The Babylonian World - Historia Antigua

— Amélie Kuhrt —
by the king, royal retinue and army contingents, but also for the speedy communication
between king and satrapal authorities and to facilitate the journeys of personal servants
of Persian nobles engaged in looking after their landed estates. The clearest illustration
is a document issued by the satrap of Egypt, then perhaps in Babylon or Susa, to
permit the manager of his Egyptian estates to travel, together with three other servants,
and draw supplies at posting-stations along the way (Porten and Yardeni 1986, A6.9).
The route runs from north-eastern Babylonia, north along the east bank of the Tigris
to Arbela, then through the Jezirah, across the Euphrates and the Syrian steppe to
Damascus. Rivers, too, were part of the communication network. From the Mediterranean
coast, for example, travellers moved overland to Thapsacus on the Euphrates
in North Syria, sailing from there down to Babylon (Diodorus Siculus 14.81.4).
Landed estates, whose revenues were granted to members of the Persian aristocracy
and especially favoured people who had performed exceptional services for the king
as personal royal gifts, were located throughout the empire. Babylonia, again, provides
some of the best evidence: apart from royal domains, lands were held in the Nippur
region by the queen, queen mother, crown prince and close members of the royal
family. The distribution of land in the provinces to such powerful individuals must
have served as a brake on the unrestricted exercise of satrapal power. While some of
the highest-ranking owners held such estates in several different regions of the empire
and were thus, perforce, absentee land-holders, others (including Persians) were firmly
settled on their estates with their families, forming a provincial landed gentry. The
estates included a fortified dwelling and it is clear from several accounts that these
were permanently guarded by soldiers, and that the estates embraced holders of
military fiefs who could be used to fend off attacks or, conversely, levied by the owner
in response to larger military threats. The estates within the provinces were thus
another means that served to spread the Persian presence and military control
throughout the empire (Xenophon, Anabasis 7.8).
Keeping and extending land under production was a prime royal concern in order
to ensure and safeguard an adequate agricultural base and the concomitant creation
of state wealth as a result of productivity. The Persian rulers particularly fostered
irrigation projects, both the extension of existing ones and the installation of new
ones – in Babylonia, Bactria, northern Iran and the Egyptian oases. Fars is a testament
to a striking landscape transformation wrought by the Persians. Archaeological survey
indicates that, in the 400–500 years preceding the emergence of the Achaemenid
state, the area was sparsely settled, there were virtually no large urban centres and
the prevailing mode of land use was herding; but by the end of the empire, the region
was remarked upon by historians as a veritable Garden of Eden – densely settled,
fertile, heavily wooded, filled with fields, orchards and pastures, and well watered
(Diodorus Siculus 19.21.2–4). The hard reality of this change has been established,
not only by excavation of the palatial centres of Pasargadae and Persepolis, but also
by surveys in the region, which chart the sudden and massive increase of settlements
in the Achaemenid period.
THE KING AND ROYAL IDEOLOGY
At the apex of the empire stood the king, who regularly proclaimed himself as king
of kings and ruler on this earth, but also stressed that he was an Iranian and a Persian,
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