Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian, and Persian Empires
by Sanderson Beck
The twelfth to the ninth centuries BC in Mesopotamia are considered
a dark age,
because very little is known about that time period.
From the thirteenth century BC to the middle of the sixth century
is called the iron age with increasing use of that new technology.
A powerful Elamite kingdom led by Shutruk-nahhunte and his son
Kutir-nahhunte
conquered several hundred settlements and captured
Babylon,
ending the Kassite dynasty and taking away the statue
of Marduk in 1157 BC.
Kutir-nahhunte died about 1140 BC and was
succeeded as king of Elam
by his brother Shilkhak-Inshushinak,
who used Babylonian tribute to build up their capital of Susa.
Shilkhak launched military campaigns against Aramaean settlements
to the west and north along the Tigris River.
The 46-year reign
of Ashur-dan was ending with a struggle for power in Assyria.
Ashur-resh-ishi (r. 1133-1116 BC), claiming to be the "avenger
of Assyria,"
strengthened their defenses, rebuilt the palace,
and repaired the Ishtar temple.
A new Babylonian dynasty emerged in Isin; Nebuchadrezzar I
(r. 1124-1103 BC)
attacked Elam and, after an early defeat and
plague,
triumphed and regained the statue of Marduk.
However,
his attacks against Assyria were successfully resisted.
Both the
Babylonians and the Assyrians fought against the Lullubi tribes
in the eastern hills and the nomadic tribes in the western deserts.
Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser I (r. 1115-1077 BC) defeated the
Mushki,
who were invading the Tigris valley from the north.
Tiglath-pileser
also led his troops to the west as far as Lebanon.
However, these
victories were not followed up with effective
imperialistic administration,
as the Aramaeans were able to fight back later.
Tiglath-pileser
entertained himself hunting big game and claimed he killed 920
lions.
He organized water projects and collected literature in
the world's oldest extant library.
Tiglath-pileser did attack
Babylon and plunder it, but withdrew.
For the next two centuries Assyria and Babylon co-existed.
In the eleventh century BC Nebuchadrezzar I was celebrated in
an epic poem;
Sinleqeunnimi of Uruk produced a humanized version
of the Epic of Gilgamesh;
and another poet expressed the workings of divine justice,
an
important concept in Babylonian religion. Tiglath-pileser's son
Ashur-bel-kal
(r. 1074-1057 BC) fought with Babylon against the
Aramaeans, but Ashurnasirpal I
(r. 1050-1032 BC) could not preserve
the conquests of his famous grandfather;
his prayers lamented
his adversity and asked for forgiveness for not teaching his
subjects
to reverence God sufficiently. Assyrian laws were stricter and
their treatment
of women worse than among the Babylonians, Hittites, and Israelites.
In Assyria
women could be divorced for no reason without being given any
money,
could be killed or maimed for adultery, and had to wear
a veil outside the house,
except for prostitutes who were forbidden
to wear a veil.
In spite of the efforts of Assyrian kings Tiglath-pileser II
(r. 967-935 BC)
and Ashur-dan II (r. 934-912 BC), the Aramaeans
had spread around the Euphrates and Tigris rivers.
In his reign
(911-891 BC) Adad-nirari II fought numerous military campaigns
of expansion and made a treaty with Babylon that lasted eighty
years.
His son Tukulti-Ninurta II began reporting hostile attacks
as justification
for his campaigns and rebuilt the walls of Ashur.
Continued expansion by his son Ashurnasirpal II (r. 883-859 BC)
used extensive cavalry, battering rams, cruel treatment of defeated
enemies,
deportation, plunder of precious metals, horses, cattle,
and sheep,
followed by bureaucrats and annual tribute to create
an empire.
Ashurnasirpal rebuilt Kalakh and made it his capital;
69,574 guests attended the opening ceremonies at his new palace.
Ashurnasirpal's son Shalmaneser III (r. 858-824 BC) conquered
northern Syria
but was unable to take Damascus, though Israel's
King Jehu paid him tribute.
In Babylon Marduk-zakir-shumi called
upon Shalmaneser and the Assyrians
to help him establish his kingship
against a challenge by his younger brother,
who was defeated by
Shalmaneser's army in 850 BC.
Shalmaneser went on to defeat and
take tribute
from the Chaldeans and plunder the land of Namri.
The next year Shalmaneser led an army of 120,000 against Arzashkun,
the capital city of Urartu's King Aram (r. 858-844 BC) and killed
3400 troops.
Aram was overthrown by Sarduri I,
whose dynasty in Urartu lasted a quarter of a millennium.
Urartu kings Menua (r. 810-785 BC)
and Argishti (785-753 BC) expanded
the Urartu kingdom, the latter
bragging about the number of men killed and animals stolen.
Urartu
king Sarduri II (753-735 BC) claimed he captured 21,989 people
from north of Mt. Ararat, but he was defeated by Tiglath-pileser
III in 736 BC.
At the end of his reign the crown prince rebelled against Shalmaneser;
the dying king turned to his younger son, who became Shamsi-Adad
V,
won the civil war with Babylon's help, and reigned for a dozen
years,
ungratefully attacking Babylon and the Chaldeans.
Shamsi-Adad's
queen Sammuramat, the legendary Semiramis of Greek historians,
ruled as regent (or at least was influential) for her son Adad-nirari
III,
who in 806 BC invaded Syria and collected tribute from the
Neo-Hittites,
Phoenicians, Philistines, Israelites, and Edomites.
After Adad-nirari III died in 783 BC, his four sons ruled in succession;
but none of them were noteworthy until the fourth, Tiglath-pileser
III,
became king of Assyria in 745 BC, though some believe
that
he was not a royal son but a general who took power by force.
Tiglath-pileser III conquered the Syrian allies of Urartu at
Arpad and the Medes
on the Iranian plateau, declaring that he
"smashed them like pots."
Then he turned their lands
into Assyrian provinces, reorganized the army
by replacing conscription
with permanent contingents from around the empire,
and broke the
power of the lords by reforming the administration
into smaller
districts directly accountable to the king.
Massive deportations
were used to break up regional loyalties.
In 744 BC 65,000 Iranians
were displaced, and later 154,000 were moved.
30,000 Syrians were
sent to the Zagros mountains,
while 18,000 Aramaeans from the
Tigris area went to northern Syria.
Such policies increased the
hatred of Assyria,
and thus rebellions would continue in the years
ahead anyway.
A siege against Urartu failed, but Tiglath-pileser III returned
to the Mediterranean
to defeat a Philistine revolt led by Askalon
and Gaza and to collect tribute from Amon,
Edom, Moab, and Judah.
When Judah's King Ahaz asked for Assyrian aid against
Damascus
and Israel, Tiglath-pileser captured Damascus and half of Israel
while establishing Hoshea as king in Samaria.
When a Chaldean
gained the throne of Babylon,
Tiglath-pileser removed him and
in 728 BC made himself king of Babylon;
but he died the next year.
Tiglath-pileser's son Shalmaneser V was king of Assyria
barely
long enough to besiege Samaria for three years.
The deportation
of 27,290 Israelites was supervised
by his successor Sargon II
(r. 721-705 BC).
Sargon may have had to struggle to get the throne,
because he thanked the citizens of Ashur for helping him by exempting
Ashur and Harran
from the taxes imposed by Tiglath-pileser,
and
he punished "6,300 criminals" of Ashur by sending them
to Harran.
Assyria's growing empire had interfered with the trade
routes and made enemies
of Urartu in the north and Egypt, who
supported numerous rebellions in the years ahead.
Before Sargon could consolidate his power, the Chaldean Marduk-apal-iddina
II
(Merodach-baladan in the Bible) had taken the throne
in Babylon.
Assyria's first attack on Babylon was defeated by
Elam.
A decade later Sargon attacked the cities of Kish, Nippur,
and Dur-Atkhara,
while the Babylonian-Elamite coalition fought
a guerrilla defense from swamps,
flooded areas, the hills, and
the tribal peripheries.
Abandoned by Elam, Marduk-apal-iddina
eventually surrendered
at his tribal capital of Dur-Yakin, which
was destroyed.
Sargon deported more than a hundred thousand Aramaeans
and Chaldeans
to western Asia, cooperated with the priests, stayed
three years governing the area,
and imported foreign captives.
Sargon II put down Egyptian-supported revolts in Syria and
Palestine,
and he conquered the independent city of Carchemish,
making it an Assyrian province.
In 714 BC after a long march through
the mountains of Kurdistan,
Sargon led a surprise attack on Urartu,
causing their king to flee.
He persuaded his army that an eclipse
of the moon was not a bad omen for them
but for their enemy at
Musasir, Urartu's sacred city,
which they then easily plundered.
Sargon had tens of thousands of workers build his own capital
just north of Nineveh;
but before it was finished, he was killed
fighting in Iran.
His son Sennacherib believed Sargon's death
was a punishment
from the gods and left his corpse unburied.
Sennacherib left Sargon's new city unfinished and built a huge
palace at Nineveh.
Marduk-apal-iddina once again assumed the throne
of Babylon
but was forced to withdraw when Sennacherib and the
Assyrians
defeated a coalition army of Babylonians, Aramaeans,
and Elamites,
deporting 208,000 Babylonians.
Bel-ibni was appointed
king of Babylon in 702 BC;
but two years later when he seceded
from the Assyrian empire,
Sennacherib replaced him with his son
Ashur-nadin-shum.
In 701 BC Sennacherib defeated a coalition of
Phoenicians, Palestinians, and Egyptians in Syria.
Judah's king
Hezekiah bought off Sennacherib with 300 talents of silver and
30 of gold.
When Sennacherib came back, probably late in his reign,
Hezekiah, advised by Isaiah, did not surrender;
the Assyrians
withdrew the siege probably because of a plague,
though the number
of 185,000 Assyrian dead
in the Biblical account could be an exaggeration.
Sennacherib ordered the building of a fleet of ships in Nineveh,
and in 694 BC
they attacked Elam on the Persian Gulf.
However,
the Elamites counter-attacked, took the throne of Babylon,
and
the war went on for seven years.
After a great battle, which the
Assyrians claimed was a victory
although it probably was not,
Sennacherib ordered the destruction of Babylon
and even plundered
its temples, a serious offense to Assyrians,
who shared many religious
beliefs with the Babylonians.
Then a myth was developed that the
god Marduk himself was brought before
a tribunal for his transgressions,
and in the Babylonian creation story Enuma Elish
Marduk
was replaced by Ashur.
In 681 BC Sennacherib was assassinated
in a temple of Ninurta at Nineveh,
probably by his eldest sons.
Many believed that Sennacherib had mistreated the god Ninurta
as well as Marduk
and that his death was a divine punishment,
a belief ironically he had held about his own father's death.
Appointed by the imperial council and supported by the army,
a younger son
of Sennacherib named Esarhaddon became king, while
his older brothers fled to Urartu.
Esarhaddon ordered the rebuilding
of Babylon, the restoration of its gods,
and made a peace treaty
with Elam, although later his messengers,
attempting to collect
taxes from the impoverished Babylonians, were pelted with clods.
In the north Esarhaddon fought off the Cimmerians and then made
peace with them
by giving his daughter in marriage to the Scythian
chief Bartuta.
When Sidon revolted in 677 BC, he tore down the
Phoenician city,
beheaded its king, deported the inhabitants,
and gave Sidon's territory to its rival city of Tyre.
These measures enabled Esarhaddon to pursue his major ambition
of conquering Egypt.
His first attempt failed, but in 671 BC the
Assyrian army
besieged revolting Tyre on the way to capturing
Memphis.
The Ethiopians were deported;
the collection of tribute
from Egypt's 22 provinces was organized;
and the worship of Ashur
was instituted.
However, two years later the Ethiopian king of
Egypt, Taharqa,
who had fled to the south, organized a rebellion.
Esarhaddon was on his way back to Egypt when he died in 669 BC.
Three times the superstitious Esarhaddon had substituted temporary
"kings"
so that he could pretend to be a peasant and
escape
bad omens such as a lunar eclipse, which astronomers could
predict.
Putting to death the substitutes at the end of their
term
and attempting to fool the gods insulted his religion.
Esarhaddon
did make it clear in his treaties with vassals that when he died,
the crown prince designate Ashurbanipal was to be obeyed.
The best educated and most literate of Assyria's kings,
Ashurbanipal
ruled for 42 years during the height and greatest decline of the
empire.
He began by sending an army to Egypt to recapture Memphis.
Once again Taharqa fled to Thebes,
and twenty-two native kings
and governors appointed by Esarhaddon
who had fled the rebellion
were reinstalled.
However, when their conspiracy with Taharqa
was discovered,
they were exiled to Assyria and executed there,
except for Necho,
who was set up in Sais to rule Egypt.
When Taharqa
died, his nephew Tanutamen marched from Thebes to Memphis,
where
in 664 BC he killed Necho and defeated the Egyptian princes of
the Delta.
When the Assyrian army returned, Tanutamen retreated
from Memphis to Thebes,
from which he fled when it was destroyed
by Ashurbanipal's army.
Necho's son Psamtik was appointed ruler
in Sais.
According to Herodotus a decade later Psamtik aided by
Ionian mercenaries
expelled the Assyrians from Egypt while Assyria
was battling Elam.
Tyre was besieged until its ruler Baal submitted and offered
his daughter and nieces and much treasure to the Assyrians.
Elam
had attacked Babylon in 664 BC; but eleven years later
when Ashurbanipal
would not surrender the Elamite king's rivals,
another attack
by the Elamites was defeated by the Assyrian army.
The king of
Elam was killed in battle, and Ashurbanipal replaced him with
his rivals.
In 651 BC Ashurbanipal's brother Shamash-shum-ukin,
who was king of Babylon,
tried to form an alliance with Phoenicians,
Philistines, Judah, Arabs, Chaldeans,
Elamites, and even Lydia
and Egypt, closing the gates of Sippar, Babylon,
and Barsippa
to the Assyrians.
Ashurbanipal besieged Babylon for two years
until Shamash-shum-ukin set fire to his own palace and perished.
Ashurbanipal made Kandalanu (possibly another name for himself)
king of Babylon and then attacked the Arabian rebels in the desert.
So many camels were captured that the price of a camel
in Assyria
dropped to less than one shekel.
By 639 BC Elam was completely devastated as its
capital at
Susa was destroyed and plundered.
Salt and thorny weeds were scattered
on their land,
and Elam's 3,000-year-old civilization would never
rise again.
Ashurbanipal marched in triumph with three Elamite
princes
and a king of Arabia harnessed to his chariot.
Jews, Aramaeans,
and Lydians had been subjugated,
and Assyria was rich with plundered
booty.
Yet the annals of Assyria came to an end in 639 BC;
apparently
they did not like recording their defeats.
Within thirty years
the Assyrian empire would be no more.
The Medes attacked Assyria, but the northern Scythians saved
Nineveh
and forced the Medes to pay them tribute for 28 years.
When Ashurbanipal (and Kandalanu) died in 627 BC,
his son Ashur-etil-ilani
fought a civil war with his brother Sin-shar-ishkun.
The Chaldean
Nabopolassar took the throne of Babylon in 626 BC
and according
to one chronicle fought with Sin-shar-ishkun for two years
before
the latter became king of Assyria in 623 BC.
For a dozen years
Babylon and Assyria fought each other.
The Medes led by Cyaxares
tipped the balance
and in 616 BC attacked Nineveh but were beaten
back by the Scythians.
However, in the next two years the Medes
conquered Arrapkha and Ashur.
When the Medes joined with the Babylonians
to attack Nineveh,
Assyria's attempted alliance with Egypt
was too late.
By the end of 612 BC Nineveh and the major cities
of Assyria had been destroyed.
Ashur-uballit II replaced the dead
Sin-shar-ishkun and retreated to Harran;
but two years later this
city was destroyed,
and by 609 BC the remaining Assyrian army
capitulated.
Probably the most significant piece of Assyrian literature
was the epic of "Erra and Ishum."
Ashurbanipal and his
scholars certified this work,
which was probably written or given
its final form around 700 BC
when Assyrians were attacking Babylon.
Its fierce warlike qualities typify the most salient feature of
Assyrian culture.
Even the hero Ishum, who finally manages to
lessen the warmaking somewhat,
is referred to as a "pious
slaughterer whose hands are adept
at carrying his furious weapons
and making his fierce axes flash!"1
The seven gods express
the love of battle when they speak to Erra,
whose heart already
was urging him to make war.
Why do you stay in town like a feeble old man?
How can you stay at home like a lisping child?
Are we to eat women's bread, like one who
has never marched on to the battlefield?
Are we to be fearful and nervous as if we had no experience of war?
To go on to the battlefield is as good as a festival for young men!
