As we noted in the Introduction, royal courts were the ‘households’ of monarchs and the attractions of court life for the nobility of the realm were obvious - power, prestige, and remuneration could all be obtained through service to the Great King. There was clearly a hierarchy of rank among the many groups who made up the Achaemenid court, although trying to decode the precise function of every royal office within the Persian court is difficult and frustrating. Something of the rich mixture of jobs which comprised an ancient Near Eastern royal bureaucracy is reflected in the Biblical list of officials who served under King David of Israel (A16). For their part, the Greeks found Persian court hierarchy puzzling and their writings on the Persian court fail to provide us with a clear picture of the multitudinous range of court offices. But the Greeks were certain of one thing: the Persian Great Kings needed to be surrounded by a variety of courtiers, ranging from satraps to stable boys, because they were too grand to bother themselves with the mundane tasks of governing the Empire themselves (A17). Greek sources suggest that in his youth Cyrus had held several court positions - ‘master of the wand-bearers’, ‘master of the squires’, and ‘cup-bearer’ (Athenaeus 14.633d; Ctesias F8d* §5;
See also Xenophon, Cyropaedia 1.3.8-9); Darius the Great had been ‘quiver-bearer’ to Cyrus II and was Cambyses’ ‘lance-bearer’ (Aelian, Historical Miscellany 12.43; Herodotus 3.139); and, before his accession, Darius III had held the title ‘letter-bearer’ (Plutarch, Alexander 18.7). The Persepolis texts record office-holders such as a ‘chair-carrier’ and ‘footstool-carrier’ (PF 0830) as well as a ‘bow-and-arrow-case carrier’ (PF 1011) who were given sizeable food rations, indicating the high rank of the courtiers who bore these titles. The entire inner court was under the watch of a powerful official known as the *hazara -patis (‘master of a thousand’) or chiliarch (Keaveney 2010), who (it seems) commanded the royal bodyguard and was responsible for all elements of court security and enjoyed the complete confidence of the ruler, controlling access to his personage through the protocol of the royal audience (Chapter 2). Other prominent inner-court dignitaries included the steward of the royal household (perhaps *vida-patis), the royal charioteer, and the king’s cup-bearer (see Chapter 5).
It must be noted, however, that court titles did not necessarily have a bearing on the duties expected of the courtier who held them and that nobles with courtly titles perhaps only ‘acted’ the prescribed roles at state ceremonies. The Vulgate book of Tobit, set at the Neo-Assyrian court, notes that a single courtier could, of course, hold multiple offices, ranging from king’s body servant to palace pen pusher: ‘Now Ahikor was chief cup-bearer, keeper of the signet, and in charge of the administration of the accounts under King Sennacherib’ (Tobit 1.22).
Two of the most prominent nobles at Darius I’s court, Aspacana (Greek, Aspathines) and Gaub(a)ruva (Greek, Gobryas), were honoured by Darius by being represented on his tomb at Naqs-i Rustam. Between them they were provided with several court titles - ‘lance-bearer,’ ‘garment-bearer’ (or possibly ‘weapon-bearer’), and ‘bow-and-arrow-case carrier’ - but, as Henkelman (2003a: 120) has stressed:
These designations are probably not expressions of actual duties, but, given the status of Gobryas and Aspathines, honorary titles bestowed on privileged court officials, possibly implying some ceremonial obligations. From this perspective ‘garment-bearer’ should not be taken too literally, but be interpreted as ‘chamberlain’.
It is clear that the Achaemenids created a complex court structure which in general can be regarded as pyramid-like, with the Great King at its apex and the workers (servants and slaves) at the base. A comparatively small group of nobles occupied a high place in this pyramidal structure, for these were the hereditary Persian nobility, whom the
Greeks called the ‘People of the Gate’ (Plutarch, Themistocles 26.6), and who were obliged - because of blood and status - to serve at court and wait on the king (Briant 2002: 326-7). A multitude of middle-ranking officials operated in the social pyramid’s space in between the nobles and the workers, and they communicated between all the other ranks. Any individual who had rendered important service to the king was a ‘benefactor’ (Greek, euergetai), and his name was recorded in the royal archives (Herodotus 8.85.90; Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 11.6.4). Briant (2002: 302-20) has carefully explored how royal benefactors were rewarded by the king with gifts of clothing, jewellery, livestock, and land, and has noted that even foreigners who worked at court could benefit from this gift-giving system (see Chapter 2 for further details of the king’s gifts). Xenophon (Anabasis 1.2.27) also records the way in which a Great King expressed his favour to a courtier: ‘Cyrus presented him with the customary royal gifts - that is to say, a horse with a gold bit, a necklace of gold, a gold bracelet, and a gold scimitar, [and] a Persian robe’. This formalised gift-giving of ‘unequal exchange’, as Briant (2002: 316) terms it, was an important tool for the monarchy, as it established as system of debt and dependency on the part of nobles and other courtiers (for gifts to the king see Chapter 3). Moreover, courtiers designated as ‘relatives of the king’ and ‘friends of the king’ had the right to eat from the royal table or assist the king as a body servant, and these were highly prized and ferociously policed privileges (discussed by Briant 2002: 308).
The title ‘friend of the king’ had a long pedigree in the Near East, and it is particularly well attested in the Hebrew Bible (2 Samuel 15:37; 1 Kings 4:5, 16:11; de Vaux 1961: 122-3, 528) and in Akkadian texts as rukhi sarri (van Selms 1957). The title does not seem to have implied any specific function, but being a ‘friend of the king’ was clearly a closely guarded privilege and a source of pride for those who bore it; thus Tiribazus, the powerful satrap of Armenia, was a particularly favoured ‘friend of the king’ (Artaxerxes II), and, when resident at court away from his satrapy, ‘he alone had the privilege of mounting the king upon his horse’ (Xenophon, Anabasis 4.4.4; see further Curtius Rufus, 3.3.14.21; and Briant 2002: 321).
