Topic: empire (11)

• PlaceBabylon

  Babylon was one of the largest cities of ancient western Asia and the centre of the Achaemenid empire's most heavily assessed province. It was a royal residence and, among the principal residences of the Persian kings, the only one whose densely built urban character is beyond dispute. Rebuilt on…

• PersonCyrus the Great

  Cyrus II, called the Great (Old Persian Kūruš), was the founder of the Achaemenid, or first Persian, empire, and reigned from about 559 to 530 BCE. A king of Anshan in the highlands of Fārs, he overthrew in turn the three great powers of his world, the Median kingdom of Astyages about 550, the…

• PlaceEgypt as a Province

  Egypt as a province of the Achaemenid Empire, the Twenty-seventh Dynasty of the Egyptian king-lists, ran from the conquest by Cambyses II (conventionally 525 BCE) to a staggered secession between 405/4 and 400/399. Artaxerxes III recovered the Delta and Memphis in 343/2, but the evidence does not…

• PlacePersepolis

  Persepolis was the ceremonial and administrative heart of the Achaemenid empire in its Persian homeland, a vast terraced complex of palaces, audience halls and treasuries raised by Darius I from about 518 BCE on the Marv Dasht plain of Fars. The Persians called it simply Pārsa, the name of the…

• PlaceSusa

  Susa was the great lowland capital of the Achaemenid empire, the ancient city of Elam that Darius I rebuilt from about 520 BCE as a royal residence and working seat of government. It lay on the Susiana plain of south-western Iran, at the meeting point of the Iranian plateau and the Mesopotamian…

• ArtworkThe Apadana Reliefs

  The Apadana reliefs are the sculptured façades of the two great stairways of the Apadana, the audience hall of Persepolis: files of Persian and Median guards, courtiers and royal grooms on one wing and, on the other, twenty-three delegations of subject peoples, each in the costume of its land,…

• Survey essayThe Peoples of the Empire

  The peoples of the empire are, in the Achaemenid kings' own word, the dahyāva: the named lands-and-nations, from Persia and Media to Egypt, Ionia, India and the Saka steppe, whose roll the dynasty carved into its monuments as the very definition of what the empire was. Five royal inscriptions list…

• ConceptThe Royal Road

  The great overland route and courier relay that bound the Achaemenid empire together: the road of stations and inns Herodotus walked in his mind from Sardis to Susa, and the mounted post along it that the Greeks called the angareion, carrying the King's word across a world in a matter of days. It…

• ConceptThe Satrapy System

  The great administrative frame of the Achaemenid empire: the division of a realm that stretched from the Indus to the Aegean into provinces, each held for the King of Kings by a satrap, his viceroy. The satrap gathered the tribute, judged the causes, kept the roads and raised the levies of his…

• ConceptTribute & Taxation

  Tribute and taxation comprised the assessments, renders and services imposed in Achaemenid territories. Herodotus distinguishes the “gifts” received under Cyrus and Cambyses II from fixed imperial assessments attributed to Darius I. Late Babylonian field plans begin around 519 BCE; Dandamaev…

• Survey essayWarfare & the Army

  The Achaemenid army was the fighting force of the first Persian empire, under Darius I and his successors: the seasonal levy of the subject nations set beside the standing royal guard the Greeks called the Immortals; the shield-and-bow files, the bow as the national weapon, the cavalry and the…