Anyone who stays in town, be he a prince,
will not be satisfied with bread alone;
He will be vilified in the mouths of his own people, and dishonored.
How can he raise his hand against one who goes to the battlefield?
However great the strength of one who stays in town,
How can he prevail over one who has been on the battlefield?2
Nevertheless Ishum reprimands Erra for planning evil for the
gods in plotting
to overthrow countries and destroy their people,
asking him to turn back.
Bragging of his powers and explaining
that Marduk has neglected his word,
Erra promises to overwhelm
the people of Marduk (Babylonians).
Yet the setting up of weapons
of the privileged men
is described as an abomination to the gods
Anu and Dagan.
Ishum asks Erra if he does not fear Marduk and
says that
he has changed his divine nature and become like a human.
He has taken his weapons into Babylon like a braggart to seize
the city.
He has ensnared them in a net and destroyed them.
The army saw you and donned their weapons.
The governor, who had treated Babylon well, became enraged,
Directed his troops to loot like enemy looters,
Incited the leader of the army to crime,
"You are the man whom I shall send to that city!
You shall respect neither god nor man.
Put young and old alike to death.
You shall not leave any child, even if he still sucks milk.
You shall pillage the accumulated wealth of Babylon."3
The great lord Marduk saw and cried, "Woe!" clutching
at his heart.
An insolent governor was set over them who would
not treat them kindly.
The warrior Erra put to death the just
and unjust.
The people abandoned justice and turned to atrocities.
Erra declares that the Subartians, Assyrians, Elamites, Kassites,
Suteans,
Gutians, and Lullubeans have not even spared their own
kind as brother even
slays brother until an Akkadian shall rise
up and fell them all and shepherd the rest.
Ishum pleaded with
Erra that he rest, and finally Erra was placated and left a remnant.
This poem portrays the bitterness of the battles
between the Assyrians
and Babylonians at this time.
Another pessimistic literary work is a dialog between a master
and his servant
in which the master proposes to ride to the palace,
to dine, to hunt,
to lie in wait for his adversary, to build a
house, to remain silent, to start a rebellion,
to love a woman,
to sacrifice to his god, to give food to his country, to help
his country,
and finally to kill his servant and then himself,
but each time he changes his mind and negates the plan, except
for the last.
Then the servant asks if his master would want to
live even three days without him.
Assyrian civilization was focused around its powerful king
with a
militaristic hierarchy supported by officials, artisans,
farmers, and slaves.
The king was chief judge, lawmaker, commander-in-chief
of the army,
and head of the religion, although he was not deified
himself.
Established traditions and customs stabilized the culture
and the king.
The only revolutions in Assyrian history were by
powerful generals or palace officials,
as the social hierarchy
was never seriously challenged.
Governors and priests, in fact
any official, could be directly ordered by the king.
Kings and
officials need not be literate, because they all were assisted
by scribes.
Offices and professions tended to be hereditary,
or
appointments were based on patronage.
Aramaeans did rise to high
positions, but the process took generations.
Social classes were rigidly determined by one's position in
the hierarchy.
Captives in war and debtors were made slaves,
though
the latter could marry a free person, testify in court,
conduct
business, and own property.
Women were entirely dependent on their
male relations,
raised the children and cared for the home,
and
were not even allowed to associate with males who were not relatives.
If a man lived with a widow for two years, they were considered
married.
Adultery could be punished by the husband killing both
or mutilating the wife
and castrating her lover; though if he
did not punish the wife,
the lover could not be punished either.
Homosexuality, which was tolerated in Babylon, was punished by
the Assyrians.
The king maintained a harem of women and eunuchs.
Foreign princes and nobles were also kept in the Assyrian court
to assure treaties.
Laws operated primarily by the decisions of the king and officials
based on precedents.
Contracts were made on tablets.
Prostitution
was allowed but not common; drunkenness was discouraged;
theft
was limited; and violence and murder were usually settled by private
vendetta.
A few people were imprisoned but usually for political
reasons.
The economy was primarily based on agriculture, supplemented
by crafts, trade,
and tribute and plunder from war, though the
movement of wealth
from the periphery of the empire to the center
tended to cause misery and rebellions.
All land was considered
the property of the god as represented by the king,
but in fact
temples, wealthy lords, and private individuals did own land
or
held it in exchange for performing some service to the state.
In war the Assyrians excelled in developing siege engines,
and numerous horses were requisitioned for their chariots and
cavalry.
Cities were persuaded to submit, and excessive cruelty
of those
who resisted was calculated to make others submit more
readily.
As the empire grew, more foreign troops filled the ranks
of the army.
Hunting of lions, wild bulls, and elephants was so
popular
that elephants became extinct in the area.
Most of the gods were adopted from the Babylonians
except for
Ashur, the supreme god.
Ishtar was the only goddess if one does
not count the consorts of the gods,
but she too could be warlike.
The use of divination for guidance regarding the future
was used
extensively by Assyrian kings.
Astrological astronomers made detailed
observations
and attempted to correlate human events with celestial
signs.
Their calendar became quite accurate when they figured
out
they could add seven lunar periods every nineteen years;
they
could predict eclipses.
Astrology still allowed for divine and
human initiative.
Medical theory was based primarily on the belief that disease
was a punishment
inflicted by the gods on humans for their sins,
although dust, dirt, food and drink,
as well as contagion were
taken into consideration.
Physicians attempted to diagnose the
symptoms and might prescribe drugs,
poultices, enemas, or a change
in diet.
Libraries of cuneiform tablets were kept, and Ashurbanipal
in particular
gave instructions to gather any tablet that could
be found.
Assyrian society was fairly stable itself,
but continued
conquest and the imperial exploitation of other peoples
eventually
brought about its inevitable reaction.
The Chaldean dynasty, founded by Nabopolassar
when he became
king of Babylon in 626 BC, was to rule over the empire
they took
over from the Assyrians when they defeated their army in 609 BC.
This king had declared his son Nebuchadrezzar crown prince
when
the renovation of the palace was celebrated early in his reign.
Father and son were together when the last Assyrian king surrendered
at Harran.
From there Nabopolassar went to Babylon, while Nebuchadrezzar
seized and burned forts and gathered much booty for three months.
Then the king marched up the Euphrates to set up garrisons against
the expected
Egyptian attacks, while the prince raised support
for this war from the temple authorities.
When the Egyptians did
invade, killing intervening Judah king Josiah along the way,
Nebuchadrezzar
took command of the army and, in a battle in which Greek mercenaries
fought on both sides, defeated the Egyptians at Carchemish in
605 BC,
allowing "not a single man to escape to his country."
He was in the west asserting control over this part
of the empire when Nabopolassar died.
Nebuchadrezzar immediately marched through
the desert
and was crowned king in Babylon three weeks later.
Nebuchadrezzar II returned to Syria to collect tribute from
Damascus,
Tyre, Sidon, and Jerusalem while destroying rebellious
Ascalon.
In 601 BC the kings of Egypt
and Babylon fought
a great open battle that was costly for both
sides.
Egypt retreated from Asia,
and the Babylonians had to spend a year
re-equipping and retraining
themselves,
while Jehoiakim of Judah abrogated the obligations
that had been imposed by Babylon.
The Babylonians raided the Arabs
in the desert and got the
Aramaeans, Moabites, and Ammonites to
invade Judah.
Then Nebuchadrezzar besieged Jerusalem and captured
the city and its king in 597 BC.
Zedekiah was appointed as regent,
and 3,000 Jews were deported to Mesopotamia.
Encouraged by Egyptian
operations against Gaza, Tyre, and Sidon,
Zedekiah revolted against
Babylonian hegemony.
Nebuchadrezzar besieged Jerusalem again as
he had a decade before,
and after eighteen months Zedekiah was
captured trying to escape.
His sons were killed; he was blinded
and deported with thousands of Jews.
Jerusalem was looted; its
walls were broken down; and the temple was destroyed.
Less is known of the later years of Nebuchadrezzar's reign.
In 585 BC he mediated a truce between the Medes and the Lydians,
and it was said that his siege of Tyre lasted thirteen years.
He did claim to have pacified Lebanon so that he could exploit
its timber,
and he invaded Egypt in 568 BC.
Nebuchadrezzar II
had Babylon rebuilt and ruled for 43 years until his death in
562 BC.
He claimed to have been a just king and to have suppressed
bribery
to please the god Marduk and better all peoples.
Nebuchadrezzar's son Amel-Marduk ruled for only two years,
but according to Jeremiah 52:31-32 he released Judah's
king Jehoiachin from prison
and gave him a seat of honor in Babylon.
A leading official and landowner named Neriglissar,
who had married
Amel-Marduk's sister, organized a conspiracy that overthrew the
king.
Neriglissar led military campaigns against Piriddu in Cilicia
but died in 556 BC.
His son ruled only three months before he
was slain in turn
by a conspiracy led by Nabonidus, who was chosen
king.
Nabonidus may have helped mediate the peace
between the Medes
and Lydians in 585 BC.
His mother was devoted to the moon god
Sin at Harran, lived to be over one hundred,
and was given a queen's
funeral in 547 BC.
Nabonidus continued the effort of Neriglissar
to defend Syria from northern invasion,
bringing 2,850 captive
slaves back to Babylon
to rebuild its walls and restore the temple
of Sin at Harran.
By divination he decided to dedicate his daughter
as a priestess at Ur.
Although he did shift religious emphasis
to Sin,
he still provided supplies to the temples of Marduk and
Nabu.
While campaigning in Amanus he gathered plants
for Babylon's
famous hanging gardens that Nebuchadrezzar had built.
Nabonidus
spent ten years at Tema in the Arabian desert putting down a rebellion
and controlling the region, not even leaving to attend his mother's
funeral.
While he was away, his son Belshazzar ruled in Babylon.
Finally after a drought, divination and abundant rainfall showed
favorable omens,
and Nabonidus returned to Babylon.
Sin was restored
to his temple at Harran, and Nabonidus celebrated the
New Year's
festival in Babylon, taking the hand
of the statue of Bel (Marduk)
to show his divine kingship.
Then Cyrus II of Persia launched
a victorious attack on Babylonian Opis.
Nabonidus fled, and two
days later Persian forces, having redirected the water,
charged
into Babylon through the dry channels;
then Guti governor Gubaru
entered the city without a battle.
Belshazzar was killed, and
Nabonidus surrendered.
The holy places were protected, and two
weeks later Cyrus entered Babylon
proclaiming peace to all the
people and giving audience
to the rulers of the former Chaldean
empire.
Cyrus claimed that he was fulfilling the will of Marduk,
reaffirmed the privileges of Babylon, ordered exiled deities returned,
and decreed that the Jews would be allowed to return to their
country.
These privileges were granted to citizens of sacred cities
such as
Babylon, Sippar, Nippur, and Borsippa
as the Assyrians
had done with Ashur and Harran.
These urban dwellers believed
that their cities were protected by the god
of their temple and
that if the king violated justice, he and the land would be punished,
as indicated in the following Akkadian text from the seventh century
BC:
If a king does not heed justice, his people will be thrown into chaos,
and his land will be devastated.
If he does not heed the justice of his land, Ea, king of destinies,
will alter his destiny and will not cease from hostilely pursuing him.
If he does not heed his nobles, his life will be cut short.
If he does not heed his adviser, his land will rebel against him.
If he heeds a rogue, the status quo in his land will change....
If the sons of Nippur are brought to him for judgment,
but he accepts a present and improperly convicts them, Enlil, lord of the lands,
will bring a foreign army against him to slaughter his army,
whose prince and chief officers will roam the streets like fighting cocks.
If he takes the silver of the sons of Babylon and adds it to his own coffers,
or if he hears a lawsuit involving men of Babylon but treats it frivolously,
Marduk, lord of heaven and earth, will set his foes upon him,
and he will give his property and wealth to his enemy.
If he imposes a fine on the sons of Nippur, Sippar, or Babylon,
or if he puts them in prison, the city where
the fine was imposed will be completely overturned
and a foreign enemy will make his way into their prison.
If he mobilized the whole of Sippar, Nippur, and Babylon, and imposed
forced labor on the people, exacting from them corvée
at the herald's proclamation, Marduk, prince of the gods, the prince,
the councilor, will turn his land over to his enemy so that the troops of his land
will do forced labor for his enemy, for Anu, Enlil, and Ea, the great gods,
who dwell in heaven and earth, in their assembly
affirmed the freedom of those people from those obligations.4
The people's sense of their own rights and power are seen in
a letter that warned
Assyrian king Esarhaddon by quoting the opening
and closing lines from this text.
This is the same Esarhaddon
whose tax collectors were pelted with clods.
Another document
has Esarhaddon claiming that he restored this lost protection
and privilege to the people of Babylon, including tax exemption.
Because of the survival of cuneiform clay tablets much is known
of Babylonian business transactions during this period.
Citizens
of these cities, who were exempt from military conscription and
corvée,
met in assemblies, but after attainment of the
empire
royal power dominated the assemblies.
Nabonidus may have
done much to stop judges from taking bribes
and not defending
the poor, robbing of the weak, usury, violence,
and even the taking
of fields.
These assemblies often settled minor civil and criminal
cases.
In 594 BC the Borsippa assembly executed and confiscated
the property
of a general for plotting against Nebuchadrezzar.
The local governor usually presided over the assembly.
Only free
men were in the assemblies that excluded foreigners
as well as
slaves and women, though poor artisans were included.
Many aliens lived in Babylonia, intermarrying and being assimilated
or forming their own self-governing communities.
There were Elamites,
Persians, Medes, Cilicians, Jews, Ionians,
and most numerous of
all, Egyptians.
Conflicts over ethnicity or religious differences
were not apparent.
Most aliens worshiped their own gods and the
Babylonian gods
as well with the notable exception of the Jews.
The king appointed judges to administer the laws.
Polygamy
was rare, and the husband had to pay
the first wife compensation
unless she was childless.
Women could engage in contracts and
own property,
though they were rarely witnesses to contracts.
Seals or thumbnail impressions were used as signatures.
Loans
were secured with either fields, houses, slaves, children, cattle,
money,
or other possessions; these might be exploited in place
of interest,
which was usually 20% annually.
A debtor might have
to work off the debt but could not be made a slave
although his
children could.
This desperate measure rarely occurred except
during starvation due to famine,
a long siege, or a devastating
war.
The time limit for slavery in Hammurabi's code had been abolished.
These laws were still copied though, and the thirty-fold payment
for stolen temple and palace property was still in effect.
The state got revenue from taxes, and the temples received
tithes,
which averaged about ten percent of income.
The Eanna
temple of Uruk owned more than 5,000 cattle and over a 100,000
sheep.
Those who could not pay the tithe might borrow it
or even
give their children to the temple as slaves.
Scribes served not
only government administration but as business accountants as
well.
In 553 BC Nabonidus appointed a royal commissioner in the
Eanna temple
to make sure that the state got its taxes from the
temple.
Temples also had to provide services to the palace,
and
the king began to regulate temple rations to slaves, salaries,
and rental rates.
Such policies may have induced the priests to
prefer Cyrus to their own king.
Barley and dates were the largest crops, and people were often
paid in these.
The state owned and controlled the canals used
for irrigation.
The owner of the land usually received one-third
of the crop,
leaving two-thirds for the lessee.
Most craftsmen
worked for the temples or the wealthy, who could afford to train
slaves.
Most farmers worked on land belonging to the state, temples,
or the wealthy.
The king usually gave prisoners of war over to the temples
to be used as slaves.
However, the 10,000 Jews and their women
and children that were deported in 597 BC
were not enslaved but
settled near Nippur to work land that had been neglected.
There
was a limit to how many slaves could be absorbed into the economy
effectively.
Slaves could earn and own property including even
other slaves,
but they could not buy their own freedom.
Only their
master could free them, and successful slaves were usually kept.
The wages of the slave went to the master, removing the incentive
the free worker
had to work hard, thus making slavery less productive.
Babylon was the busiest center of trade at this time connecting
Egypt, Phoenicia, and Syria to Cyprus, Asia Minor, and Elam.
Weighed
silver was the primary currency, as there were no minted coins.
In the sixth century BC while most people were suffering hardship,
powerful capitalists arose, particularly the Egibi family in Babylon,
with fortunes in real estate, slaves, money-lending, commerce,
agriculture, and banking.
These inequities were probably factors
in Babylon's loss of political autonomy.
Zarathushtra is said to have lived 258 years before Alexander.
Since Alexander had taken over the Persian empire by 330 BC when
Darius III died,
and as Zarathushtra was about forty years old
when he converted King Vishtapa
and lived to be 77, the approximate
dates of his life are 628-551 BC.
Other traditions hold that he
was born long before that,
and some scholars believe he lived
between 1400 and 1200 BC.
