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ancient Iran, historic region of southwestern Asia that is only roughly coterminous with modern Iran. The term Persia was used for centuries, chiefly in the West, to designate those regions where Persian language and culture predominated, but it more correctly refers to a region of southern Iran formerly known as Persis, alternatively as Pārs or Parsa, modern Fārs. Parsa was the name of an Indo-European nomadic people who migrated into the region about 1000 bc . The first mention of Parsa occurs in the annals of Shalmanesar II, an Assyrian king, in 844 bc . During the rule of the Persian Achaemenian dynasty (559–330 bc ), the ancient Greeks first encountered the inhabitants of Persis on the Iranian plateau, when the Achaemenids—natives of Persis—were expanding their political sphere. The Achaemenids were the dominant dynasty during Greek history until the time of Alexander the Great, and the use of the name Persia was gradually extended by the Greeks and other peoples to apply to the whole Iranian plateau. This tendency was reinforced with the rise of the Sāsānian dynasty, also native to Persis, whose culture dominated the Iranian plateau until the 7th century ad . The people of this area have traditionally referred to the region as Iran, “Land of the Aryans,” and in 1935 the government of Iran requested that the name Iran be used in lieu of Persia. The two terms, however, are often used interchangeably when referring to periods preceding the 20th century.
This article covers the history of Iran and the Iranian peoples from the prehistoric period up to the Arab conquest in the 7th century ad . For the history of the succeeding periods, see the article Iran. For a discussion of the religions of ancient Iran, see Iranian religion. For a discussion of visual arts from the prehistoric period through the Sāsānian period, see art and architecture, Iranian. For a detailed account of Mesopotamian history through the Sāsānian period, see Mesopotamia, history of.
The early history of Iran may be divided into three phases: (1) the prehistoric period, beginning with the earliest evidence of humans on the Iranian plateau (c. 100,000 bc ) and ending roughly at the start of the 1st millennium bc , (2) the protohistoric period, covering approximately the first half of the 1st millennium bc , and (3) the period of the Achaemenian dynasty (6th to 4th century bc ), when Iran entered the full light of written history. The civilization of Elam, centred off the plateau in lowland Khūzestān, is an exception, for written history began there as early as it did in neighbouring Mesopotamia (c. 3000 bc ).
The sources for the prehistoric period are entirely archaeological. Early excavation in Iran was limited to a few sites. In the 1930s archaeological exploration increased, but work was abruptly halted by the outbreak of World War II. After the war ended, interest in Iranian archaeology revived quickly, and, from 1950 until archaeological study was dramatically curtailed after 1979, numerous excavations revolutionized the study of prehistoric Iran.
Britannica Quiz Former Names of Current Places QuizFor the protohistoric period the historian is still forced to rely primarily on archaeological evidence, but much information comes from written sources as well. None of these sources, however, is both local and contemporary in relation to the events described. Some sources are contemporary but belong to neighbouring civilizations that were only tangentially involved in events in the Iranian plateau—for example, the Assyrian and Babylonian cuneiform records from lowland Mesopotamia. Some are local but not contemporary, such as the traditional Iranian legends and tales that supposedly speak of events in the early 1st millennium bc . And some are neither contemporary nor local but are nevertheless valuable in reconstructing events in the protohistoric period (e.g., the 5th-century- bc Greek historian Herodotus).
For the study of the centuries of the Achaemenian dynasty, there is sufficient documentary material so that this period is the earliest for which archaeology is not the primary source of data. Contributing to the understanding of the period are, among other sources, economic texts from Mesopotamia, Elam, and Iran; historical inscriptions such as that of Darius I (the Great) at Behistun (modern Bīsotūn); contemporary and later classical authors; and later Iranian legends and literature.
Enigmatic evidence of human presence on the Iranian plateau as early as Lower Paleolithic times comes from a surface find in the Bākhtarān valley. The first well-documented evidence of human habitation is in deposits from several excavated cave and rock-shelter sites, located mainly in the Zagros Mountains of western Iran and dated to Middle Paleolithic or Mousterian times (c. 100,000 bc ). There is every reason to assume, however, that future excavations will reveal Lower Paleolithic habitation in Iran. The Mousterian flint tool industry found there is generally characterized by an absence of the Levalloisian technique of chipping flint and thus differs from the well-defined Middle Paleolithic industries known elsewhere in the Middle East. The economic and social level associated with this industry is that of fairly small, peripatetic hunting and gathering groups spread out over a thinly settled landscape.
