The ideology of royal inaccessibility was promoted in the space which monarchs inhabited, and the palaces of the Empire were carefully designed, on the one hand, to separate the king from his subjects but, on the other hand, to display him to the eyes of the court on specified ceremonial occasions.
The Achaemenid Great Kings were builder kings. Dynastic and imperial structures were their speciality, as between them they erected architectural complexes - fortresses, royal residences, and tombs - on a grand scale. Several of them allude to their construction projects in their official inscriptions, often in an attempt to demonstrate dynastic longevity through the exhaustive planning and creation of palaces, tombs, and fortresses as symbols of royal power and imperial harmony (B6; in the inscription note how Xerxes presents himself as his father’s heir in his desire to add to the palace site and to ask for Ahuramazda’s blessing).
The Persian palaces were part of the royal vid (Akkadian, bttu; Elamite ulhi) - the Old Persian equivalent of the complex Greek term oikos, meaning ‘dwelling’, ‘household’, ‘economic entity’, and ‘people of a household’ (Morgan 2010). The king’s servants and officials - those who comprised the royal vid - are recorded in the Persepolis texts, but we should be aware that even the king’s animals formed part of the royal household.
When Darius I prayed that Ahuramazda would allow ‘happiness [to] rest upon this vid’ (Dpe §3) he was alluding, of course, not just to the individuals who made up the royal household but also to the physical space which they occupied: his hope was equally that ‘happiness will rest upon this palace’ (see Kuhrt 2007: 487, n. 4; in the Bisitun inscription likewise, vid is used in the sense of ‘house’, ‘palace’, and ‘household’; see DB §61-70). The vid was the seat of Persian kingship, for the word certainly refers to the palace or royal residence, which itself was imbued with a deep symbolism reflecting monarchic power. The palace was a centre of active power and, given that the court was the administrative hub of the Empire, archives, libraries, and offices demonstrated that the court was a working machine of royal legislation. Interestingly, in the recent wars and revolutions across the Middle East, the palaces of rulers such as Saddam Hussein in Babylon and Baghdad and the palaces of the Gaddafi family in Libya were attacked in the aftermath of the downfall of their regimes, demonstrating that the intimate symbolic relationship between the ruler, his administration, and his palace still exists.
Drawing on the rich resources and the gargantuan labour force of their vast Empire, the Achaemenid kings built lavishly throughout the realm (Briant 2002: 165-70), although the chief palatial sites, crafted from fine stone, mud brick, glazed brick, and wood, were clustered in the ancestral regions of Fars (the palaces at Parsagade and Persepolis), Media (at Ecbatana) and Elam (Susa), or in areas of early conquest (Babylonia). With the exception of Persepolis, which was the brain child of Darius and built almost from scratch (there are some indications that the area around Persepolis already had a governmental presence under Cyrus and Cambyses), Achaemenid royal residences tended to be built on top of earlier areas of habitation (Susa in particular had a rich and renowned Elamite heritage - see Potts 1999 - while Babylon had a deep antiquity) and each palace site essentially duplicated the other in form and function, if not in scale. At Susa, Darius was clearly so proud of his newly built fortifications and palace that he instructed the creation of a fine text to testify to the multi-ethnic labour of love which went into its construction (B7). Archaeology also testifies to the presence of skilled foreign craftsmen and builders working at the heart of the Empire, as do the many bureaucratic texts discovered in Persepolis’ Fortification and Treasury archives (Boardman 2000: 62-9; Tavernier 2008; Brosius 2011: 69). Yet these sources - the Susa inscription in particular - underplay an important if (to us) unpleasant aspect of Near Eastern civilisation, namely the ancients’ dependence upon slavery or other forms of forced labour. After all, palaces, fortresses, city walls, and roads did not build themselves and the Great King expected all his subjects to serve the throne whenever he ordered, and just as he could conscript able-bodied men into his army, so too he could draft them into corvee labour. As Douglas Knight and Amy-Jill Levine (2011: 337) remind us:
Edifices from antiquity which impress us today with their beauty and size were constructed not only by labourers earning a living wage and not only by slaves and war captives, but generally by peasants and farmer who were compelled to spend months away from their families and fields for state building projects and receive, at best, only enough food to survive.
Persia did not have an extensive slave economy and, as Dandamayev (1988) emphasises:
On the whole, there was only a small number of slaves in relation to the number of free persons even in the most developed countries of the Achaemenid empire, and slave labour was in no position to supplant the labour of free workers.
