Making (Up) History

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The ancient Persian empire, founded by Cyrus the Great (559–530 B.C.), was on the verge of chaos. In 525 B.C. Cyrus’s son and successor, Cambyses II, led a campaign in Egypt to expand the empire’s territories. Just three years later, however, Cambyses was forced to return to Persia to put down a revolt by his brother, Bardiya, but the king died on the journey.

The revolt was quelled by a man named Darius, who later became known as Darius the Great (522–486 B.C.). According to an inscription left by Darius at Mount Bisitun (or Behistun) in present-day Kermanshah, Iran, 014the man who claimed to be Bardiya was really an imposter named Gaumata, whom Darius called “the Magus.” The real Bardiya had died some years earlier, perhaps even murdered by Cambyses himself.

This kingdom that Gaumata the Magus stripped from Cambyses, that kingship from long ago had belonged to our family … No one dared to say anything about Gaumata the Magus, until I came … Afterwards I beseeched [the god] Ahuramazda; Ahuramazda bore me aid … then I with a few men slew that Gaumata the Magus and those who were his foremost followers. I took the kingship from him … The kingship that had been taken away from our family, that I reinstated.¹

The fifth-century B.C. Greek historian Herodotus provides colorful details about Darius’s seizure of the throne, but his account does not always square with Darius’s.² For example, Herodotus credits a nobleman named Otanes with organizing resistance to the rebel Smerdis (Herodotus’s name for Bardiya/Gaumata)—whereas Darius, in the Bisitun Inscription (DB §68), includes Otanes in a list of his helpers. In Herodotus’s version, Darius was only a late addition to the plot, though he did strike the killing blow against Bardiya/Smerdis/Gaumata. The conspirators, Herodotus tells us, decided to leave the selection of the next king to portent: The rider of the first horse to neigh at 015sunrise would become king. Darius’s groomsman, Oebares, allowed his master’s horse to mate with a favorite mare at the site of the contest, so when the riders approached the site the next morning,

Darius’ horse plunged forward and neighed. At the same time this happened, there was a flash of lightning from a clear sky, and thunder. These additional signs clinched the selection for Darius (3.84-86).

Once in power, Darius had to deal with rebellions throughout the empire: Elam, Babylonia, Media, Assyria, Egypt, Parthia, Armenia, Margiana (in modern Turkmenistan), Sagartia (in central Iran), Sattagydia (in modern Afghanistan), Scythia and Lydia. By 519 B.C. Darius was in full control, and the empire that Cyrus and Cambyses had built was intact.

Although Darius claimed that he was the legitimate successor to Cambyses (“The kingship that had been taken away from our family, that I reinstated”), the fact that he encountered so many rebellions—some in the very core of the empire—suggests that his claims were not, at least initially, recognized. (Indeed, Herodotus’s very different account reveals that Darius’s version was not the only one in circulation.) In the early years of his reign, therefore, Darius moved quickly to put his own imprint upon the Persian empire—in texts, monumental architecture and art. He not only used brute force to put down rebellions across the realm, but he created and solidified his royal lineage through propaganda.³

In particular, Darius formulated the Achaemenid dynasty, named after an ancestor named Achaemenes, to justify his succession to power. The term “Achaemenid” is still used by scholars to refer to the entire line of kings from Cyrus II (Cyrus the Great) to Darius III, whose defeat by Alexander in 331 B.C. ended the Persian empire.

Darius gives his version of the events of this turbulent period in the monumental Bisitun Inscription, which was inscribed in the Elamite, Babylonian Akkadian and Old Persian languages.^a Darius also dispatched this account throughout the empire, as we know from an Aramaic copy found at Elephantine in Egypt and from fragmented inscriptions found in Babylon.

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The Bisitun Inscription, which was carved high up on Mount Bisitun’s sheer cliff face, consists of the trilingual text and a central relief scene. This scene is all that would have been discernible from the road, some 150 feet below; it shows an over-sized, triumphant Darius hailing the god Ahuramazda (the winged disk figure) and resting one foot upon the prostrate Gaumata (Bardiya/Smerdis). Behind (to the left of) Darius are two attendants; in front of Darius stand the nine rebels he defeated, each of whom is bound by a rope attached to his neck. The captions identifying the rebels were placed above and below the figures, or on the figure itself (for example, on the third rebel from the left, Phraortes). The addition of the final figure, Skunkha the Scythian, necessitated the obliteration of part of the Elamite version of the inscription. A full copy of the Elamite version was subsequently added to the lower left of the relief, below the Babylonian version, with the Old Persian version inscribed directly beneath the relief.

In the text, Darius traces his lineage to one Achaemenes:

My father is Hystaspes, the father of Hystaspes is Arsames, the father of Arsames was Ariaramnes, the father of Ariaramnes was Teispes, the father of Teispes was Achaemenes … For this reason we are called “Achaemenids” (DB §2–3).