Locally, the Mousterian is followed by an Upper Paleolithic flint industry called the Baradostian. Radiocarbon dates suggest that this is one of the earliest Upper Paleolithic complexes; it may have begun as early as 36,000 bc . Its relationship to neighbouring industries, however, remains unclear. Possibly, after some cultural and typological discontinuity, perhaps caused by the maximum cold of the last phase of the Würm glaciation, the Baradostian was replaced by a local Upper Paleolithic industry called the Zarzian. This tool tradition, probably dating to the period 12,000 to 10,000 bc , marks the end of the Iranian Paleolithic sequence.
Evidence indicates that the Middle East in general was one of the earliest areas in the Old World to experience what the Australian archaeologist V. Gordon Childe called the Neolithic revolution. That revolution witnessed the development of settled village agricultural life based firmly on the domestication of plants and animals. Iran has yielded much evidence on the history of these important developments. From the early Neolithic Period (sometimes called the Mesolithic, or Middle Stone Age) comes evidence of significant shifts in tool manufacture, settlement patterns, and subsistence methods, including the fumbling beginnings of domestication of both plants and animals, at such western Iranian sites as Āsīāb, Gūrān, Ganj Dareh (Ganj Darreh), and Ali Kosh. Similar developments in the Zagros Mountains, on the Iraqi side of the modern border, are also traceable at sites such as Karīm Shahīr and Zawi Chemi–Shanidar. This phase of early experimentation with sedentary life and domestication was soon followed by a period of fully developed village farming as defined at important Zagros sites such as Jarmo, Sarāb, upper Ali Kosh, and upper Gūrān. All these sites date wholly or in part to the 8th and 7th millennia bc .
By approximately 6000 bc these patterns of village farming were widely spread over much of the Iranian plateau and in lowland Khūzestān. Tepe Sabz in Khūzestān, Hajji Firuz in Azerbaijan, Godin Tepe VII in northeastern Lorestān, Tepe Sialk I on the rim of the central salt desert, and Tepe Yahya VI C–E in the southeast are all sites that have yielded evidence of fairly sophisticated patterns of agricultural life (Roman numerals identify the level of excavation). Though distinctly different, all show general cultural connections with the beginnings of settled village life in neighbouring areas such as Afghanistan, Baluchistan, Central Asia, and Mesopotamia.
Rather less is known of the cultures in this time range in Iran than of contemporary cultures elsewhere in the ancient Middle East. Research has tended to concentrate on the Neolithic and protohistoric periods, and the scattered evidence for important cultural and artistic developments in the Chalcolithic Period (Copper Age) and Early Bronze Age resists coherent summary. It is clear that trends that began in the late Neolithic Period continued in the millennia that followed and that the rugged, broken landscape of the Iranian plateau forced people into a variety of relatively isolated cultures. In no instance, with the important exception of Elam (see The Elamites, below), did Iran participate in the developments that led to fully urban civilization in lowland Mesopotamia to the west or in the Indus valley to the east. Throughout prehistory the Iranian plateau remained at the economic and cultural level of village life achieved in the Neolithic Period. The separate cultural areas on the plateau are as yet barely understood by the modern archaeologist in any terms other than through the painted pottery assemblages found at several sites throughout Iran. Though they developed in comparative isolation, each of these areas does yield some evidence of cultural contact with its immediate neighbours and, in some striking cases, with developments in the centres of higher civilization in Mesopotamia. Trade would appear to be the principal mechanism by which such contacts were maintained, and often Elam appears to have acted as an intermediary between Sumer and Babylon on the one hand and the plateau cultures on the other. Trade across the northern part of the plateau, through the sites of Tepe Hissar and Sialk, most probably involved transshipping semiprecious stones such as lapis lazuli from Afghanistan to Mesopotamia. The appearance of proto-Elamite tablets in Sialk IV may bear witness to such trade. So also may the appearance of similar proto-Elamite tablets at Tepe Yahya south of Kermān and in the great central desert provide evidence of trade connections between Mesopotamia and the east—in this case a trade that may have centred on specific items such as steatite and copper. Parsa perhaps also participated in such trade networks, as is suggested by the appearance there, alongside strictly local ceramics, of wares that have clear Mesopotamian affinities. In the west-central Zagros, outside influences from both the north and the west can be traced in the ceramic record; such is also the case for local cultures in Azerbaijan to the northwest. In general, however, these millennia represent a major dark age in Iranian prehistory and warrant considerably more attention than they have received.