We know from the Persepolis texts that the majority of the royal kurtas (‘workers’) were foreigners, but, as Henkelman and Stolper (2009: 281) ask, ‘were they seasonal workers on corvee duty or rather a dependent and even exploited part of the heartland population including large permanent communities of deportees?’ It is hard to imagine that the peasant population was not recruited in some way for the Great King’s large-scale building projects. (More generally on Achaemenid slavery see: Dandamayev 1984b, 1988; Briant 2002: 433-9, 505-7, 940-2.)
Inge Nielsen reminds us that when trying to understand the layout and meaning of ancient palaces it is important to remember that ‘form follows function’ (Nielsen 1999: 13), that is to say, royal architecture was intended to conform to, highlight, and even augment the needs of monarchy, whether in a ceremonial or in a domestic sense. To quote
Norbert Elias (1983: 9): ‘every kind of “being together” of people has a corresponding arrangement of space’. The primary function of the Achaemenid royal palaces was to serve the ceremonial and official needs of Persian kingship and the Persian court and therefore they were places where audiences were granted, business was concluded, embassies were received, judgements were pronounced, petitions were heard, and councils were held. Moreover, the palaces were hierarchically charged sites for monarchic display, where the king appeared in the full panoply of state, surrounded by his court. The palaces also functioned as residential spaces and each one must have included, to a fuller or lesser extent, living quarters of the king and some of his family, and maybe even of members of the court (around the stone palaces, tented cities accommodated the bulk of the court; see Chapter 3). To sustain the royal household, slave dormitories, service quarters, and kitchens were needed and to ensure the king’s protection guard rooms must have been present too. Finally, the palaces had an important administrative function, represented by treasuries, offices, and archives, all of which needed space. What we see in Achaemenid palace architecture is the idea that space is constructed by the way it is occupied. Our mental maps of the palatial structures of Persia stem from our understanding not only of the physical and material elements of the spaces but of how their occupants functioned within them.
The creation of the Empire went hand in hand with the erection of stone palaces. Cyrus II began construction of a palace complex in his tribal territory at Parsagade (Elamite, Batrakatas) early in his reign and yet the full extent of the enormous, sprawling site is yet to be completely understood, although the official palaces, built in stone and decorated in marble, have been well documented and studied (see Matheson 1972: 116-19; Stronach 1978, 1997a, 1997b). The official complex includes a ‘private’ palace, a hypostyle hall for public audience ceremonies, and a magnificent gatehouse which served to control access to the monarch’s court. The decorative scheme used for the palace reliefs (such as survive) drew heavily on Assyrian, Babylonian, Egyptian, and Elamite motifs and merges them to make something harmoniously and distinctively ‘Persian’. Surrounding the palaces were formal gardens fed by a myriad of water channels and a large park for hunting. All in all, Parsagade suggests that early on in his reign Cyrus had a sophisticated appreciation of the trappings of kingship and understood the effective use of architectural space; the separation of the public areas of the palace (the throne hall and gateway) from the private areas (and we can assume that garden was for the use of the royal family alone) already fostered that deep-set Achaemenid penchant for controlling access to the king.
Following the conquest of Babylon in 539 bce, the Persians began construction of a large ceremonial palace next to the old residence of Nebuchadnezzar II (a clear political statement to the Babylonians), but little remains of it today and only a hypothetical reconstruction of its once august appearance can be attempted; nonetheless, there is evidence for the use of Achaemenid-style column bases and bull capitals, and at least part of the palace was decorated with fine glazed brickwork which shared motifs with examples found at Susa. In fact, the influence of Babylonian culture on Achaemenid art and architecture is apparent in various remains, and is seen in the use of terraced platforms in palace construction, wall decoration, and repousse technique in metalwork (Andre-Salvini 2009: 241-5).
