians, not only including the stabbing of a sacred Apis bull and his subsequent burial at the Serapeum in Saqqara, but also the desecration and deliberate burning of the embalmed body of Amasis (a story that has been partly evidenced by destruction of some of Amasis' inscriptions) and the banishment of other Egyptian opponents.

The story of Cambyses II's fit of jealousy towards the Apis bull, whether true or simply Greek propaganda, was intended to reflect his personal failures as a monarch and military leader. In the three short years of his rule over Egypt he personally led a disastrous campaign up the River Nile into Ethiopia. There, we are told, his ill-prepared mercenary army was so meagerly supplied with food that they were forced to eat the flesh of their own colleagues as their supplies ran out in the Nubian desert. The Persian army returned northwards in abject humiliation having failed even to encounter their enemy in battle.

Then, of course, there is also the mystery of his lost army, some fifty thousand strong, that vanished in the Western Desert on their way to the Siwa Oasis along with all their weapons and other equipment, never to be heard of again. Cambyses II had also planned a military campaign against Carthage, but this too was aborted because, on this occasion, the king's Phoenician sea captains refused to attack their kinfolk who had founded the Carthagian colony towards the end of the 8th century BC. In fact, the conquest of Egypt was Cambyses' only spectacular military success in his seven years of troubled rule over the Persian empire.

However, we are told that when the Persians at home received news of Cambyses' several military disasters, some of the most influential nobles revolted, swearing allegiance to the king's younger brother Bardiya. With their support, the pretender to the great throne of Cyrus seized power in July 522 BC as Cambyses II was returning home.

The story is told that, on hearing of this revolt, and in haste to mount his horse to swiftly finish the journey home, Cambyses II managed to stab himself in the thigh with his own dagger. At that moment, he began to recall an Egyptian prophecy told to him by the priests of Buto in which it was predicted that the king would die in Ecbatana. Cambyses II had thought that the Persian summer capital of Ecbatana had been meant and that he would therefore die in old age. But now he realized that the prophecy had been fulfilled in a very different way here in Syrian Ecbatana.

Still enveloped in his dark and disturbed mood, Cambyses II decided that his fate had been sealed and simply lay down to await his end. The wound soon became gangrenous and the king died in early August of 522 BC. However, it should be noted that other references tell us that Cambyses II had his brother murdered even prior to his expedition to Egypt, but apparently if it was not Bardiya (though there is speculation that Cambyses II's servants perhaps did not kill his brother as ordered), there seems to have definitely been an usurper to the throne, perhaps claiming to be his brother, who we are told was killed secretly.

The Real Cambyses II

Modern Egyptologists believe that many of these accounts are rather biased, and that Cambyses II's rule was perhaps not nearly so traumatic as Herodotus, who wrote his history only about 75 years after Cambyses II's demise, would have us believe. In reality, the Saite dynasty had all but completely collapsed, and it is likely that with Psamtek III's (Psammetichus III) capture by the Persians, Cambyses II simply took charge of the country. The Egyptians were particularly isolated at this time in their history, having seen there Greek allies defect, including not only Phanes, but Polycrates of Samos. In addition, many of Egypt's minorities, such as the Jewish community at Elephantine and even certain elements within the Egyptian aristocracy, seem to have even welcomed Cambyses II's rule.

A depiction of Cambyses II worshipping the Apris Bull

The Egyptian evidence that we do have depicts a ruler anxious to avoid offending Egyptian susceptibilities who at least presented himself as an Egyptian king in all respects. It is even possible that the pillaging of Egyptian towns told to us by Greek sources never occurred at all. In an inscription on the statue of Udjadhorresnet, a Saite priest and doctor, as well as a former naval officer, we learn that Cambyses II was prepared to work with and promote native Egyptians to assist in government, and that he showed at least some respect for Egyptian religion. For example, regardless of the death of the Apris Bull, it should be noted that the animal's burial was held with proper pomp, ceremony and respect. Udjahorresnet also tells us that:

"I let His Majesty know the greatness of Sais, that it is the seat of Neith-the-Great, mother who bore Re and inaugurated birth when birth had not yet been...I made a petition to the majesty of the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Cambyses, about all the foreigners who dwelled in the temple of Neith, in order to have them expelled from it., so as to let the temple of Neith be in all its splendor, as it had been before. His Majesty commanded to expel all the foreigners who dwelled in the temple of Neith, to demolish all their houses and all their unclean things that were in the temple.

When they had carried all their personal belongings outside the wall of the temple, His Majesty commanded to cleanse the temple of Neith and to return all its personnel to it...and the hour-priests of the temple. His Majesty commanded to give divine offerings to Neith-the-Great, the mother of god, and to the great gods of Sais, as it had been before. His Majesty knew the greatness of Sais, that it is a city of all the gods, who dwell there on their seats forever.

" Indeed, Cambyses II continued Egyptian policy regarding sanctuaries and national cults, confirmed by his building work in the Wadi Hammamat and at a few other Egyptian temples.

The statue recording the autobiography of Udjadhorresnet

Udjadhorresnet goes on to say in his autobiography written on a naophorous statue now in the Vatican collection at Rome, that he introduced Cambyses II to Egyptian culture so that he might take on the appearance of a traditional Egyptian Pharaoh.

However, even though Cambyses II had his name written in a kingly Egyptian cartouche, he did remained very Persian, and was buried at Takht-i-Rustam near Persepolis (Iran). It has been suggested that Cambyses II may have originally followed a traditional Persian policy of reconciliation in the footsteps of their conquests. In deed, it may be that Cambyses II's rule began well enough, but with the his defeats and losses, his mood may very well have turned darker with time,

along with his actions. We do know that there was a short lived revolt which broke out in Egypt after Cambyses II died in 522 BC, but the independence was lost almost immediately to his successor, a distant relative and an officer in Cambyses II's army, named Darius. The dynasty of Persian rulers who then ruled Egypt did so as absentee landlords from afar.

The unfinished tomb of Cambyses II in Iran The Lost Army of Cambyses II

Within recent years all manner of artifacts and monuments have been discovered in Egypt's Western Desert. Here and there, new discoveries of temples and tombs turn up, even in relatively inhabited areas where more modern structures are often difficult to distinguish from ancient ruins. It is a place where the shifting sands can uncover whole new archaeological worlds, and so vast that no more than very small regions are ever investigated systematically by Egyptologists. In fact, most discoveries if not almost all are made by accident, so Egypt antiquity officials must remain ever alert to those who bring them an inscribed stone unearthed beneath a house, or a textile fragment found in the sand.

Lately, there has been considerable petroleum excavation in the Western Desert. Anyone traveling the main route between the near oasis will see this activity, but the exploration for oil stretched much deeper into the Western Desert. It is not surprising that they have come upon a few archaeological finds, and it is not unlikely that they will come across others. Very recently, when a geological team from the Helwan University geologists found themselves walking through dunes littered with fragments of textiles, daggers, arrow-heads, and the bleached bones of the men to whom all these trappings belonged, they reported the discovery to the antiquity service.

Mohammed al-Saghir of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) now believes that this accidental find may very well be at least remnants of the mysterious Lost Army of Cambyses II, and he is now organizing a mission to investigate the site more thoroughly. If he is successful and the discovery is that of Cambyses II's 50,000 strong lost army, than it will not only answer some ancient mysteries, but will probably also provide us with a rich source of information on the Persian military of that time, and maybe even expand our knowledge of Cambyses II himself. The Persian armed forces consisted of many elements, including companies of foreign mercenaries such as Greeks, Phoenicians, Carians, Cilicians, Medes and Syrians. Hence, if this is not another false lead, we may expect excellent preservation of helmets, leather corselets, cloth garments, spears, bows, swords and daggers – a veritable treasure trove of military memorabilia. The rations and support equipment will all be there, ready for detailed analysis.

However, it should be noted that some Egyptologists question the very existence of such an army, rather believing that the whole affair was simply a fable told by a very prejudiced Greek.

Yet if true, Cambyses II probably sent his army to Siwa Oasis in the Western Desert to seek (or seize) legitimization of his rule from the oracle of Amun, much as Alexander the Great would do in the 4th century BC. However, the army was overtaken by a sandstorm and buried. For centuries adventurers and archaeologists have tried to find the lost army, and at times, tantalizing, though usually false glues have been discovered.

Legitimizing his rule does not fully explain the need for taking such a large army to the Siwa Oasis. Accounts and other resources provide that the priests of the oracle were perhaps posing a danger to Cambyses II's rule, probably encouraging revolt among the native Egyptians. Perhaps the priests felt slighted that Cambyses II had not immediately sought their approval as Alexander the Great would do almost upon his arrival in Egypt. Therefore, it is likely that Cambyses II intended to forces their legitimization of his rule. In fact, some sources believe that his intent was to simply destroy the Oasis completely for their treachery, while it is also know that the army was to continue on after Siwa in order to attack the Libyans.

Yet the Siwa Oasis, the western most of Egypt's Oasis, is much deeper into the desert than others, such as Bahariya, and apparently, like many of Cambyses II's military operations, this one too was ill conceived. Why he so easily entered Egypt with the help of the Bedouins, and than sent such a large force into the desert only to be lost is a mystery.

We know that the army was dispatched from the holy city of Thebes, supported by a great train of pack animals. After a seven day march, it reached the Kharga Oasis and moved on to the last of the near Oasis, the Bahariya, before turning towards the 325 kilometers of desert that separated it from the Siwa Oasis. It would have been a 30 day march through burning heat with no additional sources of water or shade.

According to Herodotus (as later reported to him by the inhabitants of Siwa), after many days of struggle through the soft sand, the troops were resting one morning when calamity struck without warning. "As they were at their breakfast, a wind arose from the south, strong and deadly, bringing with it vast columns of whirling sand, which buried the troops and caused them utterly to disappear." Overwhelmed by the powerful sandstorm, men and animals alike were asphyxiated as they huddled together, gradually being enveloped in a sea of drift-sand.

It was after learning of the loss of his army that, having witnessed the reverence with which the Egyptians regarded the sacred Apis bull of Memphis in a ceremony and believing he was being mocked, he fell into a rage, drew his dagger and plunged it into the bull-calf. However, it seems that he must have latter regretted this action, for the Bull was buried with due reverence. Email the Editor

References:

Title	Author	Date	Publisher	Reference Number
Chronicle of the Pharaohs (The Reign-By-Reign Record of the Rulers and Dynasties of Ancient Egypt)	Clayton, Peter A.	1994	Thames and Hudson Ltd	ISBN 0-500-05074-0
Egypt in Late Antiquity	Bagnall, Roger S.	1993	Princeton University Press	ISBN 0-691-1096-x
History of Ancient Egypt, A	Grimal, Nicolas	1988	Blackwell	None Stated
Monarchs of the Nile	Dodson, Aidan	1995	Rubicon Press	ISBN 0-948695-20-x
Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, The	Shaw, Ian	2000	Oxford University Press	ISBN 0-19-815034-2

Cambyses

2011-01-06T19:02:00.000-08:00

Cambyses (Old Persian Kambujiya): second king of the ancient Achaemenid empire (ruled 530-522). In 525, he conquered Egypt. This is the first of two articles. Early career Cambyses was the oldest son of Cyrus the Great, the first king of the Achaemenid empire (559-530). The name of Cambyses' mother is not known. The Greek researcher Herodotus of Halicarnassus calls her Cassandane, but Ctesias of Cnidus states she was Amytis, the daughter of the last king of independent Media, Astyages. Cyrus' career was dazzling. In 559, he became king of Persia; in 550, he subdued his overlord, Astyages the Mede. Three years later, he conquered Lydia (western Turkey) and in 539, he added Babylonia to his empire. Babylonia was an ancient kingdom, and its king played an important role in the religious and cultural life of the ancient Near East. If Cyrus were to rule Babylonia, he ought to act as a Babylonian king. In his official propaganda (the Cyrus cylinder) he did indeed present himself as the one chosen by the Babylonian supreme god Marduk. However, the great king was not in the position to be present when the Babylonians celebrated the Akitu festival. This was a problem, because the last king of independent Babylonia, Nabonidus, had lost much credit by not attending the festival for several years. To prevent similar troubles, Cyrus appointed his son Cambyses as king of Babylon, and in this quality, Cambyses was present during the ceremonies. A contemporary source, the Chronicle of Nabonidus, states: When, on the fourth day [27 March 538] Cambyses, son of Cyrus, went to the temple of [unintelligible], the priest of Nabû who [lacuna]the bull [lacuna] They came and made the weaving by means of the handles and when he led the image of Nabû [lacuna]spears and leather quivers, from [lacuna] Nabû returned to Esagila, sheep offerings in front of Bêl and the god Mârbîti. The lacunas in the text make it hard to understand what happened exactly, but it seems that there was an incident because Cambyses was incorrectly dressed: he and his men were armed, which was forbidden. Fortunately, the error was corrected and the statue of the god Nabû was brought to the Esagila temple according to the ritual regulations. Cambyses' reign in Babylon lasted for only one year. It is not known why he resigned or what forced him to resign. The incident during the New Year's festival may have played a role. We simply do not know. It is possible that Cambyses was now made satrap of Bactria; in the next two generations, every crown prince served in that region. However, this is nothing but speculation. Cyrus fell in a battle against the Massagetes in the last weeks of 530; the last letter that is dated to his reign was written in November. Before he left, he had appointed Cambyses as his successor. The first letter dated to the reign of Cambyses was written on 31 August 530. Every Persian king needed to secure the support of the nobility. One of the means to achieve this, was a dynastic marriage. Herodotus tells us that Cambyses married Phaedymia, the daughter of Otanes. This Otanes may have been the brother of Cassandane, who was, still according to Herodotus, Cambyses' mother. If Herodotus is right, Cambyses' queen was also his cousin. However, Herodotus makes at least one mistake in his description of the family tree (he calls Otanes' father Pharnaspes instead of Thukra), so we must be skeptical. Two other marriages were concluded with his sisters. One of them was -according to Ctesias- called Roxane; the other was called Atossa and was later to marry Cambyses' successor Darius. Herodotus thinks that these marriages are an example of Cambyses' madness, but if we assume that the Persian king was a Zoroastrian, there is nothing strange about it.	Part one Early career The conquest of Egypt Part two The madness of Cambyses The revolt of Gaumâta
Lower Egypt	The conquest of Egypt The most important event during Cambyses' reign was the conquest of Egypt. This meant that the king was away from Persia for some time. The Histories of Herodotus, our most important source, and the Persian Behistun inscription agree that Cambyses ordered, as a kind of safety measure, Cambyses ordered his brother to be executed (section 10); Herodotus calls this brother Smerdis, the Behistun inscription calls him Bardiya, which is more or less the same name. The two sources disagree about the moment of the murder: the Greek researcher dates it during the Egyptian campaign, the inscription states that it happened before Cambyses left Persia. A son of Cyrus, named Cambyses, one of our dynasty, was king here [...]. That Cambyses had a brother, Smerdis by name, of the same mother and the same father as Cambyses. Afterwards, Cambyses slew this Smerdis. When Cambyses slew Smerdis, it was not known unto the people that Smerdis was slain. Thereupon Cambyses went to Egypt. Probably, the inscription is correct. As we will see below, Herodotus has constructed a part of his Egyptian narrative as a catalogue of crimes and may well have postdated the fratricide. (The colorful narrative of Ctesias of Cnidus about the killing can be ignored as historical source. It is full of errors: for example, he calls Cambyses' victim Tanyoxarkes and wants us to believe that bull's blood is a deadly poison.) Egypt was well-prepared for the war. Its pharaoh Amasis (Egyptian name Khnemibre Ahmose-si-Neit) had enlisted Carian and Greek mercenaries and had allied himself with Polycrates of Samos, who owned a large navy. This could be a great help, because marines could easily perform actions against the Persians when they were marching from Gaza to Pelusium, a vulnerable desert road along the coast. Shortly before the war broke out, Polycrates switched sides. Herodotus writes: Without the knowledge of the Samians, Polycrates sent an envoy to Cambyses the son of Cyrus (who was gathering an army to attack Egypt) and asked him to send a messenger to him in Samos to ask for an armed force. When Cambyses heard this, he sent an envoy to the Samians and requested a naval force to join him in the war against Egypt. So Polycrates selected those of the citizens whom he most suspected of desiring to rise against him, and sent them away in forty warships, charging Cambyses not to send them back. [Herodotus, Histories 3.44] It is not clear whether these people ever joined Cambyses' Phoenician navy, but in any case, Amasis could not count on their support.
The naophoros of Wedjahor-Resne (Musei Vaticani)	We happen to possess the autobiography of the admiral of the Egyptian fleet, Wedjahor-Resne. It is written on a small statue now in the Vatican Museums in Rome. One element is curiously absent from this text: Wedjahor-Resne does not mention a naval battle. Herodotus does not mention fighting at sea either. It is possible that the Persians had bribed the Egyptian admiral and offered him an important function, because after the conquest, Wedjahor-Resne was Cambyses' right-hand man. Ctesias of Cnidus, who is not known for his reliability, explicitly mentions a traitor, although he calls him Combaphis (Persica, §10). Amasis died during the preparations of the war, probably in November 526, and was succeeded by his son Psammetichus III (Ankhkaenre Psamtik). Six months later, the Persian invaders and their Arabian allies reached Pelusium. The Egyptians were defeated and Cambyses' men continued to the Egyptian capital Memphis, which they took after a long siege. Psammetichus was captured alive and received a honorable treatment.
Mesuti-Ra Cambyses	Cambyses was recognized as the new pharaoh. Wedjahor-Resne tells: The great king of all foreign countries Cambyses came to Egypt, taking the foreigners of every foreign country with him. When he had taken possession of the entire country, they settled themselves down therein, and he was made great sovereign of Egypt and great king of all foreign countries. His Majesty appointed me his chief physician and caused me to stay with him in my quality of companion and director of the palace, and ordered me to compose his titulary, his name as king of Upper and Lower Egypt, Mesuti-Ra [born of Re]. Stated differently, Wedjahor-Resne helped Cambyses behave like a true Egyptian king. (Cyrus had done his best to behave himself as a native king when he had conquered Babylon; his son followed his example in the ancient kingdom along the Nile.) For example, Wedjahor-Resne persuaded Cambyses to direct the Persian garrison in the holy city of Sais to another camp, making sure that the sanctuary of Neit, the mother of the supreme god Re, and the shrine of Osiris were purified. His autobiography also makes it clear that the conquest of Egypt was accompanied with great misery. I am the benefactor of my city. I have saved its inhabitants from the very large troubles which had come over the whole country and which had not yet existed before in this country. I defended the meek against the powerful; I saved those who were afraid after an accident had happened to them; I gave them all useful things when they were unable to take care of themselves. Human suffering must have been immense. Probably, every soldier in the Persian army was rewarded with an Egyptian slave. This can be illustrated with a contract from Babylon: on 31 December 524, the veteran soldier Idin-Nabû sold his Egyptian slave with her baby, who was three months old. (The conclusion that Idin-Nabû sold his own child seems inescapable.) A very late source, Iamblichus (c.245-c.330), tells us that among the slaves was the Greek philosopher Pythagoras, who was forced to spend twelve years in Babylon before he was allowed to return his own country. This may well be true. Having conquered Lower Egypt, Cambyses sent out a small expeditionary force against the oases in the western desert. According to Herodotus, it reached the beautiful Bahariya oasis. But when the soldiers marched to Siwa, they were overtaken by the simoon storm and killed.
A Kushite (Relief from the eastern stairs of the Apadana at Persepolis) (more).	Cambyses and a part of his army went to the south (524/523). The capital of Upper Egypt, Thebes, was occupied and the army continued along the Nile until it reached the first cataract, where a garrison was posted. (The soldiers were Jews who had a temple of their own.) When Cambyses had reached the second cataract, he founded a town called 'market of Cambyses'. It may have been a fortified trading place where the Persians, Egyptians and Kushites (Nubian) could exchange commodities. According to Herodotus, Cambyses intended to conquer Kush, but this is not very likely. Egypt was not completely pacified and it would have been foolish to leave the country before it was a safe possession of the Achaemenid empire. It is perhaps better to see the campaign to the border zone from an Egyptian point of view: the pharaoh had to go there at least once in his life to show himself as the true king. A Persian embassy was sent to the Kushite capital, and the Kushites started to pay tribute (or continued an earlier trade). They are portrayed in Persepolis, bringing incense, ivory and an okapi for the great king's zoo.
	Disquieting news forced Cambyses to return to Lower Egypt (Autumn 523). Psammetichus had organized a revolt against the new overlord. The Persian army could easily suppress the revolt, but its revenge was bloody and destructive. The Greek geographer Strabo of Amasia visited Thebes in 24 BCE and saw the ruins of several temples that had been destroyed. Perhaps this story was made up by the Egyptian priests, who had good reasons to hate Cambyses. Pharaoh Amasis had offered great gifts to the temples, but Cambyses considered this outrageous. He may have tried to 'defend the meek against the powerful' by remitting the taxes that the Egyptians had to pay to the temples. A papyrus (now in the French Bibliothèque nationale) gives a summary of Cambyses' instructions: Of the cattle that once were given by the people to the temples of the gods, let they give only half of it. [...] Regarding the poultry, do not give it to them any more. The priests are perfectly capable of rearing their own geese. So the priests, who now had to breed their own geese, had good reason to hate the Persian king.