The beginning of this period is generally characterized by an even more marked isolation of the plateau than earlier, while the latter half of the period is one of major new disruptions, heretofore unique in Iranian history, that laid the groundwork for developments in the protohistoric period. In northwestern and central western Iran, local cultures, as yet barely defined beyond their ceramic parameters, developed in relative isolation from events elsewhere. All occupation had ceased at Tepe Sialk, but the painted pottery cultures characteristic of earlier Hissar and of the sites in the Gorgān lowland in the northeast continued. Little Mesopotamian influence is evident, though some contacts between Elam and the plateau remained. Beginning perhaps as early as 2400 bc but more probably somewhat later, a radical transformation occurred in the culture of the northeast: earlier painted potteries were entirely replaced by a distinctive gray or gray-black ceramic associated with a variety of other artifacts, primarily weapons and ornaments in copper or bronze, which were also unique. Whether this cultural change represents a strictly local development or testifies to an important intrusion of new peoples into the area is still under debate. In any case, none of these developments can be traced to Mesopotamia or to other areas to the west, regions which had previously been the sources of outside influences on the Iranian plateau. Somewhat later the local cultures of central and northwestern Iran were apparently influenced by developments in northern Mesopotamia and Assyria, along patterns of contact that had been well established in earlier periods. Yet this contact, as it is observed at Godin III, Hasanlu VI, and Dinkha Tepe, did not cause any major dislocation of local cultural patterns. In the second half of the 2nd millennium, however, western Iran—at first perhaps gradually and then with striking suddenness—came under the influence of the gray and gray-black ware cultures that had developed earlier in the northeast. There the impact of these influences was such as to definitely suggest a major cultural dislocation and the introduction of a whole new culture—and probably a new people—into the Zagros. It was this development that marked the end of the Bronze Age in western Iran and ushered in the early protohistoric period.
Whereas the Iranian plateau did not experience the rise of urban, literate civilization in the late 4th and early 3rd millennia on the Mesopotamian pattern, lowland Khūzestān did. There Elamite civilization was centred. Geographically, Elam included more than Khūzestān; 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 (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 but 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.
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 (Shūstar) dynasty. The 11th king of this line entered into treaty relations with the great Naram-Sin of Akkad (reigned c. 254–c. 2218 bc ). Yet a new ruling house soon appeared, the Simash dynasty (Simash may have been in the mountains of southern Lorestān). 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 mid 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 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 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 occurred possibly in the late 16th century bc , is buried in silence.
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 modern Khūzestān. 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 Dūr Untash (modern Choghā Zanbīl). In the years immediately following Untash-Gal’s reign, Elam increasingly found itself in real or potential conflict with the rising power of Assyria. Tukulti-Ninurta I of Assyria campaigned in the mountains north of Elam in the latter part of the 13th century bc . The Elamites under Kidin-Khutran, the 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 I (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 Diyālā River area and into the very heart of Mesopotamia. Shutruk-Nahhunte I 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 Kirkūk. 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. 1119–c. 1098 bc ) attacked Elam and was just barely thwarted. 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 bc .
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. During the next century the Elamites constantly attempted 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 produced a near total collapse of any meaningful central authority in Elam. In an effort to clean up a political and diplomatic mess that had become a chronic headache for the Assyrians, Ashurbanipal’s armies mounted a series of campaigns between 692 and 639 bc that utterly destroyed Susa, pulling down buildings, looting, and sowing the land of Elam with salt.