Teispes was the great-grandfather of Cyrus the Great (and the father of Cyrus I, about whom very little is known). Darius thus claims a shared descent with Cyrus from Achaemenes.^b However, this claim to a common ancestry is exaggerated and misleading, if not an outright lie.⁴

In his own dedicatory inscriptions, all from Babylonia, Cyrus II emphasized his lineage as “king of Anshan,” a center of great importance throughout most of Elamite history. This is curious in that the archaeological record suggests that Anshan ceased to be an important urban center by about 1100 B.C.⁵ Although 017we know little about the region Cyrus ruled before he began his conquests, the title “king of Anshan” appears to have been a modification of the traditional title “king of Anshan and Susa,” which was used by many Elamite kings during the Middle Elamite and early Neo-Elamite periods (c. 1400–700 B.C.).

In the Cyrus Cylinder, a 10-inch-long clay barrel modeled after Assyrian and Babylonian foundation inscriptions, Cyrus traces his lineage through three generations:

I am Cyrus, king of the world, great king, strong king, king of Babylon, king of Sumer and Akkad, king of the four quarters [of the world], son of Cambyses the great king, king of Anshan, grandson of Cyrus the great king, king of Anshan, great-grandson of Teispes the great king, king of Anshan (lines 20–21).

Cyrus is called “king of Anshan” earlier in this inscription (line 12) and in a dedicatory brick inscription from Ur. Cyrus adopted the grander, Mesopotamian-styled titulary (“king of Babylon, king of Sumer and Akkad, king of the four quarters”) at the appropriate point in the Cyrus Cylinder. The title “king of Anshan” clearly resonated with Cyrus, even after his extensive conquests; he clearly felt, at some level, that he was the heir and conveyor of an Elamite tradition.

Cyrus’s new capital of Pasargadae, about 50 miles southeast of Anshan, was to serve as a physical statement of the empire’s power and prestige. Although not much of the city remains, its ruins are enough to suggest its former grandeur: palace complexes, gardens, a sacred precinct and the Zendan (a 45-foot-high stone tower, called the “Prison of Solomon” by the Persian poet Firdausi [940–1020 A.D.]). Many of Pasargadae’s buildings were unfinished when Cyrus died, and some of these were completed by Darius⁶—a sign of piety to his predecessor and, perhaps more significantly, an opportunity to promote his 018own dynastic agenda. Several cuneiform inscription fragments have been found at the site, but only two inscriptions survive in full: CMa and CMc (CMb is fragmentary). The inscriptions were written in Elamite, Akkadian and, in the case of CMa, Old Persian:

I am Cyrus the king, an Achaemenid. (CMa)

Cyrus the great king, an Achaemenid. (CMc)

These inscriptions link Cyrus with the Achaemenid lineage espoused by Darius. There is no mention in the Pasargadae inscriptions of Anshan or any of Cyrus’s predecessors. The authorship of these inscriptions, however, has been the subject of acrimonious debates in modern scholarship. They were likely the work of Darius, who installed them to link himself to the dynastic line of Cyrus the Great, founder of the empire.⁷

Once these inscriptions are attributed to Darius, there is no compelling reason to label Cyrus an Achaemenid. Cyrus traced his lineage only to Teispes, and he emphasized his dynastic line’s kingship of Anshan. Although Cyrus ruled the territory of Parsa (at that time, Parsa was geographically synonymous with Anshan, that part of Iran roughly equivalent to modern Fars), his titulary retained an Elamite focus. Darius, on the other hand, never used the toponym “Anshan” and called himself instead the “king of Parsa” (that is, “king of Persia”). Elamites and Persians had clearly been living together in Parsa/Fars for quite some time, and Elamite influence on the Persians was pervasive.⁸ But the choice of titulary reflected a deliberate emphasis: Elamite for Cyrus, and Persian for Darius.

What do we make, then, of Darius’s claims of legitimacy via a familial link with Cyrus? Did he make it up out of thin air?

Maybe not. In the Bisitun Inscription (DB §10), Darius refers to Cambyses II (the son of Cyrus the Great) as a member of Darius’s family (that is, as an Achaemenid). Darius’s claim that Cambyses was “of our family” may be reconciled through the person of Cambyses’s mother, Cassandane, an Achaemenid woman who married Cyrus. According to Herodotus, “Cambyses was the son of Cassandane, the daughter of Pharnaspes, an Achaemenid” (History 2.1). Herodotus also noted her death and the subsequent mourning:

He [Cambyses] was the son of Cyrus and Cassandane, the daughter of Pharnaspes, and Cassandane had died before Cyrus himself; Cyrus had mourned greatly for her and instructed all his subjects to do likewise. Cambyses, then, was a son of this woman and Cyrus (3.2).

