Clothing was an important element of ancient Persian court culture. Its significance could be physical, economic, social, or symbolic and the function of clothing, moreover, was multiple. Clothing could protect, conceal, display, or represent a person’s office or state of being and the fact that garments could wear out or tear is also important. After all, in the ancient world handmade fabrics were costly, scarce, and valuable and dyes and decorations added to their worth, so their disintegration or loss was a serious blow to a household economy and personal wealth (see Cleland et al. 2007: 40-1, 205).
In our discussion of the royal investiture (Chapter 1) we noted that the new king went through a symbolic rite of separation and reincorporation that was signified through the use of ceremonial clothing as the ruler stripped off his fine garments, put on the humble garb that Cyrus II had worn before taking the throne, and was then re-clothed in a robe which indicated both his illustriousness and his right to rule. The imagery of undressing and dressing is usually symbolic of bigger issues, and in the case of the Achaemenid investiture ritual the transference of clothing harked back to Persia’s humble beginning (and, in a sense, by donning Cyrus’ clothing every subsequent Great King became a Cyrus reborn) while simultaneously celebrating its current glories.
The Greeks generally regarded Persian dress as beautiful (Herodotus 1.135, 7.61-2) and expensive, and indeed Cook (1983: 138) estimates that by modern standards Artaxerxes II stood up in nothing short of ?3 million worth of clothing and jewellery. But what did the royal robe look like? Members of the Achaemenid court wore two distinct types of clothing (Llewellyn-Jones 2010b). The first sort can be called ‘riding habit’ or ‘cavalry costume’ (F13; see Widengren 1956; Vogelsang 2010): made up of five items of clothing - a felt cap, a sleeved coat (Greek, kandys; Old Persian, gaunaka), sleeved tunic (Greek, ependytes), trousers (Greek, anaxyrides), and footgear - this sort of dress was ideal for a people so dependent on horses for transportation and warfare (see Chapter 3). On the Persepolis Apadana reliefs it is worn by peoples from the Iranian plateau and related groups (Vogelsang 2010). The Greeks erroneously called this ‘Median dress’ - for there is no evidence for it being limited to the Medes, although unfortunately the tag has stuck in much contemporary scholarship (see for instance Sekunda 2010). The labelling of this type of outfit as ‘Median’ needs to be overturned in favour of ‘riding habit’ or ‘cavalry costume’ or some other suitably equine-related idiom. Interestingly, Achaemenid iconography never depicts the king wearing the riding habit, although it is probable that he did so. Indeed, four groups of Iranian delegates are represented at Persepolis bringing coats, tunics, and trousers to their ruler, and the motif is repeated on the Nereid monument from Xanthos in Asia Minor. The message is clear: the Great King is an Iranian horseman as well as the foremost Persian courtier.
Aspects of court etiquette operated around the kandys, which is usually shown draped over the wearer’s shoulders with the sleeves (Greek, kore) hanging loosely at the sides. These ultra-long sleeves were supposed to be used in the presence of the Great King and the suppliant was expected to place his arms in the sleeves but (probably) allow the excess fabric to fall over his hand, thereby rendering his hands harmless (since they could not grip weapons). Failure to do this was read as an insult to the monarch or his representative, and Prince Cyrus the Younger used such an affront as an excuse to execute two of his powerful - and potentially troublesome - kinsmen (B14).
The second form of Persian clothing is known as the ‘court robe’ (F14) and may have been of pure Persian invention, although it does bare resemblance to Egyptian-style royal tunics of the New Kingdom period (Root 2011: 426-9 argues that the garment originated in Elam but there is nothing to support this). Constructed from a huge double square of linen or wool (or perhaps cotton or even silk), and worn over baggy trousers, the tunic was tightly belted at the waist to form a robe with deep folds which created an overhang resembling sleeves (see Goldman 1964, 1991; Beck 1972; Kuhrt 2007: 532). The court robe (Greek, sarapis, serapeis, kalasireis or aktaiai) was richly decorated with woven designs and ornamented applique decorations made from gold and semiprecious stones; it was as costly as it was beautiful (Athenaeus 12.525d-e). This was the costume of the Great King par excellence and he is represented wearing it repeatedly, whether sitting on his throne or actively fighting in battle or killing an animal (mythical or otherwise). In reality the court robe would have been a highly impractical garment for any form of active combat, so the choice to depict the monarch wearing it with such regularity can only be explained by the fact that it was symbolically important. The court robe represented Achaemenid power.