Cambyses (Old Persian Kambujiya): second king of the ancient Achaemenid empire (ruled 530-522). In 525, he conquered Egypt. This is the second of two articles; the first one can be found here. The madness of Cambyses Although Cambyses had reduced the temple taxes, he did his best to behave as an Egyptian pharaoh. This is proven by the autobiography of Wedjahor-Resne, one of the few contemporary documents. He also made a wise decision when he appointed Aryandes as satrap of Egypt. This man ruled the country for more than twenty years, and possible almost thirty. The Greek researcher Herodotus, living almost a century after the conquest of Egypt, offers a completely different picture. In his view, Cambyses' behavior is almost criminal. He gives a complete catalogue of evildoings. In Sais, he had violated the corpse of Amasis: When Cambyses had entered the palace of Amasis, he gave command to take the corpse of Amasis out of his burial-place. When this had been done, he ordered [his courtiers] to scourge it and pluck out the hair and stab it, and to dishonor it in every other possible way. When they had done this too, they were wearied out, for the corpse was embalmed and held out against the violence and did not fall to pieces. Cambyses gave command to consume it with fire, a thing that was not permitted by his own religion. The Persians hold fire to be a god and to consume corpses with fire is by no means according to the Persian or Egyptian custom. [Herodotus, Histories 3.16] According to Herodotus, this happened almost immediately after the conquest of Egypt, in the summer of 525. A new sacrilege was committed after the expedition to Upper Egypt: Cambyses killed the Apis bull. This was a manifestation of the god Ptah and therefore a sacred animal. After the death of the Apis bull, the priests started to search for a new Apis, and when they had found it, every Egyptian joined the celebrations. When Cambyses arrived at Memphis, Apis appeared to the Egyptians [...] and they began to wear their fairest garments and organized festivities. Cambyses saw the Egyptians doing thus and supposed that they were rejoicing because he had fared ill. Therefore, he called for the officers who had charge of Memphis, and when they had arrived, he asked them why the Egyptians had done nothing of this kind when he was at Memphis on the former occasion, but were now, when he came there after losing a large part of his army, very glad. They said that a god had appeared to them [...] and that whenever he appeared, they all rejoiced and kept festival. Hearing this Cambyses said that they were lying, and as liars he condemned them to death. [Herodotus, Histories 3.27]	Part one Early career The conquest of Egypt Part two The madness of Cambyses The revolt of Gaumâta
Cambyses and the Apis (From G. Posener, La première domination Perse en Egypte, 1936; ©!!!) .	After the execution, Cambyses called the priests and the sacred bull into his presence. When the priests brought Apis, Cambyses -being somewhat affected with madness- drew his sword, and aiming at the belly of Apis, struck his thigh. Then he laughed [...] and ordered those whose duty it was to do such things, to scourge the priests without mercy, and to put to death any one of the other Egyptians whom they should find keeping the festival. Thus the festival of the Egyptians was brought to an end, the priests were chastised, and Apis [...] lay dying in the temple. When he had died because of the wound, the priests buried him without the knowledge of Cambyses. [Herodotus, Histories 3.27] Egyptologists have refuted Herodotus' story. It is a fact that an Apis bull died in September 524, but he received a normal burial in the Serapeum at Saqqara (near Memphis). The funeral monument shows Cambyses worshipping the divine bull.
	The next crime on Herodotus' list is the killing of his brother Smerdis. We have already seen above that this happened before Cambyses went to Egypt. Herodotus' claims that Cambyses' next victim was the son of one of his courtiers, Prexaspes. Twelve Persian noblemen were buried alive, courtiers were executed, statues of Egyptian gods were ridiculed. Herodotus concludes with a remark that this last crime shows that Cambyses was completely out of his mind, because only a madman would mock the ancient laws and customs of a foreign country (text). This conclusion tells a lot about Herodotus, who had great respect for foreign cultures. The question is what its says about Cambyses, and the answer is: nothing. Herodotus is interested in the moral aspect of his story and did not check his spokesmen, the Egyptian priests who had, as we have already seen above, every reason to hate the Persian king. However, it is too easy to conclude that Cambyses' behavior was completely normal and Herodotus is simply mistaken. The Apis was buried comparatively late, which may suggest that something unusual had happened. Many inscriptions mentioning Amasis were damaged, and although we do not know why and when, it certainly makes sense if we assume that Cambyses wanted to eradicate Amasis' reign. We simply do and can not know what happened in Egypt between 525 and 522.
	The revolt of Gaumâta Herodotus and the Behistun inscription agree that Cambyses' stay in Egypt was interrupted in the spring of 522 by the news that a Magian named Gaumâta had seized power in the Achaemenid empire, claiming to be Smerdis. (Gaumâta could do this, because the real Smerdis had been killed secretly.) According to the Behistun inscription: When Cambyses had departed into Egypt, the people became hostile, and the lie multiplied in the land, even in Persia and Media, and in the other provinces. Afterwards, there was a certain man, a Magian, Gaumâta by name, who raised a rebellion in Paishiyâuvâdâ, in a mountain called Arakadriš. On the fourteenth day of the month Viyaxana[11 March 522] did he rebel. He lied to the people, saying: 'I am Smerdis, the son of Cyrus, the brother of Cambyses.' Then were all the people in revolt, and from Cambyses they went over unto him, both Persia and Media, and the other provinces. He seized the kingdom; on the ninth day of the month Garmapada [1 July 522] he seized the kingdom. Afterwards, Cambyses died uvamaršiyuš. The word uvamaršiyuš means 'his own death'. Nobody knows how to understand this: some scholars have argued that Cambyses died of natural causes, others maintain that it means suicide. The second alternative seems more plausible, because otherwise 'he died' would have been sufficient. Herodotus offers no real help. He tells that Cambyses, on hearing the news of the rebellion, rushed back to Persia. But when he jumped into the saddle of his horse, the cap fell of the sheath of his sword and exposed the blade, which pierced his thigh. The Greek historian does not fail to stress that this was just the spot where Cambyses had wounded the Apis. According to Herodotus, the Persian king died not much later. The idea that Cambyses died by his own sword may or may not corroborate the interpretation that uvamaršiyuš means suicide. The last letter that is dated to Cambyses' reign was written on 18 April 522. It was found in Babylon, and it merely proves that Gaumâta was recognized as king in April or May. Cambyses probably was still alive. He may have died in July. The court official with the title of arštibara, "lance carrier", must have replaced him as commander. His name was Darius son of Hystaspes.
Takht-e Rostam	According to both Herodotus and the Behistun inscription, Darius and six noblemen killed the Magian Gaumâta on 29 September 522. The first regnal year of the new king saw nineteen battles in an intense civil war, but at the end of that long but single year, Darius was victorious and was recognized as the true successor of Cyrus the Great and Cambyses. There has been some speculation whether the stone structure at Takht-e Rostam was Cambyses' tomb. However, from the Persepolis Fortification Tablets, we know that he was venerated in Pasargadae. In a press release dated 13 December 2006, the Iranian Heritage Organization announced that the entrance gate of the tomb of Cambyses had indeed been found near Pasargadae.

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CYRUS THE GREATS' CYLINDER: The World's First Charter of the Human Rights

2011-01-06T18:57:00.001-08:00

Cyrus

2011-01-06T18:55:00.000-08:00

	Cyrus
A modern Persian carpet showing Cyrus the Great, seen in Tehran.	Cyrus (Old Persian Kuruš; Hebrew Kores): founder of the Achaemenid empire. He was born about 600 BCE as the son of Cambyses I, the king of the Persian kingdom called Anšan. During Cambyses' reign, the Persians were vassals of the Median leader Astyages. Expressions like 'king of the Persian kingdom' and 'the Median kingdom' are a bit misleading. The Medes and the Persians were coalitions of Iranian nomad tribes; in the fifth century, this was still remembered and the Greek researcher Herodotus of Halicarnassus wrote: The achievement of Deioces [...] was to unite under his rules the peoples of Media - Busae, Parataceni, Struchates, Arizanti, Budii, Magi. The Persian nation contains a number of tribes [...]: the Pasargadae, Maraphii, and Maspii, upon which all the other tribes are dependent. Of these, the Pasargadae are the most distinguished; they contain the clan of the Achaemenids from which spring the Perseid kings. Other tribes are the Panthialaei, Derusiaei, Germanii, all of which are attached to the soil, the remainder -the Dai, Mardi, Dropici, Sagarti, being nomadic. [Herodotus, Histories 1.101 & 125; tr. Aubrey de Selincourt] These 'kingdoms' were in fact losely organized tribal coalitions. In the first half of the sixth cenctury, the Median federation was the most powerful and was able to demand tribute from the Persians, but also from the Armenians, Parthians, Drangians and Arians. Cyrus became king of Anšan in 559, and formed a new coalition of his own tribe, the Pasargadae, together with the Maraphii, Maspii, Panthialaei, Derusiaei, Germanii, Dahae, Mardi, Dropici and Sagarti. They revolted in 550 (or 554/553 according to another chronology). The Median king Astyages sent an army to Anšan. It was commanded by Harpagus, but he defected to the Persians. Astyages was captured, his army was -according to Herodotus- massacred, and Cyrus became the new ruler of the empire of Persians and Medes. According to the Greek topographer Strabo of Amasia, who lived more than five centuries later, Cyrus' victory took place among the Pasargadae, where Cyrus built his residence. From now on, this tribal name became the name of a city. According to Herodotus, Cyrus' father Cambyses had been married to Astyages' daughter Mandane. This would explain why the Medes accepted Cyrus' rule; he was one of them. Intertribal marriages were common, but it is also possible that the story of Cambyses' Median marriage was invented to justify Cyrus' rule. The Greek historian Ctesias of Cnidus writes that Cyrus also married a daughter of Astyages. If both authors are right, this woman must have been Cyrus' aunt. Cyrus may have united Persia and Media in a personal union; it was, therefore, a dual monarchy. Taking over the loosely organized Median empire also implied taking over several subject countries: Armenia, Cappadocia, Parthia, Drangiana, Aria. They were probably ruled by vassal kings called satraps. It is plausible that Elam was an early addition. In 547, Urartu was captured; its king was killed. After 547, Cyrus defeated the Lydians in the Battle of Sardes and added Lydia to his possessions, a state that had among its vassals the Greek and Carian towns in the west and southwest of what is now Turkey. A part of the population appears to have been deported to Nippur in Babylonia, where a community of Lydians is recorded in the Murašu Archive. According to Herodotus, Cyrus left Lydia and "his mind was on Babylon and the Bactrians and the Sacae and the Egyptians" (Histories 1.154). It is certain that Cyrus never invaded Egypt, which was left to his son and successor Cambyses. However, it is possible that he added Cilicia to his dominions, making the local ruler, the Syennesis, a vassal king. Babylonian sources do not mention imported Cilician iron after 545 - which may be signicant. It is plausible that Cyrus did indeed, as Herodotus suggests, conquer Bactria, although there is no independent confirmation. What we do know for certain is that in October 539, the Persian king took Babylon and captured its king Nabonidus. The capture of the city was easy, but the aftermath of the battle appears to have been violent: the Nabonidus Chronicle uses the expression iduk, "to kill, to massacre" to describe what happened to the defeated. The Babylonian Empire had been large, and Cyrus now became ruler of Syria and Palestine as well. According to the Biblical book of Ezra, Cyrus allowed the Jews, who were exiled to Babylon, to return home. This may have been an attempt to fortify the empire's western border against possible Egyptian attacks. However, there are serious chronological problems, and the archaeological evidence suggests that the return of the Jews took place much later. The Cyrus Cylinder reports the return of Mesopotamian exiles. (The policy was pretty standard, cf. ABC 2, 15-17). The second century Greek-Roman author Arrian of Nicomedia tells us in his book about Alexander the Great (the Anabasis) that Cyrus founded a frontier town in Sogdia; there is no reason to doubt this statement. The Greeks called this town Cyropolis ('town of Cyrus') or Cyreschata (a pun on the name of the king and the word 'far away'); both names seem renderings of Kurushkatha, 'town of Cyrus'. The Sacae (or Scythians) lived between Bactria and Cyreschata, and there is nothing implausible in Herodotus' words that Cyrus subdued these tribes.	All texts related to the fall of Babylon can be found here. Cyrus' royal inscriptions: Cyrus Cylinder CMa, CMb, CMc
The tomb of Cyrus at Pasargadae	Another story by Arrian deals with Cyrus' expedition to India (text); probably, this story is also accurate, but we cannot be completely certain. If he did invade India, he had to control Gandara first, and it is certain that Cyrus managed to seize this country: in the Behistun inscription, it is mentioned in the list of countries that king Darius the Great inherited from earlier Persian kings. However, it seems equally certain that Cyrus did not conquer the Indus valley itself, because India is not mentioned in the Behistun inscription. Maybe his navy conquered Maka during this campaign. Cyrus' latest expedition took him to modern Khazakhstan, where he fought against a nomadic tribe called Massagetes. The news of his death in battle reached Babylon in December 530, where letters were dated 'first year of the reign of king Cambyses', because Cyrus had appointed his son Cambyses as his successor. (The mother of Cambyses was Cassadane, a sister of Otanes, who was to play an important role after the death of Cambyses.) Cyrus was buried near Pasargadae, in a small building containing a gold sarcophagus, his arms, his jewellery and a cloak. This cloak played an important role in the Persian inauguration rituals (see Plutarch of Chaeronea, Life of Artaxerxes 3.1; the custom itself is Babylonian). When Persia was subjected by the Macedonian king Alexander the Great, many sacred objects were taken away to prevent the coronation of an anarya, a foreigner; Cyrus' body was desacrated by throwing it on the ground. Alexander ordered restorations in January 324 BCE. Cyrus' capital was Pasargadae, where inscriptions in his palace state Cyrus the Great King, an Achaemenid. They were probably written during the reign of Darius I the Great, and it is uncertain whether the two kings really belonged to the same family.
Cyrus' cylinder (British Museum)	Literature The most important sources documenting the reign of Cyrus are the contemporary Chronicle of Nabonidus and the Cyrus cylinder. The first book of the Histories by the Greek researcher Herodotus is also very important, but legends and fairy tales sometimes obscure the historical facts. The book known as Education of Cyrus by the Athenian author Xenophon (c.430-c.355) is a vie romancée that contains no historical information. E. Badian, 'Alexander the Great between two thrones and Heaven: variations on an old theme' in: Alastair Small (ed.), Subject and Ruler: the Cult of the Ruling Power in Classical Antiquity (1996 Ann Arbor) Diana Edelman, The Origins of the 'Second' Temple (2005) Amélie Kuhrt 'The Cyrus Cylinder and Achaemenid Imperial Policy' in: Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 25 (1983) 83-97. Max Mallowan, 'Cyrus the Great' in: Ilya Gershevitch (ed.): The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. II: The Median and Achaemenian Periods, 1985 Cambridge, pages 392-419 R.J. van der Spek, 'Did Cyrus the Great introduce a new policy towards subdued nations?' in: Persica 10 (1982), pages 278-283

ACHAEMENID PERIOD (553 BCE - 330 BCE)

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In the middle of the sixth century BCE, the Achaemanid clan of the Persians was headed by Cyrus, who ruled, under Median domination, as sub-king of Parsa, or Persis. In 553 BCE Cyrus led a revolt that resulted in the overthrow of the Median ruler and the rise to the power of the Achaemenids. A close union of Persians and Medes soon followed, and an army drawn from these tribal groups embarked on a series of successful campaigns that resulted in the establishment of the first world Empire.
The Medo-Persian army reached the Aegean Sea opposite Greece in 546 BCE, captured Babylon in 539, and sized Egypt a decade later. Cyrus proved to be a wise ruler and a generous victor. The Jews called him the Messiah, and later Greek writers praised his sagacity. His son, Cambyses II, died violently in 522 BCE, leaving the kingdom rent by civil war, during which a false pretender, Smerdis or Gaumata, temporarily mounted the throne. In a brilliant two-year campaign, 520-518 BCE, Darius I, claimed kingship to Achaements, reunited the country, recording his feats on the famous Behistuen rock carving. His rule was long and noteworthy. Herodotus gives detailed figures on the organization of the immense realm called "the land of the Aryans" or Eranshahar, the largest world has seen up to that time. The new capital, called by the Greeks Persepolis, was adorned with exquisitely beautiful rock carvings depicting the glories and wealth of his realm. It is also fairly well established that at his court there lived Zoroaster, one of the greatest of the Aryan-speaking prophets, whose teachings were eventually codified in the sacred books know as the Zend-Avesta. Because some Greeks encouraged the Ionians to revolt in Asia Minor (499-494 BCE), Darius sent two punitive forces to punish them. The first army was only partly successful, but the second was overwhelmed at Marathon in 490 BCE. A more ambitious to subjugate the Greeks was attempted by Xerxes, but after a navel disaster at Salamis in 480 BCE and a decimation of the land forces at Plataea the next year, the invading forces were withdrawn to the shores of Asia Minor. Vastness of the kingdom, degeneration of royal line, and the ambitions of powerful satraps combined, brought about a decentralization of authority in spite of good post roads and an originally enlightened provincial policy. The effort of Cyrus the Younger, satrap of Asia Minor, to size the throne in 401 BCE resulted in the retreat of the ten thousand Greek mercenaries described by Xenophon. This incident also revealed the weakness and wealth of the empire, temporarily held together by Artaxerxes III.
The Achaemenid Empire cam to an end when Alexander the Great defeated the forces of the last ruler in pitched battles and moved on to Susa and Persepolis, where the vast royal treasures were plundered and taken. At Persepolis the structures of the platform were burned to the ground. Fire destroyed the wooden roofs and brick walls of the buildings, and in the course of the following centuries a considerable depth of debris accumulated over the site. Only a few of the lofty stone columns and a number of the stone doorways made a landmark of the site.