It is also possible that there could
have been more than one Zarathushtra.
Little is known about the
life of Zarathushtra, who was called Zoroaster by the Greeks,
but his influence on Iranian religion was very great.
The name
Zarathushtra has been translated as "he of the golden Light,"
and legend indicates that as a child he glowed with radiant light.
The Aryans, who settled in Iran and those who invaded India,
shared a common religion originally, as indicated by a Mitannian
treaty
with Hittites from the 14th century BC which acknowledged
the Vedic gods Mitra, Varuna, Indra, and the two Nasatyas.
The
names Mitra and Varuna were often linked together
in the Hindu Vedas as a dual compound.
The Iranian god Ahura shared
the characteristics of the early Varuna,
and Zarathushtra added
the attribute of wisdom (Mazda) and declared that
the one
true God is Ahura Mazda.
Apparently when the split occurred between
the Hindus and the Iranians,
they eventually demonized some of
each other gods and spirits.
The divinities the Hindus call devas
became evil spirits or devils
to the Iranians and Zarathushtra,
while the Hindus called evil spirits asuras.
According to tradition Zarathushtra was born smiling or laughing
as the third
of five sons in the Spitama family in the pastoral
Median town of Rhages
near what is now Tehran; he was initiated
into the priesthood at age fifteen.
He left home on a spiritual
quest when he was twenty and at thirty
recognized the Wise Lord (Mazda Ahura) when Good Thought (Vohu Manah)
came
to him and asked him who he was.
Zarathushtra declared that he
was a foe to the Liar and a supporter of what is right.
Zarathushtra
criticized aggressive violators of order as followers of the Lie,
and his teachings were opposed by the religious authorities.
Zarathushtra
was tempted to give up his new faith
but continued on with great
determination.
For ten years he wandered around with very few
followers.
Traveling east as he preached, Zarathushtra struggled for two
years
to convert a Chorasmian prince named Vishtapa.
Opposed by
greedy Karpan priests and critical of their corruption, intoxicated
orgies,
and animal sacrifices, Zarathushtra was put in prison
until he was aided by Vishtapa's consort Hutaosa;
then Vishtapa
accepted the new faith and promoted it actively.
The court of
Vishtapa was drawn into the religion,
Zarathushtra marrying a
daughter of one of the nobles
whose brother married Zarathushtra's
daughter by his first wife.
The new religion was promulgated so
actively that
two holy wars were fought in its defense,
and in
the second one Zarathushtra was killed
at the age of 77 while
attending a fire ceremony.
The teachings of Zarathushtra were passed down
through the
ancient poetry of the Gathas.
Zarathushtra declared that
there is one God, the Wise Lord he called Ahura Mazda,
transforming
the polytheism of the Aryan religion into monotheism.
This God
he identified as the creator and governor of the universe through
the Holy Spirit.
The most important characteristic of God is Asha,
which means truth or what is right (justice, law).
This God is
profoundly ethical, rewarding the thoughts, words, and actions
of the good,
and bringing recompense to those of the evil.
All
spirits and beings are free to choose between the good and evil.
The twenty names Zarathushtra gave to God are
I am, Giver of Herds,
Strong One, Perfect Holiness, All-Good, Understanding,
Having
Understanding, Knowledge, Having Knowledge, Blessing, Causing
Blessing,
Lord, Most Beneficent, Not Harming, Unconquerable, Truthful,
All-Seeing,
Healing, Creator, and Wise (or Omniscient).
Zarathushtra taught that God has seven major attributes.
Spenta
Mainyu is the Holy Spirit through which everything is created.
God communicated to Zarathushtra through the Vohu Manah
or Good Mind.
Asha Vahishta means best order or justice.
The Khshathra Vairya, which obviously has the same etymology
as the Kshatriya
or ruling caste of India, means Absolute
Power, Desirable Dominion,
and the Ultimate Paradise to be established
on Earth in the end time
which came to be called the kingdom or
sovereignty of heaven by Jesus.
Yasna 41:2 states, "May
we be granted thy good government (khshathra)
for ever
and ever, O Wise Lord.
May a good governor, whether it be a man
or a woman, rule over us in the two worlds."5
The two worlds
refer to the spiritual and material worlds.
Armaiti means
Devotion and Piety and came to be associated
with the sustaining
nurturing of Mother Earth.
Haurvatat is Wholeness, Health,
and Perfection.
The seventh attribute Ameretat is Immortality.
Because God allows free choice, some spirits, who were originally
created by the one God,
chose badly and became Druj or the spirit
of Deceit that can lead people astray.
All thoughts, words, and
actions have their consequences for good or bad.
The Yazata
or Adorable Ones give rewards to the good.
The Guardian Spirit
of humanity is called Sraosha,
who along with Mithra and Rashnu,
judges the souls after death.
Sraosha also has a sister called
Ashi Vanguhi, which means Holy Blessing
or Good Reward of Deeds.
She also protects married life and guards the chastity of women,
while abhorring the unfaithful wife.
Mithra listens to appeals
and represents contracts.
He and Rashnu represent truth and light,
and the sin of deceiving Mithra can even affect one's family.
For Zarathushtra fire was a symbol of the divine flame and
pure truth
that glows in the heart of every being.
Xerxes, who
found an ever-burning lamp in the temple of Athere Polias
at Delos,
spared the sanctuary out of respect for Zarathushtran
fire worship.
The Holy Spirit is the highest next to God,
but
it is opposed by the Evil Spirit and its offspring, the daevas,
providing a constant challenge for humans to choose wisely.
The
human soul (urvan) and spirit (fravashi) use the
faculties
of knowing energy (khratu), wisdom and consideration
(chisti),
intelligence and perception (ushi), mind
(manas), consciousness and memory (bodha),
practical
conscience (ahu), free will (kama), speech (vachas),
and action (shyaothna)
as well as the instrument of the
living body (tanu).
Above all these is daena, the
gift of vision or revealed religion.
In addition to the strong mandates to tell the truth and be
just, Zarathushtra also taught
practical things like tilling the
soil, raising grain, growing fruits, rooting out weeds,
reclaiming
wasteland, irrigating barren ground, and treating animals kindly,
especially cows who serve farmers.
He severely castigated the
Turanian nomads, who after killing cattle as sacrifices
went out
on violent raids, destroying fields and produce.
After death the soul comes to the Bridge of the Separator,
and all one's actions, words, and thoughts are evaluated in terms
of good and evil.
The good are able to cross the bridge into the
heavenly world,
but the bad fall down below.
However, Gatha
49:11 makes it clear that
Zarathushtra originally taught that
such souls come back to Earth by reincarnation,
though this concept
was later dropped from the religion.
But among evil rulers, evil doers, evil speakers, among evil egos, evil thinkers,
and followers of Untruth, Souls do come back by reason of dim insight;
truly they are dwellers in the Abode of Untruth.6
This makes sense, because Zarathushtra taught that eventually
all souls will be purified
and brought out of hell when the world
enters a new cycle free of all evil and misery,
ever young and
rejoicing with all souls, enjoying ineffable bliss and glory.
This is also referred to as the Resurrection (Ristakhez),
another idea that greatly influenced Judeo-Christian religion.
The essence of the teachings of Zarathushtra can ultimately
be
summed up in three words, "BE LIKE GOD."
Through missionaries the religion of Zarathushtr
spread rapidly
throughout the Persian empire.
Darius I showed in his own proclamations
that survived in inscriptions
how much he was influenced by Zarathushtra's
emphasis on truth and justice.
At Behistun Darius declared that
Ahura Mazda helped him,
because he was not disloyal and did not
follow the Lie.
He did not do wrong but walked in justice.
He
wronged neither the weak nor the powerful.
He was warned not to
befriend those who do wrong but punish them.
In the Naqshi-i Rustama
inscription Darius praised Ahura Mazda,
who created the Earth,
sky, humans, human happiness,
and who bestowed wisdom on him.
He declared that the weak should not have wrong done to them
by
the powerful nor the reverse.
He claimed that he controlled his
anger by his thinking power.
Darius also wrote that he rewards
those who cooperate and punishes those
who do harm according to
the damage they have done.
The civilization on the Iranian plateau is very ancient;
copper
was smelted there about 5500 BC,
and Elam in the lowlands lagged
only slightly behind Sumer
in the
development of hieroglyphic writing 5,000 years ago.
However,
the Elamites adopted the written language of Akkadian
as the most
universal language of the area for two millennia.
An overlord
in Susa ruled over vassal princes.
The oldest written document
of a treaty found so far was between
the Akkadian Naram-Sin and
an Elamite king about 43 centuries ago.
Much of what is known
about Elamite civilization comes to us
from Sumerian, Babylonian
and Assyrian records.
The cities of Susa and Anshan were important
links for trade and
communication between Mesopotamia and the
Harrapan culture of the Indus valley.
Elam overthrew the Third
dynasty of Ur in the 21st century BC;
three centuries later they
were conquered by Babylon's Hammurabi,
but they were able to defeat
his son.
In the 17th century BC when the Kassites
began to take over Babylon,
they
also dominated Elam, as Aryans came through Iran on their way
to India
bringing Indo-Iranian languages in the first half of
the second millennium BC.
Elam clashed with Assyria in the thirteenth
century BC but reached its height of power
in the twelfth century
BC when Shutruk-nahhunte I overthrew the Kassites in Babylon,
and his son took the statue of Marduk to Susa.
King Shilkhak-Inshushinak
invaded Assyria as far as Ashur and besieged Babylon,
establishing
a brief Elamite empire, which used the proto-Elamite script in
its inscriptions.
However, before the twelfth century was over,
Babylon's Nebuchadrezzar I
defeated the Elamites and took Marduk's
statue back.
For the next three centuries little is known of Elamite
culture.
Assyrian military campaigns against Elam in the eighth
century BC
increased in the seventh century, climaxing in 639
BC when Ashurbanipal's armies
destroyed Susa and sowed the land
with salt.
Elam continued to exist for another century but never
rose to power again.
The name Iran derives from the word "Aryan," and
in the first half of the first millennium BC
Iranian-speaking
peoples moved gradually into the area of the Zagros mountains,
the largest groups being the Medes and the Persians.
More effective
use of iron tools and irrigation from the ninth to the seventh
centuries BC
enabled the Iranians to farm more successfully and
increase population in the plains.
The Aryans brought horses and
chariots,
and their use of cavalry stimulated the Assyrians to
do the same.
The Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser III conquered and
deported 65,000 Medes,
replacing them on the plateau with Aramaeans.
Urartu led by its king Rusas I tried to fight back against the
Assyrians,
and the semi-legendary first king of the Medes, Daiukku,
was said to have united dozens of tribal chiefs to join the effort.
According to Herodotus Daiukku had been made king
because of his
reputation for making fair judgments.
Assyria's Sargon II defeated
dozens of Median chiefs and settled 30,000 captured Israelis
in
the towns of the Medes in the late eighth century BC.
From the
northwest came Scythians and Cimmerians,
who devastated Urartu
so badly that Rusas committed suicide.
While Assyrian king Sennacherib was busy fighting Babylon,
Elam, Egypt, and Judea,
the Medes rallied around Khshathrita (called
Phraortes by Herodotus), the son of Daiukku.
With Cimmerians as
allies and Persians as vassals
they attacked Nineveh in 653 BC
but were defeated, and Khshathrita was killed.
The Scythians took
advantage of this opportunity
by invading and subjugating the
Medes for 28 years.
Herodotus told how the next Median king Cyaxares
killed the drunken Scythian chieftains
at a banquet and went on
to recover Median power.
The prophet Nahum indicated that the
growing hatred of the Assyrian nobility, priests,
military, administrators,
and merchants was going to bring about the downfall of that empire.
Adopting the specialized military units that had been used by
the Urartians and Assyrians
for more than a century, the Medes
marched west and took Arrapkha in 615 BC,
surrounded Nineveh the
next year, and then went on to take Ashur by storm.
Nineveh fell
in 612 BC with help from the Babylonians.
The Assyrian empire
was divided between the Medes and the Babylonians.
Babylon ruled over the fertile crescent, while Media controlled
the north and east.
The Medes came into conflict with Lydia, the
major power in Asia Minor
and fought with them for five years
before an eclipse of the sun stimulated them
to agree to a truce
mediated by Babylonians in 585 BC.
That same year Astyages succeeded
as Median king and ruled for 35 years.
Perhaps influenced by Zarathushtra,
Astyages was reluctant to engage in
continual conquest and thus
alienated the ambitious aristocracy.
A plot of the nobles was
organized by Hypargus,
and border tribes were incited to rebel
by Oebares and others.
After Persian king Cyrus II revolted, Babylonian
king Nabonidus
took back Harran in 553 BC while the Medes were
defeating Cyrus,
who was forced to retreat.
Faced with the Persian
revolt and the betrayal of the aristocracy,
Astyages was captured;
the royal city of Ecbatana had to submit to Cyrus,
according to
Ctesias because Cyrus threatened to torture his daughter Amytis,
whom Cyrus later married.
Cyrus II inherited a Persian kingdom in the Median empire
from
his father Cambyses I in 559 BC.
The mother of Cyrus was a daughter
of the Median king Astyages.
Herodotus, who delighted in relating
stories of how oracles and dreams
unexpectedly came true, wrote
that because of a dream
Astyages tried to have Cyrus murdered
when he was a baby;
but Hypargus did not want to kill him and
left it to another who saved the child.
When the boy was found
to be acting like a king,
he was discovered and returned to his
true mother and father.
This ironic story may have been fabricated
to justify Cyrus for overthrowing his grandfather.
As a vassal king in Anshan Cyrus ruled from his capital at
Parsagarda
and united seven Persian princes into a royal council
under his leadership.
Cyrus initiated diplomatic relations with
Babylon's king Nabonidus
and was able to win over Hypargus and
much of the Median aristocracy
when he revolted against Astyages
and took over the Median empire in 550 BC.
Cyrus bypassed the
fortresses of Babylon and marched north to capture
the Assyrian
cities of Arbela and Ashur, whose gods' statues had been taken
to Babylon.
Harran, the city sacred to Nabonidus, must also have
fallen,
as Cyrus proceeded on to invade Cilicia, Cappadocia, and
Armenia.
In each of these cases Cyrus allowed native kings to
retain power
under his rule as he established satrapies.
Croesus, who held the regional power as king of Lydia,
formed
an alliance with Egypt's Amasis, Babylon's Nabonidus, and the
Spartans
who wanted to defend the Greek city states in Asia.
Believing
the Delphic oracle, which declared he would destroy a great empire,
Croesus refused to be a king under Persian sovereignty.
Croesus
crossed the Halys River, which divided the empires,
and began
to devastate the Syrian lands in Cappadocia
and enslave the inhabitants
not driven out.
The Median general Hypargus suggested placing
camels in the front line
which intimidated the Lydians' horses
and enabled the Persians to win a victory
and take Sardis after
a two-week siege.
Herodotus told how Croesus was saved from being
burned to death
by rain and a reprieve from Cyrus.
The great empire
Croesus destroyed was his own Lydian empire.
Croesus blamed Apollo
for his defeat, saying,
"No one is fool enough to choose
war instead of peace—
in peace sons bury fathers, but in war
fathers bury sons."7
Yet he had chosen war.
Since Miletus was the only Greek city state to surrender, the
others were conquered
by the Persian army led by Hypargus; then
the islanders surrendered.
Cyrus once again was able to use local
disaffection for another easy victory
over a Mesopotamian power,
this time Babylon, winning over their general Gobryas,
who took
Uruk in 546 and Babylon in 539 BC,
becoming satrap of the new
province of Babirush.
Nabonidus was severely criticized by Persian
propaganda,
and the Akkadian gods were returned to their temples,
as Cyrus tried to legitimize his taking the kingship of Babylon.
Business went on without much change under Persian rule,
but the
Jews were allowed to return to their homeland under generous conditions
that allowed them to take the precious utensils that had been
stolen from their temple
a half century before by the Babylonians.
Cyrus had been heralded as the Lord's anointed by Jewish prophets.
Cyrus also expanded the Persian empire greatly in the east
to the edge of India;
but if he was influenced by the new religion
of Zarathushtra,
it did not quell his desire for imperial conquest.
Near the Jaxartes River he ran into the Massagetae led by Queen
Tomyris,
who sent him the following message:
King of the Medes, I advise you to abandon this enterprise,
for you cannot know if in the end it will do you any good.
Rule your own people, and try to bear the sight of me ruling mine.
But of course you will refuse my advice;
as the last thing you wish for is to live in peace.8
In 529 BC a bloody battle was fought,
destroying most of the
Persian army and killing Cyrus.
Eight years before he died, Cyrus had made his son Cambyses
king of Babylon,
while a second son Bardiya administered the eastern
provinces.
