We have already noted the immense amount of food which constituted the king’s table and how it was distributed to his elite retinue, who, in turn, used it to feed their own households (Chapter 3) and it is clear that lavish meals served on costly table settings of precious metals were a hallmark of court life (on tableware see Allen 2005a: 88-92). We know something of the eating habits of the Persian elite, if not much about the recipes they created, and although Kuhrt (2007: 578) notes that ‘the ingredients of the meals were not particularly exotic or expensive and were put together in accordance with ideas about maintaining health’, the reality is that we have no way of knowing how the raw ingredients were combined or what kind of rich dishes might have been enjoyed. Perhaps Kuhrt says more about current thoughts and trends in eating habits than authentic Achaemenid customs and the fact that Herodotus notes that the Persians had a particular penchant for syrupy or milky deserts (confirmed by the ingredients listed by Polyaenus; C33) suggests that something other than health food was desired. Moreover, Herodotus (1.133) says that the Persians ‘eat only a few main dishes, but they frequently consume an assortment of nibbles - but these are not served together at one time but are distributed randomly throughout the course of the meal’ and Xenophon confirms (Cyropaedia 1.3.3) this Persian fondness for ‘fancy side dishes and all sorts of sauces and meats’ (see also Athenaeus 14.640f; for the appropriate translation ‘nibbles’ see Sancisi-Weerdenburg 1997: 341). Taking the Greek reports as her starting point, Sancisi-Weerdenburg (1997: 339) argues for a ‘presence at court of specialist cuisiniers, producing not so much dishes as works of art’ and she suggests that ‘even if we cannot sketch more than its outlines, there is every reason to qualify cooking at the Persian court as haute cuisine’.
Like all other aspects of his official life, the ideology of invisibility governed the Great King’s dining habits and according to Heraclides (E6) the sovereign tended to dine alone and hidden from view in a chamber (or some other specified space) and his selected guests sat outside to eat, ‘in full sight of anyone who wishes to look on’, although the most highly honoured guests were served by the royal butlers in a hall close to the king’s dining room. The two spaces were separated by a screen or hanging that permitted the king to view his guests but kept him obscured from their sight. However, as the dinner drew to a close a few of the guests were called by name by a eunuch and were summoned to drink in the king’s company; this was a mark of exceptional distinction because it was during these drinking bouts that important matters of state were discussed and personal ambitions might be realised (Herodotus 1.133; Strabo 15.3.20; Athenaeus 4.144b, 5.102c). A courtier specifically honoured with a regular place at the king’s table was known as a homotrapezus (‘messmate’), a title held by such high-ranking nobles as Megabyzus, Darius I’s brother (Ctesias F14 §43), although even foreigners could be awarded this auspicious title (Herodotus 3.131, 5.24).
Beyond the daily consumption of food, which even for the court might have been repetitive, better pleasure could be had in eating and drinking in the festive atmosphere of a royal banquet, such as an almost legendary one thrown by King Ashurnasirpal of Assyria for 69,574 guests over a period of ten days (Pritchard 1969: 558-60) or that thrown by Xerxes in the third year of his reign when he gave a state feast for all his administrators, ministers, and satraps, and for all the women of the court (E7). Xerxes’ banquet lasted a full 180 days. The importance of dining in this extravagant fashion is examined and explained by Jean Bottero (2004: 99):
A banquet represented something more than the simple provision of daily bread, it gave eating and drinking their full meaning. . . . A banquet broke with the ordinary, occasioned as it most often was by fortunate circumstances in life that were outside the daily routine and thus naturally joyful.
The royal banquet par excellence was that held on the Great King’s birthday (Old Persian, tykta, ‘perfect’; Herodotus 9.110), a time of great rejoicing amid the court but also one of ritual importance as well, since the royal birthday might have served as the setting for an annual ceremonial renewal of royal power, as seems to have been the case in the Seleucid period (Bickerman 1938: 246; Sancisi-Weerdenburg 1989: 132-3). This type of royal banquet is depicted by Xenophon (Cyropaedia 8.4.1-5) but it is Herodotus who shows the most interest in the event and several of his stories are set during this important annual court festivity. Thus we learn that the birthday celebration ‘is the one time of the year when the king anoints his head and bestows gifts on the Persians’ and that ‘the law of the Royal Supper stated that on that day no one should be refused a request’ (Herodotus 9.109-10); he notes also that the Persian nobility followed the royal example because ‘of all days in the year a Persian most distinguished his birthday and celebrated it with a dinner of special magnificence’; on that day they have ‘an ox or a horse or a camel or a donkey baked whole in the oven’ (Herodotus 1.133). With such a surplus of food, and the rule for the drinking being ‘No restrictions!’ (Esther 1:5; E7), dining at a royal banquet might be regarded as a form of extreme sport, and one on a par with another Achaemenid courtly passion: hunting.