Little remains of the once-famed Achaemenid residence at Ecbatana (Old Persian, Hamgmatdna) near Hamadan - and much controversy surrounds even its archaeological location (see Boucharlat 1998). The palace at Susa (Elamite, Susan), and its adjacent ville royale is archaeologically better preserved, with good traces of monumental gateways, columned halls, and staircases. Finds have included glazed brick reliefs and enormous columns with bull capitals (Harper et al. 1992; Curtis and Tallis 2005: 86-91; Perrot 2010), although perhaps the most remarkable discovery (in 1972) was the unearthing of a statue of Darius I (originally there were probably two) at the palace’s main gate (F10). Larger than life size, the statue is a very rare example of Achaemenid royal sculpture in the round, and while its upper part is missing, the statue nevertheless tells us much about imperial ideology. The king wears the court robe (see below), but the posture - one foot forward, one arm held close to the chest, the other hanging straight at the side - is purely Egyptian in style. The folds of the robe carry an inscription in Egyptian hieroglyphics and three Near Eastern cuneiform scripts: ‘Here is the stone statue which Darius ordered to be made in Egypt, so that he who sees it in the future will know that a Persian man holds Egypt’ (DSab). The statue’s base is carved with the Egyptian symbol of unity and the sides are adorned with the representation of the peoples/countries of the Empire, each of which is identified by local dress and a cartouche tag (Azarpay 1994: 177; Curtis and Tallis 2005: 99; Perrot 2010: 256-87).
Persepolis (Old Persian, Pdrsa; Greek, Persis, whence Persia), some 500 km east of Susa, lies in the heart of Fars and is by far the largest and most spectacular of the Achaemenid palaces (see especially Mousavi 2012). The structures there were chiefly built by Darius I, Xerxes, and Artaxerxes I but were still being added to until 330 bce, when they were destroyed by Alexander of Macedon (although enough of the site was still sufficiently complete for it to be described by Strabo 17.1-2, 71.1.3-8). Remarkably there is still no scholarly consensus about the aims of Darius in building the palace, and the basic function of Persepolis is still debated (for a succinct precis of the deliberation see Briant 2002: 185-6; and, importantly, Mousavi 2012: 51-6). Was the palace primarily a site for celebrating Nowruz, the Persian New Year festival? This has been well argued for, from the time of Herzfeld’s excavations onwards, even though some scholars repudiate the claim that Nowruz was celebrated in the Achaemenid period at all (see Mousavi 1992: 206; Mousavi 2012: 52-3). Some have seen Persepolis as a temple-like religious centre and not a working palace at all (Razmjou 2010), although the presence at the site of a huge bureaucracy overseeing and recording the day-to-day economic manoeuvres of the central Empire seriously challenges this. For other scholars, though, Persepolis is the ultimate illustration of royal power (Root 1979: 153-61) as well as a political, economic, and administrative centre of the Empire. This is perhaps the best way to regard the palace, although the case for considering Persepolis as the site of the Nowruz festival should not be dismissed lightly because the remarkable images of tribute-bearers from across the Empire carved into two regal staircases at the palace’s throne hall certainly suggest their participation in some kind of imperial celebration (F11a-d; Briant 2002: 175-81), and a Nowruz festivity might fit the bill nicely.
The same palatial configuration found at Susa is repeated at Persepolis (see Wilber 1969; Matheson 1972: 122-8; Koch 2001; Mousavi 2002; Shahbazi 2004). The palace is built on a high terrace platform (fortified and permeated with drainage channels) and is entered via a grand double-flighted staircase, whose steps are shallow enough to be comfortably ascended by horses and other animals; this might endorse the theory that the palace was used for a great gift-giving festival in which animals were presented to the king (the Apadana reliefs show goats, sheep, rams, horses, bulls, camels, lions, and even a giraffe - or possibly an okapi - being presented to the ruler). At the top of the staircase stood the mighty portal known as the ‘Gate of All Nations’, built by Xerxes, which was flanked by monumental stone bulls (F15) and human-headed winged bulls (for a ground plan see Kuhrt 2007: 582, fig. 12.1); official access to the palace was via this gateway (although a service gate at the southern end of the terrace was also maintained).
The terrace was essentially divided into two areas: a public space (a physical manifestation of the outer court) for group gatherings, parades, and state occasions; and a more private area (the corresponding inner court), catering to certain ceremonial events as well as residential and administrative needs. The largest and most imposing part of the public space was the audience hall (Apadana), which, at a height of nearly twenty-two metres, stood on a podium three metres higher than the huge open courtyard that surrounded it to the north and east. It consisted of an immense square hall with thirty-six columns supporting an enormous roof of cedar wood; it had three porticos (each with twelve columns) on the north, west, and east sides, four four-storey corner towers, and a series of storage and guardrooms on the south. It is estimated that the Apadana could hold 10,000 people. This was clearly the main site of the most important royal ceremonies, and entering into the darkened hallows of this majestic hall must have been an overwhelming experience for any diplomat, courtier, or suppliant.