When Cambyses II succeeded his father,
he had his brother
Bardiya secretly assassinated and then invaded Egypt.
With the advice of a defecting Greek general,
Cambyses was able
to get Bedouin help in crossing the desert.
In a battle in which
Greek mercenaries fought on both sides,
the Egyptian forces of
Psamtik III fled to Memphis, which then fell to the Persians.
From Egypt Cambyses tried to attack
Carthage,
but his Phoenician allies refused to fight against their
own colony.
According to Herodotus a venture against a Libyan
oasis failed because of a sandstorm.
Cambyses did manage to invade
Nubia,
but the Persians suffered great losses on their return.
Greek accounts of Cambyses' atrocities in Egypt probably reflect
Egyptian resentment for the Persian domination they suffered until
402 BC.
In 522 BC a man saying he was Bardiya rose up and tried
to rule in Persia;
Cambyses headed home but died on the way.
Darius, a prince and governor of Parthia who had commanded
the ten thousand immortals against Egypt,
led a group of seven Persian nobles,
maintained control of the
army, and put down the revolt,
killing the false Bardiya two months
after the death of Cambyses,
though it took two years to put down
the various revolts in the empire.
Darius sent forces led by Otanes
to help Syloson, the exiled brother of Polycrates,
to retake the
island of Samos.
He appointed Zerubbabel governor of Judah, and
when the order of Cyrus
to restore the temple was discovered,
Darius supported that project.
In 519 BC Darius himself crossed
the Caspian Sea and led the invasion
of the eastern Scythians,
and the following winter he marched to Egypt,
where he sought
wise men and reinstated the former Egyptian laws.
He also ordered
the digging of a canal 150 feet wide
from the Nile River to the
Gulf of Suez.
After seizing a great empire, Darius endeavored to judge it
by establishing laws.
The empire was divided into twenty provinces,
each ruled by a Persian satrap and a commander-in-chief.
The Persians
were exempted from taxation, and India's gold provided nearly
a third
of the total annual tribute valued at 14,500 talents of
silver.
Inspectors called "the ears of the king" kept
him informed and had their own armed forces.
The laws were intended
to keep the stronger from destroying the weak.
Judges were appointed
for life unless they were removed for miscarriage of justice.
Darius claimed that he loved what is right and hated lies and
what is wrong,
that he was not angry but restrained those who
were angry.
Those who injured he punished.
Those who did not speak
the truth he did not trust,
believing that anyone who lies destroys.
He even withdrew a death sentence when he realized that he had
violated his own law
not to execute anyone for only one crime;
but in weighing the man's services against his crime he ended
up making him a governor.
However, the death penalty was used
for offenses against the state or the royal family,
and mutilation
was common for lesser crimes.
Darius encouraged trade and economic development in a number
of ways.
He standardized weights and measures and coinage on a
bimetallic system
of gold and silver that had been introduced
by Croesus in Lydia.
Darius created a network of roads including
a royal highway from Susa to Sardis in Lydia.
He commended the
satrap of Asia Minor and Syria
for transplanting fruit trees from
beyond the Euphrates.
Sesame spread to Egypt,
and rice was planted in Mesopotamia.
Generally large estates were
worked by serfs and war-captured slaves
who belonged to the land.
Industry not only produced luxury goods made from precious metals,
but also trade of useful tools, household products,
and inexpensive
clothing raised the living standards of many people.
However,
the empire did have to be supported, and there were taxes on ports,
internal trade, and sales as well as on estates, fields, gardens,
flocks, and mines.
The wages of skilled workers, laborers,
and
even women and children were strictly regulated.
The Indus valley had been subdued and made into the satrapy
of Hindush by 513 BC
when Darius crossed the Bosphorus and led
an attack against the European Scythians.
With the vassal help
of hundreds of Greek ships
the Persians defeated the Getae and
got the Thracians to submit.
However, the Scythians destroyed
their own land and while retreating
harassed the Persian army
with arrows from horsemen.
King Darius fled back to Asia but left
behind 800,000 soldiers led by Megabazus,
satrap of Dascyleium,
to continue the fighting.
The next year Libya was conquered after
a nine-month siege of Barca,
while Megabazus was taking the towns
of Thrace one by one
and deporting their warriors to Phrygia.
Envoys demanded of Macedonia's Amyntas earth and water,
the sign
of submission, and he complied.
Darius appointed his brother Artaphrenes
satrap in Sardis to oversee
the Greek cities of Ionia, and he
replaced Megabazus with Otanes,
who controlled the grain trade
through the straits, cutting off the Scythians from
Greek art
treasures, Milesian business, and threatening
the food supply
of the European Greeks.
Megabazus strengthened this blockade by
capturing the islands of Lemnos and Imbros.
In 500 BC the Greek Ionian cities revolted and burned Sardis.
The war went on sporadically until the Persians defeated
the Greek
fleet off Miletus in 494 BC.
Most of the men in Miletus were killed,
and the women and children were enslaved.
The next spring Chios,
Lesbos, and Tenedos were taken along with mainland cities.
Handsome
boys were made eunuchs, and beautiful girls were put in the royal
harem.
Cities and temples were burned.
Only the historian Hecataeus,
who had opposed the revolt, was spared.
The Ionian cities that
had been allowed local autonomy
before were now brought under
imperial administration.
Private wars between cities were no longer
allowed but were arbitrated.
A census was taken, and the taxation
imposed on the weakened cities was burdensome.
Darius appointed
his son-in-law Mardonius, who according to Herodotus,
ejected
irresponsible despots from Ionian cities and set up democracies.
The Persians took gold-rich Thasos even though it had not been
hostile,
after which much of the Persian fleet and over 20,000
men
were destroyed by a storm off Athos.
At the same time a Thracian
tribe of Brygi inflicted heavy losses on the Persian army
on land
while wounding Mardonius, who eventually subdued them before retreating
to Asia.
In 490 BC Darius sent envoys to Greek cities demanding the
earth and water of submission.
The trading island of Aegina cooperated,
but Sparta and Athens were determined to resist.
The Persian attack
was led by Datis.
When the people of Naxos fled to the interior,
the city was burned.
Eretrians were divided but decided only to
defend themselves, not to attack.
After the Persians had assaulted
Eretria for six days, two democrats betrayed the city,
hoping
their party would gain power; but the Persians made the moral
mistake
of destroying the temples and enslaving the people.
This
stimulated the Athenians to attack the Persians on the plain of
Marathon,
defeating them so badly that the Persians fled for home.
In Egypt, where graft had been
rampant, Darius instituted a new code of laws.
Suffering under
a heavy Persian garrison and severe taxes,
Egyptians complained
that the great building projects in Persepolis, Susa,
and Ecbatana
had been financed by Egyptian wealth.
The Egyptian satrap Aryandes
was executed for violating Persian coining laws,
probably for
melting down royal coins with the king's image and selling
the
bullion at an enormous profit, which was considered treason.
Upset
by the heavy taxation imposed to raise money for the war against
Greece,
in 486 BC a revolt erupted in Egypt
and was soon followed by the death of Darius.
His oldest son by Queen Atossa, Xerxes, who had been administering
Babylon
as viceroy for twelve years, became king of the Persians
and the Medes
and spent his first royal year putting down the
Egyptian revolt.
Xerxes inflicted more severe treatment than his
predecessors had there and also
in Babylon after their satrap
Zopyrus was killed
in a revolt in 482 BC
that was ruthlessly defeated.
Not only were the Babylonian fortifications demolished and the
temples destroyed,
but the great, solid-gold statue of Marduk
was removed and melted down.
No longer could anyone take the hand
of Bel to show their divine-approved
rulership at the Babylonian
New Year's festival.
Babylon was incorporated into the Assyrian
satrapy, which had to provide
a thousand talents of silver and
500 boys for eunuchs.
Even the name Babylonian was banned, and
after this time they were known as Chaldeans.
Urged on by the war party led by Mardonius, Xerxes amassed
a huge army formed
from 46 nations and commanded by 29 Persian
generals to launch an attack against Greece.
Gold raiment marked
the 10,000 immortals, elite Persian and Median soldiers
allowed
to bring their concubines and servants on the march.
The navy
of 1200 ships was mostly furnished by the Phoenicians, Egyptians,
Anatolians,
and by Dorian, Aeolian, and Ionian Greeks.
Half of
the Persian imperial army was used—
about 180,000 men. So confident
were they that when they caught three men in Sardis
spying for
the Greek allies, they showed them the vast army
and let them
go make their report.
However, the Persians suffered losses when they met determined
resistance
from 300 Spartans at the Thermopylae pass,
though eventually
the Spartans were killed,
and the Thebans surrendered and were
branded.
The army of Xerxes then burned deserted Plataea and Thespiae
before entering Athens and burning the acropolis.
In the major
naval battle at Salamis the imperial navy lost 200 ships,
the
Greek allies only 40.
Xerxes reacted by executing the Phoenician
captains,
causing the Phoenicians and Egyptians to go home.
Xerxes
then went back to Sardis, leaving Mardonius in command.
At Plataea
both armies had been promised victory by seers if they stayed
on the defensive.
Mardonius refused to retire and use bribery.
When the allies were withdrawing, which might have broken up the
coalition,
the Persians attacked, causing the desperate Greeks
to fight.
Mardonius himself entered the battle and was slain
along
with his guard of a thousand Persians.
This and news of the Persian
defeat at the island of Mycale
caused the imperial army to withdraw
from Europe.
Xerxes retired to his harem and used bribery and diplomacy
to try to win over the Greeks,
who formed the Delian league led
by Athens which attacked Thrace in 476 BC
driving Persian imperialism
out of Europe except at Doriscus.
Xerxes in his romantic affairs
aroused the jealousy of the queen,
who at the New Year's feast
requested the woman be mutilated.
The victim's family fled and
was going to raise a revolt,
but they were overtaken and killed.
Another Achaemenid prince violated a virgin from a prominent family
and was ordered to circumnavigate Africa;
but when he returned
without matching the Phoenician feat, he was impaled.
In 466 BC
two hundred Greek ships invaded Caria
and shot arrows into besieged
Phasaelis, persuading them to pay ten talents
and join the war
to liberate Greek cities.
Xerxes sent a navy, but eighty ships
were delayed at Cyprus
and captured after the battle at the Eurymedon.
The Persian threat against Europe had been replaced by Greek influence
in Asia Minor.
In 465 BC Xerxes was assassinated in the royal bedchamber by
a conspiracy
led by Artabanus, Megabyzus, and the eunuch chamberlain
Aspamitres.
Artabanus was able to persuade 18-year-old Artaxerxes
that his older brother Darius,
who hated Xerxes for seducing his
wife, had killed their father,
causing Artaxerxes to murder his
brother Darius.
When Artabanus tried to get rid of Artaxerxes,
he was betrayed by Megabyzus
and killed after wounding the young
king.
The eunuch Aspamitres was tortured to death.
Hystaspis,
another brother of the new king, revolted in Bactria
and was defeated
by Artaxerxes, who then made sure that all his brothers were killed.
Artaxerxes ruled the Persian empire for forty years collecting
annual taxes
that totalled about 10,000 talents plus nearly half
as much again from India.
Little value from this ever went back
to the satrapies that provided it
except in payment to imperial
soldiers from their countries.
Taxes were so heavy that many had
to borrow money at 40% interest
until they were ruined and lost
their land to the original owners,
who were also being taxed.
Many revolts resulted from this oppression.
In Egypt Inaros, a son of Psamtik of the Saite line,
drove
out the tax collectors and requested aid from Athens in 460 BC.
The satrap Achaemenes was killed, and most of Memphis was taken.
While this revolt continued, Ezra was given permission by Artaxerxes
to take the written law of the Jews from Babylon to Jerusalem.
Persian money aided Sparta in defeating Athens at Tanagra in 457
BC,
and a pacified Judah allowed safe passage of the Persian army
led by Syrian satrap Megabyzus on its way to Egypt,
where it drove
the Athenians out of Memphis, capturing 6,000 Greeks.
Inaros and
the Greeks were taken to Persia,
and several years later the queen
ordered him and fifty Greeks executed.
Some Greeks were still
holding out in the Nile Delta
when Cimon of Athens attacked Cyprus
with 200 ships,
but the Persians successfully resisted this and
the ships that were sent to Egypt.
In 449 BC a peace treaty was made between Athens and Persia
which confirmed
what had been the situation before the long war.
Persia acknowledged the autonomy of the Greek cities in Asia,
while the Athenians renounced attempts to liberate others there
as long as the
Persian king would recognize the autonomy of his
vassal Greek cities
and their low tribute amount from before the
war.
A demilitarized zone was proclaimed around the borders between
the two empires.
Athens also agreed not to support rebellions
in Egypt and Libya.
However, when the queen had the Greeks and
Inaros executed, Megabyzus,
upset that his pledge had been violated,
revolted in Syria.
After redeeming his honor in two victories
against the empire,
Megabyzus agreed to return to loyalty provided
he remain satrap.
This Syrian revolt may have stimulated rebellious
feelings in Jerusalem,
where the walls were being rebuilt.
Artaxerxes
ordered this building stopped and the work destroyed;
but later
his cupbearer Nehemiah with the help of wine persuaded the king
to allow him to go to Jerusalem to rebuild the city,
and Nehemiah
was even given an armed guard for his journey.
Herodotus recited his History in Athens in 445 BC, as
Pericles made a thirty years' peace
with Sparta and moved toward
challenging the Persian empire by accepting a large present
of
gold and grain from Libyan rebel Psamtik and establishing tribute
districts
from cities in Caria, Ionia, Hellespont, and the islands.
When democratic Miletus appealed to Athens after having been defeated
by oligarchic Samos, Pericles in 441 BC sent an expedition to
re-establish the democracy.
The oligarchs driven out turned to
Pissouthnes, the satrap of Sardis,
who allowed 700 mercenaries
to be hired to recover the island
and capture the Greek garrison
for the satrap.
Samos, however, was taken over by the Athenians
when Phoenician ships failed to defend it.
Thus the peace treaty
was broken.
Persia regained some cities, and Pericles countered
with imperial gains in the Black Sea area.
Megabyzus, who on a hunt had saved Artaxerxes from a charging
lion,
was exiled for killing an animal before his master; his
son Zopyrus, aided by Athenians,
assaulted Caunus and was killed.
Megabyzus eventually was invited back to the king's table;
but
when he died, his wife Amytis, the king's sister,
became the mistress
of a Greek physician, who, when it was discovered,
was buried
alive for polluting the royal blood, Amytis dying the same day.
Jews complained of the Persian taxes, but Nehemiah,
who as
governor was supported by the imperial bureaucracy,
blamed the
rich Jews and said he loaned money without interest.
Nehemiah's
criticism of the wealthy probably led to his recall by Artaxerxes
in 433 BC,
but he returned to Jerusalem again to institute reforms
such as forbidding commerce on the Sabbath.
Meanwhile a plague
spread from Ethiopia through Egypt and into Athens
and the Persian
empire that further oppressed the overtaxed.
The Persian court
sent the great beauty Thargelia and courtesans
to gather information
from lusty Athenian statesmen.
When Artaxerxes and his queen died on the same day in 424 BC,
Xerxes II
became king but was killed a month and a half later
while sleeping after heavy drinking
at a festival. Secydianus,
the assassin, was a son of Artaxerxes by a Babylonian concubine;
but he was replaced by a different Babylonian concubine's son,
who raised an army in Babylon and declared himself Darius II,
promising Secydianus
half the kingdom but half a year later causing
his death; other conspirators in the
assassination of the king
were put to death or committed suicide.
His sister and wife Parysatis
became an influential queen especially on behalf of Cyrus,
who
was the next son born to them.
Darius II began by renewing the
treaty with the Athenians, but continued imperial taxation
caused
more fields to go out of cultivation and only be used for grazing.
In 413 BC Pissouthnes in Sardis revolted; Persian forces led
by Tissaphernes
compelled him to surrender, and Darius II ordered
him killed.
When Darius' own son Amorges rebelled in Caria with
Athenian aid
Darius decided to help the Spartans fight the Athenians.
Governing Sardis now, Tissaphernes started collecting taxes from
the Greek cities
and offered to support Spartan troops in Asia.
Clazomenae, Teos, Lebedos, Ephesus,
Phocaea, and Cyrene accepted
Persian garrisons and paid their owed tribute.
Persia signed a
treaty with Sparta through Tissaphernes,
agreeing to wage war
together against Athens.
However, in Sparta politicians refused
to ratify a treaty that recognized Persian territory
that had
belonged to ancestors of the Persian king.
When the Spartan ambassador
Lichas demanded this change in 411 BC,
Tissaphernes left in a
rage.
