After the conquest, the Achaemenids retained the royal residences of the conquered states for themselves: Ecbatana, Sardis, Bactra, Babylon, Susa, Sais, and Memphis. Even after the foundation of Pasargadae in Persia, all of these capitals retained an eminent place in the new Empire, but with different roles. Some, such as Memphis, were reduced to the rank of satrapal capital or subsatrapal capital (e. g., Damascus); others, like Sardis in the west or Bactra in the east, represented centers of Persian authority over wider regions; still others—Ecbatana, Babylon, and probably Susa—were promoted to royal residences in the full sense, while maintaining their position as satrapal capitals. In Ecbatana and Babylon there were not only royal archives and treasury but also one or more palaces where the king and his retinue could stay.
In the absence of systematic excavations, we know nothing of the royal palaces of Ecbatana except for the description given by Herodotus (1.98) and the late information from Polybius (X.27). Herodotus assigns the construction of the town to King Deioces, whom he presents as the founder of the Median kingdom. The building of a capital is understood as the act that founds a new state. According to Herodotus, the town developed around the palace and the treasuries and was surrounded by seven walls of different colors: white, black, purple, blue, and red-orange. The blue wall had silver battlements; the red-orange had golden battlements. On the other hand, in a description from the Hellenistic period, Polybius holds that Ecbatana was at this date “without fortifications.”
He stresses instead the splendor of the royal palace, enhanced by the gleam of the columns sheathed with plates of silver and gold and with tiles that “were all silver ” But it is not possible to determine what in a late text goes back to the Median period and what is the result of Achaemenid and (even later) Hellenistic alterations. What is certain is that Ecbatana continued to be one of the royal residences, with its palaces, treasuries, and archives. The town, moreover, constituted a strategic site for a power that was reaching toward Central Asia.
It is true that, beyond the proclamations of Cyrus himself, we do not know much of anything about the palaces of Babylon at the time of the conqueror and his son. We know, however, that several secondary residences provided with paradises were built in Babylon and that the king or his son stayed in them on occasion. In the Cyropaedia, Xenophon assigns a central position to Babylon in the organization of the imperial space. This is where he places the principal decisions made by the conqueror regarding imperial administration (VII.5.37-86; VIII. 1-7). He even says (VIII.6.22) that the king spent seven months of the year at Babylon, which was deliberately chosen because of its location at the center of the Empire. There is little doubt in fact that the practice of periodically relocating the Achaemenid court was inaugurated during the reign of Cyrus. Finally, the excavations at Susa show that the Great Kings did not undertake any architectural or urbanization projects before the reign of Darius. Until that time, the remains at Susa reflect only the maintenance of Neo-Elamite cultural traditions. This observation implies not that Susa was not a residence under Cyrus and Cambyses but that at this time Susa had not yet achieved the place it would hold beginning with Darius.
Palace and Gardens ofPasargadae
In truth, Persia, cradle and nursery of the Persian people, continued to occupy a central place under Cyrus and Cambyses, especially on the ideological plane. It was in Persia that Cyrus decided to erect a new capital, Pasargadae, situated at a height of about 1900 m in the Zagros, some 40 km as the crow flies from the site of Persepolis. Strabo (XV.3.8-fr) describes the conditions of the foundation of the town in these terms:
Cyrus held Pasargadae in honour, because he there eonquered Astyages the Mede in his last
Battle, transfericd to himself the em|)ire of Asia, founded a city, and constructed a palace as
A memorial of his victory.
In reality, the link of cause and effect asserted by Strabo is dubious, for the battles won at Pasargadae against the Medes were not the last ones; far from it. At any rate, numerous archaeological arguments favor a date after the conquest of Sardis for the founding of Pasargadae.
It is well to recall that, according to Herodotus (1.1250), of the three tribes most important to the Persians, the Pasargadae were “the most distinguished; they contain the clan of the Achaemenidae from which sprung the Perseid kings.” The choice of site is thus explained most naturally by its location in the tribal territory of the Pasargadae (which was both ethnonym and toponym). Throughout Achaemenid history, Pasargadae was considered the town of Cyrus. Nevertheless, it is established that Darius furthered the work of Cyrus so well that the dating of the various monuments remains cloaked in considerable uncertainty. Two palaces, which the archaeologists call P and R, have been cleared. The dale of the first, a residential building in the full sense of the term, remains debated, the tendency being to attribute it to the reign of Darius. However, Palace R without doubt goes back to Cyrus. First, it fills the function of a monumental gateway providing aceess to the palace complex proper. It is also to the reign of Cyrus that the Zendan-i Sulaiman (“Prison of Solomon”) dates; it is a tower of scpiared stone, entered by a stairway, and its precise purpose has not been determined. Alexander the Great, sometimes ealled philokyros (‘friend of Cyrus’), stayed at Pasargadae twice, at the beginning of 330 and after his return from India. He took special care of the monumental tomb in which the founder of the Empire had been buried; his political acumen led him to demonstrate public admiration for Cyrus’s memory. This leaves us contradictory descriptions by several Hellenistic authors (pp. 205-208). Archaeological work now reveals that the funerary chamber proper (topped by a roof with two sloping sides) was erected on top of a monumental podium with six tiers, the entirety rising originally nearly eleven meters (fig. 2).