Achaemenid Architecture

Darius, who became king of the Achaemenid Empire in 521 BCE, ordered construction work at Persepolis in southwestern Iran just two years later. Work was carried on intermittently at the site until 337 BCE. Susa, Babylon, and Ecbatana were the political and commercial centers of the Empire. Persepolis, however, situated in the homeland of the Achaemenids was its spiritual center. It was the site of the royal treasury, and every spring the kings came in state to celebrate the festival of the New Year.
The site of Persepolis is a low rocky spur jutting out from a line of low hills; it faces west and overlooks a broad, fertile plane. This spur was first cut down to create a level platform area. From the plain below a great double reversing staircase leads up to the platform, and once ended at an entrance gate with very high walls which enclosed the entire platform. Beyond the gate which, along with the enclosing walls, now has disappeared, was the portico of "all lands." This structure was built by Xerxes, the son and successor of Darius, and still stands today. The portico building is square in plan with four interior columns and with portals guarded by huge human-headed, winged bulls of stone.
To the south of the portico of Xerxes are the remains of the great apadana, or audience hall, built under Darius and Xerxes. The retaining wall of the hall and its double stair are of stone decorated with incised reliefs. These reliefs depict both the Persian Guards in their distinctive Persian and Median dress and long lines of the subject peoples of the Empire bringing offerings of the most typical products of their provinces for the New Year festival. The hall once contained six rows of six columns supporting a flat roof, but only a few of these lofty stone columns still stand, and the entrance porticoes of the hall have long since vanished.
To the east of the apadana are the ruins of the "hall of one hundred columns," an audience hall constructed during the reign of Xerxes. Only column bases and stone door-jambs decorated with incised reliefs remain. Behind and to the south of the hall of Xerxes are the excavated lower walls of the royal treasury constructed by Darius. Adjacent to the treasury is the harem, or women's quarters, of Darious and Xerxes. The foundation walls of this structure was excavated and then rebuilt according to its original plan. Now it is a museum to house the precious objects found at the site. At the southwestern corner of the platform are the remains of a number of small royal palaces: the tachara of Darius; the hadish of Xerxes; the palace of Artaxerxes III; and an unidentified palace.
The structures at Persepolis indicate that Achaemenid architecture was a cosmopolitan, eclectic style in which elements and details from many lands had been absorbed and joined. Assyria supplied the concept of the royal structure on a raised platform, certain of the plan forms, the use of colossal bulls, and the composition and style of the incised reliefs. Egyptian architecture furnished specific decorative elements and the profiles of certain of the moldings. Achaemenid inscriptions record that workmen were drawn from every part of the vast empire, as were the materials used, including cedars carried a great distance overland from the famous groves of Lebanon.
Cut into the hill behind the platform on which Persepolis was built are the tombs of Artaxerxes II, Artaxerxes III, and Darius III, at Naksh-i-Rustam, only three miles from Persepolis. High up carved into the cliff are the rock-cut tombs of Darius, Xerxes, Artaxerxes I, and Darius II. These rock-cut facades, descendants of the Median type, display four engaged columns bearing an elaborate entablature. Naksh-I-Rustam is also the site of the so-called Ka'aba-I-Zardusht, a tower-like structure similar to the one at Pasargadae but in a much better state of preservation.
The excavations at Susa brought to light the plan of an extensive palace built during the reign of Darius. This in all probability is the structure described in the Book of Esther, i:2-6.

The Persian Empire

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630-553 BC: Zarathustra
559-530 BC: Reign of Cyrus the Great
- 559 BC: Cyrus the Great overthrows Astyages of Media
- 546 BC: Persians conquer Lydia
- 538 BC: Persians conquer Babylonia
530-522 BC: Reign of Cambyses
- 525 BC: Persians conquer Egypt
522-521 BC: Civil War
521-485 BC: Reign of Darius
- Reorganizes the government into satrapies.
- Builds an extensive system of roads.
- 521-519 BC: The Empire is extended beyond the Indus River
- 490 BC: Attempts to conquer the Greek mainland.Persian War Chronology
485-465 BC:Reign of Xerxes
- 480 BC: Makes a second attempt to conquer the mainland Greeks.Persian War Chronology
465-338 BC: A Period of Imperial Decline
- 465-424 BC: Reign of Artaxerxes I Longimanus
- 424-404 BC: Reign of Xerxes II
- 404-358 BC: Reign of Artaxerxes II Mnemon
- 358-338 BC: Reign of Artaxerxes III Ochus
- 336-330 BC: Reign of Darius Codomannus
  - 330 BC: Alexander the Great conquers the Persian Empire Rise of Macedonia Chronology

A c h a e m e n i d s

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An ancient Persian dynasty whose kings ruled from 559 to 330 BC, when Darius III was defeated by Alexander the Great.

Central and Eastern Satrapies: Anonymous (circa 500 - 300 BC) AR Satamana Mitchiner ACW 152; 4076 43 x 10 x 3 mm. 10.67 gm. Die position=n/a Obverse: Septa-radiate symbol at each end; three other punchmarks (single pellet, heart shape with two pellets [Jalalabad (?)], two crescents, one pellet, two 'insects' [Taxila (?)]. Reverse: Blank. Anonymous (circa 500 - 300 BC) AR Satamana Mitchiner ACW 4073v. 36 x 10 x 4 mm. 8.08 gm. Die position=n/a Obverse: Septa-radiate symbol at each end. Reverse: Blank. Anonymous (circa 500 - 300 BC) AR 1/8 Satamana Mitchiner 14 x 12 mm. 0.92 gm. Die position=n/a Obverse: Septa-radiate symbol. Reverse: Blank.; Anonymous (circa 500 - 300 BC) AR 1/8 Satamana Mitchiner ACW 153 14 mm. 1.25 gm. Die position=n/a Obverse: Septa-radiate symbol. Reverse: Blank.
Achaemenid Kings: Darius I to Artaxerxes I (490 - 460 BC) AR Siglos SGCv2 4682; Mitchiner ACW 106; Carradice type IIIa 15 x 15 x 4 mm. 5.49 gm. Die position=n/a Obverse: Bearded, crowned king wearing quiver, running right; holding spear and bow. Bankers' marks. Reverse: Oblong punch. Bankers' marks. Note: Courtesy Jamison T. Graff collection.; Artaxerxes I to Artaxerxes II (450 - 370 BC) AR Siglos SGCv2 4683v.; Mitchiner ACW 111v.; Carradice type IVa 16 x 14 mm. 5.57 gm. Die position=n/a reverse Obverse: Bearded (?), crowned king running right; holding dagger and bow. Mark or letter (Aramaic (?)) behind head. Traces of dotted border at bottom (!) Reverse: Oblong punch. Note: This coin has an odd style; perhaps from an eastern mint.; Artaxerxes II to Darius III (390 - 320 BC) AR Siglos SGCv2 4682; Mitchiner ACW 106; Carradice type IIIc 16 x 13 mm. 5.54 gm. Die position=n/a Obverse: Bearded, crowned king wearing quiver, running right; holding spear and bow. Reverse: Oblong punch.; Artaxerxes II to Darius III (390 - 300 BC) AR Siglos SGCv2 4683v.; Mitchiner ACW 110; Carradice type IVb 14 x 15 x 4 mm. 5.42 gm. Die position=n/a Obverse: Bearded, crowned king running right; holding dagger and bow. Reverse: Oblong punch. Note: Courtesy Jamison T. Graff collection.; Artaxerxes II to Darius III (390 - 300 BC) AR Siglos Carradice type ___ 13 x 14 mm. 5.67 gm. Die position=n/a Obverse: Crowned king running right; holding dagger and bow. Reverse: Oblong punch. Artaxerxes II to Darius III (390 - 300 BC) AR 1/8 Siglos Carradice type ___ 8 mm. 0.85 gm. Die position=n/a Obverse: King running right holding dagger. Reverse: Blank; incuse.
Satraps of Caria: Memnon (?) (circa 349-333 BC) AR Tetradrachm Mitchiner ACW -; Hurter/Price P132, 32v. 20 x 21 x 4 mm. 14.64 gm. Die position=12h Obverse: Reverse: Note: Courtesy Peter A. Linenthal collection.

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IRANIAN MILITARY HISTORY:Achaemenid Imperial Army

2011-01-06T18:43:00.001-08:00

"The armoured Persian horsemen and their death dealing chariots were invincible.

No man dared face them."

- Herodotus (484 - 430 BCE)

Iran under Achaemenid dynasty

The Achaemenian/Achaemenid army is well known through descriptions by Herodotus, Xenophon, and Arrian as well as by illustrations on Persepolitan and Greco-Persian monuments [31]. Of particular importance for the topic are the Greek representations of Persian warriors [32] and the evidence of the so-called Alexander Sarcophagus from Sidon [33]. The Persians whom Cyrus united [34] did not possess a professional army: as in days of old, the "people" of a region was represented by its backbone, the "military force," so the two words were used synonymously in one Old Persian term, kāra (cognate with Lithuanian kārias/kāris "war, army," Gothic harjis "army," and German Heer "army," [35]), a sense still retained in the New Persian term kas-o kār "relatives and supporters."

Glazed0Tiles from Susa, showing the Immortals (Click to enlarge)

At first the Achaemenid army consisted wholly of Iranian warriors, and even when other regions were subjugated, Iranian formed the nucleus of the imperial army [36]. Darius the Great advises his successor: "If thus thou shalt think: `May I not feel fear of (any) other,' protect this Persian kāra; if the Persian kāra shall be protected, thereafter by the will of Ahuramazda happiness shall come down uninterruptedly and eternally upon this royal house" [37]. With the expansion of the petty kingdom of Persis into a world-empire embracing all Iranian groups from Central Asia to the Danube, a standing army was formed from Persians, Medes, and closely related peoples, and an imperial army was organized by incorporating warriors of all subject nations. Persepolitan representations, and official Persian economic and military documents ultimately used by Herodotus [38] prove that the closer a nation was to the Persians, the more it shared in the domination of the empire by paying less tribute but contributing more soldiers. Thus, the Medes who had the second position in the empire furnished more soldiers than others and indeed many of the imperial generals were chosen from the Medes (Mazares, Harpagus, Taxmaspada, Datis, etc.). Then came the Sacians, Bactrians, Hyrcanians, and other East Iranian groups [39].

The general term for the professional army was spāda. This consisted of infantry (pasti), cavalry (asabāri "horse-borne," and occasionally usabari "camel-borne"), and charioteers (only the noblest warriors used the then obsolete but symbolic chariot), and a large number of camp followers [40]. From the moment they met the Greeks, the Iranians incorporated subject or mercenary Greeks in their army [41]. As the time went by, not only Iranian satraps in Asia Minor but also the King of Kings employed Greek mercenaries, each of whom received free board and a monthly wage (a gold Daric per month in 401 BCE [42]). By the time of Alexander, these mercenaries had become a regular part of the spāda and their leaders had been incorporated into Iranian aristocracy [43]. They played a major role in Greco-Iranian cultural relations, and helped an eastward expansion of Greek culture.

(Click to enlarge)

The size of the imperial army was never as large as the Greeks exaggerated. Careful examination of topography, logistics, organization of the spāda, and official battle orders enable historians to arrive at reasonable figures for Iranian forces. Thus, Xerxes' 3,000,000 fighting men [44] or 2,641,610 soldiers and an equal number of attendants [45] are reduced to 70,000 infantry and 9,000 horsemen [46]; the 900,000-strong army of Artaxerxes II at Cunaxa [47] was in reality no more than 40,000 [48], and the 1,040,000 soldiers of Darius III at Gaugamela [49] is brought down to 34,000 cavalry and some infantry [50]. Unfortunately, historians have seldom paid attention to these overstatements, accordingly, their judgements of Iranian tactics, strategy, and motives have been impaired by faulty calculations [51].

The organization of the spāda was based on a decimal system "far superior to anything on the Greek side" [52] and was not employed in any Asiatic army until the Mongols [53]. Ten men composed a company under a daθapati [54]; ten companies made up a battalion under a *θatapati [55]; ten battalions formed a division under a *hazārapati [56]; and ten divisions comprised a corps under a *baivarapati [57]. The whole spāda was led by a supreme commander (probably *spādapati, although a generalissimo with full civil authority was called *kārana [Greek karanos] [58]), who was either the King of Kings himself or a trusted close relative or friend (e.g., Mazares the Mede led Cyrus the Great’s army and Datis the Mede that of Darius of the Great at Marathon). A characteristic of the Achaemenid period is that commanders and dignitaries participated in actual fighting, and many of them lost their lives in action [59].

The training of the Iranian nobility was arduous. As a youth, the Iranian was schooled-in companies of fifty-in running, swimming, horse grooming, tilling the land, tending the cattle, making various handicrafts, and getting accustomed to standing at watch; he would be trained in the arts of the chase (both afoot and on horseback), archery, throwing the spear and javelin, and of sustaining forced marches in unfriendly climate [60]. At twenty he started his military profession [61] which lasted till the age of fifty [62] as a foot soldier or a rider. The elitist groups were trained for both tasks. Thus, Darius says proudly: "Trained am I both with hands and with feet. As a horseman I am a good horseman. As a bowman I am a good bowman both afoot and on horseback. As a spearman I am a good spearman both afoot and on horseback" [63]. The foot soldier carried a short sword (acinaces), a spear with wooden shaft and metal head and butt, a quiver full of arrows of reed with bronze or iron heads, and a bow about one meter long with ends formed in animals' heads, and a case which combined the bow-case and quiver-holder [64]. A symbol of kingship and the Iranian national arm, the bow was held in the hand of the King of Kings on his tomb and coins. Battle-axe was also used, especially by North Iranians [65]. For protection, the infantryman relied on his wicker shield (made of sticks evidently threaded through a wet sheet of leather capable of stopping arrows [66]). The shield was either small and crescent-shaped or large and rectangular; the latter could be planted in the ground allowing the archer to discharge his arrows from behind it [67]. Some guards carried the large "figure-of-eight" -shaped shield known as the Boeotian, while the Gandharans carried round shields not dissimilar to those of Greek hoplites [68]. Some Iranians wore metal helmets, but only the Egyptians and the Mesopotamian contingents wore armour for body protection [69]. The elite infantry had variegated costumes: either the fluted hat, short cape over a shirt, pleated skirt and strapped shoes of the Elamite court dress, or the conical felt hat, tight-fitting tunic and trousers and boots of the Median cavalry suit. One division of the infantry comprised "one thousand spearmen, the noblest and bravest of the Persians" who formed a special royal guard; their spears had golden apples as butts from which they were called the Apple-bearers [70]. As a prince, Darius served in this guard of spearmen under Cambyses [71]. Their commander was the hazārapati of the empire, who, as the officer next to the emperor, possessed vast political power [72]. All members of this guard fell at Plataea defending their position [73]. One corps of the spāda consisted of ten thousand elite Iranian foot soldiers, the so-called "Immortal Guard," whose "number was at no time either greater or less than 10,000"[74]. These had variegated costumes [75] and acted as the Imperial Guards [76]. "Of these one thousand carried spears with golden pomegranate at the lower end instead of spikes; and these encircled the other nine thousand, who bore on their spears pomegranates of silver" [77].

Achaemenid Armored Cavalry

(Click to enlarge)

The cavalry had been instrumental in conquering subject lands, and it retained its importance to the last days of the Achaemenid empire. The horseman was equipped more or less like the foot soldier; but he carried two javelins, one for throwing and one for fending-at least this was the case in Xenophon's time[78]. Some wore metal helmets and padded linen corselets covered with metal scales [79]. A Babylonian document dated to the second year of Darius II lists the requirements of a horseman as follows: a horse along with its girdle (?) and bridle, a helmet, a cuirass of iron, a bronze shield, 120 arrows, a mace of iron, and two iron spears [80]. There were also units of camel-borne troops, and some riding chariots and scythed-chariots, but these were very seldom effective against massed infantry. At Gaugamela 15 elephants were also present but their action is not recorded [81]. Various divisions bore particular standards (Herodotus 9.59), but the imperial banner was a golden eagle with outstretched wings borne on a spear at the side of the commander-in-chief of the army [82].

Apart from the standing army, the rest of the levies were recruited when the need arose, and it took a long time, sometimes years, to muster a grand army. There were many Iranian garrisons in important centres of the empire, and satraps and governors also had their guards and local levies, but these could not be depleted to form an army on short notice because the danger of revolt was always present. Tribal troops, especially from East Iran, were more readily available. Levies were summoned to a recruiting station (*handaisa[83]) where they were marshaled and reviewed. Campaigns usually started in early spring [84]. Provisions were stored at various magazines along the route of the army, and were also brought with it in baggage-trains [85]. Royal and religious emblems accompanied the centre of the army where the commander had his position: the eagle standard and the holy fire in portable fire-holders attended by Magi chanting hymns, and the sacred chariots of Miθra, Ahura Mazda and others[86]. Mounted scouts were sent in advance to watch the enemy's movements [87]. There was also an excellent system of communication: couriers on the royal road changed horses at short intervals and speedily conveyed their messages to their destinations [88]; also by their light and mirror signals the King of Kings in Susā and Ecbātanā received the news from the whole empire-it is claimed-on the same day [89]. Fire signals communicating the news from towers and heights were widely used with good results [90]. Fortified gates were set up in narrow passes leading into various provinces not only for custom checks but also for stopping the advance of an enemy [91]. The Iranians disliked night marches and did not attack at night; their daily marches were, however, in slow pace because of the heavy baggage-train which often comprised litters for conveying the wives and concubines of the commanders [92]. When night fell, they encamped in a flat area, and if they were approaching the enemy, they dug a ditch and set up ramps of sand-bags around it [93]. Rivers were forded by using rafts, boat-bridges, or inflated skins or simply by riding across on horses and camels [94].

Before the battle (hamarana), a council of war was held and plans of action discussed. The line of battle was usually drawn up as follows: the foot archers were stationed in the front, flanked by cavalry and supported by light-armed and heavier-armed infantry. The commander-in-chief occupied the centre, observing the lines and directing the actions from an elevated point, where he was best protected, and his orders were received by both wings at the same time. When the battle was joined the archers discharged their arrows, and the slingers [95] threw their stone missiles (lead missiles with longer range became fashionable from 400 BCE, and an actual lead bullet bearing the name of Tissaphernes in Greek has survived [96]). The aim was to throw the enemy lines into confusion. The effective range of the Persian archer was about 120 yards [97]. Then the heavier infantry with spear and sword moved in, supported by cavalry attacking the flanks. These tactics worked well against Asiatic armies, but failed against heavy-armed Greek infantry (hoplites) and Macedonian phalanxes: the arrows were simply stopped by the body armour and the huge shield of the hoplites, and once the hand to hand combat began, no amount of personal bravery could compensate for the Iranians' lack of armour and their inferior offensive weapons [98]. At the battle of Plataea, for instance, a fierce hand-to-hand combat raged between the Iranians and the Greek hoplites: The Iranians "many times seized hold of the Greek spears and broke them; for in boldness and warlike spirit the Iranians were not a whit inferior to the Greeks; but they were without shields, untrained, and far below the enemy in respect of skill in arms. Sometimes singly, sometimes in bodies of ten, now fewer and now more in number, they dashed forward upon the Spartan ranks, and so perished" [99]. Another weakness of the Iranians was the attitude towards their commander: with an able and farsighted general, they displayed unsurpassed courage, but the same men took to disorderly flight as soon as the commander was killed or forced to flee [100]. Knowing that the King of Kings was the heart of his army, Cyrus the Younger ordered Clearchus-his Greek mercenary leader-to attack the centre where the King of Kings was stationed: "and if," he said, "we are victorious there, our whole task [of defeating his army] is accomplished," [101].