The beginning of the Iron Age is marked by major dislocations of cultural and historical patterns in western Iran (almost nothing is known of the eastern half of the plateau in the Iron Age). The Iron Age itself is divided into three periods: Iron Age I (c. 1300–c. 1000 bc ), Iron Age II (c. 1000–c. 800/750 bc ), and Iron Age III (c. 750–c. 550 bc ). The latter is the archaeological equivalent of what historically can be called the Median period.
Though isolated groups of speakers of Indo-European languages had appeared and disappeared in western Iran in the 2nd millennium bc , it was during the Iron Age that the Indo-European Iranians rose to be the dominant force on the plateau. By the mid-9th century bc two major groups of Iranians appeared in cuneiform sources: the Medes and the Persians. Of the two the Medes were the more widespread and, from an Assyrian point of view, the more important group. When Assyrian armies raided as far east as modern Hamadān, they found only Medes. In the more western Zagros they encountered Medes mixed with non-Iranian indigenous peoples. Early in the 1st millennium 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 modern Kermānshāh, later certainly in the southwestern Zagros somewhere near the borders of Elam, and eventually, of course, in the region of Fārs. 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 Elburz Mountains and, as they entered the Zagros, spread out to the northwest and southeast following the natural topography of the mountains. Where they could, they infiltrated farther west—for example, along the major pass across the mountains from Hamadān to Kermānshāh. In doing so, they met resistance from the local settled populations, who often appealed to Urartu, Assyria, and Elam for assistance in holding back the newcomers. Such appeals were, of course, most welcome to these 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 gray and gray-black pottery into western Iran from the northeast, 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 it is a reasonable reading of the combined evidence. If it is so, then the earliest Iranians in the Zagros Mountains can be dated to Iron Age I times, about 1300 bc . 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 bc , 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 kingdom in the 7th and early 6th centuries bc and the Iranianization of the whole of the Zagros Mountains.
Traditionally, the creator of the Median kingdom was one Deioces, who, according to Herodotus, reigned from 728 to 675 bc and founded the Median capital Ecbatana (modern Hamadān). Attempts have been made to associate Dāiukku, a local Zagros king mentioned in a cuneiform text as one of the captives deported to Assyria by Sargon II in 714 bc , with the Deioces of Herodotus, but such an association is highly unlikely. To judge from the Assyrian sources, no Median kingdom such as Herodotus describes for the reign of Deioces existed in the early 7th century bc ; at best, he is reporting a Median legend of the founding of their kingdom.
According to Herodotus, Deioces was succeeded by his son Phraortes (reigned 675–653 bc ), who subjugated the Persians and lost his life in a premature attack against the Assyrians. Some of this tale may be true. 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 bc ). 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 bc and with increasing impact in the late 8th and early 7th centuries, groups of nomadic warriors 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 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 covering the years 653 to 625 bc . 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 7th century bc there were a great many Scythians in western Iran, that they—along with the Medes and other groups—posed a serious threat to Assyria, and that their appearance threw previous power alignments quite out of balance.
Herodotus reports how, under Cyaxares of Media (625–585 bc ), 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, archers, 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 bc , surrounded Nineveh in 614 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 Babylonian King Nabopolassar’s son, Nebuchadrezzar II (605–562 bc ). In 612 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-uballiṭ II, disappeared from history in 609.
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 bc , probably through the mediation of the Babylonians, peace was established between Media and Lydia, and the Halys (Kızıl) 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, perhaps as far as the area of modern Tehrān; and all of southwestern Iran, including Fārs. 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 royal title, king of kings.
Astyages followed his father, Cyaxares, on the Median throne (585–550 bc ). 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 Medians were soon overthrown by the rise to power in the Iranian world of Cyrus II (the Great) of Persia.