Meanwhile the Athenian Alcibiades, who had gone over to
the Spartan side,
persuaded Tissaphernes to delay most payments
to the Spartans,
because a triumphant Sparta would challenge Persian
imperialism.
In a third treaty Sparta acknowledged Persian taxes
in Asia while excluding them
from Europe and the islands, and
Tissaphernes agreed to pay for Spartan ships.
Miletus and Cnidus
reacted to this Spartan abandonment
by driving the Persian garrisons
out.
Darius II had to contend with a revolt by the Medes which he
put down
and palace intrigues that included a eunuch who tried
to make himself king but failed.
In Egypt
a revolt was motivated by the desire to destroy the Jewish temple
at Elephantine
that was offensive because of its animal sacrifices.
In 409 BC the Athenians invaded Asia and burned the grain in Lydia.
The queen got her 16-year-old son Cyrus appointed commander of
the Persian forces
in Asia Minor, and he began paying Sparta what
had been promised;
but he kept the Spartan general Callicratidas
waiting two days while he drank.
Cyrus also had two sons of the
king's sister executed
for showing their hands in his presence.
Recalled to his ill father, Cyrus turned his money over to Lysander;
this enabled the Spartans to win the battle at Aegospotami
and
cut off grain supplies from Russia, starving Athens into surrender
in 404 BC.
By the time Darius II had died in 404 BC,
Egypt
had revolted and was lost to the Persian empire.
Artaxerxes II
began his rule by cruelly executing Udiastes
for having assassinated
Teriteuchmes.
Cyrus was caught plotting to murder the new king
at his coronation;
but their mother pleaded for her favorite,
and Cyrus was allowed to return to his satrapy.
Cyrus was able
to win over the Ionian cities abandoned by the Spartans except
for Miletus,
which was held by Tissaphernes after they banished
their aristocrats.
The exiles were received by Pharnabazus, giving
Cyrus a reason to gather an army
that included 13,000 Greek mercenaries
to besiege Miletus.
As Cyrus and his army headed east, the mercenaries
demanded more money.
At Cunaxa near Babylon Cyrus met the Persian
army that might otherwise have been
used to reconquer Egypt.
Cyrus wounded Artaxerxes but was then killed.
The next year the
queen-mother Parysatis poisoned Queen Stateira and was banished
to her native Babylon, but later the forgiving Artaxerxes recalled
his mother.
Tissaphernes succeeded Cyrus as margrave of Anatolia, but ungrateful
Sparta,
roused by accounts of the ten thousand mercenaries' escape
from Persia,
sent Thibron to liberate Asian Greek cities. He incorporated
into his army the mercenaries,
who had made it to the Black Sea
after their generals were killed.
Accused of allowing his troops
to plunder their allies, Thibron was replaced by Dercylidas,
who
made a truce with Tissaphernes and attacked Pharnabazus.
He was
supported by the Dardanian widow Mania and her Greek mercenaries
until
she was murdered by her son-in-law Meidias, who allied himself
with Spartan Dercylidas
and used Mania's treasure to pay 8,000
soldiers for a year.
The Spartan army plundered Bithynia, and
agreeing to another truce,
Pharnabazus returned to the king to
urge a naval war.
Five hundred ships were to be built at Cyprus
and put under the command of Athenian admiral Conon and the satrap.
The Spartans marched into Caria, but Tissaphernes and Pharnabazus
joined together
to defend it and then attacked Ionia;
then these
two satraps and Dercylidas agreed to a truce for a year.
In 396
BC Spartan king Agesilaus himself arrived, and after a three-month
truce
which enabled Tissaphernes to send for reinforcements, he
was ordered to leave Asia.
With Caria defended, Agesilaus invaded
Phrygia and captured towns of Pharnabazus,
whose attacks were
avoided by using captives as screens.
While Pharnabazus sent Persian
money to stir up rebellion against Sparta in Europe,
Agesilaus
defeated Tissaphernes and captured their camels, the Greeks plundering
much unprotected land.
Forgiven and plotting once again, Parysatis
arranged to have Tithraustes
sent to murder Tissaphernes, which
was accomplished by Ariaios and his men.
Since Agesilaus would not leave Asia without instructions from
home,
Tithraustes gave him 30 talents to invade Pharnabazus' satrapy
of Hellespontine Phrygia again.
Pharnabazus reacted by confiscating
the property of Tissaphernes
and giving 220 talents to the Athenian
Conon.
Tithraustes provided another 700 talents to his generals
Ariaios and Pasiphernes
for diplomatic maneuvering.
By these bribes
and diplomatic machinations the Greek cities of Asia
were garrisoned
by Persian money.
Conon had to fight off mercenaries at Cyprus
and then went to the winter palace
at Babylon to get funds from
Artaxerxes II.
After ravaging Phrygia, Agesilaus was recalled
to Sparta;
he said it was because of the king's ten thousand golden
archers,
by which he meant the gold coins used for diplomacy.
Obviously we know more about this west side of the Persian empire
and these long wars because of Greek
sources;
yet the lack of business documents in this period may
be because of the devastation
and looting in these wars which
accomplished little except destruction.
In 394 BC the Persian navy, manned by Phoenicians and Greeks
defeated the Spartan navy off Cnidus.
The old alliance of Persia
and Athens established democracies in numerous
Asian cities under
the auspices of the Persian empire.
Only Abydos and Sestos resisted.
The Persians and Athenians even ravaged European Laconia and established
a Persian garrison on the island of Cythera, threatening the Peloponnese.
The allies at Corinth were given money, and the walls of Athens
were rebuilt by Conon.
However, the new satrap of Sardis from
Armenia, Tiribazus, now feared the
Athenian
Empire and had Conon imprisoned
and secretly gave money to
Antalcidas to build up the Spartan navy.
At a peace conference
in Sparta, representatives of Athens, Thebes, Corinth, and Argo
agreed on a treaty, but Athens rejected it by denouncing and banishing
their delegates.
At the same time Tiribazus was replaced by Struthas
as satrap of Ionia,
and he sided with Athens against Sparta.
Thibron
returned from Ephesus and resumed the war; but he was slain by
Struthas
at a discus game, and his army was devastated by the
Persian cavalry.
However, Thibron's successor Diphridas held some
cities loyal to Sparta and got money
for mercenaries by ransoming
the daughter of Struthas and her husband Tigranes.
In all this confusion many rulers showed their independence
by issuing coins,
including Euagoras of Cyprus, Milkyaton of Citium,
Hecatomnus of Caria,
and Autophradates of Lycia.
Autophradates
and Hecatomnus were ordered to put down the rebellion of Euagoras,
while the Spartan governor of Abydos regained Aeolian cities from
Pharnabazus.
Athenians assisted Euagoras and replaced Milkyaton
and his coins.
Athens even allied itself with Egypt,
stimulating Artaxerxes to change sides again
and to replace both
Autophradates and Struthas with the pro-Spartan Tiribazus.
Sparta
responded by sending Antalcidas from Ephesus to Susa to meet the
king.
Then Tiribazus and Antalcidas used Spartan and Syracusan
fleets to destroy the Athenians
guarding the Hellespont, threatening
Athens with the same starvation that ended the
Peloponnesian War
seventeen years before.
Delegates soon gathered at Sardis in 386
BC and agreed to the King's Peace named
after Antalcidas in which
Persia retained the cities in Asia and the islands of Clazomena
and Cyprus, except that Lemnos, Lesbos,
and Scyros would belong
to Athens as they had before.
The Persian empire had lost Egypt, but they had retained Asia.
Imperial taxation was still oppressive, stimulating many revolts
and uprisings by workers
that were often put down by local tyrants,
while newly minted coins indicated a growing
wealthy class and
economic development. Barred by the peace treaty from helping
Cyprus,
Athenian mercenaries led by Chabrias went to defend Egypt, which thus was able to resist
for three years and turn away the long delayed Persian invasion
to regain Egypt,
while Euagoras
of Cyprus allied himself with Egypt and invaded Cilicia and Phoenicia,
capturing Tyre. The Persian army led by Aroandas (Orontes) regained
Cilicia
and invaded Cyprus to restore Milkyaton at Citium.
With
the help of pirates, Euagoras tried to cut off their food, causing
a mutiny by the Ionian
mercenaries which was put down; but after
losing a naval battle Euagoras had to submit,
asking to be treated
as a king, which was denied in 380 BC, the same year Isocrates
tried
and failed to raise a crusade against the Persians at the
Olympic games.
When Pharnabazus complained that Chabrias' mercenary activity
in Egypt
violated the treaty, Athens recalled him on pain of death.
Though Tiribazus was winning over mercenaries with money, the
rivalry of Aroandas
caused Artaxerxes II to have Tiribazus arrested;
but Aroandas had to accept the terms of Euagoras at Cyprus that
Tiribazus had rejected.
The Cadusian revolt was so nearby that
Artaxerxes took the field himself;
after much suffering, a peace
was made, and the Persian king only escaped on foot.
Out of this
frustration Artaxerxes had several nobles executed for disloyalty.
With Cyprus settled, Pharnabazus prepared to invade Egypt
again and enlisted
Athenian general Iphicrates to lead the Greek
mercenaries.
In Asia Bithynia was independent, and Hecatomnus
passed on his rulership of Caria
to his son Mausolus in 377 BC.
Three years later Artaxerxes imposed another treaty
on the Greeks
and with the younger Dionysius
of Syracuse.
By 373 BC Pharnabazus had gathered 300 triremes, 12,000 Greeks,
and countless Persians and easterners to invade Egypt.
They landed
on the Delta; but unable to take Memphis,
they had to retreat
from the flooding Nile to Asia.
In 371 BC Thebes won a big victory
over Sparta at Leuctra and refused to accept
the latest King's
Peace.
A year later Jason of Pherae, who united Thessaly and aimed
at conquering Persia,
was assassinated.
The king's money was also
used to contribute to the famed oracle at Delphi,
but Thebes still
refused to accept the imperial terms.
Within the Persian empire revolts led by Datames and Ariobarzanes
were breaking out.
Needing the loyalty of Carian satrap Mausolus,
Artaxerxes II punished envoys who had complained about Mausolus.
When Aroandas felt he had been demoted from Armenia to Mysia,
he accepted the leadership of the coalition of revolting satraps.
Ordered to send tribute, Mausolus merely collected more money
for himself.
Aroandas' presence in Syria stimulated more rebellions
there and among
Lycians, Pisidians, Pamphylians, and Cilicians;
even Autophradates joined him, and Artabazus was imprisoned.
The
Persian empire had lost half its revenues.
Djedhor, the new king of Egypt
in 361 BC, known to the Greeks as Tachos,
seized on this opportunity
and, with the help of rivals Agesilaus of Sparta and Chabrias
of Athens, joined the revolted satraps and invaded Palestine and
Phoenicia.
However, his brother in Egypt
used resentment against taxes to put forth
as king of Egypt his son Nekht-har-hebi, who had joined the satrap revolt in Syria.
All kinds of rebellions were breaking out, and Nekht-har-hebi
was forced by the feudal
chiefs to abandon Asian conquest and
return to Egypt, where he was saved
from a siege
by Agesilaus; but when his uncle Tachos was captured
by the Persian prince Ochus
and died on his return to Egypt to
be a vassal king for Artaxerxes,
Nekht-har-hebi ended up ruling Egypt from 359 to 340 BC.
All this
enabled the army of Artaxerxes to slowly advance and cross the
Euphrates,
and Aroandes, abandoned by the Egyptians,
returned
to loyalty and surrendered the other rebels with him.
Autophradates
also freed Artabazus and came to terms with the empire.
Then Aroandes
and Artabazus fought the mercenaries,
and Datames was eventually
murdered at a conference of the revolting satraps
by Mithridates,
who had also betrayed his own father Ariobarzanes to crucifixion.
Darius, the oldest son of Artaxerxes II by Queen Stateira,
was executed for plotting
with fifty of the king's sons by concubines
to kill their father.
Ochus, the youngest son of the queen, persuaded
his only other brother of the queen
to take poison, because he
thought his father was angry at him.
Arsames, another son, beloved
by Artaxerxes for his wisdom, was also murdered,
and the king
soon died of grief in 359 BC after ruling the Persian empire for
45 years.
Ochus became Artaxerxes III and ruthlessly had his relatives
killed regardless of age or sex.
He ordered the satraps in Asia
Minor to get rid of their mercenaries,
causing Artabazus to revolt
and appeal to Athens
when an army of 20,000 was raised against
him in Phrygia.
In 356 BC Mausolus organized a confederacy with
Rhodes, Chios, Cos, Erythrae,
and Byzantium, his coins showing
himself as a Heraclean leader.
Artabazus got 5,000 mercenaries
from Thebes, but sensing treachery from agents
bribed by the king,
he fled to Philip in Macedonia.
Aroandes, who had joined his revolt,
held out for a while in Lydia but eventually came
to terms again.
Mausolus, whose magnificent funeral sculptures in Halicarnassus
his
wealth financed, coined the word mausoleum and died in 353
BC.
Ochus spent a year campaigning in Egypt,
but once again the Persian army had to retire in 350 BC.
However,
seven years later as the captives taken at Sidon entered Babylon
and Susa,
Egypt finally fell to the Persian reconquest that
was
supported by 10,000 Greek mercenaries.
Nekht-har-hebi retreated
to Ethiopia and claimed to rule from there.
The Greeks and Persians
fought over the spoils,
and Ochus carried off the leading Egyptians
to Persia.
In 338 BC while Philip
of Macedonia was on his way to defeating the Athenians
and Thebans
at Charoneia, Ochus was poisoned
by his physician by order of
the eunuch Bagoas.
Arses, the son of Ochus, became king and refused
to pay reparations
to Philip
for Persia's having helped Perinthus.
So Philip
led a Greek crusade to liberate all the Greek cities under Persian
domination.
Arses tried to poison Bagoas, but was poisoned himself,
and all his children were killed.
Bagoas found a 45-year-old Achaemenid
noble remaining he made Darius III but,
trying to poison him too,
had at last to drink his own brew.
Philip's assassination was blamed on the king of Persia by
his son Alexander.
Macedonian
troops already in Asia were defeated by the Persian fleet at Magnesia,
and Darius III was able to put down a revolt in Egypt.
In 334 BC Alexander's army crossed the Hellespont into Asia
at
the same place Xerxes' army had come the other way 146 years before.
The Greeks won a narrow victory over the Persian army at Granicus.
Persians who surrendered were sent home, but Alexander had most
of the captured
Greek mercenaries slaughtered, sending the rest
to Macedonia as slaves.
Halicarnassus was burned during a siege.
Alexander replaced the Persian satrap, general, and treasurer
of each conquered province with Macedonians.
At Issus the Greeks
met the army of Darius, who fled.
Parmenio then took Damascus,
the Persian baggage train, and the rest of the royal family.
The
Phoenician cities surrendered to the Greeks except Tyre,
which
was destroyed after a seven-month siege.
After taking Gaza, where
he was wounded, Alexander
was welcomed
by the Egyptians glad to be rid of the hated Persians.
Offered half the empire by Darius III, Alexander
refused and crossed
the Euphrates and Tigris rivers unopposed.
The two armies met again at Gaugamela in 331 BC,
and once again
Darius deserted his army.
Alexander
entered Babylon and ordered the temple of Bel that had been destroyed
by Xerxes rebuilt. The major capital of Susa surrendered to the
Greeks without resisting,
and the immense treasure accumulated
by the Persian empire was found in the palace.
Alexander
began to train Persians by his new military methods.
More treasure
was found at the other main capital at Persepolis,
where the men
were killed, the women were enslaved, and the city was burned,
perhaps in revenge for the burning of Athens in 480 BC.
Alexander
then went east in pursuit of the viceroy of Bactria who had imprisoned
Darius;
by 330 BC Darius was dead, and Alexander
ruled over his former empire.
Uncooperative satraps were punished;
others were retained by Alexander,
who founded numerous cities named after himself.
Two years were
spent in putting down the resistance of the Sogdians in the north.
Alexander went as far as India
before his troops demanded to return;
by 324 BC they were back
in Susa.
Alexander married the daughter
of Darius III and had 10,000 of his men marry Persian girls,
hoping
to breed an army for his new empire.
He was already treating Persians
equally with Greeks and using them in his army,
and the Persian
nobility was being educated by Greek teachers.
The Persian treasure
was coined as money and distributed.
Warned that if he entered
Babylon he would die,
Alexander finally did and succumbed to an
illness or was poisoned in 323 BC.
The immense empire was divided
and ruled by the Greek generals of the armies
that had conquered
it.
The Persian empire was no more, and the Hellenistic era had
begun.
Hellenistic culture dominated this region under the Seleucid
empire
and Egypt under the Ptolemies.
Later Roman imperialism
impinged on the western Middle East.
