Ancient Persia: A Concise History of the Achaemenid Empire, 550-330 BCE

by Matt Waters

  Tribute to the King and Coins

  Herodotus 3.89–95 offers an overview of the Empire’s satrapies and their respective tributes, broken down into specific amounts. This passage is an important, if often misunderstood, piece of evidence for the Empire’s organization. Whether Herodotus’ tallied tribute – a total of 14,560 talents, an absolutely staggering sum of money into the billions of dollars in today’s terms, though any such conversions are extremely difficult and notoriously unreliable – has any basis in reality is open to debate. Significant components thereof were more likely to have been paid in kind rather than in coin or precious metal, so some of the numbers must be estimated equivalents.

  On what was Herodotus’ list based? For a long time, this account formed the core of any discussion of Achaemenid satrapal organization, and it is certainly a starting point for assessing the extent and wealth of the Empire. Nonetheless, scholars are still divided over its interpretation to this day. Some view it as a reasonably coherent overview of the satrapy system but one that is heavily Hellenized and, as a consequence, contains several irregularities. Other scholars assert that it has no historical worth whatsoever and is, rather, entirely a creation of Herodotus based on Greek literary conventions, including those of Greek epic.5

  Revenues of all sorts poured into the satrapal capitals and from there to the king. The assessment and collection of tribute, or revenues in general, was a complex system that is difficult to categorize succinctly. The organizational elements were attributed to Darius I, but even if he reformed the system there was certainly tribute collected by his predecessors; it was a long standing practice before the Achaemenids. Terminology is not always straightforward, since Herodotus distinguishes some peoples as having given gifts (Greek dra) instead of tribute (Greek phoros and variants), such as the Ethiopians. The distinction may have been relative. Beyond this, tribute might also include additional elements such as troop levies and what we would term taxes: payments from royal holdings (granaries, fisheries, mines) either in kind or in coin, for the maintenance of government officials.

  There was no one size fits all approach. A people called the Uxians, who lived in the mountains between Khuzistan and Fars, presumably had a special relationship with the King whereby they were given gifts not to harass the Persians, who could not control them. This perspective – which fits the Greek stereotype of the weakness of the Persian king – comes once again from later Greek sources (e.g., Arrian 3.17) and is misleading. A special relationship may have applied here through a gift exchange: to the effect that the Uxians retained their internal autonomy but acknowledged Persian suzerainty. Such an arrangement was hardly unique. A multitude of sources in Elamite, Babylonian, and Aramaic reveal the complexity of the system, the extent of Achaemenid reach and effective control.

  The application of coinage to the payment of tribute is also a subject of frequent discussion, though, as noted, payment in kind or in weighted precious metals was more common. Coined money had been in use in Lydia and Greece for some time before Darius I, who appears to have been the first to command minting silver or gold royal coinage. We find the most references to Persian coins (and not only of Persian issue) in context of payments to Greek mercenaries in the later fifth and fourth centuries, although that usage was hardly exclusive. The most famous type was the gold daric: it portrayed the King in various poses as an archer, sometimes also with a spear (Figure 6.3), another striking image of the royal ideology. But this type of coin was worth a lot of money and would have been difficult to use in daily exchanges where, if coinage was used, it would have been in silver. Gold darics could be used in commerce, but they may have been primarily prestige items, doled out as a sign of royal favor.

  Figure 6.3 Persian gold daric. © The Trustees of the British Museum/Art Resource, NY.

  Satraps and Provincial Personnel

  The satraps, the “protectors of the kingdom,” were the King’s most important officials, typically members of the Persian elite if not the extended royal family. The word “satrap” (Old Persian xaçapvan) may be considered equivalent to the governor of a province, one level below the King, while the term “satrapy” (from the Greek satrapeia, derived from the Old Persian term) refers to a province. Classical sources use different words when referring to the political hierarchy of the Achaemenid Empire, and this engenders confusion; for example, it is uncertain whether the Greek title hyparchos (variously translated as “governor,” “lieutenant governor,” or even “ruler”) refers to a Persian satrap or an official who reported to the satrap. Since various Greek authors used the terms so fluidly, it is no wonder that modern scholars have such difficulty with them. But we are not reliant only on Greek evidence. For example, the archive of Arshama (Greek Arsames), the satrap of Egypt during the later fifth century, offers extensive information on the day-to-day operations of that important satrapy’s administration (see p. 189).