The ruling dynasty of the Persians that was settled in Fārs in southwestern Iran (possibly the Parsumash of the later Assyrian records) traced its ancestry back to an eponymous ancestor, Hāxamanish, or Achaemenes. There is no historical evidence of such a king’s existence. Traditionally, three rulers fell between Achaemenes and Cyrus II: Teispes, Cyrus I, and Cambyses I. 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 bc , though there are chronological problems involved with this equation. When Median control over the Persians was supposedly reasserted under Cyaxares, Cambyses I is thought to have been given a reunited Persia to administer as a Median vassal. His son, Cyrus II, married the daughter of Astyages and in 559 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 king. He united under his authority several Persian and Iranian groups who apparently had not been under his father’s control. He then initiated diplomatic exchanges with Nabonidus of Babylon (556–539 bc ), 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 the Median empire became the first Persian empire, and the Achaemenian kings appeared on the international scene with a suddenness that must have frightened many.
Cyrus immediately set out to expand his conquests. After apparently convincing the Babylonians that they had nothing to fear from Persia, 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 bc 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. 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 Persian 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.
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 full 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. The writer of Deutero-Isaiah, speaking for many of the captive Jews in Babylon, undoubtedly represented the hopes of many of Nabonidus’s subjects that Cyrus was 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 bc , seized the hands of the statue of the city 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 Persian power to the borders of Egypt, for with Babylon came all that it had seized from the Assyrians and gained in the sequel.
Little is known of the remainder of Cyrus’s 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 Persian 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 conquered in the east is uncertain. What is clear is that he lost his life in 529 bc , fighting somewhere in the region of the Oxus (Amu Darya) and Jaxartes (Syr Darya) rivers.
On the death of Cyrus the Great, the empire passed to his son, Cambyses II (reigned 529–522 bc ). There may have been some degree of unrest throughout the empire at the time of Cyrus’s death, for Cambyses apparently felt it necessary to secretly kill his brother, Bardiya (Smerdis), in order to protect his rear while leading the campaign against Egypt in 525. The pharaoh Ahmose II of the 26th dynasty sought to shore up his defenses by hiring Greek mercenaries but was betrayed by the Greeks. Cambyses successfully managed to cross the hostile Sinai Desert, traditionally Egypt’s first and strongest line of defense, and brought the Egyptians under Psamtik III, son and successor of Ahmose, to battle at Pelusium. The Egyptians lost and retired to Memphis, which subsequently fell to the Persians. Three subsidiary campaigns were then mounted, all of which are reported as failures: one against Carthage, though the Phoenician sailors, who were the backbone of the Persian 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 bc news reached Cambyses of a revolt in Iran led by an impostor claiming to be Bardiya, Cambyses’ brother. Several provinces of the empire accepted the new ruler, who bribed his subjects by remitting taxes for three years. Cambyses died—possibly by his own hand but more probably from infection following an accidental sword wound—as he hastened home to regain control. 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, partly because of the prejudices of Herodotus’s Egyptian informers and partly because of the propagandist motives of Darius I. 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 I, called the Great, tells in detail the story of the overthrow of the false Bardiya and of the first year of his own rule in his famous royal inscription cut on a rock face at the base of Mount Bīsotūn, a few miles east of modern Kermānshāh. Some historians consider Darius’s account to be mere propaganda and argue instead that Bardiya was not an imposter. According to Darius, six leading Achaemenian nobles assisted in slaying the imposter and together proclaimed Darius the rightful heir of Cambyses. Darius was a member of the Achaemenian royal house. His great-grandfather was Ariaramnes, son of Teispes, who had shared power in Persia with his brother Cyrus I. Ariaramnes’ son, Arsames, and his grandson, Hystaspes (Darius’s 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’s own inscriptions. Hystaspes was, however, an important royal prince and apparently the governor of Persis. 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 the revolts associated with Bardiya’s claim to the throne and Darius’s 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-coordinated 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 Persian-controlled provinces. Expansion in the west began about 516 bc 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, 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 River. He retreated in good order, however, with only limited losses, and a bridgehead across the Hellespont was established.
Perhaps partly in response to these developments or perhaps for more purely internal reasons, the Ionian Greek cities on the west coast of Asia Minor revolted against Persian rule in 500 bc . The Persians were apparently taken by surprise, and at first the rebellion prospered. The Ionians received some limited assistance from the Athenians and in 498 felt strong enough to make another offensive. With one hand Darius negotiated; with the other he assembled a counterattack. The first Persian military efforts proved only partially successful, however, and the Ionians enjoyed another respite in the years 496–495. A renewed Persian offensive in 494 was successful. The Greek fleet was badly beaten off Miletus, and the Persian land army began a systematic reduction of the rebel cities. About 492 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 Xerxes was able to levy troops in this region with little trouble.
