A court under canvas

In the open landscape, after a day’s travelling, the imperial procession came to a halt and set up camp. Immediately tents were erected and a royal city of cloth, leather, and wood sprang up (C25). Herodotus (7.119) records that the Persian troops marching with Xerxes had the task of dismantling, transporting, and reassembling the royal tent when they reached a new camp and we should imagine that the tents of the other royals and nobles were erected by teams of servants at the same time. Systematically arranged to reflect hierarchical and defensive concerns, the royal camp was constructed with the Great King’s tent at the centre of the complex, facing towards the east and decorated with distinguishing devices (Curtius Rufus 3.8.7). Standing at the epicentre of the camp, the king’s tent became the symbol of royal authority itself (Plutarch, Eumenes 13) and inside the tent the king carried out the same rituals and duties that he followed inside the palaces. Cyrus is depicted listening to the trial of a traitor (and condemning him to death) inside his tent, although the subsequent execution takes place elsewhere (Xenophon, Anabasis 1.6.5-11). As a mark of honour and as a display of royal largess, the Great King might gift a favoured courtier (even a foreigner) a splendid tent, often richly furnished with couches, textiles, gold plate, and slaves (C26). Some fine tents were even considered heirlooms (Xenophon, Cyropaedia 5.5.1-2). The tent was a visible emblem of imperial authority - so much so that the enemy capture of a royal tent and its rich accoutrements was a symbol of the collapse of monarchic authority itself - as Alexander came to fully appreciate once he had moved into the tent which had previously belonged to Darius III (C27).

The royal tent was a colossal structure made from colourfully woven textiles and leather panels, supported by a framework of pillars; in all respects, the king’s tent was a collapsible version of a palace throne hall and it is reasonable to think of the Apadana at Persepolis or Susa as stone versions of the royal tent. Several descriptions survive of a series of state tents utilised by Alexander after his conquest of Persia (C28, C29; Aelian, Historical Miscellany 9.3) and it is clear that the Macedonian monarch was making use of Achaemenid tents, possibly captured after the defeat of Darius III at Issus in 333 bce (Miller 1997: 51; Spawforth 2007a: 94-7, 112-20). Alexander’s tents are described as truly colossal, with the textile roof supported by fifty golden pillars and enough space to hold 100 couches. While it is difficult to pronounce firmly on the shape of the royal tents, it has been proposed that they were rectangular and with a circular canopy at the centre - this helps make sense of Greek texts that specifically speak of an Ouranos (‘heaven’): ‘in Persia the royal tents and courts [have] circular ceilings, (like) skies’ (Photius, Lexicon s. v. ouranos; see Spawforth 2007: 120). The Greeks knew about Persian state tents because several had been taken as war booty during the period of the Persian war and its aftermath; they were clearly a staggering sight in the eyes of the Greeks (Herodotus 9.82-3; Xenophon, Anabasis 4.21) and consequently they left their imprint in the later Greek imagination (a description of a tent in Euripides’ play Ion (121-48), of c. 413, was probably inspired by a Persian tent stored in a treasury at Delphi). Should we doubt the scale and grandeur of Persian state tents, then Margaret Miller reminds us that Ottoman-period Turkish imperial tents still survive which testify to the luxury of their Achaemenid ancestors (Miller 1997: 50-1). Moreover, reports of tented accommodation in Mughal sources equate closely with the descriptions we have of Persian tents, confirming the centrality of the tent in the presentation of monarchy in the east (Lal 1988: 64-6; Andrews 1999; on tents in the ancient Near East see Homan 2002).

Once the tents had been erected, the work began of feeding the court and the camp - an immense and costly undertaking (C30, C31). We have already noted how food produce from all over the Empire was brought to the table of the Great King, but it is clear that as he travelled throughout his realm - sometimes to its far edges in pursuit of war - then cities, towns, and villages were required to meet the needs of the army and court at the encampment (C32). Like a swarm of locusts, the court could easily strip the surrounding countryside of its produce; a royal visit was both a blessing and a curse (Herodotus 7.118-19; see also Athenaeus 4.146a-b and Joel 2).

While occasionally we read that the nomadic court was affected by local food shortages (Plutarch, Artaxerxes 24.3), by and large the image we receive is that, even while on the move, the Great King’s table (and by extension that of the royal household) was served daily with abundance, magnificence, efficiency, and order. But what food was served to the king and court?

