Concepts & Institutions (15)
A catalogue view: every article filed as concept. For the encyclopaedia arranged by subject, see the themes.
- ConceptAhura Mazdā
Ahura Mazdā, the "Wise Lord", is the supreme god of the Achaemenid kings: named at the head of nearly every royal inscription as creator of earth, sky, man and human happiness, giver of kingship, and upholder of order against the Lie. He is also the God whom Zarathustra proclaimed in the Gāthās,…
- ConceptAnāhitā
Anāhitā, in full Arədvī Sūrā Anāhitā, 'the moist, the strong, the undefiled', is the great Iranian goddess of the waters. She is the deified cosmic river that falls from the mythical mountain Hukairya into the world-sea, the source of every stream and so the giver of fertility: she purifies the…
- ConceptArta (Truth, right order)
Arta (Old Persian arta-, Avestan aša) is the Iranian principle of truth and right order: the correct joining of the world, cosmic, social and moral at once, set against its standing opposite, the Lie (drauga). It is the exact cognate of Vedic ṛta, so the opposition of Truth and Lie is older than…
- ConceptMithra
Mithra (Avestan Miθra, later Mihr) is one of the oldest gods of the Indo-Iranian world, and the one whose nature is least in doubt, because his name is also the ordinary word for 'contract'. He is the deified covenant, the all-seeing guardian of the sworn word and the alliance, he of the wide…
- ConceptProskynesis
Proskynesis (Greek προσκύνησις, from pros, "towards", and kyneō, "to kiss") is the gesture of respect a Persian made before a social superior, and above all before the king: a graded act that ran from a kiss between equals to a full prostration by the lowly. The word is Greek, not Persian, and…
- ConceptThe Drauga (the Lie)
The drauga (Old Persian drauga-, Avestan druj) is the Lie: the principle of falsehood, deceit and disorder that stands against arta, the right order of the world, in the religion and the royal ideology of ancient Iran. More than a word for the spoken untruth, it names the power that unmakes…
- ConceptThe Immortals
The Immortals were the 10,000-strong standing corps of elite Persian foot that guarded the King of Kings and formed the professional heart of the field army, famous under the Greek name Herodotus gave them, 'the Immortals' (athanatoi): Herodotus says the corps was held always at ten thousand, a…
- ConceptThe King of Kings
King of kings (Old Persian xšāyaθiya xšāyaθiyānām) is the title the Achaemenid ruler set at the head of almost every inscription he left, and the seed of a whole account of the world. It claims that above the many kings of the earth's many peoples stands one king; that his office is part of the…
- ConceptThe King's Eye
The King's Eye (Greek ho basileōs ophthalmos), with its companion the King's Ear, is the name the Greeks gave to a royal officer who watched over the empire's provinces and reported what he saw and heard straight to the king. Around it grew the picture of an Achaemenid surveillance state: a corps…
- ConceptThe paradise garden
The enclosed, well-watered royal park of the Persian king and his satraps, and the single most resonant word the Achaemenids gave to the languages of Europe. In its own tongue the name was concrete and unromantic: Old Iranian pairi-daiza-, 'a walled enclosure', from pairi- 'around' and *daiza-…
- 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 Sacred Fire
The sacred fire (Avestan ātar) was the purest of the good creations and the earthly emblem of aša/arta, tended by the Magi and honoured in the open air at free-standing stone fire-holders. The roofed sanctuary whose consecrated flame is kept perpetually alight belongs to the later empire and…
- 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…
- ConceptThe Seven
The Seven are the seven Persian nobles, Darius among them, who in September 522 BCE killed the man ruling the empire as Bardiya, son of Cyrus, and made Darius king. They are unique in Achaemenid history in being attested by two versions of the same list, set down separately, in different languages…
- 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…