By 492 bc Mardonius had also recovered Persian Thrace and Macedonia, first gained in the campaign against the Scythians and lost during the Ionian revolt. There followed the Persian invasion of Greece that led to Darius’s 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 Persians 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, coordinated scale. These plans were interrupted in 486 by two events: a serious revolt in Egypt, and the death of Darius.
Xerxes (reigned 486–465 bc ), Darius’s 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, 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 484. 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, he ruthlessly ignored Egyptian forms of rule and imposed his will on the rebellious province in a thoroughly Persian 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 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 naught, and the Persian land forces marched on Athens, taking and burning the Acropolis. But the Persian 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-Persian forces), and the Persian naval loss at Mycale in 479. Of the three, the Persian 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 Persian forces collapsed. Time and again in later years this was to be the pattern in such encounters, for the Persians 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 Persian 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. Harem intrigues, which were steadily to sap the strength and vitality of the Achaemenian Empire, led to the king’s assassination in 465 bc .
The death of Xerxes was a major turning point in Achaemenian 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 (reigned 465–425 bc ), Xerxes II (425–424), and Darius II Ochus (423–404)—were all comparatively weak as individuals and as 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, not fully suppressed until 454. An advantageous peace (the Peace of Callias) with Athens was signed in 448 bc , whereby the Persians agreed to stay out of the Aegean and the Athenians agreed to leave Asia Minor to the Achaemenids. Athens broke the peace in 439 in an attack on Samos, and in its aftermath the Persians made some military gains in the west. Xerxes II ruled only about 45 days and was killed while 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, which was fought, with occasional pauses, over the latter decades of the 5th century 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 Persians in bribing first one Greek state and then another. Initially the Persians encouraged Athens against Sparta and from this gained the Peace of Callias. Then, after the disastrous Athenian campaign against Sicily in 413, the Persians intervened on Sparta’s side. By the treaty of Miletus in 412, the Persians 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 the fall of Athens in 404 bc . Despite the fact that the Persians played the two sides against each other to their own 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 coordinated Persian intervention in the Greek war. When Egypt revolted in 405 bc , Persia was unable to do much about it, and from that point forward Egypt remained essentially an independent state.
Artaxerxes II came to the throne in 404 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 Persians; 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 Persians, the principal issue again being the Greek cities of Asia Minor. While Sparta played one Persian governor in Anatolia against the other, the Persians spent gold in Greece to raise rebellion on Sparta’s home ground. The Persians 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 Persia, created a balance of power in Greece, and eventually Artaxerxes was able to step in, at the Greeks’ request, and dictate the so-called King’s Peace of 387–386 bc . Once again the Greeks gave up any claim to Asia Minor and further agreed to maintain the status quo in Greece itself.
Cyrus the Younger, though caught in an assassination attempt at the time of Artaxerxes’ coronation, was nevertheless forgiven and was returned to the command of a province in Asia Minor. But he revolted again in 401 bc 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 that summer. 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 Achaemenian history revealed more clearly to the Greeks the essential internal weakness of the Achaemenian Empire than the escape of so large a body of men from the very heart of the Persian domain.
Since 379 bc Artaxerxes had been gathering Greek mercenaries in order to mount a campaign against Egypt. An attack in 373 failed against the native Egyptian 30th dynasty. On the heels of this failure came the revolt of the satraps, or provincial governors. Several satraps rose against the central power, and one, Aroandas (Orontes), a 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 coordinate their march eastward through Syria with an Egyptian attack, under the king Tachos, and support by Greek mercenaries. The Egyptian attack was called off because of a revolt in Egypt by Tachos’s brother, and Artaxerxes managed to defeat the satraps who were left alone to face the king’s wrath. 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 Artaxerxes. 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 repulsed in 351. This setback encouraged revolt in Sidon and eventually in all of Palestine and Phoenicia. Parts of Cilicia joined the rebellion, but the revolt there was crushed in 345, the same year it had begun. 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. Led by Artaxerxes III himself, it succeeded in 343 bc . But the local Egyptian dynasty fled south to Nubia, where it maintained an independent kingdom that kept alive the hopes of a dynastic revival. Persia then misplayed its hand in Greece by refusing aid to Athens against the rising power of Philip II of Macedon. In 339 bc Persian 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 Artaxerxes’ youngest son, Arses, king (338–336 bc ) in hopes of being the power behind the throne, but Arses did not bend easily to Bagoas’s 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 of the Achaemenian Empire came soon afterward, in May 334, when he lost 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 Achaemenian Empire—rebellions, murders, weak kings trapped in the harems, missed chances, and foolish policies—cannot be the whole story. The sources, mostly Greek, are often prejudiced against the Persians 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.