Much information on that
region during this period can be found in
Volume 4 Greece and
Rome to 30 BC in the chapter on the "Hellenistic Era"
and in
Volume 5 Roman Empire 30 BC to 610.
Persian historians recorded that the Arsacid dynasty of Parthia
was founded
by a descendant of Persian kings called Ashk or Arsaces
in 247 BC.
His revolt began in the north, and by 238 BC he controlled
the kingdom called Parthia,
invading and annexing Hyrcania.
When
Seleucus II invaded Media, Arsaces retreated to the territory
between the Oxus
and the Jaxartes, where he was protected by nomadic
Aspasiacae.
He established Dara (Dareium) as the Parthian capital.
He was succeeded by his son Arsaces II in 217 or 214 BC.
He extended
Parthian territory by defeating the Seleucid Achaeus and taking
the
Median capital at Ecbatana; but he fled from there when Antiochus
III invaded Armenia
and Media in 209 BC.
Arsaces II and the Parthians
used guerrilla tactics; but the Seleucids managed
to preserve
water systems and seized Hecatompylus.
Arsaces II agreed to an
alliance with Antiochus III, who ventured further east
into Bactria
and India in imitation of Alexander's invasions.
In 191 BC Arsaces
II was succeeded by his son Phriapites (Priapatius),
and about
176 BC his son Phraates I became king of Parthia.
He took over
the Mardi and built Charax in Media Rhagiana.
When the Seleucids
were defeated by the Romans at the battle of Magnesia in 190 BC,
they lost control of Asia Minor, Armenia, and much of Iran.
In
Armenia the general Artashes I (r. 189-160 BC)
founded the Artashesian
dynasty that lasted two centuries.
In 171 BC Phraates was succeeded by his brother Mithradates I,
who was friendly to Greeks and receptive of Hellenistic culture.
He expanded the Parthian empire by taking over Mesopotamia, including
Elymais and Persis.
When the Bactrians invaded to the east beyond
the Hindu Kush,
Mithradates took the opportunity to encroach on
their western territory.
After the Seleucid Timarchus died in
160 BC,
Mithradates invaded Media and suppressed a revolt in Hyrcania.
When the Bactrian king Eucratidas was murdered by his son in 148
BC,
the Parthian king was able to take over Ecbatana in Bactria.
Mithridates invaded Babylonia and took over Seleucia in 141 BC;
after proposing peace, he treacherously attacked
and captured
Seleucid king Demetrius II the next year.
Demetrius escaped his
luxurious captivity at Hyrcania but was recaptured by Phraates
II,
who succeeded his father Mithridates about 138 BC.
Phraates
released Demetrius before attacking and defeating the
Seleucid
Antiochus VII Sidetes near Ecbatana in 129 BC.
The Parthian empire
had replaced the Seleucids
but now had to face the Seleucids' nemesis Rome.
During the early Han dynasty
of China in the second century BC, the northern Huns
called Xiongnu
about 163 BC drove the Yuezhi nomads west into the Saka Scythians,
who consequently invaded the Parthians.
Apparently defections
by Greeks resulted in Parthian defeats by the nomads,
and Artabanes
II, who succeeded Phraates II in 127 BC,
was killed by the Saka
three years later.
Eventually the Saka were assimilated into the
eastern portion of the Parthian empire.
Mithradates II (r. 124-88
BC) was the first monarch this far west to develop
communication
by making a trade treaty with China in 115 BC.
This Parthian king
also suppressed a revolt by his Babylonian viceroy Himerus.
Armenia
under Artavazd I (r. 160-115 BC) also became independent of the Seleucids.
He was succeeded
by his son Tigran I (r. 115-95).
Parthians led by Mithradates
II invaded Armenia and put Tigran II on that throne in 95 BC.
Tigran later took back ceded regions and some Parthian territory.
After Romans took over Cilicia in 102 BC, Lucius Sulla invaded
to the Euphrates River
but rejected an alliance proposed by a
Parthian ambassador in 92 BC.
Mithradates II yielded to the Roman advance.
While Rome was fighting a series of wars with Pontus king Mithradates
VI (r. 120-63 BC),
Parthia was divided by a civil war with Gotarzes
(r. 95-87 BC)
ruling in the east and Orodes I (r. 90-77 BC) governing
in the west.
These conflicts enabled Armenia under Tigranes II
(r. 95-55 BC) to take
upper Mesopotamia and Media Atropatene from
the Parthians,
and by 74 BC he ruled over what had been the Seleucid
empire.
In 77 BC eighty-year-old Sinatruces, brother of Mithradates
II,
returned from exile among the Scythians to restore order to
Parthia.
He was succeeded by his son Phraates III in 70 BC.
Romans led by Lucullus
invaded Armenia in 69 BC,
but his soldiers refused to advance
into the Ararat mountains.
Pompey replaced Lucullus and negotiated
with Parthia's Phraates III,
granting him Corduene and Adiabene
in exchange for Parthia as an ally against Armenia,
which had
taken them; but when Pompey later expelled the Parthians from
these
two provinces and gave them back to Armenia, the Parthians
resented the betrayal.
Two years after Pompey
left, Phraates was assassinated by his two sons in 57 BC.
Orodes
II deposed his elder brother Mithradates III for cruelty, assigning
him to govern
Media Magna; but the latter revolted and fled to
Gabinius, the Roman governor of Syria.
However, Gabinius was lured
into invading Egypt by an enormous amount of money,
and Mithradates,
supported by Seleucia, fled to Babylon,
where he was captured
and executed by Orodes.
In 55 BC Marcus Licinius Crassus
led a Roman invasion
across the Euphrates before returning to
Syria for the winter.
Armenian king Artavazd II (r. 55-35 BC)
offered him 16,000 cavalry
and 30,000 infantry against the Parthians.
Crassus already had
seven legions with 42,000 men.
An Arab shaikh from Osrhoene, spying
for Orodes II, persuaded Crassus
to seek booty across the open steppe in 53 BC.
Orodes also managed
to keep the feared Armenian cavalry out
by making a peace treaty
with Artavazd.
Orodes sent his Surena (commander-in-chief), who
used the Parthian tactics
of retreating and shooting arrows at
the Romans,
annihilating a Roman detachment led by Publius, the
son of Crassus.
At Carrhae the Surena offered a truce
but then
treacherously killed Crassus and half his men.
About 10,000 Romans
escaped,
but an equal number were captured and settled at Margiana.
Two years later, Pacorus, son of Orodes, led a Parthian invasion
of Syria,
which was defended by the Cassius who later assassinated Julius Caesar.
After
Cassius retreated to Antioch, Pacorus began plotting against his
father,
who found out about it and recalled him.
During Rome's
civil war between Caesar and Pompey,
the latter asked for help
from the Parthians but rejected it when they demanded Syria.
After
Caesar's assassination, Parthians led by Bassus supported
Cassius
at Philippi in 42 BC, the only time the Parthians ever fought
in Europe.
Two years later Orodes sent forgiven Pacorus with the
Roman general Labienus
to invade Syria, where they took Apamea
and Antioch, defeating Decidius Saxa.
Tyre resisted successfully,
and in Palestine the bribe of a thousand talents
and 500 Jewish
women enabled Antigonus to buy Parthian help that enabled him
to overcome his rival uncle Hyrcanus and rule for three years.
Meanwhile Labienus killed Decidius Saxa in a second battle
and
took over southern Asia Minor.
In 39 BC Mark Antony
sent Publius Ventidius to recover Syria,
and his Roman legions
killed Labienus and drove Pacorus back across the Euphrates.
The
next year Pacorus came back across the river but was defeated
and killed.
Aging Orodes abdicated and let his son Phraates IV
succeed him;
but he had his many brothers and complaining father
murdered in 37 BC.
This reign of terror discouraged nobles,
and
the general Monaeses told Antony
this was an opportunity.
Antony
asked for the Roman standards and prisoners taken from Crassus;
but Phraates pardoned Monaeses,
while Antony
made a secret treaty with Armenia's Artavazd II.
The latter persuaded Antony to attack lucrative
Praaspa, the capital of Media Atropatene.
However, Antony's extended
forces were divided,
and the Parthians defeated those led by Statianus,
killing 10,000 Romans
and forcing Antony
to make a difficult retreat.
Media's king quarreled and rebelled
against Phraates in 34 BC,
offering an alliance to Antony,
who then captured Artavazd with a strategem.
Antony
returned the next year to help the Media king take territory from
Armenia.
After Antony went back
to struggle against Octavian,
Parthia's Phraates IV made an alliance with Artashes II (r. 30-20
BC), son of Artavazd,
and captured the Roman garrisons in Armenia
so that
it could become independent of Rome, though under Parthian
influence.
Also in 33 BC the Parthian Tiridates revolted and was
crowned king,
ruling Parthia for three years before Phraates returned
with a force of nomads.
Tiridates fled with a son of Phraates,
who became a hostage in the court of Octavian.
Seven years later
Emperor Augustus (Octavian)
began negotiating to get back
the Roman standards, which were
regained when Augustus visited the region in 20 BC.
Parthia was ruled by a hereditary monarchy, and the king was crowned
by the hereditary military commander called the Surena.
Many followed
a nomadic life on horses,
and there was no standing army beside
the royal guard.
Polygamy was common, and women were subordinate.
Little is known about Parthian culture, because they left behind
little writing.
They followed the Zoroastrian religion primarily,
and the Magi priests were the most educated and influential.
In
the cult of Mithras this Aryan god was created by the supreme
God Ahura Mazda
as Light to overcome evil and govern the world
in prosperity.
A series of seven initiations corresponding to
the five planets, sun, and moon
became very popular among soldiers,
merchants, and slaves.
The cult was introduced in Rome by Cilician
pirates captured by Pompey
and was a major rival to early Christianity.
However, monotheism and the growing popularity and sophistication
of the Christian
movement eventually overcame Mithraism, which
passed on the date
of the Christmas holiday from the celebration
of Mithras' birthday.
Armenia was often caught in the struggle between the Parthian
and Roman empires.
In 2 BC Phraatakes with help from his mother
Musa,
who was a slave given Phraates IV by Augustus, murdered
his father Phraates IV.
In the year 1 CE Phraatakes, also known
as Phraates V, made a treaty with Rome
and agreed to withdraw
from Armenia.
Reaction to the regicide caused Phraatakes to be
killed,
and the Arsacid Orodes III was elected king.
Orodes was
killed also, and Phraatakes' son Vonones returned from Rome.
His
foreign ways were resented, and Artabanus II,
the Arsacid king
of Media Atropatene, revolted and drove out Vonones.
In 16 CE
Vonones claimed the throne of Armenia;
but threatened by a war
with Parthia,
he fled to Roman protection in Syria.
Emperor Tiberius sent his nephew
Germanicus, who chose Artashes to rule Armenia.
When Artashes died in 34 CE, Artabanus II was able to put
his
oldest son Arsaces on the throne of Armenia.
Tiberius
sent his nominees for the Armenian kingship;
but Iberian king
Pharasmanes had Arsaces assassinated in 35
and took the Armenian
crown himself, defeating an invading Parthian army.
When Rome's
governor of Syria, Vitellius, marched toward the Euphrates,
Artabanus
retreated from Armenia and fled to Hyrcania,
awaiting the judgment
of the Parthian nobles.
Although Tiridates II was crowned in Ctesiphon
by the Surena,
he was unpopular and fled when Artabanus returned.
Artabanus met with Vetellius and made peace with Rome
by promising
to leave Armenia alone.
Nobles resented this so much that they
exiled Artabanus again
Jews were also massacred during his reign.
After his death, his sons Vardanes and Gotarzes II struggled for
the throne in 39 CE
until the former was assassinated in 45.
Some
nobles asked Rome to send Meherdates, son of Vonones,
but he was
defeated by Gotarzes.
Anti-Hellenic sentiment in Parthia caused
Seleucia
to revolt and become independent for several years.
When Gotarzes II died in 51 CE, Vonones II was soon replaced by
his son
or brother Vologeses I, who ruled until 78, except for
the interval 55-58
when his son Vardanes II took over.
Pharasmanes
of Iberia, brother of Armenian king Mithradates,
persuaded his
son Rhadamistus to assassinate his uncle Mithradates to take that
throne.
So Vologeses in 51 invaded Armenia to make his brother
Tiridates king.
In 55 Rome's Nero
sent his top general Corbulo;
Vologeses submittted and gave hostages
to Rome,
because he was preoccupied with the rebellion by his
son Vardanes.
After his son's revolt was crushed, Vologeses took
on Corbulo
but was weakened by a revolt in Hyrcania.
Tiridates
lost Artaxata in 58 and Tigranocerta two years later.
Rome put
the Cappadocian prince Tigranes on the throne of Armenia;
but
Vologeses was able to defeat Nero's favorite Lucius Paetus, who
fled.
Corbulo marched to Armenia and in 63 made a treaty giving
the Armenian throne
to Tiridates, who was crowned in Rome by Nero in 66.
This treaty lasted
half a century.
During the reign of Vologeses I the Avesta scripture
for the Zoroastrian religion was compiled.
The Roman historian
Pliny described the Parthian empire
as having eleven kingdoms
in the north and seven in the south.
The nomadic Alans in alliance with the Hyrcanians overran the
Parthian empire in 75 CE.
Vologeses II ruled for only one year
and was succeeded by Pacorus II (r. 78-93),
though his rule in
Persia was taken over by Artabanus III for a year in 80.
The last
coin Pacorus issued was minted in 96,
and Vologeses II issued
a coin nine years later.
Before he died about 100, Pacorus made
his son Axidares king of Armenia.
Vologeses III (r. 105-47) faced
rebellions and a major challenge from Osroes I (r. 109-28).
In
115 Roman emperor Trajan marched
east to Armenia and captured Nisibis.
After spending the winter
in Antioch, the next year his Roman legions invaded Adiabene,
crossed the Tigris but could not capture Hatra; he died on his
way home in 117.
Osroes drove the remaining Romans out of the
capital of Ctesiphon.
Hadrian
became emperor and withdrew Roman troops from the regions east
of the
Euphrates River, allowing the Roman and Parthian empires
to co-exist in peace.
Vologeses III paid off invading Alans in
133.
Vologeses IV (r. 147-91) invaded west of the Euphrates in
161.
The counter-attack the next year was led by co-emperor Lucius
Verus,
and the Parthians were driven back across the Euphrates.
Statius Priscus captured Artaxata in Armenia,
and the Romans took
Babylon, Seleucia, and Ctesiphon before invading Media.
However,
in Atropatene (Azerbaijan) a devastating plague caused the Romans
to withdraw.
Parthian king Vologeses V (r. 191-207) intervened in a Roman succession
struggle
in support of Pescennius Niger's revolt in 195 by invading
Mesopotamia;
but Roman emperor Septimius Severus was successful
and subjugated Adiabene,
capturing Ctesiphon and Seleucia in 198.
The Romans again could not take Hatra but annexed Adiabene.
After
Vologeses V died, his sons Vologeses VI (r. 207-22) and Artabanus
IV (r. 213-24)
fought a civil war, dividing and ending the Parthian
empire.
Vologeses VI ruled Iraq from Ctesiphon, and Artabanus
IV was sovereign over Iran.
Roman emperor Carcalla attacked Artabanus
in the west in 216,
but his successor Macrinus was defeated the
next year near Nisibis
and paid the Parthians 200 million sesterces.
During the Parthian and Sasanian empires Persian society primarily
practiced the Zoroastrian religion and had four classes.
Highest
were the priests and judges; second was the military;
third were
the literate bureaucrats; and fourth were the workers
that included
farmers, artisans, and merchants.
Above these was the royal family,
and below the four classes
were non-citizen aliens and slaves;
the law did not recognize a slave as having a family.
Sacred slaves
were those from any class
who dedicated themselves to work in
the Zoroastrian temples.
Socially extended families were important
as agnatic groups.
Persians were patriarchal, and the wealthy
often had harems.
Mani was born in Babylonia on April 14, 216 after Caracalla
overthrew Vologeses VI
and made his brother Artabanus IV (r. 213-24)
the last Parthian king.
When Mani was twelve, he was told in a
vision to withdraw from a baptizing sect
associated with Elkhasai.
This revelation coincided with Ardashir's overcoming the Parthians
and reviving the Persian empire with the Sasanian dynasty.
Near
his 24th birthday Mani was told by his higher self or angelic
teacher
to proclaim himself a prophet.
Two years later Shapur
I became the king of Persia.
Mani's mission took him to Ctesiphon
and then into western India for two years.
There he wrote a book
diplomatically praising Shapur.
Hindus found his teaching of celibacy
too strict;
but in 243 he had more success in Khurasan, where
he converted governor Feroz,
who told his brother King Shapur
that Mani had no political ambitions
but wanted to unify the people
of the empire with this universal religion.
