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| Bull Column at Persepolis |
This blog will try and look at the Near East for the years 479-460BC, which during this period was mainly included in the Persian Empire. I will occasionally mention the affairs of Carthage as well. From the Persian period onwards, the historical sources become quite scant and we are quite heavily reliant on the writings of the Greeks, particularly Herodotus. This period sees the ending of Herodotus’ history and the sources become even sparser.
Other important sources will be Thucydides, Plutarch and Diodorus Siculus. Occasional snippets of information may come from the Hebrew biblical writings, or sacred traditions, but these will generally only concern affairs in Judea or those pertaining specifically to Jewish history. The story of Esther is an exception of sorts, but even this event would not have been of major concern to other peoples of the empire. It is not that there is nothing to say for this period, but the history is now mainly written by the Greeks. So if most of what I have to say concerns the Greeks, we should remember it is because they are writing the history, not because nothing else was happening in the Persian Empire. For any events that deal with the Greeks, I will only write of them briefly as they are dealt with in greater detail in previous blogs, which will be listed at the end.
In the year 479 Persia ruled most of the world known to the people of the Near East. From Ionia to India, from the edges of Scythia to the edges of Kush, the Persian Empire held sway, under the monarchy of Xerxes I. In the previous year Xerxes had launched an unsuccessful invasion of Greece and had suffered a major naval defeat at the Battle of Salamis. Faced with an enemy that now had a naval advantage, Xerxes retreated from Europe and went to Sardis in Lydia, there to wait to hear the outcome of the war. He had left a high-ranking general by the name of Mardonius in Greece who would carry on the struggle against the Athenians and Spartans. Mardonius had a large army and there were good reasons to suspect that he would achieve his goals. The Persian navy had fallen back and was anchored near the Aegean island of Samos, quite close to the mainland of Asia Minor.
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| Relief of Persian soldiers from Susa |
Mardonius attempted to negotiate with the Greek cities, particularly the Athenians, to try and detach them from their alliances. This was a good tactic, albeit unsuccessful, and led to serious dissensions among the Greek alliance. Trying to pressure his enemies, Mardonius moved his armies towards Attica and tried once more to negotiate.
Meanwhile a city in the north of Greece had already rebelled against Persia, thinking Persia already defeated in the wars. This could not be allowed to stand and Mardonius had sent a force to subdue the city of Potidaea before the rebellion could spread. The siege was proceeding against the coastal city when the sea suddenly retreated away from the shore, exposing weakened areas of the walls of Potidaea. The Persians could not pass up such a heaven-sent opportunity and they ran across the exposed shallows towards the wall. While their columns were rushing along the sand the Persians were caught as the sea returned in a greater tide than had ever been seen in that region. The attackers were swept away in the surf and the Persian commander abandoned the siege. This may possibly be the first description of a tsunami in the historical record.
Meanwhile Mardonius occupied Athens and, upon hearing that the Athenians were flatly refusing any further negotiations, he burned it to the ground as thoroughly as he could accomplish. The Athenians appealed to the Spartans to actually do something instead of waiting behind fortifications at the Corinthian Isthmus and finally the Spartans did march out.
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| Relief from the palace at Susa |
The Spartans and their allies, combined with the Athenians and other troops, made up an army perhaps 80,000-100,000 strong, which was also probably the largest Greek army (not counting later Macedonian armies) ever fielded in the classical era. I could be mistaken on this however. Mardonius had a slightly larger army, probably numbering around 100,000-120,000. The Persians were much less lightly armoured, but had the advantage of Greek allies such as the Thebans, who were armed much like the Spartans. The Persians also had the advantage of having a much stronger cavalry component to their army.
The two armies met on a plain in Boeotia near the city of Plataea. The Greeks won some initially skirmishes, beating back Persian cavalry attacks and killing a Persian cavalry commander. Wishing to capitalise on these successes, the Greeks, under the leadership of a Spartan general called Pausanias, moved closer to the Persian camp. But this proved to be a mistake on the part of the Greeks, as their food and water supplies were now threatened by the more mobile Persian units. The Greeks decided to pull back to a more defensible position, covering themselves from Persian attack by retreating at night.