  The formal creation of the Achaemenid satrapy system has been attributed to Darius I, but it has become increasingly clear that Cyrus and Cambyses initiated the system through adoption and adaptation of preexisting structures. The resulting administrative units were occasionally modified in light of political circumstances but remained relatively intact throughout the Achaemenid period. It is not possible to demarcate fixed boundaries of satrapies, especially on modern maps, but they frequently coincided with natural ones such as major rivers. Creation of a satrapy usually involved the replacement of the previous king or ruler of a region by a Persian satrap, appointed by the King. Thus the King became an additional level of administration superimposed upon previous kingdoms and territories now incorporated into the Persian Empire. Local officials were often retained but became subordinate to the satrap.

  Continuity of satrapal rule through generations of the same family indicates that the appointment became almost dynastic in some areas, whether the satrap was initially a local ruler, as in the case of Mausolus in fourth-century Caria (southwestern Anatolia), or a royal appointee from a Persian elite family, as in the case of Artabazus in Hellespontine Phrygia (in northwestern Anatolia). Artabazus and his descendants provide an unbroken line from 479 BCE well into the fourth century. Artabazus was a cousin to the royal family, thus a part of the extended Achaemenid clan, and this connection underlines the Persian nobility’s stake in the Empire. The King depended upon his satraps’ loyalty for the Empire’s smooth functioning and stability, and the satrap depended upon the King for his position. There were occasions when a satrap spurred destabilization through revolt, especially in the context of a disputed royal succession.

  While satraps had a great deal of independence in the day-to-day operation of their provinces, foreign policy was another matter. The satrap was ultimately responsible to the King. It is easy – because we have voluminous evidence of various types – to visualize frequent and ongoing communications between the King’s court and the satraps on a variety of matters. Each satrapy had its own administration that was connected with the overarching administrative net through which the King controlled the Empire. Satraps were not only responsible for the security of their provinces but also for the collection and delivery of taxes and tribute as well as for the maintenance of roads and other networks of communication. When the King sought military forces for a major campaign, it was the satrap’s responsibility to assemble the requested forces from his area.

  Royal secretaries and military personnel, responsible directly to the King, were key components of satrapal administration. These individuals and their retinues helped to govern the satrapy and to maintain consistent and reliable communication with the King. They also served as tangible reminders that the satrap owed his position to the King. Greek sources contain many examples of a satrap’s deference to the King in matters of foreign affairs, in response to one or another request by a Greek city-state for assistance or a change in policy. It is easy to interpret such hedging as a satrap’s evasion, but the realities of Achaemenid hierarchy and bureaucracy insist
otherwise. Herodotus’ story of Darius I’s handling of the recalcitrant Oroites (see p. 78) provides a paradigmatic example of the King’s authority in the provinces: a mechanism of royal control and an illustration of the consequences of insubordination.

  The stereotyped view of the detached or cloistered King, prominent in much of twentieth-century scholarship, has become much less compelling. There is ample reason to assert that the King was well-informed of his satraps’ activities, and that a satrap in good standing (i.e., one not in open rebellion) consistently deferred to the King on any matters beyond his jurisdiction or prerogative. A fine line may separate satrapal independence from satrapal revolt, but the weight of the evidence indicates satrapal adherence to royal directives. In other words, satraps were aware not only of their responsibilities to the royal administration but also of the sorts of initiatives they could, or were expected to, undertake. Evidence from Greek, Aramaic, and Elamite sources attests to a high degree of imperial organization and control.