Other official buildings included the magnificent ‘Hall of a Hundred Columns’, an immense banqueting vestibule (or an alternative throne hall), and the Tripylon or ‘Central Palace’, a small but lavishly ornamented structure with three doorways and four columns, which may have served as a council chamber. The jambs of the eastern doorway show foreign throne-bearers lifting high the Great King (F12); this might be a purely symbolic image, but it has been suggested that this may reflect an actual court ceremony in which, at some great festival at Persepolis, twenty-eight courtiers representing subject nations of the Empire lifted the royal throne seating the king and prince, and carried them into the main hall of the Tripylon, where they received guests (L’Orange 1953; Root 1979: 153-61; Shahbazi 2009).
The buildings of the inner court, situated to the rear of the Apadana, were made up of Darius’ tagara (literally, ‘suite of rooms’) and Xerxes’ hadis (literally, ‘seat of power’), two smaller palaces used as ‘private’ residences by the kings (Shahbazi 2004: 160) and incorporating (perhaps) dining areas and even bathrooms; it should be noted, however, that Lindsay Allen (2005a: 62) has rightly pointed out the dangers of attempting to pin these Old Persian words to specific palace locations. Other ‘palaces’ were located in this area, including the so-called Palace H, perhaps originally built by Artaxerxes I, and the completely destroyed palace G (dating, maybe, to Artaxerxes III). At the southern end of the platform, on a level below these small private palaces, was the harem (see Chapter 4 for a discussion). The managerial heart of the palace was based in the private part of the terrace as well: the treasury was located here, and it contained not only the vast wealth of Persepolis brought there by foreign dignitaries, satraps, and an unending herd of middle men, but it also housed the state bureaucracy’s army of scribes, secretaries, and other administrative personnel. It was here, as well as in the surrounding fortification wall, that the archival documents relating to the running of the Empire were discovered. At the foot of the platform, to the south, were gathered several mud-brick and stone pavilions (buildings A-H) which might well have served as royal dwelling places, including one (building H) with a sunken stone bath.
Perhaps the most striking feature of Persepolis, though, is the profusion of finely carved stone reliefs which seem to cover every available inch of space. Once brightly painted and even embellished with overlays of precious metal, the reliefs are now bleached of colour and stripped of ornament, yet their beauty and elegance, made most apparent in the formulaic regularity of their subject matter and detail, are a wonder of artistic creativity and planning. Armed guards, court dignitaries, foreign ambassadors, a menagerie of animals, and a host of magical creatures jostle for space on the palace walls, but all of them take second place to the many images of the Great King which dominate the scenes. He is shown calmly walking from one room to another, eyes fixed on the middle distance; he holds a long sceptre (F1; Salvesen 1998: 136-7; Brettler 1989: 80-1), and is followed by two courtiers (always depicted on a smaller scale), one of whom holds a parasol above the king’s head while the other holds a fly whisk (see F2; some examples show a folded towel-like strip of linen or else an unguent pot); sometimes the king is more active and is depicted slaying real or mythical animals, his sword plunging into the belly of the monster (F7; Root 1979: 285-9). Occasionally the monarch strangles a lion in the crook of his left arm. In these combat scenes, where the wild beasts represent chaos, disorder, and ‘the lie’, it is possible that the king represents ‘every man’ and takes on the form of ‘the Persian hero’ restoring order to his country (Root 1979: 303-8).
Remarkably, though, certain artistic themes are notable by their absence: in all of Persepolis there is no representation of the king engaged in warfare or the hunt - yet we know both to have been integral components of Achaemenid kingship and its ideology; neither is the king represented feasting or in worship (although tomb reliefs do represent the latter act). Hunting scenes, feasting scenes, war scenes, and religious scenes are all represented in the minor arts (especially seal images) but for some reason they do not enter into the repertoire of official monumental Achaemenid iconography. Why? Briant (2002: 185-6) puts forward a valuable suggestion:
Persepolitan art is not a simple quasi-photographic reflection of reality. Though it does capture reality, it does so in order to transform it and make it sublime; it relates less to a scenic scenario than to an ideological discourse on royalty and imperial might organized around themes particularly evocative of the power of the Great King: the king in majesty. . . armed forces. . . the cooperation of the aristocracy. . . and imperial dominion.
World History