We know little of the recipes concocted by the royal chefs but one text is useful in providing us with knowledge about the ingredients which were used (C33): the Stratagems of Polyaenus records an inscribed inventory, purportedly found by Alexander, of the foodstuffs brought before the Great King and his household on a daily basis - enough produce to feed no less than 15,000 people, if we accept the words of Ctesias and Deinon (Ctesias F39/Deinon F24 = Athenaeus 4.146c-d; the origin of Polyaenus’ text might in fact lie in the Persica of Heraclides or, more likely, Ctesias). The sheer volume of food and drink recorded by Polyaenus might lead us to suspect that he is merely indulging himself in the familiar Greek trope of imagining fantastical Persian excess (tryphe; see Herodotus 1.133; Sancisi-Weerdenburg 1995; Lenfant 2007b) but, given that he carefully estimates the amount of produce in terms of Greek measurements and that he distinguishes the apportionment of food according to the court’s location (Babylon, Susa, Ecbatana, and Persepolis), the text can be accorded some reliability (‘all of the information feels right’, says Briant 2002: 288) and can, in fact, be augmented by evidence provided by Heraclides of Cyme (C34), who similarly lists huge quantities of food served at court. Heraclides carefully notes how the produce was distributed from the king to his entourage (including men and women of the royal family) and how it was subsequently distributed by the royals and their courtiers to their own respective households. Therefore the Great King’s table was the locus of food distribution to many people of varying social rank. Xenophon (Cyropaedia 8.3-4) understood the essence of this practice, but he linked it to the monarch’s display of beneficence to chosen individuals.

Wouter Henkelman (2010a) has demonstrated how the Greek conception of the king’s dinner is accurately reflected in the Persepolis Fortification archive (and other Achaemenid-period documents) and he has brilliantly analysed how the intricate royal food distribution system operated - with livestock and foodstuffs flowing into and out of the royal household (see also Stevenson 1997: 144-52). Known as the J Texts, these Elamite tablets listing products ‘delivered to the king’ seem to confirm Polyaenus’ inventory and they show that when the king or a member of the royal family relocated (not necessarily as part of the main court migration) they received provisions from the central administration (royal individuals included in the J Texts include Darius’ wife, Irtasduna (or Irtastuna), in PF 730-2, his son Arsama in PF 733-4, 2035, and his brother-in-law/father-in-law Gobryas in PF 688). Briant (2002: 290) notes though that the J Texts can often merge with the so-called Category Q Texts, relating to travel rations (see also comments by Jankovic 2008; Potts 2008). Henkelman concludes that ‘the crown’s internal hierarchy included officials responsible for provisioning the royal table who travelled with the court’ and that the ‘redistribution of commodities within the court society was a matter of the court administration. . . . The Elamite and Greek sources both (implicitly) understand the Table of the King as a complex organization with its own rules, hierarchy, and bureaucracy’ (Henkelman 2010a: 732).

It has been suggested that the preparation of a royal dinner is depicted on the staircase of the tagara of Darius I at Persepolis: men in riding habit hold wine skins, bowls, and pots and carry live lambs and kids (Brosius 2007: 44, following Sancisi-Weerdenburg 1989). However, doubts have been raised about this interpretation - are these scenes more properly related to religious rituals (Razmjou 2004), or do they narrate the presentation of local bazis (Sancisi-Weerdenburg 1998)? Interestingly, similar scenes have been found on the fragmentary staircase of the palace of Artaxerxes I, and one particularly interesting fragment shows a stretcher bearing four lambs being carried towards the palace (for an image see Jacobs 2010: 408). Sancisi-Weerdenburg (1998: 29) argues that ‘it is unlikely that the living animals carried by these persons were to serve as ingredients for the royal banquet in the palace where they decorated the entrances. A barbecue within the ceremonial halls is difficult to imagine.’ She makes a valid point. However, it should not be supposed that the preparation of the meat took place within the king’s dining room itself; after all, the (messy) slaughtering, skinning, butchering, cooking, and dressing of even a small lamb or kid takes considerable time and requires the skills of professional staff; meat dishes must have been prepared in kitchens (indoor or outdoor varieties). Living animals are depicted on the staircase relief to emphasise the freshness of the meat being offered to the king and the lambs simply represent the notion of fresh meat. These are not images of living lambs per se; similar artistic conventions are found in Egyptian art (see Wilkinson 1992: 95; Desroches Noblecourt 2007: 60-9).