In daily life, kings and courtiers could wear either the court robe or the riding habit as situation required, although it is next to impossible for us to understand when and why the two types of dress were worn. It is not beyond possibility that some court positions required a specific form of livery. On the tomb of Darius I, for instance, Aspathines, the king’s bow-bearer, wears the riding habit, while Gobryas, the spear-bearer, wears the court robe (both courtiers, incidentally, were Persian, strengthening the argument that the riding habit was not Median at all).
It is probable that the royal robe worn at the climax of the investiture ceremony was a court robe since we know that it was richly dyed and beautifully worked with exquisite designs (Xenophon, Cyropaedia 8.3.13-14; Curtius Rufus 3.3.17-19). Ctesias (F41) recalls that one sort of royal robe was known as a sarapis and here, remarkably, he seems to preserve an authentic ancient Elamite term for a royal garment since the word sarapi is found in Middle Elamite texts from the acropolis at Susa, suggesting a long continuity of tradition in ceremonial dress in southern Iran (see Henkelman 2003b: 228-31; for Elamite royal robes in the Achaemenid period see Alvarez-Mon 2009).
Given that the investiture ceremony was a rite of passage or, as Plutarch would have it, a telete (‘mystery rite’) in which the ruler underwent a metamorphosis, the royal robe worn by the king was thereafter imbued with religious symbolism. Curtius Rufus (3.3.17-19) notes that it was purple, white, and gold and decorated with the ‘motif of gilded hawks attacking each other with their beaks’ - no doubt his interpretation of the winged Ahuramazda symbol. It was this ensemble which, Ctesias (F45py) notes, struck the Persians with an almost religious awe (thaumaston).
The Great King’s robe was a talisman. When Cyrus the Younger plotted to kill his brother Artaxerxes II, he refused to strike the death blow while the king was wearing this garment (A1) and the true significance of the robe as a manifestation of the kingship itself is the key to understanding the story Herodotus tells about Xerxes’ robe (E14), behind which no doubt lies a Persian account of Masistes’ attempt to usurp the throne (Sancisi-Weerdenburg 1983: 28-9); moreover, Herodotus’ audience would probably have known that Xerxes himself was assassinated in a court coup, thereby adding significance and irony to the story (see Chapter 5). The very real paranoia lying behind the idea of usurpation and its relationship to the royal robe is likewise encountered in a Persian story told by Deinon which has the ambitious and treacherous Assyrian queen Semiramis trick her weakling husband into lending her his royal garment, which she subsequently refuses to return (B15). When in the Hebrew Bible Prince Jonathan, the son and heir of King Saul, gifted David his robe and belt he was effectively relinquishing his claim to the throne and announcing David as a more fitting (God-chosen) successor to Saul (1 Samuel 18:1-4).
Even when ripped or tattered, the king’s robe possessed extraordinary powers. One courtier, Teribazos, managed to get hold of one of Artaxerxes Il’s cast-offs and wore it openly in front of the court. But he escaped the death sentence which naturally accompanied such a rash act because of the king’s benevolence and because Teribazos was prepared to debase himself by playing the fool in front of the king and was thus exonerated of treason (Plutarch, Artaxerxes 5.2).