Remains of an Achaemenid battle-ship along with the artist reconstruction

Cyrus the Younger who knew both the Iranian and Greek armies, tactics and strategies, nearly succeeded in removing Iran's military weaknesses. He supplemented his Asiatic force with a large army of Greek hoplites, formed battalions of heavy cavalry which wore helmets. Breast-plates, and thigh-guards (this protected the sides of the horse as well), and carried a Greek sword in addition to their own arms; their horses too were protected with frontlets and breast-pieces [102]. He made effective use of the coordination of heavy cavalry and heavy infantry-an art which later Agesilaus and especially Alexander employed to the fullest and with the best results. It must be remembered, however, that the effectiveness of the Persian shock cavalry was severely hampered by the lack of stirrup and the saddle. "Encumbered with a corslet of scale armour and poised precariously atop his steed, the horseman kept his seat only through the pressure of his knees. He will have been in serious danger of being unhorsed whenever he delivered a blow with his saber or came within reach of an enemy soldier" [103].

The Iranians gave quarter to the adversary who requested it, and usually treated their captives with respect and kindness. Noble prisoners were accorded due honour, and princes treated royally. Even rebellious peoples were deported only to be given new lands and houses and enrolled as ordinary subjects. Personal valour was greatly esteemed, and special boons were conferred on brave servants of the empire [104]. Records of battles were kept, detailing the course of an engagement and casualty figures [105]. The commander-in-chief's scribe wrote down distinguished deeds of warriors: "During the whole battle Xerxes sat at the base of the hill..., and whenever he saw any of his own captains perform any worthy exploit he inquired concerning him, and the man's name was taken down by his scribe, together with the names of his father and city" [106]. In the same way Darius recorded the names of his six helpers, together with those of their fathers and nationality, adding: "Thou who shalt be king hereafter, protect well the family of these men" [107]. In 335 BCE both Athens and Thebes sought Iranian help, and the ambassadors of the latter city were received with the greatest honour at the Imperial court and their wishes were granted on the account that their forebears had rendered military assistance to Xerxes 150 years earlier [108]. Cont.. Parthian Army

MAPS:Ancient Iran through Ages (728BCE to CE651)

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Medes / Median (Mâdhâ) Dynasty; 728-550BCE

Achaemenid (Hakhâmaneshiyân) Dynasty; 550-330BCE

Parthian /Arsacid (Ashkâniân) Dynasty; 247BCE-CE224

Sasanid / Sasanian (Sâsâniân) Dynasty; CE224-640

Modern Iran

HAKHÂMANESHIÂN : The Empire of Achaemenid Dynasty (550-333 BCE)

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CAIS

2000

Achaemenid research still suffers from persistent marginalization in the academic world… Achaemenid studies have been persistently undervalued…

Professor Pierre Briant

ABSTRACT: The Achaemenid dynasty of Iran was the first and the largest empire that the ancient world had seen, extending from Anatolia and Egypt across western Asia to northern India and Central Asia. Its formation began in 550 BCE, when King Astyages of Median dynasty, who dominated much of Iran-proper and eastern Anatolia, was defeated by his southern neighbor Cyrus the Great (r. 559–530 BCE). This upset the balance of power in the Near East. The Lydians of western Anatolia under King Croesus took advantage of the fall of Media to push east and clashed with Persian forces. The Lydian army withdrew for the winter but the Persians advanced to the Lydian capital at Sardis, which fell after a two-week siege. The Lydians had been allied with the Babylonians and Egyptians and Cyrus now had to confront these major powers. The Babylonian empire controlled Mesopotamia and the eastern Mediterranean. In 539 BCE, Persian forces defeated the Babylonian army at the site of Opis, east of the Tigris. Cyrus entered Babylon and presented himself as a traditional Mesopotamian monarch, restoring temples and releasing political prisoners. The one western power that remained unconquered in Cyrus' lightning campaigns was Egypt. It was left to his son Cambyses to rout the Egyptian forces in the eastern Nile Delta in 525 BCE After a ten-day siege, Egypt's ancient capital Memphis fell to the Persians.

A crisis at court forced Cambyses to return to Persia but he died en route and Darius the Great emerged as king (r. 521–486 BCE), claiming in his inscriptions that a certain "Achaemenes" was his ancestor. Under Darius the empire was stabilized, with roads for communication and a system of governors (satraps) established. He added northwestern India to the Achaemenid realm and initiated two major building projects: the construction of royal buildings at Susa and the creation of the new dynastic center of Persepolis, the buildings of which were decorated by Darius and his successors with stone reliefs and carvings. These show tributaries from different parts of the empire processing toward the enthroned king or conveying the king's throne. The impression is of a harmonious empire supported by its numerous peoples. Darius also consolidated Persia's western conquests in the Aegean. However, in 498 BCE, the eastern Greek Ionian cities, supported in part by Athens, revolted. It took the Persians four years to crush the rebellion, although an attack against mainland Greece was repulsed at Marathon in 490 BCE

Darius' son Xerxes (r. 486–465 BCE) attempted to force the mainland Greeks to acknowledge Persian power, but Sparta and Athens refused to give way. Xerxes led his sea and land forces against Greece in 480 BCE, defeating the Spartans at the battle of Thermopylae and sacking Athens. However, the Greeks won a victory against the Persian navy in the straits of Salamis in 479 BCE It is possible that at this point a serious revolt broke out in the strategically crucial province of Babylonia. Xerxes quickly left Greece and successfully crushed the Babylonian rebellion. However, the Persian army he left behind was defeated by the Greeks at the Battle of Plataea in 479 BCE

Much of our evidence for Persian history is dependent on contemporary Greek sources and later classical writers, whose main focus is the relations between Persia and the Greek states, as well as tales of Persian court intrigues, moral decadence, and unrestrained luxury. From these we learn that Xerxes was assassinated and was succeeded by one of his sons, who took the name Artaxerxes I (r. 465–424 BCE). During his reign, revolts in Egypt were crushed and garrisons established in the Levant. The empire remained largely intact under Darius II (r. 423–405 BCE), but Egypt claimed independence during the reign of Artaxerxes II (r. 405–359 BCE). Although Artaxerxes II had the longest reign of all the Persian kings, we know very little about him. Writing in the early second century A.D., Plutarch describes him as a sympathetic ruler and courageous warrior. With his successor, Artaxerxes III (r. 358–338 BCE), Egypt was reconquered, but the king was assassinated and his son was crowned as Artaxerxes IV (r. 338–336 BCE). He too was murdered and replaced by Darius III (r. 336–330 BCE), a second cousin, who faced the armies of Alexander III of Macedon ("the Great"). Ultimately Darius III was murdered by one of his own generals and Alexander claimed the Persian empire. However, the fact that Alexander had to fight every inch of the way, taking every province by force, demonstrates the extraordinary solidarity of the Persian empire and that, despite the repeated court intrigues, it was certainly not in a state of decay.

The rise of the Persians under the Cyrus the Great

The ruling dynasty of the Persians settled in Fars in south-western Iran (possibly the Parsumash of the later Assyrian records) traced its ancestry back to an eponymous ancestor, Haxamanish, or Achaemenes. There is no historical evidence of such a king's existence.

Cyrus the Great - Artist impression, Oil on canvas by Tim Newark 2000

(Click to enlarge)

Traditionally, three rulers fall between Achaemenes and Cyrus the Great (Kurosh): Teispes (Chishpesh), Cyrus I, and Cambyses I (Kambujiya). Teispes, freed of Median domination during the so-called Scythian interregnum, is thought to have expanded his kingdom and to have divided it on his death between his two sons, Cyrus I and Ariaramnes. Cyrus I may have been the king of Persia who appears in the records of Ashurbanipal swearing allegiance to Assyria after the devastation of Elam in the campaigns of 642-639 BCE, though there are chronological problems involved with this equation. When Median control over the Persians was supposedly reasserted under Cyaxares (Kiyâksâr), Cambyses I is thought to have been given a reunited Persia to administer as a Median vassal. His son, Cyrus II, married Mandan (Mândânâ) the daughter of Astyages and in 559 BCE inherited his father's position within the Median confederation. Cyrus II certainly warranted his later title, Cyrus the Great.

He must have been a remarkable personality, and certainly he was a remarkable Emperor. He united under his authority several Persian and Iranian groups including Medes who apparently had not been under his father's control. He then initiated diplomatic exchanges with Nabonidus of Babylon (556-539 BCE), which justifiably worried Astyages. Eventually, he openly rebelled against the Medes, who were beaten in battle when considerable numbers of Median troops deserted to the Persian standard. Thus, in 550 BCE, the first Iranian Empire built by the the Median dynasty became the first Persian Empire, and the Achaemenid Emperors appeared on the international scene with a suddenness that must have impressed and frightened many.

Cyrus the Great immediately set out to expand his conquests. After apparently convincing the Babylonians that they had nothing to fear from Iran, he turned against the Lydians under the rule of the fabulously wealthy Croesus. Lydian appeals to Babylon were to no avail. He then took Cilicia, thus cutting the routes over which any help might have reached the Lydians. Croesus attacked and an indecisive battle was fought in 547 BCE on the Halys River. Since it was late in the campaigning season, the Lydians thought the war was over for that year, returned to their capital at Sardis, and dispersed the national levy. Cyrus, however, kept coming. He caught and besieged the Lydians in the citadel at Sardis and captured Croesus in 546 BCE. Of the Greek city-states along the western coast of Asia Minor, heretofore under Lydian control, only Miletus surrendered without a fight. The others were systematically reduced by the Iranian armies led by subordinate generals. Cyrus himself was apparently busy elsewhere, possibly in the east, for little is known of his activities between the capture of Sardis and the beginning of the Babylonian campaign in 540 BCE.

Nowhere did Cyrus display his political and military genius better than in the conquest of Babylon. The campaign actually began when he lulled the Babylonians into inactivity during his war with Lydia, which, since it was carried to a successful conclusion, deprived the Babylonians of a potential ally when their turn came. Then he took maximum advantage of internal disaffection and discontent within Babylon.

Nabonidus was not a popular king. He had paid too little attention to home affairs and had alienated the native Babylonian priesthood. Second Isaiah, speaking for many of the captive Jews in Babylon, was undoubtedly not the only one of Nabonidus' subjects who looked to Cyrus as a potential deliverer. With the stage thus set, the military campaign against Babylon came almost as an anticlimax. The fall of the greatest city in the Middle East was swift; Cyrus marched into town in the late summer of 539 BCE, seized the hands of the statue of the city Babylonian-God Marduk as a signal of his willingness to rule as a Babylonian and not as a foreign conqueror, and was hailed by many as the legitimate successor to the throne. In one stride Cyrus carried Iranian power to the borders of Egypt, for with Babylon came all that it had seized from the Assyrians and had gained in the sequel.

Little is known of the remainder of Cyrus' reign. The rapidity with which his son and successor, Cambyses II, initiated a successful campaign against Egypt suggests that preparations for such an attack were well advanced under Cyrus. But the founder of Iranian power was forced to turn east late in his reign to protect that frontier against warlike tribes who were themselves in part Iranians and who threatened the plateau in the same manner as had the Medes and the Persians more than a millennium earlier. One of the recurrent themes of Iranian history is the threat of peoples from the east. How much Cyrus the Great conquered in the east is uncertain. What is clear is that he lost his life in 529 BCE, fighting somewhere in the region of the Oxus and Jaxartes rivers.

Iran Under Achaemenid Dynasty

(Click to enlarge)

Cambyses

On the death of Cyrus the Great the empire passed to his son, Cambyses II (529-522 BCE). There may have been some degree of unrest throughout the empire at the time of Cyrus' death, for Cambyses apparently felt it necessary secretly to kill his brother, Bardiya (Smerdis), in order to protect his rear while leading the campaign against Egypt in 525 BCE. The pharaoh Ahmose II of the 26th dynasty sought to shore up his defences by hiring Greek mercenaries, but as a medium was betrayed by the Greeks. Cambyses successfully managed the crossing of the hostile Sinai Desert, traditionally Egypt's first and strongest line of defence, and brought the Egyptians under Psamtik III, son and successor of Ahmose, to battle at Pelusium. The Egyptians lost and retired to Memphis; the city fell to the Iranian control and the Pharaoh was carried off in captivity to Susa in mainland Iran.

Three subsidiary campaigns were then mounted, all of which are reported as failures: one against Cartage, but the Phoenician sailors, who were the backbone of the Iranian navy, declined to sail against their own colony; one against the oasis of Amon (in the Egyptian desert west of the Nile), which, according to Herodotus, was defeated by a massive sandstorm; and one led by Cambyses himself to Nubia. This latter effort was partly successful, but the army suffered badly from a lack of proper provisions on the return march. Egypt was then garrisoned at three major points: Daphnae in the east delta, Memphis, and Elephantine, where Jewish mercenaries formed the main body of troops.

In 522 BCE news reached Cambyses of a revolt in Iran led by Gaomata (Gaomâtâ) an impostor claiming to be Bardiya (Bardiyâ), Cambyses' brother. Several provinces of the empire accepted the new ruler, who bribed his subjects with a remission of taxes for three years. Hastening home to regain control, Cambyses died--possibly by his own hand, more probably from infection following an accidental sword wound. Darius, a leading general in Cambyses' army and one of the princes of the Achaemenid family, raced homeward with the troops in order to crush the rebellion in a manner profitable to himself.

Cambyses has been rather mistreated in the sources, thanks partly to the prejudices of Herodotus' Egyptian informers and partly to the propaganda motives of Darius I (the Great).

Cambyses is reported to have ruled the Egyptians harshly and to have desecrated their religious ceremonies and shrines. His military campaigns out of Egypt were all reported as failures. He was accused of suicide in the face of revolt at home. It was even suggested that he was mad. There is, however, little solid contemporary evidence to support these charges.

Darius the Great - Bistun (Click to enlarge)

Darius the Great

Darius I, the Great, tells the story of the overthrow of Bardiya and of the first year of his own rule in detail in his famous royal inscription cut on a rock face at the base of Bisitun mountain, a few miles east of modern Bakhtaran. Six leading Achaemenid nobles assisted in slaying the false Bardiya and together proclaimed Darius the rightful heir of Cambyses. Darius was a member of the Achaemenid royal house. His great-grandfather had been Ariaramnes, son of Teispes, who had shared power in Persia with his brother Cyrus I. Ariaramne (Âriyâramna)s' son, Arsames (Ârshâm), and his grandson, Hystaspes (Histâspa, Darius' father), had not been kings in Persia, as unified royal power had been placed in the hands of Cambyses I by Cyaxares. Neither is named a king in Darius' own inscriptions. Hystaspes was, however, an important prince of the blood, who at the time of revolt of the false Bardiya had apparently been the governor of Parthia. Darius himself was in the mold of Cyrus the Great—a powerful personality and a dynamic ruler.

It took more than a year (522-521 BC) of hard fighting to put down revolts associated with Bardiya's claim to the throne and Darius' succession to power. Almost every province of the empire was involved in the conflict, including Persia and, most particularly, Media. A balanced policy of clemency backed by the swift and thorough punishment of any captured rebel leader, in combination with a well-co-ordinated and carefully timed distribution of loyal forces, eventually brought peace to the empire and undisputed power to Darius. He then turned his attention to the organization and consolidation of his inheritance, and it was for this role--that of lawgiver and organizer--that he himself, to judge from his inscriptions, most wished to be remembered.

Such activities, however, did not prevent Darius from following an active expansionist policy. Campaigns to the east confirmed gains probably made by Cyrus the Great and added large sections of the northern Indian subcontinent to the list of Iranian-controlled provinces. Expansion in the west began about 516 BCE when Darius moved against the Hellespont as a first step toward an attack on the Scythians along the western and northern shores of the Black Sea. The real strategic purpose behind this move probably was to disrupt and if possible to interrupt Greek trade with the Black Sea area, which supplied much grain to Greece. Crossing into Europe for the first time, Darius campaigned with comparatively little success to the north of the Danube. He retreated in good order, however, with only limited losses, and a bridgehead across the Hellespont was established.

Perhaps in part in response to these developments, perhaps for more purely internal reasons, the Ionian Greek cities on the west coast of Asia Minor revolted against Iranian rule in 500 BC. The Iranian were apparently taken by surprise, and at first the rebellion prospered. The Ionians received some limited assistance from the Athenians and in 498 BCE felt strong enough to take the offensive. With one hand Darius negotiated; with the other he assembled a counterattack. The first Iranian military efforts proved only partially successful, however, and the Ionians enjoyed another respite in the years 496-495 BC. A renewed Iranian offensive in 494 BCE was successful. The Greek fleet was badly beaten off Miletus, and the Iranian land army began a systematic reduction of the rebel cities. About 492 BCE Mardonius, a son-in-law of Darius, was made special commissioner to Ionia. He suppressed local tyrants and returned democratic government to many cities. In time the wounds caused by the revolt and its suppression healed, and by 481 BCE Xerxes was able to levy troops in this region with little trouble.

By 492 BCE Mardonius had also recovered Iranian Thrace and Macedonia, first gained in the campaign against the Scythians and lost during the Ionian Revolt. There followed the Iranian invasion of Greece that led to Darius' defeat at the Battle of Marathon late in the summer of 490 BC. The "Great King" was forced to retreat and to face the fact that the Greek problem, which had probably seemed to the Iranians a minor issue on the western extremity of the empire, would require a more concerted and massive effort. Thus began preparations for an invasion of Greece on a grand, co-ordinated scale. These plans were interrupted in 486 BCE by two events: a serious revolt in Egypt, and the death of Darius.

Xerxes I

Xerxes (486-465 BC), Darius' eldest son by Queen Atossa, was born after his father had come to the throne; he had been designated official heir perhaps as early as 498 BC, and while crown prince he had ruled as the King's governor in Babylon. The new king quickly suppressed the revolt in Egypt in a single campaign in 485 BC. Xerxes then broke with the policy followed by Cyrus and Darius of ruling foreign lands with a fairly light hand and, in a manner compatible with local traditions, ruthlessly ignored Egyptian forms of rule and imposed his will on the rebellious province in a thoroughly Iranian style. Plans for the invasion of Greece begun under Darius were then still further delayed by a major revolt in Babylonia about 482 BC, which also was suppressed with a heavy hand.