Bizarrely, in its own way hunting was less of a sport per se than an art form; it was not simply a matter of killing animals. A successful hunt had to end in an animal’s death but it had to be a specific type of animal that was killed, and in a particular way; it must have been free to flee its predator or to turn and attack the hunter but it also must have been killed deliberately - and with violence (there could be no use of traps, poisoned baits, or nets). But more than anything else, the hunter’s prey had to be a wild animal (even if temporarily captured) with every chance of being hostile to the hunter and it could not be thought to have been tame or docile around humans. There was no sport in hunting dairy cows, for example. As Matt Cartmill (1995: 773) explains, ‘hunting is by definition an armed confrontation between the human world and the untamed wilderness, between culture and nature and it has been defined and praised and attacked in those terms throughout history’. For the elites of successive courts and noble houses, the hunt became an elaborate ritual encrusted with jargon and ceremonial which served to validate the aristocratic credentials of the hunters, for the court hunt had nothing to do with providing for economic necessity - it was predominantly a political and ideological activity (Allsen 2006) and the countless depictions of the hunt on Achaemenid seals demonstrate the centrality of the image in Persian thought.
The frequency and duration of royal hunts reflect the nexus between hunting and governance, as do the amount of resources invested in the hunt, and while it is difficult to get precise data about the number of hours the Persian king spent in the saddle, Classical texts suggest that he was at least conceived of a la chase for considerable amounts of his time. By way of comparison, and by his own testimony, the Mughal emperor Jahangir hunted almost daily (Allsen 2006: 20; Jackson 2010: 156-7), as did Louis XV of France. He was a particularly enthusiastic huntsman and during the thirty years of his prime he killed a staggering 210 stags a year, in addition to countless boars, wolves, and wildfowl, and it has been estimated that in one year’s hunting he covered 8,100 miles on horseback (Mitford 2001: 23). Monarchs have always laid stress on their ability in the hunt and it was in this display of chivalric bravery that the Great King was able to demonstrate his manhood, for hunting was set on a par with warfare, as the same skills were necessary for both and thus monarchs had to be ‘leaders in war and hunting’ (Pseudo-Aristotle, De Mundo 398a).
Hunts took place in paradeisoi or in the open field (see Chapter 3). Xenophon suggests that the best thrill could be had when hunting game in the wild (E8) and this may well have been the case, because game-park hunting meant chasing prey which had been captured and brought into the locale specifically to be killed. An event of this kind may have lacked the frisson of danger of hunting in the open terrain but, nonetheless, it was the symbolic execution of the hunted creature that was the most important part of the hunt and in many cases this simply led to the time-saving method of pre-capturing animals to be executed by the monarch later, as is often seen in Neo-Assyrian palace reliefs. This in turn confirmed the centrality of game parks, where captured animals were brought and released, or else an area was fenced off and designated a hunting ground.
Every royal hunt was meticulously planned and was under the charge of court officials who were responsible for procuring wild animals (if in a paradeisos) and training and caring for the huge mastiff dogs which accompanied the hunting party. Grooms and stable-hands were needed for the horses (Chapter 3) and bodyguards were ever present because, after all, on a hunt the Great King’s life was particularly vulnerable (as noted by Herodotus 3.30 and Aelian, Historical Miscellany 6.14). Courtiers tasked with organising the hunt had every chance of elevation to the highest court offices. Ottoman court records from 1478 CE attest to the high-profile presence of hunting officials, for the names of forty-eight keepers of the royal hounds, fifty-eight keepers of hunting birds, and nine falconers of the Sultan are preserved in the archives, which means that 115 of the 530 permanent staff of the Ottoman palace were related to the running of the royal hunt (Murphey 2008: 159). These positions served as stepping stones to the highest level of government and there is every possibility that Achaemenid courtiers benefited from a similar system.
Successful royal hunts also required military personnel to be involved as ‘beaters’ to flush out the prey. Monarchs tended to participate in the so-called ‘ring hunt’, a formation which involved a massive number of people, since it eliminated the problem of chasing the prey; cornered by a diminishing circle of hunters, the prey tended to flounder and the monarch could then enter the ring to symbolically eliminate the animal. A refinement of this was the idea of ‘fencing’, where large nets might be employed by a section of the military to literally fence off an area, such as an entire mountainside, to force the prey to confront the king and his courtiers. Whatever methods were involved, accompanied by a large escort of nobles, servants, and even concubines, the Great King must have looked an impressive sight in the saddle (E9; on concubines attending the hunt see Heraclides F1 = Athenaeus 12.514c; concubines also accompanied the Mughal royal hunt - see Lal 1988).