After Mani spent a year in a cave making paintings,
Shapur invited
the prophet to his court in 245.
Mani requested and received royal
letters to all the Persian governors
telling them not to hinder
his mission.
For the next ten years Mani was able to spread his
teachings throughout the Persian empire,
establishing many churches
and sending out disciples.
Adda and Pateg carried the teachings
of Mani to Egypt.
When people made fun of an ugly saint, Mani
pointed out that the soul is beautiful
and is to be rescued from
the material body.
In 255 Zoroastrian priests led by Karter persuaded Shapur to break
with Mani
and promote their religion in the empire, causing Mani
to go into exile.
In the next eighteen years the prophet returned
to Khurasan and traveled in central Asia
as far as western China, returning by way of Tibet and
Kashmir.
In 272 Shapur died and was succeeded by his son Hormizd
I, governor of Khurasan,
who supported the Manichaeans; but he
died after reigning one year.
His younger brother Bahram loved
pleasure and was cruel.
He was persuaded by the Magi to end toleration
of heresies and foreign cults
in order to promote the orthodox
Sasanian religion.
Mani tried to meet with the new king at his
winter palace in Ctesiphon but failed to do so.
Mani was said
to have been related to the Parthian Arsacid dynasty,
and his
association with King Baat, possibly a Parthian Armenian, as he
lectured
to his disciples at Phargalia, may have led to Mani's
arrest at Gondeshapur (Belapat).
Mani was brought before an angry King Bahram I and said he had
done no harm
but had helped the royal family by freeing their
servants of demons and by healing them.
The king accused Mani
of supporting the defeated Parthian cause.
Mani replied that God
sent him to bring the perfect commandments of Christ
that he received
from God through an angel
so that many souls might be saved and
escape punishment.
Bahram asked why God did not reveal this to
him, the king.
Mani replied that God commands and decides whom
to teach.
The angry king silenced the prophet and had him chained
in order to please the Magi.
Mani said that he had been protected
by Shapur and Hormizd,
but Bahram sentenced him to death and scourging.
Mani was chained heavily in prison for 26 days.
There he consoled
his disciples and appointed Sisin as his successor.
Mani died
in prison on February 26 in 274,
described as the Messenger of
the Light withdrawing his soul from the body.
Public distress
at the news stimulated the king to order Mani's body
fed to birds
and his head placed on a gate.
So began persecution of the Manichaeans
in the Persian empire
that would continue sporadically for centuries.
Four years of persecution occurred before Sisin could organize
the church.
Many died as martyrs, and many fled to Khurasan or
Turkestan.
Some went west, and Pateg is said to have preached
against the Old Testament in Rome by 280.
Bahram II lost Ctesiphon
and Seleucia to the Roman
emperor Aurelius Carus in 282,
while Amu traveled in central Asia
and Adda put together scriptures in Africa.
About five years later
African proconsul Julian warned Diocletian
that this strange
religion's ideas on sex, war, agriculture, and
civic duties endangered Roman society.
By 290 Manichaeism was
flourishing in the Fayyum district of Egypt,
and the Syriac Psalms
would soon be translated into Coptic.
Terrible persecution broke
out in the Persian empire in 291.
Bahram II killed Sisin himself,
and many Manichaeans were slaughtered.
Innai became the leader
and is reported to have healed the king by prayer,
giving peace
to the new religion for a while.
In 296 Diocletian extended the Christian persecution to the Manichaeans,
resulting in numerous martyrs in Egypt and North Africa.
Although
Persian king Narseh (r. 293-302) lost Mesopotamia and western
provinces
to Rome after he was defeated by Galerius, he left the
Manichaeans in peace.
In 303 Hormizd II executed Innai, and the
next four Manichaean leaders were also killed.
In the fourth century
Manichaeism spread throughout the Roman empire.
Two Christians,
Archelaus in his Disputation with Manes and Alexander of Lycopolis
in his "Of the Manichaeans," treated Manichaeism as
a Christian heresy
instead of a new religion, because Mani acknowledged
Jesus as the Christ.
In 372 Valentinian I prohibited all meetings,
and Augustine adopted the faith for a decade
until Christians
urged Theodosius I to take away their civil rights in 381;
the
next year he decreed Manichaean elders put to death,
and in 383
Theodosius banished all Manichaeans.
Exile was again decreed by
Valentinian II,
and in Rome their property was confiscated in
389.
Since Mani believed that other religions had deteriorated because
their original founders
did not write down their teachings, he
wrote several books himself in the Aramaic language
of Syriac
and made sure that they were accurately copied.
His first book,
Shapurakan, honored King Shapur I
and assured him that he had
no political ambitions.
The Living Gospel was written and illustrated
in the Turkestan cave
and contains an account of the mission of Jesus.
Mani began this
book and his letters by referring to himself as the messenger
of Jesus.
The Treasure
of Life describes how the soul comes from the pure Light
and the
body from the bad darkness.
Although Manichaeism is similar and
has been compared to Gnosticism,
this book refutes the Marcionite doctrine of a third intermediary
principle,
and it gives cures for errors.
The Book of Mysteries
teaches that souls are purged and educated through reincarnation,
and it aims to cut away false beliefs.
The Pragmateia suggests
what ought to be done.
His other main works are The Book of
Giants, Letters,
and The Book of Psalms and
Prayers.
Although these books were faithfully copied and translated into
many languages
as the religion spread, the many persecutions eventually
destroyed the books.
As Manichaeism faded into Catharist movements
in the 13th century,
the religion disappeared.
In the 20th century
Coptic documents were found at al-Fayyum in Egypt,
and texts were
also found in Turfan and Dunhuang in China.
The Chinese catechism noted a book illustrating the two great
principles,
which may have been based on Mani's paintings made
for those who cannot read.
The largest work found at al-Fayyum,
the Kephalaia,
contains the principal teachings of Mani described
by disciples.
These discoveries, though difficult to piece together
because the texts were deteriorating,
provide a more balanced
view to the already known Christian works refuting Mani.
Mani taught there are two sources that are unborn and eternal—
God
(Light) and matter (darkness).
God as good has nothing in common
with evil,
because "a good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit."
Mani explained the universe as having three moments involving
these two substances.
In the past Spirit and matter were at first
separate.
Then Spirit entered into matter as souls incarnated
into bodies,
which is the present condition.
Mani as a messenger
of Light is helping souls become liberated from their bodies.
The third moment is the future when the world will end
as Spirit
becomes purified again from matter.
Somehow the king of darkness
decided to enter the region of Light.
God had no evil with which
to punish, so Spirit entered into matter as souls
went into bodies
with the five faculties of intuition, thought, will, consideration,
and reason.
As souls mixed with matter they began to feel material
and thus became trapped in bodies.
When the Mother of Life, the
First Man, and the Living Spirit prayed to the Great Father,
that
one sent a Messenger with the following twelve virtues: royalty,
wisdom, victory,
contentment, purity, truth, faith, patience,
sincerity, kindness, justice, and Light.
According to Mani, Jesus lifted up the first man Adam to taste
the Tree of Life.
Mani also taught the trinity of the Father (God
of truth), the beloved Son (Christ),
and the Holy Spirit (Mother
of Life).
The five dark rulers may express themselves as the tyranny
of rulers, arrogance of officials,
idolatrous errors, superstitious
rites, and sorcery.
Previous messengers of God include Zarathushtra,
Buddha, and Jesus.
True messengers may be known by the following five characteristics:
gentleness, austerity, beauty, wisdom, and transformation.
Their
mission is to teach and convert living beings in order to save
them from their suffering.
Mani planted good seeds of truth and
strengthened his church,
sending out envoys to many lands.
He
fought greed and lust in order to teach people wisdom and knowledge.
The Psalms refer to the divine medicine that heals wounds,
crushes evil
while crowning godliness, purifies the Light from
the darkness, and gives rest to the souls.
The Great Father is
Love who gives oneself for everything.
Souls are divine; even
though they have fallen into the world, they will return to God.
Although the Manichaean community had a hierarchy of five levels
including Mani's successor and twelve masters (teachers), 72 illuminates
(overseers),
elders (priests), the rest of the elect, and hearers,
the main distinction was between the elect and the hearers.
The
elect have their hearts, hands, and mouths sealed by celibacy,
non-injury,
and abstinence from alcohol and meat.
The elect eat
only a little in the morning and one meal in the evening.
In their
strict poverty their only possession was one garment
that was
replaced once a year.
The elect teach by grace, wisdom, and faith.
The duties of the hearers are to fast, pray, and give charity.
They are to fast and be celibate on Sundays, and hearers pray
four times a day.
Giving charity includes providing food for the
elect who do no injurious work
such as farming, giving a relative
to be one of the elect,
and building a temple or dwelling place.
The hearers could work in the fields and have one wife,
but they
were forbidden to fight in wars.
The hearers confess to the elect,
and the elect confess to one another.
The soul is from on high but is imprisoned in the body waiting
to be liberated.
Mani taught renouncing the world's possessions
to find the peace of poverty.
He advised wisely and skillfully
strengthening oneself around the body's gates
lest the sin of
the body prevail and extinguish the Light.
His religious methods
include singing and chanting spiritual words, reading and studying,
discriminating with wisdom and accepting pure commands,
always
being clean in actions of body, mouth, and mind, practicing kind
deeds,
being gentle and amiable, bearing humiliation, following
good rules and habits,
resting the mind in the place of liberation,
and leaping for joy in standing firm in the right way.
Mani warned
against lying, anger, and hurtful words that may come from speaking
for the sake of killing a man, beasts, or trees.
Kindness and
sincerity are for saints a base for brightness and a wonderful
gate
which lets one see everywhere while walking a straight path.
Like the Mahayana Buddhists, Mani promised such would be born
in a Pure Land,
where they would be free of penalties and could
rejoice in calmness.
The Light-mind of the Christ awakens those
who sleep
and gathers those who are scattered abroad.
God sends
the soul to the judge of the dead that appears as in a mirror.
The Great Judge has no partiality but knows how to forgive those
who have repented.
No one can hide when that one searches out
their actions
and repays them according to their deserts.
The
saints go to the heaven of Light and are at peace.
Unstained by
ignorance, passion, and desire, they are not pressed into rebirth.
Artabanus IV was also known as Ardawan.
When he attacked Fars
in 224, the rebel Ardashir was victorious at Hormuzdagan
and founded
the Sasanian dynasty based on his descent from Sasan.
According
to the historian Tabari, Ardashir went on to conquer Sakastan
(Seistan),
Hyrcania, Merv (Margiana), Balkh (Bactria), and Khwarezm
(Chorasmia),
and Ferishta recorded that he even invaded the Kushan
empire in India.
Armenia continued to be fought over by the Romans
and the Persians.
In 232 Ardashir won a battle against the Romans over Armenia
and made a treaty with Emperor Alexander Severus.
Then a Persian
noble assassinated the Armenian king Khosrov
and was drowned while
fleeing.
Ardashir restored the privileges of the Magi and organized
them
into an assembly with seven top priests.
His zeal for the
Zoroastrian religion caused Christians to be persecuted.
Ardashir
maintained a standing army and kept it independent of the provincial
governors.
Ardashir once said, "There can be no power without
an army, no army without money,
no money without agriculture,
and no agriculture without justice."9
When Ardashir died in 240, Armenia and Hatra revolted
against
his successor Shapur I (r. 240-70).
The second Sasanian king managed
to take the latter fortress by promising to marry
the rebelling
king's daughter; but after Hatra capitulated,
he had the princess
executed.
While the Romans were in turmoil, Shapur captured Nisibis
and ventured west as far as Antioch.
The Romans
fought back and pushed the Persians across the Tigris.
When Philip
replaced the murdered Roman
emperor Gordian III in 244,
he made a treaty with Shapur and departed.
Shapur conquered Antioch again in 258 and even captured
the Roman emperor Valerian
two years later.
Shapur invaded Cappadocia; but Odenathus of Palmyra
had a powerful army
and pushed the Persians back across the Euphrates,
besieging Ctesiphon.
After Odenathus was assassinated, his widow
Zenobia gained Egypt
but did not get Persian aid for Palmyra,
which was defeated by Roman
emperor Aurelian in 275.
Shapur died in 270 and was succeeded
by Hormizd I, who supported the prophet Mani.
However, he was
succeeded by his son Bahram I the next year.
Bahram was so tyrannical
that a conspiracy ended his life in 274.
During the reign (r.
274-93) of Bahram II, Roman
emperor Carus invaded Persia in 283;
but the legions believed
that his death by lightning was a sign from heaven and retreated.
During this era the mobad Karter led the drive
that persecuted
any religion other than the Zoroastrian.
In 287 Emperor Diocletian
placed Tiridates III,
the son of Khosrov II, on the Armenian throne.
After Bahram II died in 293, Narseh (r. 293-302) became the Sasanian
king
and invaded Armenia three years later, forcing Tiridates
to flee to Rome.
Diocletian
sent Galerius to Armenia the next year;
the wounded Narses fled
as the Persians were routed,
and a treaty made the Tigris River
the boundary between the two empires.
Having lost more territory
than any other Parthian or Sasanian ruler,
Narseh abdicated in
302 BC.
Hormizd II (r. 302-09) set up a court of justice to help
the poor
keep from being oppressed by the rich.
When he died,
the nobles did not want his oldest son to rule
because of his
favoring Hellenic culture.
So they elected Shapur II (r. 309-79)
while his mother was still pregnant,
because the mobad (priest)
had declared that the baby would be male.
In 323 Hormizd escaped
from prison
and was well received by Roman emperor Constantine.
Meanwhile Tiridates III (r. 287-330) of Armenia had stopped persecuting
Christians
and had become a zealous convert to Christianity in
294.
After the powerful Constantine
died in 337, dividing his empire between his three sons,
Shapur
II took the opportunity to urge the pagans in Armeni
to revolt
and raid across the Roman border.
The next year Shapur besieged
Nisibis but could not take the Roman stronghold.
The Persians
raided Roman territory.
Shapur captured and blinded Arsaces, son
of Tiranus, but in 341 he made a treaty
with Armenia and put Arsaces
on their throne.
Shapur's Persians invaded Mesopotamia in 348
and fought the Roman army of Constantius for two years.
For the
third time Shapur failed to capture Nisibis, losing 20,000 men.
Christianity had become the official religion of the Roman empire,
and Shapur responded by doubling taxes for Christians to pay for
his wars.
For refusing to collect the taxes six bishops and a
hundred priests
were executed at Susa on Good Friday 339.
Massacres
and the destruction of churches continued in the Sasanian empire
for the next forty years of Shapur's reign.
Shapur had to fight
off Huns (Chionites) in the east from 353 to 358.
During this
interlude Constantius found a Roman wife for King Arsaces II (r.
351-57),
and Armenia returned to the Roman orbit.
Shapur fought
another war for two years with the Roman empire,
capturing the
fortress at Amida.
This war ended when Constantius died in 361.
In 363 the pagan Roman emperor Julian
invaded Persia with a hundred thousand men
and a fleet of 1100
ships built for the Euphrates River;
but the Sasanians had far
surpassed the Parthians in fortifying their cities.
Julian avoided
them, and his alliance with the Saracen chiefs fell apart;
fighting
near Samarra, he was killed by a javelin
and was portrayed heroically
as a lion by Persian painters.
Jovian became Roman emperor and
ceded the five provinces east of the Tigris
and the fortress of
Nisibis to Shapur's empire.
Europeans, who had been in Nisibis
for two centuries, were removed.
When Valens became Roman emperor
for the East, Shapur II invaded Armenia.
Pap (r. 369-374), son
of Arshak II, fled and asked for Roman support.
So Shapur returned
to Armenia and captured the treasury of Arsaces
and made Pap agree
to his terms.
After the Romans interfered in Iberia in 370,
the
next year the Persians attacked the Romans at Vagabanta.
In 376
a truce led to a treaty that left Christian Armenia and Iberia
independent.
The long reign of Shapur II was followed by Ardashir II (r. 379-83),
who was called the Beneficent for remitting taxes;
but he was
deposed by his nephew Shapur III (r. 383-88).
Factional conflict
in Armenia resulted in the Persians and Romans
making a treaty
in 384 that divided Armenia.
During the reign of Bahram IV (r.
388-99), Khosrov IV, the satrap of Persian Armenia,
revolted but
could not get help from Emperor Theodosius I and was imprisoned.
After Bahram IV was killed by a mutiny,
Yazdgard I (r. 399-420)
became ruler of the Sasanian empire.
He tolerated the Christians
and Jews, decreeing in 409 that Christians could worship
openly
and rebuild their churches; but the Zoroastrians pressured him
into persecuting them
during the last five years of his reign.