Xerxes then turned his attention westward to Greece. He wintered in Sardis in 481-480 BCE and thence led a combined land and sea invasion of Greece. Northern Greece fell to the invaders in the summer of 480, the Greek stand at Thermopylae in August of 480 came to nought, and the Iranian land forces marched on Athens, taking and burning the Acropolis. But the Iranian fleet lost the Battle of Salamis, and the impetus of the invasion was blunted. Xerxes, who had by then been away from Asia rather long for a king with such widespread responsibilities, returned home and left Mardonius in charge of further operations. The real end of the invasion came with the Battle of Plataea, the fall of Thebes (a stronghold of pro-Iranian forces), and the Iranian naval loss at Mycale in 479 BC. Of the three, the Iranian loss at Plataea was perhaps the most

decisive. Up until Mardonius was killed, the issue of the battle was probably still in doubt, but, once leaderless, the less organized and less disciplined Iranian forces collapsed. Time and again in later years this was to be the pattern in such encounters, for the Iranian never solved the military problem posed by the disciplined Greek hoplites.

The formation of the Delian League, the rise of Athenian imperialism, troubles on the west coast of Asia Minor, and the end of Iranian military ambitions in the Aegean followed rapidly in the decade after Plataea. Xerxes probably lost interest in the proceedings and sank deeper and deeper into the comforts of life in his capital cities of Susa, Ecbatana, and Persepolis. Treasury intrigues, which were steadily to sap the strength and vitality of the Achaemenid Empire, led to the assassination of the Great King in 465 BC.

Artaxerxes I to Darius III

The death of Xerxes was a major turning point in Achaemenid history. Occasional flashes of vigour and intelligence by some of Xerxes' successors were too infrequent to prevent eventual collapse but did allow the empire to die gradually. It is a tribute to Cyrus, Cambyses, and Darius that the empire they constructed was as resilient as it proved to be after Xerxes.

The three kings that followed Xerxes on the throne-- Artaxerxes I (465-425 BC), Xerxes II (425-424 BC), and Darius II Ochus (423-404 BC)--were all comparatively weak individuals and kings, and such successes as the empire enjoyed during their reigns were mainly the result of the efforts of subordinates or of the troubles faced by their adversaries. Artaxerxes I faced several rebellions, the most important of which was that of Egypt in 459 BC, not fully suppressed until 454 BC. An advantageous peace (the Peace of Callias) with Athens was signed in 448 BC, whereby the Iranian agreed to stay out of the Aegean and the Athenians agreed to leave Asia Minor to the Achaemenids. Athens broke the peace in 439 BCE in an attack on Samos, and in its aftermath the Iranians made some military gains in the west. Xerxes II ruled only about 45 days and was killed in a drunken stupor by the son of one of his father's concubines. The assassin was himself killed by Darius II, who rose to the throne through palace intrigue. Several revolts marred his reign, including one in Media, which was rather close to home.

The major event of these three reigns was the Peloponnesian War between Sparta and Athens that lasted, with occasional pauses, from 460 to 404 BC. The situation was ripe for exploitation by the famous "Persian archers," the gold coins of the Achaemenids that depicted an archer on their obverse and that were used with considerable skill by the Iranian in bribing first one Greek state and then another. Initially, the Iranian encouraged Athens against Sparta and from this gained the treaty of Callias. Then, after the disastrous Athenian campaign against Sicily in 413 BC, the Iranian intervened on Sparta's side. By the treaty of Miletus in 412 BC, Iran recovered complete freedom in western Asia Minor in return for agreeing to pay for seamen to man the Peloponnesian fleet. Persian gold and Spartan soldiers brought about Athens' fall in 404 BC. Despite the fact that the Iranian played the two sides against each other to much advantage, they should have done better. One observes a certain lack of control from Susa by the king in these proceedings, and the two principal governors in Asia Minor who were involved, Tissaphernes of Sardis and Pharnabazus of Hellespontine Phrygia, seemed to have permitted a personal power rivalry to stand in the way of a really co-ordinated Iranian intervention in the Greek war.

Artaxerxes II came to the throne in 404 BCE and reigned until 359 BC. The main events of his long rule were the war with Sparta that ended with a peace favourable to the Iranian; the revolt and loss to the empire of Egypt; the rebellion of Cyrus the Younger, brother of the king; and the uprising known as the revolt of the satraps.

Sparta, triumphant over Athens, built a small empire of its own and was soon involved in a war against the Iranian, the principal issue again being the Greek cities of Asia Minor. While Sparta played one Iranian governor in Anatolia against the other, the Iranian spent gold in Greece to raise rebellion on Sparta's home ground. The Iranian rebuilt their fleet and placed a competent Athenian admiral, Conon, in command. The contest continued from 400 to 387, with Sparta forced to act on an ever-shrinking front. A revitalized Athens, supported by Iran, created a balance of power in Greece, and eventually Artaxerxes was able to step in, at Greek request, and dictate the so-called King's Peace of 387-6 BC. Once again the Greeks gave up any claim to Asia Minor and further agreed to maintain the status quo in Greece itself. When Egypt revolted in 405 BC, Iran was unable to do much about it, and from this point forward Egypt remained essentially an independent state.

Cyrus the Younger, though caught in an assassination attempt at the time of Artaxerxes' coronation, was, nevertheless, forgiven, thanks to the pleadings of the Queen Mother, and was returned to the command of a province in Asia Minor. But he revolted again in 401 BCE and, supported by 10,000 Greek mercenaries, marched eastward to contest the throne. He was defeated and killed at the Battle of Cunaxa in Mesopotamia in the summer of 401. The Greek mercenaries, however, were not broken and, though harried, left the field in good order and began their famous march, recorded in the Anabasis of Xenophon, north to the Black Sea and home. Probably no other event in late Achaemenid history revealed more clearly to the Greeks the essential internal weakness of the Achaemenid Empire than the escape of so large a body of men from the very heart of the Great King's domain.

Since 379 BCE Greek mercenaries had been gathered together in order to mount a campaign against Egypt. An attack in 373 failed against the native 30th dynasty. On the heels of this failure came the revolt of the satraps. Several satraps, or provincial governors, rose against the central power, and one, Aroandas, a late satrap of Armenia, went so far as to stamp his own gold coinage as a direct challenge to Artaxerxes. The general plan of the rebels appears to have been for a combined attack. The rebel satraps were to co-ordinate their march eastward through Syria with an Egyptian attack, under the pharaoh Tachos (Zedhor), supported by Greek mercenaries. The Egyptian attack was called off because of a revolt in Egypt by Tachos' brother, and Artaxerxes managed to defeat the satraps who were left alone to face the Great King's wrath. How different would have been the wrath of Darius! Several of the

satraps, including Aroandas, were actually forgiven and returned to their governorships. In general the impression is that, in the end, rather than fight the central authority, the satraps were willing to return to their own provinces and plunder there in the name of the Great King. Perhaps they saw that they actually had more authority and more control over real events in their own provincial territories than Artaxerxes had in his empire.

Plot and counterplot, harem intrigue, and murder brought Artaxerxes III to the throne in 359 BC. He promptly exterminated many of his relatives who might have challenged his rule--all to no avail, for revolts continued to rock the empire. A fresh attempt to win back Egypt was thrown back in 351-350. This setback encouraged revolt in Sidon and eventually in all of Palestine and Phoenicia. Parts of Cilicia joined the rebellion but the revolt was crushed the same year it had begun, 345 BC. Peace was achieved only temporarily; mercenaries from Thebes and the Argives, as well as from the Greek cities of Asia Minor, gathered for a new attempt on Egypt, which, led by Artaxerxes III himself, succeeded in 343 BC. But the local dynasty fled south to Nubia, where it maintained an independent kingdom that kept alive the hopes of a national revival. Iran then misplayed its hand in Greece by refusing aid to Athens against the rising power of Philip II of Macedon. In 339 BCE Iranian troops were fighting alone in Thrace against the Macedonians, and in the following year, at the Battle of Chaeronea, Philip extended his hegemony over all of Greece--a united Greece that was to prove impervious to Persian gold.

Artaxerxes was poisoned by his physician at the order of the eunuch Bagoas. The latter made Arses king (338-336 BC) in hopes of being the power behind the throne, but Arses did not bend easily to Bagoas' will. He attempted to poison the kingmaker but was himself killed in retaliation. Bagoas then engineered the accession of Darius III, a 45-year-old former satrap of Armenia. So many members of the royal house had been murdered in the court intrigue that Darius probably held the closest blood claim to the throne by virtue of being the grandnephew of Artaxerxes II. Darius was able to put down yet another rebellion in Egypt under Khababash in 337-336 BC, but the beginning of the end came soon afterward, in May 334, with the loss of the Battle of Granicus to Alexander the Great. Persepolis fell to the invader in April 330, and Darius, the last Achaemenid, was murdered in the summer of the same year while fleeing the conqueror. His unfinished tomb at Persepolis bears witness to his lack of preparation.

Alexander did not win his victories easily, however, and the catalog of troubles that marked the latter part of the Achaemenid Empire--rebellions, murders, weak kings trapped in the harem, missed chances, and foolish policies--cannot be the whole story. The sources, mostly Greek, are often prejudiced against the Iranian and tend to view events from but a single point of view. No government could have lasted so long, found its way somehow through so many difficulties, and in the end actually have fought so hard against the conqueror without having much virtue with which to balance its vices.

Achaemenid society and culture

Achaemenid society and culture was in reality the collective societies and cultures of the many subject peoples of the empire. From this mosaic it is sometimes difficult to sort out that which is distinctively Persian or distinctively a development of the Achaemenid period and therefore perhaps an early Iranian contribution to general Middle Eastern society and culture.

Language.

The languages of the empire were as varied as its peoples. The Iranian, at least originally, spoke Old Persian, a south-western dialect of Iranian (Median was a north-western Iranian dialect), but they were illiterate. Their language was first written when Darius commanded that a script suitable for this purpose be invented so that he might inscribe the record of his rise to power at Bisitun (the inscriptions in Old Persian are attributed to earlier kings as either late historical forgeries or as probably written during the reign of Darius). That few could read Old Persian might be the reason why Darius at Bisitun established the tradition that royal inscription should be trilingual in Old Persian, Babylonian, and Elamite. Old Persian was never a working written language of the empire. Elamite, written on clay tablets, appears to have been the language of many of the administrators in Fars and, it may be assumed, in Elam. Archives of administrative documents in Elamite have been found at Persepolis. Aramaic, however, was the language of much of the empire and was probably the language most used in the imperial bureaucracy. The beginnings of the strong influence of Aramaic on Persian, which is so evident in the Pahlavi (Middle Persian) of Sasanian times, can already be seen in the Old Persian royal inscriptions of late Achaemenid times.

Social organization

Little is known of Iranian social organization in the period. In general, it was based on feudal lines that were in part drawn by economic and social function. Traditional Indo-Iranian society consisted of three classes, the warriors or aristocracy, the priests, and the farmers or herdsmen. Crosscutting these divisions was a tribal structure based on patrilineal descent. The titleking of kings, used even in the 20th century by the shahs of Iran, implies that the central authority exercised power through a pyramidal structure that was controlled at levels below the supreme authority by individuals who were themselves, in a certain sense, kings. Traditionally the king was elected from a particular family by the warrior class; he was sacred, and a certain royal charisma attached to his person.

Such a method of organizing and controlling society undoubtedly changed under the influences and demands of imperial power and underwent much modification as Iranians increasingly borrowed social and political ideas from the peoples they ruled. Even in later times, nevertheless, there is evidence that the original Iranian concepts of kingship and social organization were still honoured and remained the ideals of Iranian culture.

Fravahar symbols from Persepolis

(Click to enlarge)

Religion

Iranian religion in the pre-Achaemenid and Achaemenid periods is a subject on which there is little scholarly agreement. When the Iranians first entered the semilight of the protohistoric period, they were certainly polytheists whose religious beliefs and practices closely paralleled other Indo-Iranian group at the same stage in history. Their gods were associated with natural phenomena, with social, military, and economic functions, and with abstract concepts such as justice and truth. Their religious practices included, among others, animal sacrifice, a reverence for fire, and the drinking of the juice of the haoma plant, a natural intoxicant.

Around 1800 BCE there arose in the north-east of the Irnaina plateau the great Iranian religious prophet and teacher Zarthushtra (Zoroaster). The history of the religion that he founded is even more complicated and controversial than the history of pre-Zoroastrian Iranian religion. Yet certain features of his religious reform stand out. He was an ethical prophet of the highest rank, stressing constantly the need to act righteously and to speak the truth and abhor the lie. In his teaching, the lie was almost personified as the Druj, chief in the kingdom of the demons, to which he relegated many of the earlier Indo-Iranian deities. His god was Ahura Mazda, who, it seems likely, was a creation in name and attributes of Zoroaster. Though in a certain sense technically monotheism, later Zoroastrianism viewed the world in strongly dualistic terms, for Ahura Mazda and the "Lie" were deeply involved in a struggle for the soul of man. Zoroaster, as might be expected, attempted to reform earlier Iranian religious practices as well as beliefs. He first rejected and then perhaps allowed the practice of the haoma cult in a modified form, he clearly condemned the practice of animal sacrifice, and he elevated to central importance in the ritual a reverence for fire. Fire worship, however, is a misnomer since the Zoroastrians have never worshipped fire but rather have revered it as the symbol par excellence of truth.

The crucial question is: were the Achaemenids Zoroastrians or at least followers of the prophet in the terms in which they understood his message? Possibly Cyrus the Great was, probably Darius the Great was, and almost certainly Xerxes and his successors were. Such a simple answer to the question is possible, however, only if we understand that Zoroastrianism as a religion had already undergone considerable development and modification since Zoroaster's lifetime, influenced by beliefs and practices and by the religions of those subjects of Achaemenids with whom the expanding Zoroastrians had intimate contact.

The god of the Achaemenid king of kings was the great Ahura Mazda, from whom they understood they had received their empire and with whose aid they accomplished all deeds. Xerxes and his successors mention other deities by name, but Ahura Mazda remains supreme. Darius the Great names only Ahura Mazda in his inscriptions. More significant, however, is Darius' tone, which is entirely compatible with the moral tone of Zoroaster and, in some instances, even compatible with details of Zoroaster's theology. During the reigns of Darius and Xerxes, the archaeological record reveals that religious rituals were in force that were also compatible with an evolved and evolving Zoroastrianism. The haoma cult was practiced at Persepolis, but animal sacrifice is not attested. More important, fire clearly played a central role in Achaemenid religion.

There may have been religious overtones in the quarrel between Cambyses and Darius on the one hand and the false Bardiya, a Magian or Median priest, on the other. Certainly there were religious as well as political motivations behind Xerxes' suppression of the Daeva worshippers and the destruction of their temple. It is possible that there was some conflict among the royal Achaemenids, who were followers of one form of Zoroastrianism, the supporters of a different version of Zoroastrianism as practiced by other Iranians, believers in older forms of Iranian religion, and foreign religions, which in the light of the Prophet's teachings were reprehensible. Compromises and syncretism, however, probably could not be prevented. Though the Zoroastrian calendar was adopted as the official calendar of the empire in the reign of Artaxerxes I, by the time of Artaxerxes II, the ancient Iranian god Mithra and the goddess Anahita had been accepted in the royal religion alongside Ahura Mazda.

Thus, in a sense, the Achaemenid kings were Zoroastrians, but Zoroastrianism itself was probably no longer exactly the religion Zoroaster had attempted to establish. What the religion of the people beyond court circles may have been is almost impossible to say. One suspects that a variety of ancient Iranian cults and beliefs were prevalent. The Magi, the traditional priests of the Medes, may have wielded more influence in the countryside than they did at court, and popular beliefs and practices may have been more deeply influenced by contact with other peoples and other religions. Later classical Zoroastrianism, as known in the Sasanian period, was an amalgam of such popular cults, of the religion of the Achaemenid court, and of the teachings of the Prophet in their purer form

Art

Achaemenid art, like Achaemenid religion, was a blend of many elements. In describing, with justifiable pride, the construction of his palace at Susa, Darius says:

The cedar timber--a mountain by name Lebanon--from there it was brought . . . the yaka-timber was brought from Gandara and from Carmania. The gold was brought from Sardis and from Bactria . . . the precious stone lapis-lazuli and carnelian . . . was brought from Sogdiana. The . . . turquoise from Chorasmia . . . The silver and ebony . . . from Egypt . . . the ornamentation from Ionia . . . the ivory . . . from Ethiopia and from Sind and from Arachosia . . . The stone-cutters who wrought the stone, those were Ionians and Sardians. The goldsmiths . . . were Medes and Egyptians. The men who wrought the wood, those were Sardians and Egyptians. The men who wrought the baked brick, those were Babylonians. The men who adorned the wall, those were Medes and Egyptians.

This was an imperial art on a scale the world had not seen before. Materials and artists were drawn from all the lands ruled by the Great King, and thus tastes, styles, and motifs became mixed together in an eclectic art and architecture that in itself mirrored the empire and the Iranian' understanding of how that empire ought to function. Yet the whole was entirely Persian. Just as the Achaemenids were tolerant in matters of local government and custom, as long as Iranian controlled the general policy and administration of the empire, so also were they tolerant in art so long as the finished and total effect was Persian. At Pasargadae, the capital of Cyrus the Great and Cambyses in Fars, the Persian homeland, and at Persepolis, the neighbouring city founded by Darius the Great and used by all of his successors, one can trace to a foreign origin almost all of the several details in the construction and embellishment of the architecture and the sculptured reliefs, but the conception, planning, and overall finished product are distinctly Iranian and could not have been created by any of the foreign groups who supplied the king of kings with artistic talent. So also with the small arts, at which the Iranian excelled: fine metal tableware, jewellery, seal cutting, weaponry and its decoration, and pottery. It has been suggested that the Iranian called on the subject peoples for artists because they were themselves crude barbarians with little taste and needed quickly to create an imperial art to match their sudden rise to political power. Yet excavations at sites from the protohistoric period show this not to have been the case. Cyrus may have been the leader of Persian tribes not yet so sophisticated nor so civilized as the Babylonians or Egyptians, but, when he chose to build Pasargadae, he had a long artistic tradition behind him that was probably already distinctly Iranian and that was in many ways the equal of any. Two examples suffice: the tradition of the columned hall in architecture and fine gold work. The former can now be seen as belonging to an architectural tradition on the Iranian Plateau that extended back through the Median period to at least the beginning of the 1st millennium BC. The rich Achaemenid gold work, which inscriptions suggest may have been a speciality of the Medes, was in the tradition of the delicate metalwork found in Iron Age II times at Hasanlu and still earlier at Marlik. In its carefully proportioned and well-organized ground plan, rich architectural ornament, and magnificent decorative reliefs, Persepolis, primarily the creation of Darius and Xerxes, is one of the great artistic legacies of the ancient world.

An Achaemenid Persian Soldier - Artist impression (Click to enlarge)

The organization and achievement of the empire

At the centre of the empire sat the king of kings. Around him was gathered a court composed of powerful hereditary landholders, the upper echelons of the army, the harem, religious functionaries, and the bureaucracy that administered the whole. This court lived mainly in Susa but in the hot summer months went to Ecbatana (Hamadan), probably in the spring to Persepolis in Fars, and perhaps sometimes to Babylon. In a smaller version it travelled with the king when he was away in the provinces.