The Classical authors emphasize the abundance of trees planted within the funerary area. Aristobulus, cited by Arrian (VI.29.4<>-), states that the tomb was located “in the royal park; a grove had been planted round it with all sorts of trees and irrigated, and deep grass had grown in the meadow.” The excavations carried out on the site have shown that this is true of all the buildings of Pasargadae, which all opened on gardens. A “royal garden” has been discovered there, with stone channels running through it and marked by basins fed by the Pulvar River, which waters the plain. There can be little doubt that the original plans for these gardens go back to the time of Cyrus, even if they were completed in the time of Darius and scrupulously maintained during the entire Achaemenid period. All of the royal palaces were so furnished, as several Babylonian documents from the time of Cambyses show unambiguously. The paradises, integrated into the Achaemenid palace space (cf. Esther 1:5, Viilg.), were always considered one of the most striking external manifestations of Persian wealth and luxury by the Greek authors.
The Beginnings ofPersepolis
It is not only at Pasargadae that the continuity between Cyrus and Darius is visible. It can also be seen at Persepolis, which has traditionally been considered an entirely new project of Darius’s. In one of his inscriptions, Darius proclaimed that he had constructed a fortress there where none had existed before (DP/), a legitimate assertion, for he inaugurated the work on the terrace. However, numerous remains of buildings have been discovered on the plain, indicating that a vast area of nearly 200 hectares was in the process of urbanization well before Darius. Analysis has shown that there were in fact several palaces and monumental gates and that the techniques used in their construction resemble those of Pasargadae more than those of Persepolis. We may add that some of the palatial ruins are located close to an unfinished monument, the Takht-i Rustam (‘the throne of Rustam'), which seems to have been a nearly exact replica of the tomb of Cyrus at Pasargadae. It is sometimes interpreted as having been intended as a tomb for Cambyses. It is thus reasonable to conclude that these structures go back to the reigns of Cyrus and Cambyses. It is nearly certain that the site is the one that is called Matezzis (Uvadaicaya in Persian) in the Persepolis tablets from the time of Darius. Several Babylonian tablets make it perfectly clear that Matezzis was a very active urban center during the reign of Cambyses (see p. 72).
These recent discoveries and analyses do not call into ciuestion Darius’s role in conceiving the Persepolitan palace complex; on the contrary, they help us situate it within
Fig. I (above): Pyramidal tomb at Sardis.
F/g. 2 (right): Tomb of Cyrus.
The continuum of Achaemenicl history. When Darius chose the site of Pevsepolis, it was not only to distinguish himself from Cyrus, whose work he actually carried on at Pasai-gadae. Nor was it simply because it was at Matezzis that he had his principal opponent of Persian origin, Vahyazdata, executed (if the public execution was carried out there, it was rather because the city had already accpiired some prestige by that time). The ehoiee of Persepolis is explained by prior developments, which had made the region a vital, populous palace and urban center in contact with the Babylonian centers. It was also a center capable of providing the basic resources (particularly food staples) needed for the enormous works the king and his counselors had planned for the terrace. We know that, like Darius and Xerxes at Persepolis, Cyrus and Cambyses summoned workers from different parts of the Empire (especially Lydia), and we know that a ration system had been in place since the time of Cyrus (see p. 95 below). Considering these facts, it seems likely that, before the date of the first currently known Elamite tablet (509), an already well-organized “royal economy” of the Elamite type existed in Persia and that it was revised and improved by Darius and his son.
Persian Socret)’ and Empire
These regional policies imply profound modifications of the Persian way of life, which is usually thought (in a rather schematic way) to have been seminomadic or agropastoral before the conquests of Cyrus. Beginning with Cyrus and Cambyses at the latest, part of the population settled around the royal residences and thereafter turned to agricultural activity. However, the entire Persian population did not abandon the nomadic or seminomadic way of life. Even later, the Classical sources make it possible to identify several subgroups belonging to the Persian ethnos who practiced short-range nomadism along with subsistence agriculture in the valleys. Nevertheless, the general direction of the development can hardly be doubted —development that was the result of a conscious policy enacted by the kings and made possible by the influx of wealth to Persia from the military conquests.
Several Babylonian tablets from the time of Cambyses and Bardiya also explain the development of commercial activities at Matezzis. Six tablets refer to the purchase of slaves and three to contracts entered into in the city by the representative of the Babylonian business firm Egibi. They attest to the vigor of trade between Babylon and the royal residences and to the presence of Babylonian communities in Persia at this date. They also show that the Persians were fully integrated into these commercial networks, since in one tablet a Persian is called ‘head merchant’ {tamkaru). Finally, several slaves and their owners had Iranian names. If the names given to slaves were their own, they indicate that lower-class Persians could be enslaved; if they were names assigned by their Persian owners, we must conclude that prisoners of war were deported to Persia as early as the time of Cyrus and Cambyses.
In each case, the complex image of Persian society extracted from these documents is quite different from that supplied by Herodotus (1-125), who simply distinguishes agricultural and nomadic tribes. These same documents also allow us to clarify the claim of numerous Greek authors who say that the Persians “were completely unfamiliar with the concept of markets and did not use them at all,” or “did not set foot in a market (agora), since they had nothing either to buy or sell." Herodotus also mentions a prohibition on going into debt as one of the Persian social rules (1.138). These brusque for-
Fig. 5. Relief from Palace P at Pasargadae.
Mulalions may find their explanation in the aristocratic ethic of which some Greek admirers of Sparta were particularly enamored. But they express only part of the truth, whieh the Babylonian documents will be able to enrich substantially.
World History