Their retreat was uncoordinated and Mardonius mistook this for a full-scale withdrawal. He ordered a Persian attack, but while his army was readying itself, the Greeks managed to get into some form of order and prepared for the Persian assault. Mardonius had thus committed himself to fighting an uphill infantry battle against more heavily armoured troops. But his army was already engaged by the time the mistake would have been realised and there would have been no choice but to carry on with the battle and hope that Persian courage would carry the day. The balance of the battle hung in doubt until Mardonius was killed in the thick of the fray. The Persian army collapsed after the death of Mardonius and probably only around half the Persian army was able to escape. The Persian land invasion of Greece had failed.
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| Bull column from the palace at Susa |
The Greek fleet had sailed eastwards to engage the Persian fleet. The Persians had moved from Samos to the nearby mainland at a place called Mycale, where they had beached their ships and built a stockade to protect themselves from attack. Seeing that the Persians did not offer battle on the sea, the Greeks landed their marines and sailors and moved to the attack. The Persians left their camp so as not to be surrounded by the Greeks. It seems as if the Persian morale was poor or that perhaps they were not expecting an engagement. The Greek hoplite armour would have been much heavier than the Persian armour (which was often simply a light shield) and in close-quarters combat the Greeks defeated the Persians, sacked their camp and burned their ships. This ended the last chance that the Persians had to offer any resistance to the Greeks in the Aegean. Both the battles of Plataea and Mycale are described in more detail in previous blogs.
Xerxes had been in Sardis while these events were ongoing and it must have been extremely demoralising to hear the news of catastrophic defeat after catastrophic defeat. I wonder why the Persians did not bring up more troops to attack the Greeks or to fight back. But there are some indications to suggest that the province of Babylon was in revolt at this time and any troops that could be spared would have had to be sent to quell this. However, this is far from proved. It is not certain that the Babylonians drew away troops from the western satrapies of the Persian Empire, but it is a possibility and the Greek victories may have been easier, or less contested than they would otherwise have been. But this is speculation.
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Coins of the
Ghazzat Hoard |
At least some Persians (or Phoenicians) returned from the wars. A coin hoard was found underwater near Gaza in Palestine, now known as the Ghazzat hoard. These coins were all from the northern areas of Greece and parts of Thrace, and all of these coins are from the decades immediately previous to Xerxes invasion of Greece. I wonder if this was the part of the pay or plunder of a Phoenician captain who managed to escape the storms and battles of Artemision and Salamis only to return to the Levant and perish within sight of their native land. I’m being very melodramatic here, but it is interesting to see that there is such physical evidence of the invasion found in various parts of the Near East.
In the year 478 Xerxes seems to have left Sardis and returned to the centre of his empire, probably to Susa or Persepolis. It is not known if he left the heartland of his realm again and we know of no further military campaigns undertaken by the king.
The Greeks attacked Cyprus and continued their attacks on Persian holdings around the Aegean Sea. It is likely that there were still some areas that acknowledged the Persian king in northern Greece or in Ionia. But they would have acknowledged the king in name only and the Greek alliance, now led by the Athenians, would be continually attacking any place that had any illusions of remaining loyal to the Persian invaders.
One of the last events recorded by Herodotus is a strange affair whereby Xerxes falls in love with a lady called Artaynte. She was the daughter of his brother Masistes and Xerxes ordered her to be married to his son and heir, the Crown Prince Darius. Xerxes seems to have been in love with both Artaynte and her mother. Herodotus records that Xerxes swore to give Artaynte a gift: Any gift that was in his power to give. She asked for a shawl that had been a gift from Amestris, one of the wives of Xerxes. Xerxes feared to give this to her, as it would mean his angry wife would hear of it, but he had promised and the word of the King could not be rescinded.
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| Treasury at Persepolis |
Artaynte is said to have worn the shawl and Amestris inevitably heard of this. Suspecting that the mother of Artaynte was behind the entire affair, Amestris went to Xerxes and asked a gift of Xerxes: Any gift that was in his power to give. Amestris then asked for the mother of Artaynte to be handed over to her. Xerxes tried to save his brother’s wife, but once again, he had given his word. The wife of Masistes was handed over to Amestris who tortured, humiliated and mutilated her before sending her back to her brother.
Masistes was a son of a king and the brother of a king and must have felt the insult keenly, as well as fearing for his life. He fled to the east of the empire, towards Bactria, looking to raise a rebellion against Xerxes. However he and his sons were caught and killed and the rebellion, such as it was, was swiftly quelled.