The provinces, or satrapies, were ruled by governors (satraps), technically appointed by the central authority but who often became hereditary subkings, particularly in the later years, of the empire. They were surrounded and assisted in their functions by a court modelled on that of the central government and were powerful officials. The great king was nevertheless theoretically able to maintain considerable control in local affairs. He was the last court of appeal in judicial matters. He controlled directly the standing military forces stationed in the provinces, though as time went on, the military and civil authority in the provinces tended to become combined under the satrap. The king was also aided in keeping control in the provinces by the so-called king's eyes, or better, the king's ears, officials from the central government who travelled throughout the empire and who reported directly back to the king on what they learned. The number of satrapies and their boundaries varied greatly from time to time; at the beginning of Darius' reign there were 20 provinces. In general, as time went on, the number of satrapies increased, partly because of the need to reassert control over the satraps by decreasing their power base, partly because the feudal structure that underlay Iranian society required rewarding more and more people with a role in government, and partly because the original 20 satrapies were undoubtedly simply too large to permit efficient administration.

The army was a particularly important element within the empire. It, too, developed and changed with time. After Cyrus the Persian tribal levy, based on the responsibility of all male Iranian to fight for the king, was replaced by a professional army supplemented by a troop levy from the subject peoples in time of intensive military activity. The elite of the standing army were the 10,000 "immortals" composed of Persians and Medes, 1,000 of whom were the personal guard of the king. The person who controlled this elite, as did Darius on the death of Cambyses, usually controlled all. The troops of the imperial levy fought with the regular army in national units, were armed according to their individual customs, but were usually officered by Persians. Permanent bodies of troops were stationed at strategic points throughout the empire, and, to judge from the garrison at Elephantine in Egypt, these were actually military colonies, firmly settled into the local countryside. Greek mercenaries were used with increasing frequency in later years, and many Greeks fought faithfully for Persian silver.

Both the civil and the military administration, as well as public and private trade, were greatly facilitated by the famous royal Achaemenid road system. Communications throughout the empire were better than any previous Middle Eastern power had maintained. The famous road from Susa to Sardis in western Asia Minor is the best known of these imperial highways. It was an all-weather road, maintained by the state. Over it ran a governmental postal system based on relay stations with remounts and fresh riders located a day's ride apart. The speed with which a message could travel from the provinces to the king at Susa was remarkable.

On the whole, Iranian rule sat lightly on the subject peoples, at least under the early Achaemenids. It was a conscious policy of Cyrus and Darius to permit conquered nations to retain their own religion, customs, their methods of doing business, and even to some extent their forms of government. Cyrus' attitude toward the Babylonians, which led to his being accepted as the rightful successor of Nabonidus, his willingness to permit the Jews to return to Palestine and to their own way of life, and his successors' concern that this promise be honoured; Cambyses' behaviour in Egypt and his acceptance by the Egyptians as founder of a legitimate new Egyptian dynasty; and the policy adopted under Mardonius toward the Ionian cities following their rebellion are all examples of such a policy. Perhaps even too often in the later empire, rebellious peoples, governments, and leaders were forgiven and not suppressed with the thoroughness sometimes characteristic of other regimes. Lapses from this policy, such as Xerxes' violent reaction to rebellion in Babylon, stand out in the record.

Law played an important role in the administration of the empire, and stories of Persian justice abound in the Greek sources. Darius particularly wished to be remembered as the great lawgiver, and law reform was one of the cornerstones in his program for reorganizing the empire. To judge from the Babylonian evidence, two sets of law, possibly administered by two sets of courts, were in force in the provinces. One was the local law undoubtedly based on custom and previous local codifications; the other was the Iranian, or imperial, law, based ultimately on the authority of the great king. A new word for law appeared in the Middle East in Achaemenid times, the Iranian data, and was borrowed by the Semitic languages used in the empire. In Babylonian and Aramaic, sources give evidence for Iranian judges called by the Iranian word data-bar. These were probably the judges of the imperial courts. With legal reform came reform and unification of tax structures. The tax structure of the empire was apparently based on the principle that all the conquered lands were the actual property of the king. Thus taxes were rather rents, and the Iranian and their land, Fars, by virtue of not being a conquered people, were always tax-free. Each satrapy was required to pay a fixed yearly amount in gold or silver and each vassal state paid a fixed tribute in kind. Again going on the Babylonian evidence, where in previous times agricultural taxes were levied in fixed amounts regardless of the fluctuating quality of the harvest, under Darius all land was surveyed, an estimate of its yield based on an average of the harvests over several years was from time to time established, and taxes were levied in fixed amounts based on a percentage of that average yield. This was not quite an income tax, since it was not based on a percentage of each year's production, but it was at least a reasonable figure based on a reasonable average production.

Breakdowns often occurred in the Achaemenids' effort to maintain a productive balance between local social structures, customs, laws, and government and the demand of the empire. The failure of the Iranian to find such a balance when dealing with what was, for them, that extremely strange system of social and political organization, the Greek polis, or city-state, probably lay at the heart of their never-ending troubles in Ionia as much as did the power and ambitions of mainland Greeks. Yet even the Ionians, at the best of times, often realized the mutual advantages and benefits of the king's peace and a unified western Asia under a tolerant central administration.

The economy of the empire was very much founded on that king's peace; it was when the peace broke down with ever-increasing frequency during the last century of Achaemenid rule that the economy of the empire went into a decline that undoubtedly contributed significantly to eventual political and military collapse. Wealth in the Achaemenid world was very much founded on land and on agriculture. Land was the principal reward that the king had available for those who gave service or who were in positions of great political or military power in the empire. Under Darius there was a measure of land called a "bow" that was originally a unit considered sufficient to support one bowman, who then paid his duty for the land in military service. At the other end of the scale were enormous family estates, which often increased in size over the years and which were or became hereditary holdings. They were often administered by absentee landlords. Such major landholdings were, as one would expect, usually in the hands of Iranians, but non-Iranians were also able to amass similar wealth and power, thereby testifying once again to the inherent tolerance with which the empire was administered. The Achaemenids themselves took a positive role in the encouragement of agriculture by investing state funds and effort in irrigation and the improvement of horticulture.

They also invested in and endeavoured to encourage trade, a major source of imperial wealth. The effect of the state-maintained road system on the encouragement of trade has already been mentioned. Equal attention was paid to the development of seaborne trade. State-sponsored voyages of exploration were undertaken in order to search for new markets and new resources. Darius completed a project, begun by the Egyptians, of linking the Nile with the Red Sea by a canal, so that routes across the Arabian Sea and into the Persian Gulf could be used to link the eastern and western ends of his empire. As part of the same program, port development on the Persian Gulf coast was encouraged. An imperial standardization of weights and measures, efforts to encourage the development and use of coinage, and the standardization in the king's name of that coinage were all policies intended to encourage commerce and economic activity within the realm. Banking played a role in the economy. Documents have survived from a family banking business in Babylonia--the house of Murashu and Sons of Nippur--covering the years c. 455-403 BC; the firm evidently prospered greatly by lending money and by acting as a middleman in the system of tax collection. Interest rates were high, but borrowers were numerous.

As time went on, there were more and more such borrowers, for the later empire is marked by a general economic decline.

The principal cause for this decline was the unsettled political conditions, but other, more indirect causes were unwise government interference in the economy, overtaxation, and the removal of too much hard money from the economy. Gold and silver tended to drain into the treasury of the central government from the provinces, and too little found its way back into the economy. Disastrous inflation was the result. The large sums of money paid to foreign mercenaries and as bribes to foreign governments must have also contributed to an unfavourable balance of payments that in turn stimulated inflation. Such conditions hardly strengthened the empire and must have contributed, in ways that cannot be documented with certainty, to the political unrest that was their own main cause.

Ultimately, the achievement of the Achaemenid dynasty was that they ruled with much creative tolerance over an area and a time that, for both the Middle East and for Europe, saw the end of the ancient and the beginning of the modern world. In one sense, the ancient Middle East died when Cyrus marched into Babylon. Others would argue that its death came when Alexander burned Persepolis. The question remains open. What is clear is that the Achaemenid Empire, the largest anyone had ever yet tried to hold together and one that was not to be surpassed until Rome reached its height, was a profound force in western Asia and in Europe during an important period of ferment and transition in human history. That period witnessed major developments in art, philosophy, literature, historiography, religion, exploration, economics, and science, and those developments provided the direct background for the further changes, along similar lines, that made the Hellenistic period so important in history. Hellenism probably would not have been possible, at least not in the form we know it, if it had had to build directly on the rather more narrow and less ambitious base of the individual civilizations of Bablyon, Egypt, or Greece. In a sense the Achaemenid dynasty passed on a concept of empire that, much modified by others, has remained something of a model throughout history of how it is possible for diverse peoples with variant customs, languages, religions, laws, and economic systems to flourish with mutual profit under a central government. In narrower terms, but for the Iranians themselves no less important, the Achaemenid Empire was the beginning of the Iranian nation, one of the pivotal peoples in the modern

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IRANIAN HISTORY: MEDIAN DYNASTY

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The Coming of the Aryans & Creation of the First Iranian Dynastic Empire

Iran under the Median Dynasty

Introduction

The Medes (Persian mādhā), were an Iranian people who lived in the north, western, and northwestern portions of present-day Iran.

The Medes are credited with the foundation of Iran as a nation and an empire. their domain was corresponding to the mainland-Iran, north of Khvarvarana and Asuristan (nowadays northern-Iraq),

The inhabitants, who were known as Medes, and their neighbors, the Persians, spoke Median languages (of the Western-Iranian group of languages), that was closely related to Aryan (Old Persian). Historians know very little about the Iranian culture under the Median dynasty, except that Zoroastrianism as well as a polytheistic religion was practiced, and a priestly caste called the Magi existed.

Median relief showing a Median Magi, from Gur-Eshagh

A golden sheet showing a Median Zoroastrian priest carrying Borsam - Picture courtesy of the British Museum

Head of a Median representative from Persepolis

(Click to enlarge)

The coming of the Iranians

Though isolated groups of speakers of Iranian languages, they had appeared and disappeared in western Iran in the 2^nd millennium BCE, it was during the Iron Age that the Iranians rose to be the dominant force on the plateau.

By the mid-9th century BCE, two major groups of Iranians appear in cuneiform sources: the Medes and the Persians. Of the two, the Medes were the more widespread and, from an Assyrian point of view (known as mādāyu), the more important group. When Assyrian armies raided as far-east as Ecbatana (modern Hamadan), they found only Medes. In the more western Zagros, they encountered Medes mixed with indigenous of non-Iranian origins.

Early in the 1st millennium BCE, Iranian Medes already controlled almost all of the eastern Zagros and were infiltrating, if not actually pushing steadily, into the western Zagros, in some areas right up to the edge of the plateau and to the borders of lowland Mesopotamia.

Persians also appear in roughly the same areas, though their exact location remains controversial. At times they seem to have settled in the north near Lake Urmia, at times in the central western Zagros near Kermanshah, later certainly in the south-western Zagros somewhere near the borders of Elam, and eventually, of course, in the province of Fars. It has been argued that these various locations represent a nomadic tribe on the move; more likely they represent more than one group of Persians. What is reasonably clear from the cuneiform sources is that these Medes and Persians (and no doubt other Iranian peoples not identified by name) were moving into western Iran from the east. They probably followed routes along the southern face of the Alburz Mountains and, as they entered the Zagros, spread out to the north-west and south-east following the natural topography of the mountains. Where they could, as, for instance, along the major pass across the mountains from Hamadan to Kermanshah, they infiltrated farther west. In doing so, they met resistance from the local settled populations of Non-Iranian origin, who often appealed to Urartu, Assyria, and Elam for assistance in holding back the newcomers. Such appeals were, of course, most welcome to the great powers, who were willing to take advantage of the situation both to advance their interests at each other's expense and to control the Iranian threat to themselves.

It has been suggested that the introduction of grey and gray-black pottery into western Iran from the north-east, which signals the start of the Iron Age, is the archaeological manifestation of this pattern of a gradual movement of Iranians from east to west. The case is by no means proved but is a reasonable reading of the combined evidence. If it is so, then the earliest Iranians in the Zagros can be dated to Iron Age I times, about 1300 BCE.

Archaeologically, the culture of Iron Age II times can be seen as having evolved out of that of the Iron Age I period, and, though the development is less clear, the same can be said of the relationship between the cultures of Iron Age II and III. The spread of the Iron Age I and II cultures in the Zagros is restricted and would appear to correspond fairly well with the distribution of Iranians known from the written documents.

The distribution of the Iron Age III culture on the other hand is, at least by the 7th century, much more widespread and covers almost the whole of the Zagros. Thus, the argument that links these archaeological patterns with the Iranian migration into the area associates the Iron Age I and II cultures with the early penetration of the Iranians into the more eastern Zagros and with their infiltration westward along the major routes crosscutting the main mountain alignments. Those areas where traces of the Iron Age I and II cultures do not appear were the regions still under the control of non-Iranian indigenous groups supported by Urartu, Assyria, and Elam.

The widespread Iron Age III culture is then associated with the rise to power of the Median dynasty in the 7th and early 6th centuries BCE and the Iranianization of the whole of the Zagros.

The Empire of the Median Dynasty

Traditionally, the creator of the Median dynasty was one Daiaukku or known to Greeks as Deioces, who, according to Herodotus, reigned from 728 to 675 BCE and founded the Median capital Ecbatana (modern Hamadan). According to Herodotus, Deioces was succeeded by his son Phraortes (675-653 BCE), who united all Iranians under one umbrella including the Persians and lost his life in a premature attack against the Assyrians.

Assyrian texts speak of a Kashtariti as the leader of a conglomerate group of Medes, Scythians, Mannaeans, and miscellaneous other local Zagros peoples that seriously threatened the peace of Assyria's eastern borderlands during the reign of Esarhaddon (680-669 BCE). It is possible that Phraortes is this Kashtariti, though the suggestion cannot be proved either historically or linguistically. That a Median king in this period exerted political and military control over the Persians is entirely reasonable, though it cannot be proved.

Beginning as early as the 9th century, and with increasing impact in the late 8th and early 7^th centuries, groups of nomadic warriors of Iranian stock entered western Iran, probably from across the Caucasus.

Dominant among these groups were the Scythians, and their entrance into the affairs of the western plateau during the 7th century may perhaps mark one of the important turning points in Iron Age history. Herodotus speaks in some detail of a period of Scythian domination, the so-called Scythian interregnum in Median dynasty history. His dating of this event remains uncertain, but traditionally it is seen as falling between the reigns of Phraortes and Cyaxares and as covering the years 653 to 625 BCE. Whether such an interregnum ever actually occurred and, if it did, whether it should not be dated later than this are open questions. What is clear is that, by the mid-7^th century BCE, there were a great many Scythians in western Iran, that they, along with the Medes and other Iranian groups, posed a serious threat to Assyria, and that their appearance threw previous power alignments quite out of balance.

Herodotus reports how, under king Cyaxares of Media (625-585 BCE), the Scythians were overthrown when their kings were induced at a supper party to get so drunk that they were then easily slain. It is more likely that about this time either the Scythians withdrew voluntarily from western Iran and went off to plunder elsewhere or they were simply absorbed into a rapidly developing confederation under Median hegemony.

Cyaxares is a fully historical figure who appears in the cuneiform sources as Uvakhshatra. Herodotus speaks of how Cyaxares reorganized the Median army into units built around specialized armaments: spearmen, bowmen, and cavalry. The unified and reorganized Medes were a match for the Assyrians. They attacked one of the important Assyrian border cities, Arrapkha, in 615 BCE, surrounded Nineveh in 614 BCE but were unable to capture it, and instead successfully stormed the Assyrian religious capital, Ashur.

An alliance between Babylon and the Medes was sealed by the betrothal of Cyaxares' granddaughter to Nabopolassar's son, Nebuchadrezzar II (605-562 BCE). In 612 BCE the attack on Nineveh was renewed, and the city fell in late August (the Babylonians arrived rather too late to participate fully in the battle). The Babylonians and the Medes together pursued the fleeing Assyrians westward into Syria. Assyrian appeals to Egypt for help came to naught, and the last Assyrian ruler, Ashur-uballit II, disappeared from history in 609 BCE.

The problem, of course, was how to divide the spoils among the victors. The cuneiform sources are comparatively silent, but it would seem that the Babylonians fell heir to all of the Assyrian holdings within the fertile crescent, while their allies took over all of the highland areas. The Medes gained control over the lands in eastern Anatolia that had once been part of Urartu and eventually became embroiled in war with the Lydians, the dominant political power in western Asia Minor.

In 585 BCE, probably through the mediation of the Babylonians, peace was established between Media and Lydia, and the Halys (Kizil) River was fixed as the boundary between the two kingdoms. Thus a new balance of power was established in the Middle East among Medes, Lydians, Babylonians, and, far to the south, Egyptians. At his death, Cyaxares controlled vast territories: all of Anatolia to the Halys, the whole of western Iran eastward, as far as the area of modern Gorgan, and all of south-western Iran, including Isfahan and Fars provinces.

Whether it is appropriate to call these holdings a kingdom is debatable; one suspects that authority over the various peoples, Iranian and non-Iranian, who occupied these territories was exerted in the form of a confederation such as is implied by the ancient Iranian Imperial title, king of kings.

Astyages succeeded his father, Cyaxares, on the Median throne (585-550 BCE). Comparatively little is known of his reign. All was not well with the alliance with Babylon, and there is some evidence to suggest that Babylonia may have feared Median power.

The latter, however, was soon in no position to threaten others, for Astyages was himself under attack. Indeed, Astyages and the Median dynasty were soon overthrown by the rise his grandson to power in the Iranian world, the Cyrus II the Great and foundation of second Iranian dynasty, the Achaemenids.

IRANIAN PEOPLES-Aryans' Immigration

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Nomadic and sedentary (Imperial) Iranic Peoples in 6th century BCE

An autosomal DNA plot of genetic distances derived from 120 allele frequencies in Cavalli-Sforza's "The History and Geography of Human Genes"

The overwhelming majority of historical sources regard the people of present Persia (Iran) descendants of Aryans who are thought to have migrated from some far northern land towards south including the present land of Persia, destroyed native people and civilizations and replaced them. The date of this great migration is speculated to be sometimes between 3000 to 5000 years ago. Similarly, speculations on the point of origin of this great history-making shift includes a vast area from west, north and center of Europe to east of Asia, Baltic Sea, Scandinavian peninsula, north plains of central Asia and Caucasus, Siberia and even the north pole. This very disagreement and lack of unquestionable evidences on the exact geographical homeland of these Aryans point to the soundlessness of such speculations. Most of contemporary historical texts end the account of the land of origin and this great migration with a few short obscure and inexact statements without giving any sound reasons for such an important move. They usually suffice to present a map with a few large arrows drawn from Siberia to Caspian Sea and central plains of Persia.

The persistence of above dubious speculations is very interesting because it is now a known historical fact that the basic underlying reason for any human migration and shift of civilization is always a quest to find ‘better living conditions’ and in antiquity this ‘better living conditions’ basically meant more water and fertile land. Therefore, if on one hand we manage to prove that natural and climatic environment of Iranian Plateau was one of the most suitable one for human settlements at that time and on the other hand show that life conditions on far northern regions of this plateau (i.e. the hypothetical origin of Aryans) were far away from what is called ‘suitable environment,’ then not only we can seriously question the validity of the above theories in relation to the path and direction of the above migration, but show that it most probably took place in the opposite direction, that is from Persia (Iran) to other parts of the world.