The greatest sport was to be had in hunting lions. This was royal sport par excellence and in fact from very ancient times lion hunting was the strict preserve of royalty: ‘To finish the lion with the weapon was my own privilege’ affirms one Old Babylonian ruler (Sulgi Hymn B; Watanabe 2002: 83). A series of fascinating letters sent by one Yaqqim-Addu to the king of Mari reports how a lioness was captured in the region of Bit-Akkaka and how for five days Yaqqim-Addu tried to keep it alive and healthy so that it might be delivered to the monarch, who might then take his royal pleasure (and prerogative) in its slaughter. The last of Yaqqim-Addu’s letters tells a sorry tale of administrative bungling:
Speak to my lord, thus (says) Yaqqim-Addu, your servant.
A lioness was captured during the night in a barn (at) Bit-Akkaka. The next
Morning I was told the news and I left. In order that no one killed the lion, I stayed all day at Bit-Akkaka, saying to myself, ‘I must get it (the lioness) alive to my lord’. I threw (it) a [dog] and a pig; it killed them, left them, and did not want to eat them at all. I sent a message to Bidakha that a cage should be brought. (But) the day after, before the cage reached me, the lion died. I examined this lioness; she was old and ill. My lord may say, ‘Someone must have killed that lion’. If anyone has touched this lion, (I should be treated) as if (I had broken) the taboo of my lord. Now because this lion is dead, I had its skin flayed and gave its flesh to be eaten. The lion was old, and it is (because) of (its) weakness that it died. (Watanabe 2002: 85)
Yaqqim-Addu’s discomfort at reporting the death of the lioness to the king is palpable and it is the worry of being found guilty of having broken ‘the taboo of my lord’ (that is, being accused of killing the animal himself) which is clearly at the root of his anxiety.
Egyptian pharaohs and Assyrian rulers boasted of their prowess in slaying countless lions (E10, E11). King Ashurbanipal, for example, delighted in representing himself in the act of ritual slaughter, grasping a lion by the throat and stabbing it in the belly as it stood facing him (this feat was possible given that the now locally extinct Asiatic lion was smaller than its African counterpart; Reade 1988: 72-9; Jackson 2010: 158-61). On his personal name seal (SDa), Darius I is depicted shooting arrows at a rearing lion while the carcass of another slayed feline lies beneath his chariot’s wheels (F18; see further Herodotus 3.129; Diodorus 15.10.3; Polybius F133). The use of chariots in hunting seems to have developed in Egypt and Assyria, where they were used extensively in both war and the hunt as indicators of prestige, so closely associated were they with kings and the nobility, although in fact chariots were far from ideal hunting platforms, as they were fragile and liable to break on unsuitable terrain. While one way round this was to change to horseback if the prey fled into a forest or marsh, teams of troops were also sometimes used to stop the animal fleeing from the flat plains. Whatever the reality of the royal lion hunt, the motif of the king as slayer of lions is repeated on Persian coinage (Briant 2002: 715) and in seals and reliefs, where the lion sometimes morphs into a mythical hybrid creature and is dispatched by the king in his guise as ‘Persian hero’ (Root 1979: 300-11; Briant 2002: 232; F7).
Persians hunted by ‘throwing spears from horseback and with bows and slings’ (Strabo 15.3.18) but protocol strictly governed this aspect of the royal lion hunt and prerogatives were given to the king so that it was his right alone to cast the first spear at the prey (Xenophon, Cyropaedia 1.4.14; Plutarch, Moralia 173d). Ctesias’ account of Megabyzus’ fall from favour illustrates the intricacies of this court custom (D8). By spearing a lion, Megabyzus not only defiled the courtly protocol which gave the king alone the right to kill a lion, but seemed to question Artaxerxes’ ability as a hunter and - by extension - his fitness to rule (the same theme reappears in a story of one of Alexander Ill’s hunts; E12). It appears that in a later court edict Artaxerxes I revised the protocol of the lion hunt (E13) but nonetheless, as Briant (2002: 231) points out, ‘during royal hunts. . . courtiers had to be circumspect. While someone who came to the aid of the king could be richly rewarded. . . the example of Megabyzus indicates that it was not a good idea to appear to be a rival’.
World History