The king’s robe was uniquely his. An aetiological legend recounted by Xenophon tells how Cyrus the Great received the prototype royal robe from the daughter of the Median king, whom he then took as a wife (Cyropaedia 8.5.17-19), and the robe, it is suggested, bestowed the kingship of Media on Cyrus. Thus there is little doubt that the Persians believed the Great King’s robe to have possessed the supernatural powers of monarchy. Xerxes, troubled by dreams, instructed his uncle Artabanos to put on royal clothes and to sleep in the king’s bed; as he slept, the same apparition that had visited Xerxes came to Artabanos too, now decked out in the paraphernalia of royalty and imbued with the requisite aura of majesty (Herodotus 7.17). Alexander of Macedon’s careful employment of articles of Persian royal dress following his defeat of Darius III is best understood in this light and suggests that he wanted to be acknowledged as a legitimate Great King (Plutarch, Alexander 45.2; Diodorus 17.77.4-5; Fredricksmeyer 1997).
Garments played an important part in the wider culture of court society and in particular the act of a superior (especially the ruler) bestowing a robe on a subordinate (a courtier) as an indication of special favour and as a rite of investiture has a very ancient pedigree in the Near East. The Hebrew prophet Isaiah records the promotion of a man named Elyakim to the position of master of the Jerusalem palace and notes how he was clothed by the king with a robe and a sash as a signal of his new authority over the royal household (Isaiah 22:20); most famous is the story of Joseph and the gift his father made him of a well dyed multi-coloured coat as a sign of favour in Genesis 37. In Iran this custom can be traced in unbroken lineage from antiquity to the late twentieth century, where it has long been known as kheilat, an Islamic-period term referring to both the act of gift-giving and the robe of honour itself (see Gordon 2003, 2010; Baker 2010). The bestowing of a kheilat was a chief signifier in the political process: deserving loyal followers were rewarded with clothing and even erring courtiers who humbly repented received a kheilat to signal renewed loyalty.
Kheilat is certainly attested for the Achaemenid Empire (although the Old Persian expression is unknown). The Great King often gifted robes to his satraps, military officers, and courtiers as an expression of personal favour or for services rendered to the crown and the act served to sustain courtiers’ loyalty as the robe-giving ceremony was held publicly at court or, for those not present at court, the robes were received at public ceremonies in the provinces (even cities could be honoured with the gift of a robe - see Herodotus 7.116). Mary Boyce suggests that even in the Achaemenid period the New Year celebration was the time for kheilat ceremonies, the most lavish displays of royal gift-giving (Boyce 1983: 799-800). The Greek sources suggest that the sleeved riding coat (kandys) was especially valued as a royal gift, and that the colour and decoration of the coat could reflect rank and status (not every robe was equal, and neither was its recipient; Herodotus 3.84; Xenophon, Cyropaedia 8.3.3-5). Those honoured with the gift of a royal robe would show it off in public, as Mithradates did when he had received a handsome coat from Artaxerxes II after the Battle of Cunaxa (Plutarch, Artaxerxes 15.2) or as Mordechai did when he was paraded through the streets of Susa on the back of the king’s horse (Esther 6:11). Decked out in their finery, Achaemenid courtiers clearly cut fine figures; all the more humorous therefore is Xenophon’s vivid account of them, all bedraggled and mud-splattered, attempting to free baggage wagons from the quagmire of an impassable road (B16).
The idea that a magical sympathy exists between an individual and his clothing was acknowledged by James Frazer (1911: 207), who noted a primitive belief that ‘whatever is done to clothes will be felt by [a] man himself’. This might explain an Achaemenid ritual whereby instead of scourging the bodies of an erring courtier, his clothes were whipped as a substitute. This was a highly emblematic act that at once humiliated the victim and made an example of him to others of his rank (B17). As Keaveney (1998: 240) notes, ‘the intent seems clear enough. Those punished were meant to feel pain through their clothes. . . in a real sense, clothes made the man’. Of equal significance was the symbolism of the belt, which on a practical level could be used to tighten the tunic of the riding habit or to pull in the voluminous folds of the court robe. But the belt also indicated a bond of loyalty to the king and figuratively bound the wearer to the throne. If the king grasped a noble by his belt (presumably to pull it off) it meant that the bond between them was broken (Nepos, Datames 10.1-2; Diodorus 17.30.4; Briant 2002: 325).
World History