Our main source for this is Herodotus and it is likely that this story has some factual basis, but I would be surprised if this was the exact reason for the rebellion and death of Masistes. There are too many elements in it that seem to mirror earlier or later stories. It might be entirely true, but I feel it would be good to show some caution on this tale. This is the last piece of information given to us by Herodotus about the Persian Empire.
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| Persepolis in the evening |
According to the most common way of interpreting the book of Esther, Esther was selected and crowned queen around this time. After Vashti had been dismissed by Xerxes he eventually selected another woman to be his queen, in this case the Jewish lady called Esther, or Hadassah in Hebrew. She is unlikely to be referred to by this name, as Esther may have been a Babylonian name derived from the goddess Ishtar (it might also have derived from a Persian word however). Her uncle was known as Mordecai, which is certainly derived from the name of the Babylonian god Marduk, so the Babylonian form is more likely.
Scholars have not been sure how to correlate the crowning of Esther with the tale of Herodotus about Amestris, who clearly seems to be the main wife of Xerxes. Some have identified Amestris with Vashti or even with Esther. The identification of Esther with Amestris is probably wrong, as Amestris has full-grown children in 478 at the time of the Masistes affair. But if Amestris is Vashti, then she should have been in seclusion and out of favour with the king at this time. The solution is probably not a simple one, but we must remember that Herodotus is writing some decades later, is liable to confuse details, and is to a certain extent a hostile witness to the deeds of Xerxes and his family. The Book of Esther is also written perhaps a generation later and seems to use different names to those used by the Greeks (or the Persians). So some major confusion is really only to be expected here.
While not losing battles or engaging in silly love affairs Xerxes carried on the building programs of his father. The cities of Susa and Persepolis were adorned with vast buildings. This period, though not necessarily this exact year, saw the completion of the Imperial Treasury at Persepolis. This is sometimes referred to as the Harem (as it has many identical rooms), but is more likely to be the treasury of the empire, or even more likely, one of the treasuries of the empire.
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| Gate of All Nations at Persepolis |
Another colossal building work completed in or around this time was the Gate of All Nations. This was a great gateway to the terrace containing the main palaces of Persepolis. The gates themselves are flanked with Assyrian style
lamassu and the stairs leading to the gates are engraved with reliefs of the peoples of the empire.
As impressive as the building works at Persepolis and Susa are, they also exemplify a problem with how the Persian Empire was run. Fundamentally the Persians requested large payments in tribute every year. They were perhaps not as draconian in their tribute demands as the Assyrians or Babylonians, but they were drawing from a much larger area. Thus every year the Persians would take in precious metals, which would be melted down for bullion and stored in Susa, Persepolis and Ecbatana and a few other regional centres of Persian power. The money would never be spent and the provinces were perpetually drained of their resources. Because much of the wealth of the Persians was simply locked in ever accumulating vaults it never even benefitted the people in the heartland of the realm. Thus it seems that the nations of Asia began to suffer from a slow economic malaise during the 5th century BC.
The problem probably did not surface under Cyrus and Cambyses, who did not mint coinage and whose taxation policies were much looser. The seeds of the problem were sown with the more efficient bureaucracy of Darius, but probably only became noticeable during the reign of Xerxes. This economic stagnation and impoverishment of the provinces would continue for as long as the Persian Empire lasted. It seems to have led to the decline of Ionia at a later time period, and explains some of the economic issues seen in the literature from Judah, Babylon and Egypt.
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| Al-Yahudu Tablets |
In the year 477 the Al-Yahudu Tablets, a cache of cuneiform documents from Babylonia, that shed light on the life of the Jewish exiles living there, comes to an end. It is not clear if the Jewish community was badly affected by the turmoil in Babylonia or why the archive comes to an end at this time.
Around this time, King Eshmunazar II of Sidon died. He was buried in a sarcophagus that had been looted from Sais in Egypt, as his father Tabnit had been. The sarcophagus has a Phoenician inscription on it however, where Eshmunazar tells of his lifetime and asks the reader not to open his tomb and to leave it undisturbed.
In the month of Bul, in the fourteenth year of the royalty of King Eshmunazzar, King of the two Sidons, son of King Tabnit, King of the two Sidons, King Eshmunazzar, King of the two Sidons, said as follows: I am carried away, the time of my non-existence has come, my spirit has disappeared, like the day, from whence I am silent, since which I became mute. And I am lying in this coffin, and in this tomb, in the place which I have built. O thou reader remember this: "May no royal race and no man open my funeral couch, and may they not seek after treasures, for no one has hidden treasures here, nor move the coffin out of my funeral couch, nor molest me in this funeral bed, by putting another tomb over it.”