As any population increase can only occur under most suitable ecological conditions, the first urgent question is how could this occur under such harsh freezing cold conditions as Siberia to give rise to the idea of migration to a climatically more favorable environment such as Persia? More interesting is the fact that this unsound undocumented theory is continuing to perpetuate while none of the archaeological and geological field studies carried out in the region in question (i.e. the hypothetical original land of Aryans) show traces and signs of the presence of any significant settlements there.
In this article we put forward a more documented hypothesis that Persians or Iranians did not migrate to Persia with Aryans, but it was Aryans, including native people of Persia or Iran that migrated ‘in Iran’ and ‘from Iran’ to other parts of the world.

Climatological EvidencesThe last ice age on earth began approximately 14000 years ago and ended around 10000 years ago. These ice ages led to formation of huge glaciers and icebergs in poles and rainfall in mid altitudes including Persia. Sedimentations of inner craters reveal that during warm periods between ice ages, Persia witnessed intense rainfalls that resulted in the emergence of humid climate and forestation on the Iranian plateau and during the cold time of ice ages welcomed cold dry weather. Archaeo-geological evidences show that around 10000 years ago and with the termination of the last ice age, warm humid climatic started to rule Iran. They also show that with the onset of warm humid period and retraction of icebergs to the north pole, the amount of rainfall gradually increased until it reached 4 to 5 times of its present amount around 5500 to 6000 years ago. Subsequently the water level of regional seas rose and reached its highest level filling up all the hollows, deserts, valleys and waterways. This is the period that in various mythologies is referred to as Jamshid’s era and Noah’s Flood. An increase in rainfall and floods occurred once more around 4500 years ago, but it soon started to decline and a drought and hot dry climate started to emerge around 4000 years ago reaching its climax about 3800 years ago. This coincided with the great shift of civilization in the Iranian plateau and decline and disappearance of many of ancient settlements, cities and villages in Persia.

The warm humid climate that occurred 4000 to 1000 years ago led to emergence of lush vegetation and massive forests all over Persia and even on present dry barren deserts. In that period of tremendous forestation and regression of deserts, a green flourishing land emerged in great Persia and northern regions of present Afghanistan were covered with vast savannas and humid lush meadows. Abundant forests in north of Afghanistan and particularly its west side called Badgheys (Vaiti gaes in Avesta) is referred to in Pahlavi version of Bundahisn (primal creation or cosmology) as follows: “Vatgisan is a place full of trees.” This climatic situation of north of present Afghanistan is described in historical texts of middle ages. In his moruj ol-zahab, Massudi speaks of the beautiful city of Balkh (Bactria) with its lush vegetations and numerous fields. Vaez Balkhi speaks of hundred thousand trees of Balkh in his Virtues of Balkh and quoting Shahriyar Samanid, Nezami Arouzi regards it a superior heaven due to its flourishing green land and Farih Sayah, considers meadows of Badgheys the best in Asia. Today, large parts of Badgheys and Balkh consist of dry sand deserts. They are particularly seen around Kerman and Sistan with far greater vastness, while in historical texts of two millennia ago refer to the presence of forests and meadows in these areas. At that time, Persia possessed rich meadows and wild animals. Many ponds, marshes and lakes with sweet water which were the dwelling place of aquatic animals and birds and many vast lush forests and reedy lands existed there. According to the above data, the warm rainy climate ruled all over Persia from 4000 to 10000 years ago. In addition, the surface of the earth, rivers and their springs was lower and that of lakes and ponds higher than today. Consequently all main craters, hollows and low lands on the shores of lakes, valleys and deserts and present dry rivers were filled with abundant sweet water and Persia was entirely covered with flourishing vast meadows and possessed rich animal and plant products, thus a suitable place for human life.

Archaeological EvidencesArchaeological findings and indications also affirm the presence of warm humid climatic conditions throughout Persia from 4000 – 10000 years ago. On one hand a great part of local ancient hills and old settlements studied so far belong to the same period of 6000 years of warm rainy climate, dispersed along barren deserts, dry rivers and salt marshes which points to the existence of better climatic conditions at the time of their emergence and persistence. Establishment of these civilizations along dry salty deserts indicate that there must have been abundant amount of sweet water with present dry rivers next to those hills providing sufficient amount of drinking water for the inhabitants of nearby cities and villages. On the other hand, there is no sign of ancient hills by the shores of present seas. Ancient hills located in the south or by the shores of the Persian Gulf are separated by hundred kilometers which indicates that during the ice ages, the water level of south seas must have been lower than today and with the increase of the water level, all human settlements were sunk. Meanwhile, in between the ice ages when the water level of south seas was higher and the surface of the earth was lower and sedimentations resulting from the three rivers, Tigris, Euphrates and Karoon were less, the Persian Gulf extended to Susa and Sumeria. Sumerian inscriptions deal with the penetration of water into Mesopotamia and refer to the city of Erido as a city located by seashores. Ancient settlements in the north were only a few kilometers away from the shores of Caspian Sea which shows that its water level must have been higher than today. In addition, the remainders of ancient dams, including those over valleys and waterways of Khajeh Mountain in Sistan indicate the presence of higher amount of rainfall at that time. Those dams provided the required water for temples and other buildings located on top of the Khajeh Mountain. Today, not only those waterways, but also the Hamoun Lake have dried up. Recent short periods of drought in Persia showed that even a short period of decreased rainfall is enough to dry out lakes, ponds and large rivers and consequently lead to rapid destruction of animal and vegetation life. Drying out of the Arjan Lake in Fars and the Zayandeh Rud River in Esfahan are prominent examples of such threatening phenomenon. Archaeological indications and existing sedimentations prove the occurrence of numerous floods around 5500 years ago. An example is the findings derived from excavations of Qarah Tapeh by Mir Abedin Kaboli in Qomrud region carried out with the goal of recording changes resulting from those floods. On the basis of Mir Abedin Kaboli’s findings, a tremendous flood occurred around 5500 years ago that led to abandonment of Qomrud region and immigration of people to higher neighboring regions.

In addition, images of gazelle, elephant, deer and aquatic birds and animals including even turtles, fish and crabs point to favorable climatic conditions in those areas at the flourishing time of corresponding civilizations. Here it is necessary to refer to a vital point. Up to now, with the exception of some dispersed scant evidences (such as collective or hill graves) found on the northern parts of the Aral Lake, scientists have found no evidence for the presence of any significant human settlement in any of those regions regarded as the original Aryan home land – that is Siberia, north of central Asia and Caucasus – during the time when favorable climatic conditions for the growth of human societies ruled over the Iranian Plateau. What has been found in those areas so far have just been cold non-inhabitable weather and icebergs remaining from ice ages and any trace of civilization found there, usually belong to later ages and as the result of migration of Iranians and other tribes to those regions.

Mythological Evidences and Old TextsFrom the mythological point of view, the famous story of the great flood – found in various forms in almost all major cultures of the world - is a reminder of the existence of some actual humid rainy period on earth in the past. In Pahalvi texts, including Bundahisn, we read that Tishtar (star of rain) produced such tremendous amount of rain that later gave rise to all seas and consequent rise of water on earth led to division of dry lands into seven regions or countries.

A demon (div) called Mahrak Usha in Vidivdat (pronounced as Vandidad in Persian, old Zoroastrian text), Malkush in some Pahlavi Epistles and Malkus in Menok i Xrat (Minu-ye Kherad, heavenly reason) is a terrifying demon who brings tremendous amount of rain, snow and hail for years on earth. According to Vidivdat, Ahuramazda warns Jamshid about it and orders him to make a shelter called Var to tend a pair of all creatures of the world, from humans to birds and animals and plants and seeds, also fire and all other useful things under it until the defeat of that demon when the flood subdued and favorable life conditions started to re-appear again. Similarly, Hindus believe that Manu was caught in a great storm, but Vishnu who had turned himself into a fish with a large horn, led Manu’s ship to land on northern mountains. Vishnu had warned Manu about the storm before and had ordered him to be prepared for it. When the ship safely landed on those mountains Manu ordered the seven scientists the pair of all living creatures of the earth on board leave the ship and populate the earth again. Manu had seeds of all plants with him too. The phrase ‘northern mountains’ often found in legends of Indians living along the shores of Sand and Punjab Rivers is a clear allusion to their migration from Pamir and Badakhshan mountains in present Afghanistan which were important regions of Persia once. Another version of the great storm is the Noah’s Flood whose oldest account belongs to Sumerians. Later, it was adopted by Babylonians and Acadians and finally appeared in the Testament. The story of flood is also found in ancient Chinese texts. According to Books of Bamboo written under the reign of Yu, the founder of Shia dynasty, a great flood seized the entire Chinese empire up to highest hills. Yu competently managed to subdue it in a period of thirteen years.

References to ancient seas that no longer exist are also found in the works of famous Persian scientist, Abu Reyhan Birooni. In his book called tahdid nahayaat ol-amaaken, when writing about the construction of the Suez Channel by Persian kings, Birooni speaks of a sea in the place of Egyptian low lands; a sea whose description is also found in Herodotus’ writings. Birooni believed that this sea used to be so vast that ships not only traveled on the Nile River, but on present dry lands surrounding the Pyramids which they passed when heading for Memphis. Oral legends and stories narrated by the people living in the central dry land of Iranian plateau today, approves of the existence of a huge sea instead of the present deserts. I have listened to various stories in cities of Damghan, Saveh, Kashan, Zavvareh, Meybod, Naa-inn, and Yazd which refer to a large sea, numerous islands, seaports and harbors and even to pharos.

Finally, we should point out two other facts. The first is the account of the second fargard of Videvdat and expansion of land and population increase under the reign of Jamshid and their migration toward Nimrouz (midday) and the path of sun. To me the phrase toward Nimrouz or south is an allusion to hot midday sun and the temperature increase and not to a new dwelling land. The supplementary phrase ‘the path of sun’ clarifies the direction of dispersion which is from east to west. The other fact is the story of Fereydoon in Ferdosi’s Shahnameh and division of kingship between his three sons, Iraj, Salm and Tur which is an allusion to Iranian migration from the heart of Persia to eastern and western lands and the subsequent war that Salm and Tur waged against their small brother is an allusion to inhabitants of eastern and western regions of Persia waging war against their original homeland.

However, after this golden age, that is around 3800 to 4000 years ago, a great drought and famine occurred and the warm humid period is followed by a hot dry age. At that time the water level lowered rapidly and smaller lakes and rivers dried out creating a great crisis for human settlements. The crisis that started with water shortage rapidly led to shortage of food, stagnation and destruction of agriculture, expansion of deserts, destruction of meadows and natural environment with numerous grave consequences. The drought drove people, who had descended from heights after the flood and brought about prosperity to their previous lands, to search for more suitable living places and migrate in spite of their will. This of course led to disputes, struggles, wars on the existing scarce resources and subsequent evident destructions and ruins proved by archaeological excavations of nearly all ancient Persian hills as ‘the end of human life around 4000 years ago together with a layer of ruins and ash.’ This layer of ruins and ash is not the result of Aryan attack, but the result of struggles and wars on limited human resources which lasted until 3500 years ago. This is a period that we scarcely find any traces of life in ancient hills, except in a few site situated in the western south regions and Mesopotamian cities. These years of relative silence in the history of Persia is very similar to the reign of Zahak in Ferdosi’s Shahnameh.

At the end of this period and concurrently with the onset of Iron Age, that is around 3500 years ago, the weather gradually started to ameliorate and prepared the grounds for expansion and prosperity of new Persian civilizations which regained their previous favorable climatic environment around 2800 years ago.

On the basis of above facts, the theory of Aryan migration from north toward the present Persia and Asia Minor does not seem feasible. What is more probable is that Aryans are native people who lived on this land due to its most favorable living conditions since antiquity. This is supported by abundant traces of civilizations found while there is no trace of any similar settlements in any nearby places. Cultural and civil changes of the Iron Age are indeed the rational development of the Bronze Age and not the result of the arrival of another tribe to the region. These native Aryans migrated to the high lands during the intense increase in rainfall and returned to their previous lowlands after the intense decrease in rainfall. They migrated from the heart of Persia at least twice after the great flood:
1- Once after regression of seas and lakes and drying out of marshes remaining from the great flood when they descended from neighboring mountains and migrated to fertile lands and sedimentary plains which was naturally a vertical migration from high to low lands. The onset of these shifts was in the middle of the humid warm period and after the intense rainfalls known as the storm of Jamshid’s reign or the Noah’s Flood in 5500 years ago. Two great migrations are two examples of this kind of migration: first the Aryan Indian migration from the Hindukoush Mountains to newly dried out lands of Panjab and shores of the Sand River recorded in Rig Vedas. The second is the Elamite and Sumerian migration from western mountains of Persia to newly dried marshes of Khuzestan and Mesopotamia. There are clear references to the Sumerian migration from ‘the east’ to Sumeria or Shinar in the Old Testament (Genesis, chapter one). They brought the idea of establishment of a new civilization to the Nile valley and Egypt. There are also hypotheses about Phoenician migration from shores of the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean shores. On the other hand, we know Sumerians were physically very similar to present inhabitants of Baluchestan and Afghanistan and the Sand Valley. Their artistic and architectural works testify that the Sumerian civilization and the north west Indian civilization were similar to eastern Persian civilization and perhaps undoubtedly originate from the same source. Recent excavations by Yusef Majidzadeh in Jiroft are additional proof for such hypothesis.

2- Once again, there were migrations during the drought occurring 3500 to 4000 years ago in search of more suitable dwelling places from Persia or in Sumerian words from “Sacred motherland” to other lands, abandoning living places prepared 5500 years ago and in which they lived 1500 years due to climatic unpleasant events.

3- Various tribes and peoples lived in the ancient land of great Persia; one and perhaps the general cultural name of all of them was Aryan. All present Persian tribes and people are offspring of those old tribes and people, including Aryans who migrated many times in harmony with climatic changes from high to low lands and vice versa. It is not possible to attribute the beginning of Persian history to the idea of a migration in an unknown time, from an unknown place, to an un destination and through unknown path and only regard them as the ancestors of present Persians.

4- In ancient Persian beliefs, ‘North’ or “Apakhtar” is the headquarter of Ahriman (devil), the dwelling place of div-s (demons) and evil-doers on the entrance way to Hell. If the northern lands were Persian original motherland, they would never talk about it in this way. On the basis of all the above facts discussed here briefly, it seems that Persians (Iranians) did not migrate with Aryans to Persia (Iran), but migrated ‘in Persia’ and ‘from Persia’ and moved to other places.

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2011-01-03T18:17:00.000-08:00

The Elamite Empire

By Cyrus Shahmiri, 2004; Revised

Category: Ancient Mesopotamia and Near East

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The Iranian Plateau did not experience the rise of urban, literate civilization in the late 4th and early 3rd millennia on the Mesopotamian pattern, but the lowland Khuzestan did. It was the Elamite Civilization.

Geographically, Elam included more than Khuzestan; it was a combination of the lowlands and the immediate highland areas to the north and east. Elamite strength was based on an ability to hold these various areas together under a coordinated government that permitted the maximum interchange of the natural resources unique to each region. Traditionally, this was done through a federated governmental structure.

Closely related to that form of government was the Elamite system of inheritance and power distribution. The normal pattern of government was that of an overlord ruling over vassal princes. In earliest times, the overlord lived in Susa, which functioned as a federal capital. With him ruled his brother closest in age, the viceroy, who usually had his seat of government in the native city of the currently ruling dynasty. This viceroy was heir presumptive to the overlord. Yet a third official, the regent or prince of Susa (the district), shared power with the overlord and the viceroy. He was usually the overlord's son or, if no son was available, his nephew. On the death of the overlord, the viceroy became overlord. The prince of Susa remained in office, and the brother of the old viceroy nearest to him in age became the new viceroy. Only if all brothers were dead was the prince of Susa promoted to viceroy, thus, enabling the overlord to name his own son (or nephew) as the new prince of Susa. Such a complicated system of governmental checks, balances, and power inheritance often broke down, despite bilateral descent and levirate marriage (i.e., the compulsory marriage of a widow to her deceased husband's brother). What is remarkable is how often the system did work; it was only in the Middle and Neo-Elamite periods that sons more often succeeded fathers to power.

Elamite history can be divided into three main phases: the Old, Middle, and Late, or Neo-Elamite, periods. In all periods, Elam was closely involved with Sumer, Babylonia, and Assyria, sometimes through peaceful trade, more often through war. In like manner, Elam was often a participant in events on the Iranian Plateau. Both involvements were related to the combined need of all the lowland civilizations to control the warlike peoples to the east and to exploit the economic resources of the plateau.

1. Old Elamite Period
The earliest kings in the Old Elamite period may date to approximately 2700 BC. Already conflict with Mesopotamia, in this case apparently with the city of Ur, was characteristic of Elamite history. These early rulers were succeeded by the Awan (Shustar) dynasty.

Figuring of an Elamite Woman

The 11th king of this line entered into treaty relations with the great Naram-Sin of Akkad (c. 2254-c. 2218 BC). Yet, there soon appeared a new ruling house, the Simash dynasty (Simash may have been in the mountains of southern Luristan). The outstanding event of this period was the virtual conquest of Elam by Shulgi of the 3rd dynasty of Ur (c. 2094-c. 2047 BC). Eventually, the Elamites rose in rebellion and overthrew the 3rd Ur dynasty, an event long remembered in Mesopotamian dirges and omen texts. About the middle of the 19th century BC, power in Elam passed to a new dynasty, that of Eparti. The third king of this line, Shirukdukh, was active in various military coalitions against the rising power of Babylon, but Hammurabi (c. 1792-c. 1750 BC) was not to be denied, and Elam was crushed in 1764 BC. The Old Babylon kingdom, however, fell into rapid decline following the death of Hammurabi, and it was not long before the

After two centuries for which sources reveal nothing, the Middle Elamite period opened with the rise to power of the Anzanite dynasty, whose homeland probably lay in the mountains northeast of Khuzestan. Political expansion under Khumbannumena (c. 1285-c. 1266 BC), the fourth king of this line, proceeded apace, and his successes were commemorated by his assumption of the title "Expander of the Empire." He was succeeded by his son, Untash-Gal (Untash (d) Gal, or Untash-Huban), a contemporary of Shalmaneser I of Assyria (c. 1274-c. 1245 BC) and the founder of the city of Dur Untash (modern Chogha Zanbil).

In the years immediately following Untash-Gal, Elam increasingly found itself in real or potential conflict with the rising power of Assyria. Tukulti-Ninurta I of Assyria (c. 1244-c. 1208 BC) campaigned in the mountains north of Elam. The Elamites under Kidin-Khutran, second king after Untash-Gal, countered with a successful and devastating raid on Babylonia.

In the end, however, Assyrian power seems to have been too great. Tukulti-Ninurta managed to expand, for a brief time, Assyrian control well to the south in Mesopotamia. Kidin-Khutran faded into obscurity, and the Anzanite dynasty came to an end.