It was important for hereditary nobles to make regular appearances at court, and satraps like Tiribazus were expected to leave their satrapies to pay their respects before the Great King. Masistes was at court at the time he quarrelled with Xerxes (Herodotus 9.108-13), even though he was satrap of far-away Bactria, and, starting in 410 BCE, Arsama, the long-serving satrap of Egypt, took a two-year leave of absence from his official post in Memphis to visit the royal court and to survey his Babylonian estates (Driver 1956: 5-6). It should be noted that Arsama is never specifically called a ‘satrap’ in the diverse texts that name him, but this is not problematic: he is ‘Arsama who is in Egypt’ or ‘Arsama who is in Egypt as [. . .]’ or ‘lord’ or ‘son of the house’ - Aramaic br-byt’; this is the only address he needs, and his satrapal position is implicit.
The court was a locus of practical political decision-making and imperial power, and the hereditary nobility of Persia made an important contribution to policy-making and the governance of the realm (A18; Herodotus 3.80-4). The monarch and the royal family formed the nucleus of the court, and the Empire was regarded as the Great King’s inheritable personal possession; the interests and honour of the dynasty were propelled by the ruling dynasty and its chief adherents, who were drawn from Persia’s great noble houses (Briant 2002: 334-8). For their part, the nobles organised their own households based on the template of the royal court, by employing the same types of staff and celebrating the same rites and rituals as the king (Xenophon, Anabasis 1.6.10). Moreover, the satraps stationed in provinces far away from the heart of the Empire fashioned themselves after the royal model. Satraps should not be thought of simply as high-ranking civil servants, because, throughout the Empire, they represented the king by proxy and, as such, they imitated his behaviour and emulated his taste (Briant 2002: 345-7). But being a satrap was a hazardous business, for satraps depended personally on the king’s good favour and had to watch their behaviour accordingly, and there can be no doubt that in their provincial courts they were carefully scrutinised by the central authorities for any hint of self-aggrandisement or potential treason (Briant 2002: 338-45).
The letters sent between Arsama in Egypt and the royal court in Iran at the beginning of the fourth century bce demonstrate that even when absent from the imperial centre, court nobles in the service of the king kept up a steady dialogue with the central authority (Driver 1956; Lindenberger 2003). The so-called Passover edict from Elephantine (A19), for instance, should be viewed as the transmission of a command of Darius II via his Egyptian satrap, and therefore a reflection of how political decision-making at court was disseminated to the provinces (Kuhrt 2007: 854 n.1). Satrapal courts engaged in the same political discourse articulated in the royal court, and a series of Aramaic texts from Bactria (such as A20) offer a rare glimpse of a very distant part of the Empire to balance the richer Arsama dossier from
Egypt and the abundant Persepolis archive, and help demonstrate that the official language of a centralised policy travelled far and wide (Shaked 2004). These sources, coupled with extensive Greek texts, show us the imperial administration at work across the Empire and remind us that Achaemenid courtiers were first and foremost political animals.
Courtiers were also bureaucrats. As Elias (1983: 3) noted, the royal court was ‘both the first household of the extended royal family, and the central organ of the entire state administration’, and there can be no doubt that the Achaemenids revelled in administrative red tape (a love affair they shared with their Assyrian and Elamite forbears). Their system of government from the highest level to the lowest depended on tight communication, record-keeping, and archiving - as witnessed by the Persepolis archive, the Arsama documents, and the Bactrian files, the vast dossiers of administrative material which make up only a tiny percentage of Achaemenid documentation which originally existed but which has not survived to the present day.
The Persian monarchical system was based on a highly trained bureaucratic elite, recruited on the principle of merit. One courtier in particular stands head and shoulders above all others in respect of his role in the Achaemenid administration: Parnaka, a ‘son of the house’ and (probably) the uncle of Darius I. He was the chief overseer of the entire Persepolis administrative system as well as its larger integration in the region of Fars province, and he seems to have had free and open access to the king. He is frequently cited receiving his orders directly from Darius. It was Parnaka who oversaw the distribution of foodstuffs and other goods from the royal storerooms and it was he who conveyed the king’s orders in writing and whose personal seal-impressions (PFS 9*, PFS 16*) ratified the communication. A typical order for a ration of wine (PF 665; see further D10), for instance, runs like this:
9 marris wine, allocations by Karkish, Parnaka received for rations. For a period of 1 day, at a village named Hadarakkas. Hishbesh wrote. Mannunda communicated its message. In [regnal] year 23; month 2; on day 25 the sealed document was delivered.
Working directly under Parnaka was a man named Zissawis (who also had his own seals - PFS 83*, PFS 11) who was also in charge of recording and issuing ration orders; he sometimes deputised for Parnaka but he is usually seen working as his chief aid. Between them Parnaka and Zissawis supervised numerous storeroom and ration managers, as well as the range of officers in charge of provisions for the court when it went journeying on its regular trips around the Empire (see Chapter 3), each of whom looked after departments of wine, beer, fruit, grain, livestock, poultry, and numerous other food and drink supplies. The two chief administrators also worked alongside the head scribe and his vast workforce of secretaries and translators, the head of royal messengers and his army of staff, and the chief treasurer, who took charge of all of the court’s financial transactions and reported directly to the king.
World History