Sarcophagus of Eshmunazar II, written circa 477BC
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| Eshmunazzar Sarcophagus in the Louvre |
In this year the last vestiges of Persian power in Europe seem to have been finished. The Spartans campaigned against the Thessalians and the Athenians were in full control of the Hellespont. This meant that even if any Greek, Macedonian or Thracian peoples had wished to acknowledge the rule of Xerxes, the Athenians and Spartans would actively make war upon them to prevent this. The Spartans appear to have left the main continuation of the war to the Athenians at this point however.
In the year 476 the Greek alliance, now primarily led by the Athenians, continued their war against the Persian Empire. This year they seem to have focused on freeing any remaining Ionian cities from the Persians and in offensive operations against Persian targets within easy reach of the coast.
In 475 the Greeks seem to have focused their attacks on the island of Scyros in the Aegean. It is not clear if the Dolopian inhabitants of Scyros had any attachment to Persia, or if they were simply pirates, but this operation seems to have occupied the Greek alliance and left the Persian holdings on the mainland in peace for the time at least.
Around this time Atossa died. She had been the daughter of Cyrus the Great, the wife of Darius and the mother of Xerxes. She was the primary link of legitimacy that connected the family of Darius to the older branch of the Persian royal family. She had possibly been the reason Xerxes had been given the throne by Darius. Xerxes was not the eldest son of Darius, but he was the eldest son of Darius through Atossa, after Darius had ascended to the throne. She was a formidable figure but respected by all. Even the Greek playwright Aeschylus gives her a role in his play The Persians, which was written shortly after this time.
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| Griffins at Persepolis |
It may have been around this time that Sataspes returned. Sataspes was a cousin of Xerxes who had been convicted of raping the daughter of Megabyzus. Megabyzus was one of the most powerful nobles in the empire. He was descended from one of the seven conspirators who had helped put Darius on the throne. He had commanded the Persians who crushed the rebellion in Babylon in the previous decade and he had been a prominent commander during the invasion of Greece. Even a cousin of the king would have to be punished for such a crime, particularly when the father of the victim was a powerful man in his own right.
Sataspes was initially condemned to death, but at the urging of Atossa he had been allowed to take a different course. He was told to take ships and sail around the coastline of Africa, to circumnavigate it from the west, passing the Pillars of Heracles, and sailing southwards along the western coast, through the Atlantic Ocean until he had reached the Red Sea.
Herodotus records that he had attempted it (although Herodotus does not give an exact date). He had an Egyptian ship with Egyptians as crew and sailed far to the south. He reported that the people he saw were very small and that his ship simply stopped and went no further. Xerxes must have believed that these were tall tales and ordered Sataspes to be executed by impalement. I have recorded the expedition here, but again, there is great uncertainty on the date.
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Map showing the Benguela Current in the south Atlantic
that Sataspes' ship would have struggled to make
headway against |
It must be noted that there are peoples of shorter stature in central Africa, particularly along the Congo Basin, known as pygmies. There are also strong currents flowing northwards around the mouth of the Congo. Later Portuguese explorers avoided these by sailing westwards, towards Brazil and following the Atlantic currents around towards the Cape of Good Hope. So Sataspes may have been telling the truth. It seems as if this was the last serious attempt to circumnavigate Africa in this direction until the Age of Exploration.
Sataspes went to Egypt where he received a ship and a crew from the Egyptians, and sailed past the Pillars of Heracles. Having sailed out beyond them, and rounded the Libyan promontory called Solois (possibly Cape Cantin), he sailed south; but when he had been many months sailing over the sea, and always more before him, he turned back and made sail for Egypt. Coming to King Xerxes from there, he related in his narrative that, when he was farthest distant, he sailed by a country of little men, who wore palm-leaf clothing; these, whenever he and his men put in to land with their ship, left their towns and fled to the hills; he and his men did no harm when they landed, and took nothing from the people except cattle. As to his not sailing completely around Libya, the reason he said was that the ship could move no farther, but was stopped.