The culture that developed under the Achaemenids 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 Achaemenian period and therefore perhaps an early Iranian contribution to general Middle Eastern society and culture.
The languages of the empire were as varied as its peoples. The Persians, at least originally, spoke Old Persian, a southwestern dialect of Iranian (Median was a northwestern Iranian dialect), and were a nonliterate society. 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 Bīsotūn (the inscriptions in Old Persian attributed to earlier kings were likely written during the reign of Darius or are later historical forgeries). That few could read Old Persian might be the reason why Darius at Bīsotūn established the tradition that royal inscriptions 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 Persis 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 Middle Persian of Sāsānian times, can already be seen in the Old Persian royal inscriptions of late Achaemenian times. (See also Iranian languages.)
Little is known of Iranian social organization in the period. In general, it was based on feudal lines that were drawn in part by economic and social functions. 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 title king 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 Persian culture.
Iranian religion in the pre-Achaemenian and Achaemenian periods is a subject on which there is little scholarly agreement. When the Iranians first entered the dim light of the protohistoric period, they were certainly polytheists whose religious beliefs and practices closely paralleled other Indo-Iranian and Indo-European groups 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.
Probably about 600 bc there arose in the northeast of the plateau the great Iranian religious prophet and teacher Zoroaster (Zarathushtra). 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 Mazdā, who, it seems likely, was a creation, in name and attributes, of Zoroaster. Though in a certain sense technically monotheistic, early Zoroastrianism viewed the world in strongly dualistic terms, for Ahura Mazdā and the “Lie” were deeply involved in a struggle for the human soul. Zoroaster, as might be expected, attempted to reform earlier Iranian religious practices and beliefs. He first rejected and then perhaps allowed in a modified form the practice of the haoma cult, clearly condemned the practice of animal sacrifice, and elevated to central importance in the ritual a reverence for fire. Fire worship, however, is a misnomer, because the Zoroastrians have never worshiped 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 I was, and almost certainly Xerxes I and his successors were. Such a simple answer to the question is possible, however, only if it is understood that Zoroastrianism as a religion had already undergone considerable development and modification since Zoroaster’s lifetime, influenced by the beliefs and practices and by the religions of those people of the Middle East with whom the expanding Iranians had intimate contact.
The god of the Achaemenian kings was the great Ahura Mazdā, 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 Mazdā remains supreme. Darius names only Ahura Mazdā in his inscriptions. More significant, however, is Darius’s 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 Achaemenian religion.
There may have been religious overtones in the quarrel between Cambyses and Darius on the one hand and the false Bardiya—a magus, or Median priest—on the other. Certainly there were religious as well as political motivations behind Xerxes’ suppression of the daeva ( deva) worshipers 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 believers in foreign religions, which in the light of Zoroaster’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 Anāhitā (Anahīti) had been accepted in the royal religion alongside Ahura Mazdā.
Thus, in a sense, the Achaemenian 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 Sāsānian period, was an amalgam of such popular cults, of the religion of the Achaemenian court, and of the teachings of the prophet in their purer form. (See also Zoroastrianism.)
Achaemenian art, like Achaemenian 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 yakā-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 Persians’ 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 Persians 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 the Persian homeland (Fārs), and at Persepolis, the neighbouring city founded by Darius the Great and used by all his successors, one can trace to a foreign origin almost all the details in the construction and embellishment of the architecture and the sculptured reliefs, but the conception, planning, and overall finished product are distinctly Persian and could not have been created by any of the foreign groups who supplied the king of kings with artistic talent. This was true also of the decorative arts, at which the Persians excelled: fine metal tableware, jewelry, seal cutting, weaponry and its decoration, and pottery.