  The functioning of the Empire demanded reliable communications between center and periphery. Finds such as bullae from Daskyleion (the satrapal capital of Hellespontine Phrygia, in northwestern Anatolia) and Aramaic documents from Bactria attest to bureaucracies, comparable with and connected to the central one, even in the far-flung provinces.6 Access to provisions and storehouses along the royal roads required authorization, as demonstrated by a number of documents in Aramaic and Elamite, along with Herodotus’ more widely-known description of the Royal Road from Sardis to Susa (see discussion later in this chapter). Herodotus’ account finds corroboration in an Elamite administrative document from the central administration in Persepolis, a disbursement from the satrap Artaphernes for a group traveling to Persepolis.7 This mundane communiqué illustrates the control the king and his satraps had over their officials in these far-flung areas.

  The Persepolis Tablets: Persian Administration, Economy, and Stratification

  In the 1930s CE, excavators at Persepolis found two stashes of tablets, one from the so-called Treasury in the southeastern part of the terrace and the other deposited within the fortification wall of the northeastern part of the terrace. Thus the names Persepolis Treasury Tablets (PTT) and Persepolis Fortification Tablets (PFT) indicate the find spots, not the contents, of the tablets. The first group (PTT) is relatively small, 129 useful texts (not including additional fragments), which range in date between 492 and 457 BCE, from the reigns of Darius I to Artaxerxes I. The second group (PFT) is enormous in number but more limited in chronological scope (c. 509–493 BCE, during the reign of Darius I). The number of PFT documents ranges from 4,000 to 30,000 or more, but this depends upon who is counting and with what parameters. Higher counts often include fragments (pieces of broken texts). Studies devoted to the Fortification archive emphasize the variety in the corpus: tablets with Elamite (cuneiform) text; tablets and tags written in Aramaic (ink and incised); and many un-inscribed tablets. Only a portion of the Elamite tablets has been published. There are also a few but important anomalies, including tablets inscribed in Greek, Akkadian, Phrygian, and even Old Persian.

  Another important component of the Fortification archive is the diversity of seals applied to the tablets. There are more than 1,100 distinct seals impressed on the published Elamite tablets and many more on the unpublished ones. The seals are an integral part of the administrative process, as the sealings on a tablet may in themselves communicate the agents involved in the transaction as well as the specific locale. The seals portray a range of activity, and their rich iconography is invaluable as an index for Persian visual arts and culture. While the breadth of the archive necessitates its piecemeal study, each piece must be considered part of a cohesive administrative unit. Even though enormous strides have been made in our understanding of the archive, in many respects this venture is still nascent. What follows is only an introduction to the evidence and what it offers for the study of Achaemenid history.

  Nearly half of the Fortification texts date to the years 500–499 BCE and almost two-thirds of the Treasury tablets date to the year 466. The administrative region concerns mainly the wider Persepolis region itself, of course, but the corpus contains references to almost all parts of the Empire between Sardis and India, especially those texts that deal with supply distributions for travelers on official business. It should be emphasized that these clay tablets were only one part of the administrative apparatus. The nature of cuneiform texts makes them more durable than parchment, wax boards, and the like, on which a great deal of record keeping was also done. Despite the size of the Fortification archive, once again we are reminded that we have only a piece of the entire puzzle.

  The Fortification texts deal mainly with foodstuffs and livestock – their collection, storage, and redistribution. The tablets provide important data on the organization of labor; economy and fiscal management; the demography and cartography of the Empire’s core; operations of state institutions at a basic level; religious practices and cultic personnel; travel on state business; and a host of other social and cultural aspects of Achaemenid Persian history. None of this incredible detail and sophistication should be too surprising. Such advanced organizational control had persisted already for several centuries in both Mesopotamian and Elamite traditions, traceable as far back as 2100 BCE and the Ur III period.