Herodotus, Histories, 4.43, written circa 440BC
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| An 1869AD painting of Esther, by Portaels |
Around the year 474 the Haman Affair occurred. Dates are very far from certain on this so a certain chronological leeway should be allowed. Haman was a courtier in the retinue of King Xerxes and was highly honoured by the king. He had a feud with a less important courtier named Mordecai, who was also Jewish and the uncle of Queen Esther. Mordecai was not nobody however, and was known to the king. Mordecai had also helped the king by reporting a palace plot some time previously.
Haman, who may have had an ancestral grudge against the Jews decided to revenge himself on Mordecai by asking the king to hang Mordecai, but also to allow the Jews to be hunted and murdered with impunity on a certain day.
There was a twisted precedent for this, as Darius seems to have allowed people to hunt and kill the Magi on a particular day, as the “imposter” impersonating Bardiya was said to have been from the tribe of the Magi. It is said that Xerxes agreed to this. However, Esther, who seems to have fallen out of favour with the king by this time, approached the king unannounced, in a breach of court protocol that could have led to her execution to ask the king and Haman to a banquet.
After diplomatically getting the sympathy of the king at a later time, Esther revealed that Haman was seeking the destruction of Xerxes’ queen and all her people. Xerxes ordered the execution of Haman.
However, the king’s word was law and the destruction of the Jews could not be countermanded, however, the king sent another edict allowing the Jews to defend themselves. After this Mordecai, the uncle of Esther, was promoted to a high rank and the Jews later came to celebrate their deliverance in what is now known as the Feast of Purim. The story was commemorated in the book of Esther, which may have been written as early as sixty or so years after the events it describes.
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| Monumental ruins at Persepolis |
This has been a very brief paraphrase of the book of Esther. It is a short book and worth reading in its own right. The dates, names and overall veracity of the book are hard to verify. It is written for a Jewish audience but is dealing primarily with a non-Jewish subject matter. This means that some details are obscured and it makes it more difficult to discover the truth of the matter.
But, some of the details, such as the immutability of the word of the king and the picking of a certain day for the murder of an entire ethnic group do sound familiar from the words of Herodotus. If the story of Amestris and Artaynte is true, then it shows that there were vicious harem feuds at play at the Persian court; feuds that could trigger coups and rebellions. This too rings true to the account of Esther. It is hard to definitively say more.
There is little that can be said for the years 473, 472 or 471. I’m sure that many things happened in these year, possibly even things that I have described as happening at different times, but I cannot say for sure.
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| Idalion Tablet from Cyprus |
Around this time in Cyprus, which was now a disputed territory between the Persians and the Aegean Greeks, the Idalion Tablet was made. This was a bronze tablet from the city of Idalion that records the Greek language but written with an ancient script known as the Cypriot Syllabary.
This recorded a contract made by King Stasicyprus of Idalion and some physicians who had cared for the soldiers and people of the city during a long siege. It is unclear when this siege actually was. It may have begun in 478, but may also have taken place during the time of the Ionian Revolt, or been an entirely unrelated war.
The king had asked the physicians to treat the people without charge and in gratitude the king gifted a plot of land to the physicians forever. This is sometimes referred to as the first public health plan, but considering that it was an emergency action during wartime, this may be overstating the case.
When the Medes (Persians) and Kitians had the city of Idalion under siege, in the year of Philokypros, son of Onasagoras, King Stasikypros and the city – the Idalians – called physician Onasilos, son of Onasikypros, and his brothers, to treat people who were wounded in battle, without payment.
Idalion Tablet, written circa 470BC
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| Griffins at Persepolis |
Not much can be said to my knowledge for the year 469. Presumably things happened, but sadly I am not aware of them.
In or around the year 468 King Siaspiqa of Kush died. Nasakhma, presumably his son, succeeded him as King of Kush. Both monarchs are attested by some small artefacts and lists from Nuri and Meroe, but as with all of the monarchs of Kush from this era, very little is known about them.
Not much can be said to my knowledge for the year 467. Presumably things happened, but sadly I am not aware of them.
In the year 466 the Persians were potentially trying to retake the cities of Ionia that they had lost after the failed invasion of Xerxes. However the Persian army and navy were attacked by the Athenians at the Eurymedon River and the Persians suffered a heavy defeat. The Athenians, led by their general Cimon, inflicted a near total defeat on the Persian navy and what seems to have been a very conclusive defeat upon their land army as well. Although Xerxes had not led this debacle, it was the last major Persian defeat to have occurred during his reign.