It has been suggested that the Persians 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 as sophisticated nor as 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. To show this, 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 Achaemenian gold work, which inscriptions suggest may have been a specialty of the Medes, was in the tradition of the delicate metalwork found in Iron Age II times at Hasanlu and still earlier at Marlik. Persepolis, primarily the creation of Darius and Xerxes, is one of the great artistic legacies of the ancient world, with its carefully proportioned and well-organized ground plan, rich architectural ornament, and magnificent decorative reliefs.
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 went in the hot summer months to Ecbatana (modern Hamadān), probably in the spring to Persepolis in Fārs, and perhaps sometimes to Babylon. In a smaller version it traveled with the king when he was away in the provinces.
The provinces, or satrapies, were ruled by satraps (governors), 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 modeled 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 directly controlled 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 traveled throughout the empire and who reported directly back to the king on what they learned. The number of provinces and their boundaries varied greatly from time to time; at the beginning of Darius’s reign there were 20 provinces. In general, as time went on, the number increased, partly because of the need to reassert control over the satraps by decreasing their power base, partly because the feudal structure that underlay Persian society required rewarding more and more people with a role in government, and partly because the original 20 provinces 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 Persians to fight for the king, was replaced by a professional standing army supplemented by a troop levy from the subject peoples in times 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 guard, as did Darius on the death of Cambyses, usually controlled all. The troops of the imperial levy fought alongside 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 Achaemenian 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, Persian 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 religions, customs, methods of doing business, and even to some extent forms of government. This policy was exemplified by Cyrus’s 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. Perhaps even in the later empire, rebellious peoples, governments, and leaders were too often forgiven and not suppressed with the thoroughness sometimes characteristic of other regimes. Lapses in 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 Persian, or imperial, law, based ultimately on the authority of the great king. A new word for law appeared in the Middle East in Achaemenian times, the Iranian dāta, and was borrowed by the Semitic languages used in the empire. In Babylonian and Aramaic, sources give evidence for Persian judges called by the Iranian word dāta-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 of the conquered lands were the actual property of the king. Thus taxes were rather rents, and the Persians and their land, Fārs, by virtue of not being a conquered people or land, were always tax-free. Each province was required to pay yearly a fixed amount in gold or silver, and each vassal state paid a fixed tribute in kind. Again going on the Babylonian evidence, in previous times agricultural taxes had been levied in fixed amounts regardless of the fluctuating quality of the harvest, but 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 production average.
Breakdowns often occurred in the Achaemenids’ effort to maintain a productive balance between local social structures, customs, laws, and government and the demands of the empire. The failure of the Persians to find such a balance when dealing with what was for them an 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 Achaemenian rule that the economy of the empire went into a decline that undoubtedly contributed significantly to the eventual political and military collapse. Wealth in the Achaemenian 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 encouraging agriculture by investing state funds and effort in irrigation and the improvement of horticulture.
They also invested in and endeavoured to promote 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 developing 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, that connected the Nile to 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. Imperial standardized weights and measures, efforts to develop and use coinage, and standardizing that coinage in the king’s name were all policies intended to encourage commerce and economic activity within the realm.
Banking also 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 clearly more and more such borrowers, for the later empire is marked by a general economic decline. The principal cause of 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 general circulation. Disastrous inflation was the result. The large sums of money paid to foreign mercenaries and as bribes to foreign governments must also have 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 Achaemenian Persians was that they ruled with such creative tolerance over an area and a time that, for both the Middle East and for Europe, included 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 Achaemenian Empire—the largest anyone had ever yet tried to hold together and one that was not 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 era was one of 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 bases of the individual civilizations of Babylon, Egypt, or Greece. In a sense, the Achaemenian Persians passed on a concept of empire that, much modified by others, has remained something of a model 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 Achaemenian Empire is seen as the beginning of the Iranian nation, one of the pivotal peoples in the modern Middle East.