No Near Eastern source mentions the name of Cyrus’s wife and Cambyses’s mother, but her death in 538 019B.C. is described in a document from Babylon called the Nabonidus Chronicle:

In the month [Adar] the wife of the king died. From the twenty-seventh of the month Adar [February-March] to the third of the month Nisan [March-April] there was mourning in Akkad. All the people bared their heads.⁹

In describing Cassandane’s death, Herodotus clearly used the Nabonidus Chronicle, or they shared the same source. What Herodotus supplied for us is her name and her clan affiliation: “Achaemenid.”

Darius may well have linked Cambyses to his family (or, more broadly, his clan, the Achaemenids) through Cassandane’s marriage to Cyrus the Great. In the Bisitun Inscription, Darius strengthened this shared descent with Cyrus by stating that Cyrus’s great-grandfather, Teispes, was a son of Achaemenes. Thus Darius legitimized his own claim to the throne. That this claim was indeed problematic is also suggested by the fact that both Darius’s father, Hystaspes, and paternal grandfather, Arsames, were living when he took the throne, which vitiates Darius’s implication that the kingship had descended in a direct line to him.¹⁰ Notably, when Darius claimed in the Bisitun Inscription that he was the ninth king in succession, he did not provide the names of those who reigned before him (DB §4).

So who was this Darius who took control of a great empire in a time of turmoil and made it even greater, by extending its territories in central Asia and Europe?

According to Herodotus, Darius’s father, Hystaspes, served as governor (hyparch) of Persia under Cyrus the Great (History 3.70). In the Bisitun Inscription, on the other hand, Darius indicates that his father held an important post in Parthia (DB §35). Herodotus states that during Cambyses’s reign Darius himself was a “spear-bearer” (doryphuros) and thus “not yet a man of great account” (History 3.139). But Herodotus likely underestimates the importance of the Persian title “spear-bearer.” In an inscription from Darius’s tomb at Naqsh-i Rustam, one of Darius’s six co-conspirators, Gobryas, is also given the title “spear-bearer” (arshtibara in Old Persian), and it is clear from the context that this position was one of high honor.¹¹ Thus Darius held a position of influence under Cambyses and perhaps under Cyrus as well.¹²

Darius’s association with the god Ahuramazda tells us something about his background. Ahuramazda was the supreme god in Zoroastrianism,^c a religion that did not reach its mature form until the Sasanian period, around the third century A.D. The cultic strain observed by the Achaemenid kings is usually referred to as “Mazdaism.” Ahuramazda was probably not a new arrival in Parsa/Fars at this time, but there is little clear evidence of Mazdaism there before Darius’s reign. The prophet Zoroaster, for instance, is not mentioned in Persian texts of this 021period (though he is mentioned in fourth-century B.C. Greek sources). In any event, Zoroaster’s homeland, and thus the origins of Zoroastrianism, is thought to have been in eastern Iran. Darius’s introduction of Ahuramazda into his inscriptions is consistent with his emphasis on Persia, as opposed to Cyrus’s Elam. In some inscriptions, Darius even refers to his “Iranian” ethnicity.¹³

In taking power, Darius incorporated the empire founded by Cyrus II into his own “Achaemenid” Persian empire. He proclaimed his rule in numerous, monumental, trilingual inscriptions—for which he adapted cuneiform script for the Old Persian language. He built the magnificent citadel of Persepolis (see “Why Darius Built Persepolis,”) as a visual emblem of his power, a kind of panegyric in stone. And he continued the work of Cyrus in expanding the empire, eastward into central Asia (where Persian influence remained paramount for hundreds of years),^d and westward into Europe.

The ancient Persians are perhaps best known in the West for the incursions into Greece by Darius in 490 B.C. (a Persian force was defeated at the Battle of Marathon) and by Darius’s son and successor, Xerxes, in 480–479 B.C. Although defeated in a naval battle at Salamis, Xerxes destroyed Athens and posed a serious threat to Greek independence.^e

After Xerxes’s invasion of Greece, the empire built by Cyrus and Darius remained dynamic and active. The Achaemenids continued to rule a vast territory from modern Afghanistan to Libya, despite a civil war between Artaxerxes II and his brother, Cyrus the Younger, which lasted from 404 to 401 B.C. (immortalized by Xenophon’s Anabasis and Plutarch’s Life of Artaxerxes), and also despite the successful revolt (also in 404) of Egypt, which was not reintegrated into the Persian empire until 342.¹⁴ The Persian empire left a massive imprint on Central Asia, the Middle East and the West. Its like was not seen again until the Roman Empire under Augustus, and has been seldom seen since.

The ancient Persian empire, founded by Cyrus the Great (559–530 B.C.), was on the verge of chaos. In 525 B.C. Cyrus’s son and successor, Cambyses II, led a campaign in Egypt to expand the empire’s territories. Just three years later, however, Cambyses was forced to return to Persia to put down a revolt by his brother, Bardiya, but the king died on the journey. The revolt was quelled by a man named Darius, who later became known as Darius the Great (522–486 B.C.). According to an inscription left by Darius at Mount Bisitun (or Behistun) in present-day Kermanshah, Iran, […]