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| Probable tomb of Xerxes at Naqsh-i-Rustam |
In the year 465 Xerxes I, King of Persia, was murdered in a palace coup. It is unclear why he was murdered. His subjects may not have been happy with the continual defeats and losses after the failed invasion of Greece. They may not have been happy with the heavy taxation needed to fund the extravagant building projects of the king and his court. The conspirators may have had purely personal reasons for wishing Xerxes dead. But, whatever the cause, Xerxes was murdered.
The Persian sources, such as they are, do not seem to mention this and no Jewish text records these events. We are reliant on an offhand comment in a later work by Aristotle, written perhaps a century later, and a very unreliable account written by a Greek doctor called Ctesias, who wrote perhaps six decades after the event and is a very dubious witness. Ctesias wrote two works, Indica and Persica, neither of which survive in their original form and both of which have some very serious problems. Sadly, for Persian history, we are partially reliant on the Persica of Ctesias.
Ctesias records that a courtier who had risen to favour named Artabanus, (a different nobleman from both the Artabanus’ and the Artabazus’ mentioned in Herodotus’ work) was scheming to attain the throne. He planned a complex coup, where he enlisted the help of Megabyzus, a powerful Persian noble and one of the most powerful men in the empire, and a palace eunuch named Aspamitres.
Artabanus killed Xerxes with the help of Aspamitres and then told one of the younger princes, named Artaxerxes, that the Crown Prince Darius had murdered their father Xerxes. Artaxerxes reacted swiftly and Prince Darius, the supposed murderer, was quickly slain.
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| Detail from the (probable) Tomb of Xerxes |
Artaxerxes became king, but Artabanus seems to have planned to murder Artaxerxes as well. After acting as regent for some time, Artabanus made some form of pact with Megabyzus to slay the young Artaxerxes. However, Megabyzus had no interest in serving some lowborn character and told Artaxerxes of the plot. Artabanus and his sons were killed and Artaxerxes I was now the undisputed king of Persia. Some rebellions were fought in the east, as Bactria rose up against the king of Persia, but Ctesias does not go into great detail.
Certain later classical sources, such as Justin and Diodorus Siculus, refer to this tale, but they seem to be either drawing directly from Ctesias, or embellishing his account. If Ctesias was a better source generally, I would have much more faith in this account. But as it stands, I am not convinced the episode took place at all.
There is something similar alluded to in the book of Esther, where there is a palace intrigue, an upstart courtier (Haman in Esther, Artabanus in Ctesias, both of whom seem to have sons involved in the plots) and a plot involving eunuchs (Bigthana and Teresh in Esther, Aspamitres in Ctesias). However in the account of Esther the plot/s fail and Xerxes survives. Without saying that the book of Esther is correct in this instance, it is quite possible that Ctesias has misheard an incident from the Persian court tales and garbled the entire account of Xerxes death. In case anyone thinks I am being too tough on Ctesias, note that he somehow manages to garble the account of Xerxes’ invasion of Greece, which was common knowledge during his lifetime.
Where Xerxes was buried is not known for sure, but there is a rock hewn tomb at Naqsh-i-Rustam that is very similar to the tomb of his father. There is no inscription remaining. It is nevertheless assumed that this is the tomb of Xerxes.
It is recorded that Inaros II and Amyrtaeus of Sais rose up against Artaxerxes and Persian rule shortly after Artaxerxes took the throne. If that is the case then it would appear that the uprising may have taken place in the year 464, but it is quite likely that the revolt actually took place some years later.
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Coin of Themistocles, possibly showing a portrait on it
(or possibly not) |
In or around this time, at some point around the year 463, although it may have been some years previously, during the regency of Artabanus or even the reign of Xerxes, it seems that Themistocles arrived at the court of the king of Persia. He had been instrumental in the defeat of the Persian invasion, but the Persian kings were generally not vindictive to their foes. Themistocles was treated well and was even given a small province in the region of Magnesia to rule in the name of the Persian Empire. Themistocles ruled here for some years and even minted his own coins. The coins with portraits are perhaps some of the earliest portrait coins that are known to history, but whether or not Themistocles was the first to put his portrait on a coin is still rather debateable.
Around this time Nasakhma, King of Kush, died. He was probably succeeded by Malewiebamani, who was probably his son. Various artefacts of Nasakhma and Malewiebamani survive, but very little is known of their reigns. It is unfortunate that the kingdom of Kush is not better known and understood.