  Workers were generally labeled kurtash, an Elamite word that escapes consensus as to its exact translation. It may be misguided to narrow the term’s definition too much. Workers were of varying sorts: those who worked in the fields and shops controlled by the administration and those who labored on the massive, ongoing construction projects at Persepolis. They encompassed varying levels of specialization and socioeconomic status. Usually a given worker’s specialty is not indicated, only the amounts of rations received, which for most workers amounted to a subsistence wage. Disbursements to workers were usually in-kind, meaning quantities of foodstuffs, though some Treasury tablets record payment of silver.

  Another interesting feature of the kurtash is the range of their ethnicities: Arabs, Bactrians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Elamites, Ionians, Thracians, among several others. Who were these people and why were they working at Persepolis? How did they get there? These questions have no easy answers. Some of the royal inscriptions – for example Darius I’s “foundation charter” from Susa (DSf) – associate specific ethnic groups with specific materials or craftsmanship, an inclusive manifestation of the Empire and its diversity. People of varying ethnicity mentioned in these tablets may have been brought to Persepolis for similar reasons, whether by virtue of a specific call or by force, required to work on select projects for the King. Deportations may have been one means of their presence, such as the Eretrians (see p. 89) labeled by the central administration with the generic term “Ionian” used for all Greeks. But as reasonable as such a suggestion seems, it is not obvious that such specific populations of deportees were among the kurtash. That even Persians could be labeled kurtash gives pause to any assumption that the word indicates deportees.

  The man in charge of the Persepolis administration from 506–497 BCE was named Parnaka (Greek Pharnaces), identified by two inscribed seals in Aramaic on numerous tablets. The first one (labeled in the literature PFS 9* for “Persepolis Fortification Seal number 9,” Figure 6.4) labels him simply as “Parnaka.” A second seal (PFS 16*, Figure 6.5), substituted by official order in an Elamite tablet (PF 2067), replaced the first one and bears the label: Parnaka, son of Arsham. Aramaic Arsham is Old Persian Arshama and Greek Arsames. Scholars generally agree that, based on Parnaka’s evident high rank and his filiation, he is none other than Darius I’s uncle, brother of Darius’ father Hystaspes. Further, this same Parnaka is the father of Artabazus, whom Xerxes made satrap of Hellespontine Phrygia.

  Figure 6.4 Collated line drawing of PFS 9* from the Persepolis Fortification Archive. Courtesy Persepolis Seal Project.

  Figure 6.5 Collated line drawing of PFS 16* from the Persepolis Forti
fication Archive. Courtesy Persepolis Seal Project.

  Parnaka oversaw a vast hierarchy of officials who supervised, in turn, discrete areas of the administrative organization. It is to these various functionaries that Parnaka, or his immediate subordinates (also of high rank), sent orders for disbursements. Instructions thus followed a chain of command, and there was generally a clear allocation of responsibility and accountability. Officials in charge of warehouses – where grain, wine, or other goods for disbursement were stored – were required to keep careful records. Every year accountants prepared inventories that were sent to the central office in Persepolis where the “books” were kept. Parnaka or his lieutenants thus had relatively easy access to information about inventories at any of the warehouses throughout the districts linked to this central administration.

  High-ranking officials received commensurately greater allocations than lower-level workers. For example, three texts (PF 654, 665, 6698) give a glimpse of Parnaka’s own allocations and allow us to reconstruct his daily “payment”: two sheep, 90 liters of wine, and 180 liters of flour. The quantities provided are obviously too great to be consumed by one person. Other elites similarly received quantities far too high for any one individual to consume. Such disbursements may have been redistributed to that individual’s subordinates, credited for future withdrawals as necessary, or perhaps exchanged for other commodities or silver. Large outlays may also have been applied to special occasions or feasts at the royal table, which was attended by a careful hierarchy and performance, with many layers of significance. It is likely that some of the large disbursements to the elite may have been meant for just such purposes, though the tablets themselves generally only indicate the materials disbursed, not the intended use.