The king of nature

Recent archaeological investigations in central and southern Iran have unearthed evidence for numerous royal ‘pavilion sites’ dotted across the landscape (Arfa’i 1999). These pavilions were small but elegant palace lodges, often located away from the main highways in protected and secluded areas, suggesting that these structures were utilised by the royal family as they traversed the kingdom - this is certainly the case for the best-excavated of these pavilions, at Jenjan in Fars, where elite architecture (fine stone column bases and doorjambs) and high-quality finds strongly imply the site was visited by members of the royal party travelling between the seasonal capitals (Potts 2008). The pavilions stood as symbols of royal and administrative power at a local level and they must have been sustained by estate produce; they might also have been surrounded by gardens, parks, arable land, and even game reserves - the celebrated Persianparadeisoi (C35; Xenophon, Anabasis 1.2.7; Plutarch, Artaxerxes 25.1; Briant 2002: 427).

These paradeisoi (Median, *paridaiza from *pari, ‘around’ and *daiza, ‘wall’; Old Persian, *paridaida; Hebrew, pardes - for example Nehemiah 2:8; Song of Songs 4:13; whence the English paradise) were an essential part of Achaemenid cultural expression and throughout the Empire these carefully cultivated gardens, forests, and estates were living symbols of Persian dominance. Xenophon regularly encountered them as he trekked the western half of the realm and the astonishing beauty of various paradeisoi clearly left a mark on him (C36). The earliest reference to a Persian-style park and garden comes in the form of a Babylonian text dating to regnal year 5 of Cyrus II which speaks of a pardesu (C37; Bremmer 2008: 37; Dandamayev 1984a), but it is during the reign of Darius I that more regular references to paradeisoi are found in the Persepolis texts, which enable us to speculate more fully on their maintenance and use (PT 59; for a full exploration of Persian paradeisoi see Tuplin 1996: 80-181; Brown 2001: 119-37; Lincoln 2012: 5-9, 18-19, 59-85). In addition to textual sources, archaeological evidence of Achaemenid gardens exists at Pasargade, Persepolis, Susa, and other royal and satrapal sites throughout the Empire.

It is clear that the parks and woodlands were well stocked with all sorts of wild animals and that the hunting of both smaller animals and big game chiefly took place in the safety of these vast game reserves (Curtius Rufus 7.2.22, 8.1.11; see Chapter 5 for hunting practices) but beyond the thrill of the hunt and the obvious sensual hedonism offered by royal gardens, the paradeisoi were encoded with a rich political and religious symbolism. The royal parks were an Empire in miniature and flora and fauna from every area of the king’s dominion were resettled and replanted within their confines (Uchitel 1997; Bremmer 2008: 38). This was a longstanding Near Eastern tradition and Egyptian pharaohs and Mesopotamian kings had boasted of cultivating their gardens with foreign plants, wherein they flourished. The Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser I bragged how ‘I took cedar. . . [and] oak from the lands which I had dominion. . . and planted [them] in the orchards of my land’ (Assyrian Royal Inscriptions 2.290), thereby emphasising that an exotic garden symbolised the monarch’s control of a huge territory. Most famously, according to the Greco-Babylonian priest-cum-historian Berossus (F8 §141), Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon built high stone terraces ‘and planted them with trees of every kind. . . and completed the so-called “hanging paradeisos”, because his wife, who had been born and raised in Media, longed for mountain scenery’.

In the Persian era we hear of Achaemenid monarchs enriching their paradeisoi with foreign shrubs and fruit trees (PPA31) and there is even mention of royal vine-cutters (or grafters) who are charged with carefully pruning precious grape vines from Lebanon and transporting and replanting them in Persian soil (PF-NN1564). The idea of the king creating a fertile garden - displaying both symmetry and order - constituted a powerful statement of monarchic authority, fertility, legitimacy, and divine favour (even gods were portrayed as gardeners: see Psalm 80:11; Psalm 104:16; Homer, Iliad 5.693), so much so in fact that, as a potent symbol of resistance to Persian rule, the rebellious citizens of Sardis completely destroyed the royal park ‘in which Persian kings took their relaxation’ (Diodorus 16.41).