Nobles tried to prevent any of his sons from succeeding;
but his
son Bahram V Gur (r. 420-38) won the struggle.
He continued the
persecution of Christians; when many fled to Roman
territory,
he demanded them back and then declared war.
After
a battle between champions of the Persians and Romans,
they made a treaty in 422 that granted toleration of Christians
in Persia
and of Zoroastrians by the Romans.
In 425 the Hephthalites (White Huns) led by Yetailito
crossed
the Oxus River and invaded Persia.
Bahram Gur led a successful
counter-attack that chased the Huns back across the Oxus.
According
to the poet Firdausi, Bahram Gur ventured into India,
and as a
result 12,000 Gypsies migrated into Persia with their music and
dancing.
Bahram Gur was acclaimed for promoting agriculture, literacy,
and science,
leaving Persia at the height of its power.
His son
Yazdgard II (r. 438-57) made a treaty with Theodosius II
agreeing
that neither would build new fortifications on their frontier.
This allowed Yazdgard to campaign in the east from 443 to 451.
Zoroastrian mobads tried to win back Armenia to their religion,
defeating the Christian party.
In Iraq the patriarch Joseph became
a martyr
at Karka (Kirkuk) in 455 as other Christians fled.
The
Christian Bar-Soma was expelled from Edessa for heresy but returned
in 457.
When Yazdgard II died in 457, his younger son Hormizd III seized
the throne
while his older brother Peroz was governing Seistan.
The Hephthalites helped Peroz (r. 459-84) capture his brother,
and Peroz also put down a revolt by Albanians west of the Caspian
Sea.
After he sent a slave pretending to be a princess,
the insulted
Khush-Newaz killed and mutilated Persian officers in revenge.
Tabari wrote that Peroz was lured into the desert
and had to prostrate
himself before the Hephthalites.
Peroz helped Bar-Soma to use
force in establishing the doctrine
of the "two natures of
Christ" in order to separate these Christians
from the Monophysites
west of them.
Yazdgard and Peroz changed previous policy that
had tolerated Jews.
Yazdgard abolished the Sabbath in 455, and
in 468 Peroz had half the Jews in Isfahan
slaughtered after Jews
were accused of flaying two Magi.
The Kushans' defeat of Peroz
stimulated the Armenians to revolt in 481;
but the Iberian king
treacherously changed sides,
enabling the Persians to kill the
Armenian king.
Peroz was finally defeated and killed by Hephthalites
at Balkh;
much of the army was destroyed, and his successor Balash
(r. 484-88)
paid them tribute for two years.
Vahan gained toleration
for Christians in Armenia by helping Balash
in a civil war against
a son of Peroz named Zaren.
Kavad I, son of Peroz, became the Sasanian king in 488.
In 489
Roman emperor Zeno
dissolved the Nestorian college at Edessa,
but Bar-Soma re-established
it at Nisibis.
In 491 the Armenian Church rejected the "one
person in two natures" doctrine
promulgated by the Council
at Chalcedon in 451 and as Monophysites
have been independent
of the Constantinople patriarch ever since.
A communist named
Mazdak of Persepolis converted thousands
to his doctrine of sharing
property and even women.
The historian Tabari described how he
used a tube in a cavern beneath a fire altar
as a fraudulent religious
device and even converted Kavad.
The Zoroastrian mobads defended
their religion by deposing and imprisoning Kavad in 496.
He escaped
to the Hephthalites and was received by Khush-Newaz;
they helped
him regain the throne two years later, as his replacement Zamasp
did not fight to retain the crown.
The Nestorian doctrine that
the divine and human persons
are separate in the incarnate Christ
became prevalent in Persia.
After eighty years of peace, in 503 Kavad I went to war with the
Roman empire,
because they had not been paying Persia the agreed
expenses for the Derbent garrison.
The Persians invaded Roman
Armenia and lost 50,000 men
besieging and taking the fortress
of Amida, as the Romans there were annihilated.
That year Kavad
also sent his army to stop a Hephthalite invasion of Khurasan,
which enabled Romans to cross the Tigris.
In 505 Persia and Rome
made a peace treaty for seven years
that enabled Kavad to win
a final campaign against the Hephthalites by 513.
A resurgence
of the Mazdakis plotted with Kavad's oldest son Kavus
to establish
their religion in Persia; but Kavad's younger son Khusrau
persuaded
his father to let him put down the rebellion.
Khusrau organized
a religious debate
and then massacred the Mazdakis at Ctesiphon
about 528.
When Kavad I canceled toleration of Christians in Iberia
in favor
of Zoroastrians, they revolted.
The Iberian king Gurgenes fled
to Lazica and appealed to Rome for help.
When the Persians went
into Lazica, Romans led by the famous general Belisarius
invaded
Persian Armenia in 526.
The Romans were defeated, and Emperor
Justinian sent another 25,000 men,
including Massagetae cavalry,
which tipped the balance in an even battle.
Al-Harith ibn 'Amr
al-Kindi drove the Lakhmids out of Hira in 525 for a few years;
but the Lakhmid chief Mundhir III regained Hira and in 529 raided
Syria as far as Antioch,
where he sacrificed 400 Christian nuns
to the goddess al-Uzza, representing the planet Venus.
Two years
later the Persians allied with Mundhir to invade Syria.
Belisarius
with help from Isaurians, Lycaonians, and Arabs defended Antioch,
killed Kavad, and forced the retreat of the Persian army.
Possibly influenced by the ideas of the 2nd century,
gnostic
philosopher Carpocrates of Alexandria, whose followers venerated
Zarathushtra, Pythagoras,
and Plato for four centuries,
and Bundos,
a Manichaean who had lived in Rome during the reign
of Diocletian,
the
Zoroastrian mobad Zardusht Khurragan in the mid-5th century
began
interpreting the inner meaning of the Avesta.
Those making such
interpretations were called Zandiks.
Ibn al-Nadim wrote of an
earlier Zoroastrian named Mazdak,
who taught enjoying pleasures
in friendly equality, sharing women and family,
doing good deeds,
not harming anyone, and offering hospitality.
Mazdak, son of Bamdad, led the Mazdaki movement during the reign
of Kavad I.
According to Tha'alibi he taught that God provided
subsistence
so that it could be shared equally; but people wronged
and dominated each other
with the strong exploiting the weak to
gain property;
thus it is necessary to take from the rich to give
to the poor,
and those with an excess of property or women should
share.
The poet Firdausi
wrote that the Mazdakis avoided the five demons of
envy, anger,
vengeance, need, and greed.
Mazdak recommended ways of breaking
up the large estates, prohibiting hoarding,
removing class distinctions,
and establishing public charities for those in need.
He aimed
to reduce Zoroastrian rituals by limiting their temples to three
major ones.
Although accused of advocating wives in common, it
is more likely that
Mazdak probably wanted to eliminate harems
and polygamy
so that more people could have one wife.
Abolishing
class distinctions also meant being able to marry outside of one's
class.
Mazdaki women exercised more rights,
and the Druze sect
(currently in Lebanon) allows women to be in the elite.
King Kavad I wanted to promote justice, and he was strongly influenced
by the religious ideas of Mazdak and began implementing social
reforms
that limited the privileges of the nobles.
Mazdak asked
the king if one with extra food should share it with the hungry,
and this led to Mazdaki mobs plundering granaries, storehouses,
and the palaces of the wealthy and their harems.
The nobles reacted
by deposing Kavad, who fled to the Hephthalites.
When he returned
to power, Kavad was more cautious.
His oldest son Kavus sympathized
with the Mazdakis;
but Khusrau was his favorite son and was allowed
to persecute and massacre
the Mazdakis even before he became king,
burying their upper bodies in the ground and executing Mazdak.
As king, Khusrau also tried to implement his own reforms to assuage
the people.
Grand vizier Mebodes presented the will of Kavad
that made
Khusrau I (r. 531-79) king of kings.
Khusrau, also known as Khosrow
or as Noshirwan or Anushirwan in the east,
has been acclaimed
as the greatest of Persian monarchs;
but because of an attempt
to place his brother Zames on the throne,
he began his reign by
putting to death all his brothers and their sons
except one son
of Zames named Kavad, who escaped.
He also executed Mazdak and
one hundred thousand of his followers.
Khusrau organized the Sasanian
empire into four regional satrapies:
Khurasan and Kirman in the
east, Fars and Khuzistan in the south,
Iraq and Mesopotamia in
the west, and Armenia and Azerbaijan in the north.
After Justinian
closed the philosophy school at Athens in 529,
Khusrau welcomed
the last Neo-Platonists to his court.
He ordered Plato
and Aristotle translated into
Persian and read their works.
A book of kings was compiled and
was later used by Firdausi in his famous poem.
In 533 Khusrau
made a treaty with Rome, which agreed to pay Persia
11,000 pounds
of gold for the upkeep of garrisons in the Caucasus.
This enabled Justinian and Belisarius
to conquer Italy and North Africa in the next six years.
Buzurjmihr
tutored prince Hormizd and became vizier.
Buzurjmihr held that
the worst misery is to see the close of life approaching
without
having practiced virtue.
Zoroastrian Mar Aba converted to Christianity
and stood up to Khusrau,
who respected him and allowed bishoprics
to be founded at Herat and Samarqand by 540.
Afraid of Rome's growing power, Khusrau invaded Syria in 540,
raiding Antioch and other places.
Persia gained another treaty
in which Rome paid 5,000 pounds of gold as a war indemnity
along
with annual subsidies of 500 pounds for the garrisons.
Khusrau
ordered a city built near Ctesiphon based on the Greek model of
Antioch.
When Lazica appealed to Khusrau in 540,
he besieged and
captured Petra from the Romans.
Because Lazica had become Christian,
he wanted to remove the population
and tried to assassinate the
Lazic king Gubazes.
When this plot failed, another war with Rome
broke out in 549
that lasted eight years with the Romans driving
the Persians out of Lazica.
The five-year truce of 557 led to
the 562 treaty in which Rome
still agreed to pay Persia 30,000
gold coins annually.
Turks entered Persian history when they made
an alliance with Khusrau in 554
and helped him conquer the Hephthalites.
Khusrau also attacked the Khazars, killing thousands and ravaging
their territory.
After Khusrau poisoned the Turk ambassadors proposing
an alliance
with Sinjibu (Silzibul) in 567, the next year the
Turks
offered Rome an alternative trade route to China.
Emperor Justin wanted to impose Christian orthodoxy on Armenia,
while Khusrau sent the Surena to build a fire temple and promote
Zoroastrianism.
The Armenians got a promise of religious toleration
from Justin,
and the Romans defeated 15,000 Persians and killed
the Surena in 571.
Justin stopped paying for the garrisons and
urged Axum's Abyssinian king Arethas
to invade the Persians; but
in 572 the Persians traveled 2,000 miles
to drive the Abyssinians
out of Yemen.
The next year Justin sent his cousin Marcianus to
invade Arzanene and besiege Nisibis;
but Khusrau relieved Nisibis
and besieged Dara,
while the Adarmaanes captured Antioch and 292,000
men.
When Tiberius became emperor of Rome, he agreed to pay
45,000
gold coins (nomismata) for peace with Persia
and 30,000 annually
for three years of truce.
Armenia was not included in the treaty,
and Khusrau invaded it and burned Melitene.
Roman legions drove
the Persians back across the Euphrates and pillaged,
but they
were defeated in Armenia by the Persians in 576.
Both Roman and
Persian armies plundered in 578.
Khusrau fled to Ctesiphon, where
he died in 579.
Khusrau was called "the Just" and reformed the land
tax
to a basic minumum to give farmers incentives to produce more.
He also promoted agriculture by improving irrigation with dams,
reclaiming wasteland,
and granting seeds, tools, and animals.
Roads and bridges were repaired.
He reinstituted a standing army
with regular pay and even submitted himself
to inspection and
discipline.
His army was much stronger than Parthian armies because
of heavily armored cavalry
equipped with lances, swords, and maces
as well as bows and arrows.
In his justice system he was merciful,
especially to the young.
Women were generally not secluded in
Persia at this time,
although Khusrau himself had perhaps the
largest harem ever with 12,000 women.
Chess was imported from
India, and literature was preserved in the Pahlavi language,
though
this was still limited to about a hundred different books.
When
the Roman ambassador noted that the royal square was irregular,
he learned that the Persian Shah had decided not to force a woman
to sell her land.
Hormizd IV (r. 579-90) continued the war with Rome
after negotiations
with the general Maurice failed.
Maurice defeated the Persians
in 581 at Constantia and succeeded Tiberius
as Roman emperor the
next year.
In 588 a mutiny in the Roman army enabled the Persians
to drive them out of Arzanene;
but they defeated the Persians
and took Martyropolis.
The next year the Persians regained Martyropolis,
though the Romans won at Nisibis.
The general Bahram Chobin led
the Persians to victory over the Turks,
killing their khan and
capturing his son.
The gold and gems taken were carried away on
256 camels.
Bahram Chobin tried to take the throne but was defeated
in 591
and fled to the Turks, who killed him.
Hormuzd's son Khusrau
II Parviz (r. 590-628) had fled to Constantinople
and was restored
at Ctesiphon with the help of Roman emperor Maurice.
Khusrau ceded
territory to the Byzantine empire in the treaty of 591.
After
Maurice was assassinated in 602, Khusrau Parviz avenged this
by
going to war against his successor Phocas.
The Persians took Dara
in 605 after a siege of nine months
and Amida, Harran, and Edessa
by 607.
They also plundered Armenia, Cappadocia, Phrygia, Galatia,
and Bithynia.
Khusrau Parviz wanted the daughter of Arab prince Noman, who appealed
to the Shaybani.
The Shah's Arab allies deserted, and at the battle
of Dhuqar the Persians
were defeated by Arabs in 610, the year Muhammad had his first
revelation.
The Persian army invaded Syria, taking Antioch in
611, Damascus in 613,
and Jerusalem the next year.
The Persian
general Shahin captured Chalcedon near Constantinople by 617.
Two years later the Persians invaded Egypt and captured Alexandria.
The Persian empire had never been so large since the ancient Achaemenians.
However, Roman emperor Heraclius
began rolling back these advances in 622
by defeating Shahrbaraz
at Issus and again in Armenia in 624.
That year Heraclius
invaded Atropatene (Azerbaijan)
and destroyed the Zoroastrian
fire temple.
Khusrau made an alliance with Avars and besieged
Constantinople in 626,
but they were foiled by the Roman navy.
When Heraclius attacked the palace of Khusrau Parviz at Dastagird
the next year
and defeated the Persians near Nineveh, the Shah
fled.
After he insulted the corpse of Shahin and tried to execute
Shahrbaraz and other generals,
the nobles turned against Khusrau,
imprisoning him and torturing him to death in 628.
Khusrau Parviz tolerated Christianity because of his love
for
his Monophysite Christian wife Shirin.
When he began losing battles,
he seized treasures from Christian churches
and tried to impose
the Nestorian doctrine.
Khusrau was succeeded by his son Kavad
II, who made peace with Heraclius,
returning the "true cross"
taken from Jerusalem.
Kavad died after a few months, and a chaotic
sequence of eleven rulers tried to govern
Persia until Khusrau's
grandson Yazdgard III (r. 632-51) became the last Sasanian emperor.
In 633 the Arab invasion of Iraq led by Muslim Khalid ibn al-Walid
began.
The Persian general Rustam was defeated in the critical
battle at Qadisiya in 637.
Sa'd led the Muslim invasion of Mesopotamia
and captured the capital at Ctesiphon.
The zealous Islamic army
soon swept into Khuzistan in 640 and finally defeated
the Persian
army led by Perozan by killing over 100,000 at Nehawand in 642,
forcing Yazdgard to flee from Ray to Isfahan to Kirman and to
Balkh.
A decade after the Arabs had taken over his empire, Yazdgard
was finally murdered
for his jewelry near Marv in 651.
The Arabs
encouraged those conquered to convert to Islam
by exempting Muslims
from the taxes they imposed on the Zoroastrians,
Christians, Jews, and non-believers.
1. tr. Stephanie Dalley in Myths from Mesopotamia, p.
285.
2. Ibid., p. 287.
3. Ibid., p. 303-304.
4. Kuhrt, Amélie The Ancient Near East c. 3000-330 BC,
p. 612-613.
5. Zaehner, R. C., The Dawn and Twilight of Zoroastrianism,
p. 74.
6. The Divine Songs of Zarathushtra tr. Irach J. S. Taraporewala,
Yasna 49:11, p. 727.
7. Herodotus 1:87 tr. Aubrey de Sélincourt, p. 49.
8. Ibid., p. 96.
9. Quoted in A History of Persia, Volume 1 by Percy Sykes,
p. 397.
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