The Judgment of Animals in Classical Greece: Animal Sculpture and ...

evidence should be also added an Aramaic letter that was found in Egypt and dates to the
reign of Darius II (fifth century B.C.). Although the letter specifies no particular
medium, its content is instructive, for it describes the placing of an order by Arsam, the
satrap of Egypt, for a representation of a horse and its rider from a craftsman called
Hinzani. 481 There is, thus, considerable evidence for the centrality of the image of the
rider in both literary and visual material that is directly associated with the Achaemenid
Empire.
With respect to the trick that Herodotus relates, it has been suggested that the
account rests on “an ancient Indo-Iranian folktale that bound together horse racing and
kingship.” 482 This idea has been further sustained by the silence of Herodotus in regard
to the location of the image of the rider that Darius commissioned. 483 Approaching the
evidence from a different angle, Oswyn Murray suggests that Herodotus’ story of the
horse race attests to the Achaemenid practice of horse divination. 484 The trilingual text of
the inscribed rock relief at Bisitun, which records Darius’ proclamation of legitimate
kingship, does not mention the incident of the horse trick. 485 This evidence does not
of the gold plaques that form part of a necklace with the head of Bes at its center, housed now in the
Metropolitan Museum: Boardman, Persia and the West 195, figs. 5.77a, b.
481
For the scholarly debate on this letter and the possibility that the identification of the craftsman as a
sculptor is not secure, see S. A. Paspalas, “On Persian-Type Furniture in Macedonia: The Recognition and
Transmission of Forms,” AJA 105 (2000) 544, n. 85; also West, “Herodotus’ Epigraphical Interests,” 297,
n. 92, where she states that the identification of Hinzani as a sculptor is an assumption; he could have been
a painter or seal-cutter.
482
J. M. Balcer, Herodotus and Bisitun: Problems in Ancient Persian Historiography (Stuttgart, 1987) 38,
n. 61.
483
West, “Herodotus’ Epigraphical Interests” 297, where she states that “we are given no indication of the
location of this monument,” and that “it looks as if the story of Darius’ ruse (together, no doubt, with much
of the immediately preceding narrative) represents a Greek fantasy woven around a conspicuous monument
without regard to its real purport.”
484
O. Murray, “Herodotus and Oral History,” in H. Sancisi-Weerdenburg and A. Kuhrt, eds., Achaemenid
History II. The Greek Sources. Proceedings of the Groningen 1984 Achaemenid History Workshop
(Leiden, 1987) 115.
485
E. A. W. Budge, The Sculptures and Inscription of Darius the Great on the Rock of Behistun in Persia
(London, 1907) 1-207. The east pediment of the temple of Zeus at Olympia (460s) shows that a similar
story involving a groom and a trick was also current in early Classical Greece. The pediment shows the
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