Near Eastern monarchs prided themselves on the meticulous attention they provided for the cultivation, care, and nourishment of their lands. Thus in Assyria a cylinder text commemorating the founding of Dur-Sarrukin, Sargon’s capital city, enthusiastically praises the king for the care he shows the city’s surrounding acreage:

The sagacious king, full of kindness, who gave his thought to. . . bringing fields under cultivation, to the planting of orchards, who set his mind on raising crops on steep slopes whereon no vegetation had grown since days of old; whose heart moved him to set out plants in waste areas where the plough was unknown in the former days of kings, to make these regions ring with the sound of jubilation, to cause the springs of the plain to gush forth, to open ditches, to cause waters of abundance to rise high. . . like the waves of the sea. (Tomes 2005: 76-7)

An Achaemenid-period text from the Hebrew Bible, Ecclesiastes, has a Persian-style prince proclaim his royal prowess through his botanical accomplishments:

I made great works:

I built houses and planted vineyards for myself;

I made myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of trees.

I made myself pools

From which to water the forest of growing trees.

(Ecclesiastes 2:4-6)

This demonstrates that an effective ruler was not just a warrior and sportsman but a gardener king too, a cultivator who personally tended to agricultural matters to ensure the prosperity of his realm and in this light the Great King ordered his satraps to create and maintain parade-isoi in their provinces (Xenophon, Cyropaedia 8.6.12). Xenophon was both flabbergasted by and full of admiration for Cyrus the Younger’s vigorous and sophisticated gardening skills (Oeconomicus 4.8-13, 21-5) and the Latin Vulgate version of Esther (1:5) stresses that the royal garden at Susa ‘was planted by the care and the hand of the king’. The idea of the gardener king is given further emphasis by the appearance of the monarch in a series of seal and coin images in which he actively ploughs the land and sows it with seed (see Briant 2003).

Of all the plants cultivated in royal gardens, Near Eastern kings were traditionally identified with (or even as) fine trees. The Sumerian monarch Sulgi for instance was at one and the same time ‘a date palm planted by a water ditch’ and ‘a cedar planted by water’ (Widengren 1951: 42) and famously the kings of Israel were depicted as both a ‘shoot’ and a ‘branch’ of the Davidic house (Isaiah 11:1). Assyrian kings were frequently represented standing next to the so-called ‘Tree of Life’ - an important cult symbol in the Near East generally. This special relationship between kings and trees lies behind the infamous

Herodotean story of Xerxes’ infatuation with a plane tree (Herodotus 7.31), which Briant (2002: 235) suggests shows evidence for the existence of a Persian tree cult (see further Aelian, Historical Miscellany 2.14). Several seal images support this idea: one inscribed with Xerxes’ name (SXe; Kuhrt 2007: fig. 7.1) shows the monarch about to decorate a tree with jewellery, an exact visual parallel to the Greek account, while other seals show the monarch in close proximity to date palms (note the location of Darius’ chariot between a pair of palm trees on his name seal in F18).

The Great King was equally associated with the grape vine as a symbol of fecundity and strength. According to Herodotus (1.108) the king of Media dreamed that a vine emerged from the genitalia of his daughter, thereby predicting that Media would be overthrown by his daughter’s unborn son (the future Cyrus II). This may well have its origins in a Persian story about Cyrus’ birth and might help explain the symbolism of the golden jewel-encrusted vine which supposedly decorated either the royal bed chamber or the audience chamber (Athenaeus 12.514f-15a, 539d).

Royal power was also expressed in the king’s relationship to the bigger cycles of nature, particularly the weather. Ctesias records several stories (C38, C39) which may encode within them genuine Iranian traditions about the monarch’s ability to evoke wind, rain, and thunder through apotropaic rituals and these vignettes can therefore be linked to his important cultic role in religious rites of state. Moreover, as we have already noted that the monarch drank only water taken from Persian rivers, it is worth considering his wider relationship with waters, which he channelled and controlled by ordering the construction of canals, sluices, and qanats (Herodotus 3.117; Briant 2002: 415-19).