After a short period of dynastic troubles, the second half of the Middle Elamite period opened with the reign of Shutruk-Nahhunte (c. 1160 BC). Two equally powerful and two rather less impressive kings followed this founder of a new dynasty, whose home was probably Susa, and, in this period, Elam became one of the great military powers of the Middle East. Tukulti-Ninurta died about 1208 BC, and Assyria fell into a period of internal weakness and dynastic conflict. Elam was quick to take advantage of this situation by campaigning extensively in the Diyala River area and into the very heart of Mesopotamia. Shutruk-Nahhunte captured Babylon and carried off to Susa the stela on which was inscribed the famous law code of Hammurabi. Shilkhak-In-Shushinak, brother and successor of Shutruk-

Nahhunte's eldest son, Kutir-Nahhunte, still anxious to take advantage of Assyrian weakness, campaigned as far north as the area of modern Kirkuk. In Babylonia, however, the 2nd dynasty of Isin led a native revolt against such control as the Elamites had been able to exercise there, and Elamite power in central Mesopotamia was eventually broken. The Elamite military empire began to shrink rapidly. Nebuchadrezzar I of Babylon (c. 1124-c. 1103 BC) attacked Elam and was just barely beaten off. A second Babylonian attack succeeded, however, and the whole of Elam was apparently overrun, ending the Middle Elamite period.

It is noteworthy that during the Middle Elamite period, the old system of succession to, and distribution of, power appears to have broken down. Increasingly, son succeeded father, and less is heard of divided authority within a federated system. This probably reflects an effort to increase the central authority at Susa in order to conduct effective military campaigns abroad and to hold Elamite foreign conquests. The old system of regionalism balanced with federalism must have suffered, and the fraternal, sectional strife that so weakened Elam in the Neo-Elamite period may have had its roots in the centrifugal developments of the 13th and 12th centuries.

Neo-Elamite Period

A long period of darkness separates the Middle and Neo-Elamite periods. In 742 BC a certain Huban-nugash is mentioned as king in Elam. The land appears to have been divided into separate principalities, with the central power fairly weak.

The next 100 years witnessed the constant attempts of the Elamites to interfere in Mesopotamian affairs, usually in alliance with Babylon, against the constant pressure of Neo-Assyrian expansion. At times they were successful with this policy, both militarily and diplomatically, but, on the whole, they were forced to give way to increasing Assyrian power. Local Elamite dynastic troubles were, from time to time, compounded by both Assyrian and Babylonian interference. Meanwhile, the Assyrian army whittled away at Elamite power and influence in Luristan. In time, these internal and external pressures resulted in the near total collapse of any meaningful central authority in Elam. In a series of campaigns between 692 and 639 BC, in an effort to clean up a political and diplomatic mess that had become a chronic headache for the Assyrians, Ashurbanipal's armies utterly destroyed Susa, pulling down buildings, looting, and sowing the land of Elam with salt.

Elamite man
in Persepolis

3. List of Elamite Kings

3.1 Avan Dynasty (precise dates unknown)
Peli (fl. c. 2500 BC)
Tata (precise dates unknown)
Ukku-Takhesh (precise dates unknown)
Khishur (precise dates unknown)
Shushun-Tarana (precise dates unknown)
Napil-Khush (precise dates unknown)
Kikku-Sive-Temti (precise dates unknown)
Lukh-Ishshan (fl. c. 2350 BC)
Khelu (fl. c. 2300 BC)
Khita (fl. c. 2275 BC)
Kutik-Inshushinnak (fl. c. 2240 BC)

3.2 Simash Dynasty (precise dates unknown)
Gir-Namme (fl. c. 2030 BC)
Enpi-Luhhan (fl. c. 2010 BC)
Khutran-Temtt (precise dates unknown)
Kindattu (precise dates unknown)
Indattu-Inshushinnak I (precise dates unknown)
Tan-Rukhurater (precise dates unknown)
Indattu-Inshushinnak II (precise dates unknown)
Indattu-Napir (precise dates unknown)
Indattu-Tempt (precise dates unknown)

3.3 Elam Dynasty (precise dates unknown)
Eparti I (precise dates unknown)
Eparti II (precise dates unknown)
Eparti III (fl. c. 1850 BC)
Shilkhakha (precise dates unknown)
Attakhushu (fl. c. 1830 BC)
Sirukdukh (fl. c. 1792 BC)
Shimut-Wartash (c. 1772-c. 1770 BC)

3.4 Babylonian Dynasty (c. 1770-c. 1500 BC)
Siwe-Palar-Khuppak (c. 1770-c. 1745 BC)
Kuduzulush I (c. 1745-c. 1730 BC)
Kutir-Nahhunte I (c. 1730-c. 1700 BC)
Lila-Ir-Tash (c. 1700-c. 1698 BC)
Temti-Agun I (c. 1698-c. 1690 BC)
Tan-Uli (c. 1690-c. 1655 BC)
Temti-Khalki (c. 1655-c. 1650 BC)
Kuk-Nashur II (c. 1650-c. 1635 BC)
Kutir-Shilkhakha I (c. 1635-c. 1625 BC)

Temti-Raptash (c. 1625-c. 1605 BC)

Kuduzulush II (c. 1605-c. 1600 BC)
Tata (c. 1600-c. 1580 BC)
Atta-Merra-Khalki (c. 1580-c. 1570 BC)
Pala-Ishshan (c. 1570-c. 1545 BC)
Kuk-Kirwash (c. 1545-c. 1520 BC)
Kuk-Nahhunte (c. 1520-c. 1505 BC)
Kutir-Nahhunte II (c. 1505- ???? BC)

3.5 Igehalkid Dynasty (c. 1350-c. 1200 BC)
Ige-Halki (c. 1350-c. 1330 BC)
Pakhir-Ishshan (c. 1330-c. 1310 BC)
Attar-Kittakh (c. 1310-c. 1300 BC)
Khuman-Numena (c. 1300-c. 1275 BC)
Untash-Naprisha (c. 1275-c. 1240 BC)
Unpatar-Naprisha (c. 1240-c. 1235 BC)
Kiddin-Khutran (c. 1235-c. 1210 BC)
Interregnum period (c. 1210-c. 1200 BC)

3.6 Shutrukid Dynasty (c. 1205-c. 1100 BC)
Khallutush-In-Shushinak (c. 1205-c. 1185 BC)
Shutruk-Nahhunte (c. 1185-c. 1155 BC)
Kutir-Nahhunte III (c. 1155-c. 1150 BC)
Shilkhak-In-Shushinak (c. 1150-c. 1120 BC)
Khutelutush-In-Shushinak (c. 1120-c. 1110 BC)
Shilhana-Hamru-Lagamar (c. 1110- ???? BC)

3.7 Late Elam Dynasty (743-644 BC)
Khumbanigash I (743-717 BC)
Shuttir-Nakhkhunte (717-699 BC)
Khallushu (699-693 BC)
Kutir-Nakhkhunte (693-692 BC)
Khumma-Menanu (692-689 BC)
Khumma-Khaldash I (689-681 BC)
Khumma-Khaldash II (681-680 BC)
Khumma-Khaldash II & Shilhak-In-Shushinak (680-676 BC)
Shilhak-In-Shushinak & Urtaku (676-664 BC)
Shilhak-In-Shushinak & Tempti-Khumma-In-Shushinak (664-653 BC)
Atta-Khumma-In-Shushinak & Khumbanigash II (653-651 BC)
Atta-Khumma-In-Shushinak & Tammaritu (651-649 BC)
Atta-Khumma-In-Shushinak & Indabigash (649-648 BC)
Indabigash (648-647 BC)
Khumma-Khaldash III (647-644 BC)

Choga Zanbil

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Elamites were able to gain revenge. Kutir-Nahhunte I attacked Samsuiluna (c. 1749-c. 1712 BC), Hammurabi's son, and dealt so serious a defeat to the Babylonians that the event was remembered more than 1,000 years later in an inscription of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal. It may be assumed that, with this stroke, Elam once again gained independence. The end of the Eparti dynasty, which may have come in the late 16th century BC, is buried in silence.

2. Middle Elamite Period

2011-01-03T18:05:00.001-08:00

Iran in Venice twelfth Biennial of Architecture

August 23, 2010

"Mahan garden" in Kerman

In an interview with visual arts reporter of Fars news agency, Mahmud Shaluee, the director of visual arts department of the Ministry of Guidance spoke about the opening of Venice twelfth biennial of architecture next month and said: This biennial will begin on August 26 in Venice, Italy with the participation of 63 countries.
Pointing to the participating countries in this biennial he said: Countries like Russia, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgian, Brazil, Canada, France, Japan, Finland, America, Greece, Ireland, Malaysia, Poland, Portugal, Korea, Switzerland, China, Hungry are among the participating countries. This is the first time that our country has been officially invited to this biennial.
In relation to the works which our country will present in this biennial Shaluee explained: The Museum of Contemporary arts of Tehran will present 46 plans and pictures of Persian Gardens. The pictures will be displayed with a conceptual work by Mojtaba Kalhor, a teaching professor of architecture at Venice University. Kalhor will participate in the biennial as the deputy commissioner of Iran.
The director of visual arts department then added: The Persian gardens which will be presented in this biennial are, Qavam in Shirz, Fin in Kashan, Mahan in Kerman, Dolatabad in Yazd and Chehel Sotoun in Esfahan.
Shaluee also said that the biennial will continue for three months and the participating countries will present various programs during this period. Our program includes showing documentary films on Persian Gardens, as well as holding round tables and discussions about the maps of these gardens and also various workshops which are going to be held in the permanent space of exhibitions allocated to Iran in Venice.

2011-01-03T18:03:00.001-08:00

National Museum of Iran (Iran-e Bastan)

The National Museum of Iran, whose construction began in 1934 and which became operative in two sections in 1937, not only constitutes the largest museum of Iranian archeology and history, but also ranks among the few great museums of the world with regards to volume, quality and diversity of its collections. This museum is considered to be Iran’s mother museum. The National Museum of Iran comprises two sections, housed in separate buildings: the Iran-e Bastan Museum, inaugurated in 1937, and the Islamic Period Museum, opened officially in 1996.

In 1929, following the ratification of the law on the preservation of national artifacts, the Anjoman-e Asar-e Melli was founded and, in order to assure the protection of Iranian historic objects, the French architect André Godard, then also the director of Iranian archaeology began preparing the plans of the Iran-e Bastan Museum, drawing inspiration from the Arch of Chosroes (Ctesiphon). Red bricks were chosen for the building to recall Sasanian architecture. The museum building has an area of approximately 11,000 square meters and has three stories .

At present, bringing together the Iran-e Bastan Museum and the Islamic Period Museum within a perimeter of 18,000 square meters, benefiting from a built area of more than 20,000 square meters, and housing approximately 300,000 historic items from different historic periods, the National Museum of Iran is the greatest art and history in the world. The oldest item attesting to the presence of man on the Iranian Plateau, which dates back to 600,000 years ago, is preserved in this museum. Various objects unearthed in past years, undergo scientific research in the museum’s laboratories located on its basement floor, before being transferred to the exhibition halls.

Prehistory

The Prehistory section of the National Museum of Iran is devoted to artifacts ranging from the Stone Age to the Iron Age. Covering a wide spectrum of materials ranging from terracotta, metal, stone, and bitumen… the objects preserved in this section were discovered either through scientific archaeological excavations or by accident. The oldest items here are stone blades from Kashafrood, discovered during an archaeological survey carried out in 1974-5 in Khorasan, on the banks of Kashafrood river. Various opinions have been expressed on the age of these artifacts. Claude Thibault attributes them an age of 800,000 to 1 million years, while others make them date back to between 600,000 and 700,000 years ago. According to Thibault, this is the earliest period in which man is known to have appeared on the Iranian Plateau.

Another category of these stone instruments was discovered in the Masileh area, 50 kilometers south of Varamin, by Dr. Sadeq Malek Shahmirzadi. These items date back to between 45,000 and 60,000 years ago.

The oldest artifacts reflecting the religious and spiritual thoughts of prehistoric man are human and animal statuettes discovered at Tappeh Sarab, east of Kermanshah, in 1960. One of these, a clay figurine named “Venus” is 6.5 centimeters high. Red earthenware items discovered at Cheshmeh ‘Ali and Esma‘il-abad, which belong to the 5^th millennium BC, are also among the oldest objects visitors can admire. One of these is a vessel in which four human figures are represented facing each other two by two and holding their arms raised, as in some devotional dance.

Notable among the objects discovered in Fars is a footed terracotta plate belonging to the 4^th millennium BC, on which ritual dances are depicted. Another is a conical terracotta bowl from Tall-e Bakun, in , on which an ibex is represented with exaggeratedly large horns, in homage to this highly valued animal in prehistoric times.

Amid the highly varied objects from Khuzestan, one may point out the bull statue from the temple of Chogha Zanbil. This 106 centimeter high and 108 centimeter long glazed terracotta statue was installed at the temple’s gate, as its guardian.

History

2011-01-03T18:01:00.000-08:00

Tavoos Quarterly,Nos.5&6,Autumn2000-Winter 2001

Click to view slideshow

The ensemble is a relic of the historic Arg (governmental seat) of , where Qajar monarchs resided, and comprises several of the most beautiful ancient buildings erected in the capital during the past 200 years1.

The origins of the royal Arg, limited northward by Emam Khomeini (ex-Sepah) Square and Avenue, westward by Khayyam Avenue, eastward by , and southward by 15^th and , date back to the Safavid period. The Safavid monarch Shah Tahmasb I (930-984), was the first king who, during a pilgrimage to the mausoleum of Hazrat-e ‘Abd-ol-‘Azim, ordered a one league-long rampart to be erected around Tehran, which was a small town at the time.

After him, Shah ‘Abbas had a chahar-bagh (quadripartite garden) and a plane tree grove created north of this rampart, around which he later had a tall wall built and the royal residence, which was called Arg, built within this enclosure. In the closing years of the Safavid period, was occasionally used as a temporary royal residence and Shah Solayman (1077-1105) even had a palace built in this city, but today no traces of those Safavid buildings remain.

The most ancient extant buildings within the ensemble are the Takht-e Marmar (Marble Throne) and the Khalvat-e Karim-Khani (Karim-Khan’s Secluded Retreat), built during the reign of the Zand monarch Karim-Khan. In 1172, in the course of his wars against the Qajar Mohammad-Hassan-Khan, Karim-Khan adopted as the central camp of his military operations and, after defeating his opponent, gave a public audience in the ancient Divan-khaneh of , built under Shah Solayman, during which he was elected the king of under the title of Vakil-or-Ro’aya. Upon his orders, in the summer of the same year, the rampart of the Arg was restored and a harem, a secluded retreat and a governmental seat were built within its enclosure; and in the summer of the following year (1173 AH), when he transferred his military camp to the Chaman-e Soltaniyeh (Zanjan), he ordered a particular palace and a large administrative complex to be built in the Sasanian style and a garden created beside them.

After Karim-Khan’s death in 1193 AH, the Qajar Aqa-Mohammad-Khan adopted as his capital in 1200 AH, but, being busy with incessant military campaigns, he seldom resided in it or had any time to indulge in building and development activities. Eventually, Fath-‘Ali Shah accessed to the throne in 1211 AH. Thereafter, alongside the growing size of the country’s administrative machine and royal formalities, numerous buildings were erected within the Arg of Tehran, mainly under Fath-‘Ali Shah and Nasser-ed-Din Shah. During the reign of Reza Shah, large parts of the Arg of Tehran, including its rampart, the Bab-e ‘Ali portico, the Rehabilitation Building, the Telegraph House, the Tekie-ye Dowlat, the Narenjestan (citrus grove), the Golshan Garden and the Inner Quarters, were demolished, the royal residence was transferred to Sa’d-Abad, and then to Niavaran under Mohammad-Reza Shah, and the Golestan ensemble was dedicated to the reception of foreign guests.

2011-01-03T10:14:00.001-08:00

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2011-01-03T09:29:00.001-08:00

2011-01-03T09:27:00.001-08:00

If your New Year's resolution involves selling a home in 2011, you've got some work to do: There's lots of inventory out there and in a buyer's market like this one, getting an offer on a home can be challenging.

More from MarketWatch.com:

• Top Tricks to Sell Your Home If All Else Fails

• Mortgage Help Falls Far Short, Panel Says

• More Foreclosures, Home-Price Drops on Tap in 2011

Still, for the committed seller willing to do some prep work and come to terms with the current value of his or her home, locking in a buyer isn't impossible.

By listing in early January, you might be able to catch some of those early birds who start browsing in the winter so that they can find a new home before school starts in the fall, said Louis Cammarosano, general manager of HomeGain.com, a real-estate website. In fact, many buyers tend to start their searches online right after Christmas, and continue throughout January and February, he said.

[Click here to check home equity rates in your area.]

"If you hit the ground running and you're a fresh listing that has done everything right, you've got the best shot," said Cammarosano.

Consider the following tips to give your home the best chance to get noticed -- and sold -- in 2011.

Price It Right from the Start

Many sellers suffer from attachment bias, said Tara-Nicholle Nelson, consumer educator for real-estate website Trulia.com. They believe that their home is worth more than they'd pay for it in another context. While it's always a bad idea to overprice a home, it's especially dangerous in times like this because there is so much competing inventory in many local markets.

Nelson's advice: Give yourself a reality check by looking inside comparable homes during open houses. That can help you get a clearer idea of your home's value.

[See 7 Towns Where Land Is Free]

You might even consider interviewing a few real-estate agents to get more than one take on how the home should be priced, Cammarosano said.

The longer something sits on the market, the more price reductions you might have to make and the more potential buyers will assume that there's something wrong with the home, he said. So more often than not, it's best not to try testing the waters with a higher price, he adds.

Don't be afraid to advertise in the listing and marketing materials that it's not a foreclosure or short sale, Nelson said. In markets where distressed sales are plentiful, there are buyers who simply don't want to deal with the extra hassle and uncertainty of a short sale or bank-owned property, she said.

Get the House Ready

Most sellers know they need to declutter, paint in neutral colors and generally stage the home as best as they can to help buyers envision themselves in the home. Often, this is done on the advice of a real-estate agent or professional stager.

The closer you can get your home looking like a photo from a Pottery Barn catalog, the better off you will be, said Beth Jaworski, a real-estate agent in the Milwaukee area.

And make sure that your cabinets and refrigerators are cleaned out and decluttered, too. "You want to have a minimum of 'stuff' in the house. The less stuff you have, the larger the closets, basement and garage will look," she said.

Jaworski also recommends having a home inspection done a month before putting the home on the market to identify any major defects that need to be corrected.

Provide as Much Information as Possible

Have energy bills and a list of updates available for buyers to see, Jaworski said.

"Buyers are always curious what the utility bills are, how old the roof is, how many layers it has, how old the major mechanicals are and when that addition was added," she said. "The more information you can provide on the house, the better."

Consider providing a floor plan with listings as well, Cammarosano said. That way the prospective buyers don't have to keep making return visits to determine how their furniture will fit in the space -- they'll have the dimensions in hand.

Make It Easy to Show

The more available you can make your home for showings, the better, said David Welch, a broker/associate in Orlando, Fla.

Make it easy for your real-estate agent to access the property and keep the place clean.

[See Make Money in 2011: Your Home Edition]

"You want your home to be easy to show because you don't know if you will get a second chance," Welch said. "Trust me, the buyer wants to like your house. Keep it in show-ready condition," he said, so they aren't turned off by a first impression.

Be Flexible

Buyers are in the driver's seat these days, and they know they can make all sorts of unusual requests without risking the deal. Be ready.

"Buyer wants to see the house at 7 a.m. on Tuesday, OK," Jaworski said. "Buyer wants to bring 10 family members and an inspector to check out the house for three hours this weekend, OK. Buyer wants you to include the kitchen table and chairs, the painting over the fireplace and your snow blower, OK."

"The more flexible you are," she said, "the better off you will be."

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