Not much can be said to my knowledge for the year 462. Presumably things happened, but sadly I am not aware of them.
In the year 461 it seems that the Athenians sent the wealthy nobleman Callias (known as Callias II to differentiate him from others of the same name) to Persia. He was sent as an ambassador, but it is not clear what his mission was. As Athens was on the brink of war with Sparta it is possible that Callias was sent to Persia to investigate whether or not the ceaseless war between Athens and Persia could end. It seems that his mission did not succeed however.
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| Fallen lion head at Persepolis |
In Egypt, the revolt of Inaros II, a Libyan chieftain who ruled some portion of the Nile Delta region, was still ongoing (or just beginning at this time, the chronology is unclear). Achaemenes, who was the Persian satrap of Egypt and a brother of Xerxes I, had gathered a large army to fight it. The Athenians sent a large force of 200 ships to aid the rebellion. The Athenians made contact with the Egyptians and together they set out to confront the Persian garrison. The two armies clashed in what is known as the Battle of Pampremis and, after a sharp struggle, the Persians were routed. Achaemenes was slain in the rout.
However the victory of the Greeks was not fully complete. A section of the Persian garrison fled to a fortified section of Memphis called the White Castle and they could not be removed from this position. They had ample supplies and enough troops to disrupt the whole region of Lower Egypt. So the Athenians and their Egyptian allies settled down for a siege of this fortress.
Meanwhile Inaros, son of Psammetichus, a Libyan king of the Libyans on the Egyptian border, having his headquarters at Marea, the town above Pharos, caused a revolt of almost the whole of Egypt from King Artaxerxes and, placing himself at its head, invited the Athenians to his assistance. Abandoning a Cyprian expedition upon which they happened to be engaged with two hundred ships of their own and their allies, they arrived in Egypt and sailed from the sea into the Nile, and making themselves masters of the river and two-thirds of Memphis, addressed themselves to the attack of the remaining third, which is called White Castle. Within it were Persians and Medes who had taken refuge there, and Egyptians who had not joined the rebellion.
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, written circa 400BC
In the heartlands of the Persia, the Apadana palace complex in Persepolis was probably finished around this time. Artaxerxes I was a builder but he undertook no gigantic building projects on the scale of the buildings of Xerxes, but the projects that had been ongoing when he had taken the throne were brought to completion.
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Historical image of Mount Gerizim seen from nearby
Mount Ebal |
In the region of Samaria, a very minor province of the Persian Empire, the religious group that later became known as the Samaritans probably began building a temple atop Mount Gerizim. This group held beliefs that derived from the Judaism, as it had been practiced before the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar. They were based primarily in what had been the older northern kingdom of Israel, rather than the southern kingdom of Judah. They had perhaps mixed with the deportees from Mesopotamia who had been planted there by the Assyrian kings after the destruction of Samaria.
There was tension between the Samaritans and the groups who had returned from exile in Babylonia. Both sides claimed to represent the continued tradition of Judaism. The Jewish exiles in Jerusalem had rebuilt (albeit on a much reduced scale) a temple in Jerusalem. It seems that at some point in the mid-5th century BC that the Samaritans built their own rival temple atop Mount Gerizim. While the disputes between the two communities are remembered to a certain extent today, because of their religious writings that survive, we must remember that both the Samaritans and the Jews were very tiny minorities within the Persian Empire at the time.
Thus the period draws to a close, beginning with the defeat of Xerxes’ invasion and ending with the Greeks aiding the Egyptian revolt against Artaxerxes I. The period saw great buildings and the Persian Empire at near the height of its splendour, but also saw the beginnings of its decline, with the growing penury of the outer provinces and the serious military weaknesses of the empire exposed by its wars with the Greeks.
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| Relief from the (probable) Tomb of Xerxes |
Primary Sources:
Sarcophagus of Eshmunazar II, written circa 477BC
Idalion Tablet, written circa 470BC
Herodotus, Histories, written circa 440BC
Book of Esther, written possibly as early as 420BC
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, written circa 400BC
Ctesias, Persica, written circa 398BC
The Parian Chronicle, written circa 216BC
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, written circa 40BC
Plutarch, Themistocles, written circa AD100
Secondary sources:
The Sale of the Ghazzat Hoard:
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499-480BC in the Near East
489-480BC in Greece
479-470BC in Greece
469-460BC in Greece
479-460BC in Rome
459-440BC in the Near East
