UPDATED VERSION OF TEXT ALREADY PRE-PUBLISHED IN ACHEMENET

SOUS PRESSE ON 28 JUNE 2011.

Paper presented in the First International Conference "Iran and the Silk Road" (National
Museum of Iran, 11-14 February 2011). It is to appear, with illustrations, in D. Akbarzadeh
(ed.), Proceedings of the First International Conference "Iran and the Silk Road", Tehran,
forthcoming.

EARLY CROSS-CULTURAL POLITICAL ENCOUNTERS

ALONG THE PATHS OF THE SILK ROAD:
CYRUS THE GREAT AS A KING OF THE CITY OF
ANSHAN
by

Antigoni Zournatzi
The National Hellenic Research Foundation (Athens)

Abstract: In the famous inscription of the Cylinder of Cyrus the Great composed
after the fall of Babylon in 539 BC, the founder of the Persian empire is referred to
as king of the city of Anshan and is made to indicate that this title was equally
borne by his ancestors, Cambyses, Cyrus and Teispes.
Reference to the venerable but nonetheless Elamite and in all appearances no
longer politically important at the time city of Anshan in Cyrus royal family
titulary has triggered much scholarly discussion. It is currently thought that the
references to Cyrus dynastic association with Anshan might acknowledge some
sense of an Elamite affinity on the part of Cyrus royal line.
The present study argues that the title king of the city of Anshan of Cyrus
and his forebears was meant to accommodate traditional perceptions of legitimate
kingship within a native Mesopotamian/Elamite environment and cannot be used
as evidence for an Elamite affiliation of Cyrus dynastic line.

The author wishes to express her heartfelt appreciation to the organizers for the opportunity to
participate in a conference which opened up important new vistas on the complex interactions along
the paths of the Silk Road and for their hospitality. I also wish to extend my warmest thanks to
Daryoosh Akbarzadeh for his most gracious approval of a pre-publication, to Judith Lerner for a
useful discussion concerning the possible wider currency of Cyrus Anshanite title outside the
Babylonian domain, and to David Stronach for helpful comments and bibliographical references.
Responsibility for the views expressed here and any errors is naturally mine.

-2-

The Anshanite dynastic title of Cyrus the Great and current interpretations
Since its discovery in the ruins of Babylon in 1879, the inscribed Cylinder of Cyrus
the Great1 has had a powerful impact on modern perceptions of the founder of the
Persian empire. Composed following Cyrus conquest of Babylon in 539 BC and
stressing above all his care for the Babylonian people and his acts of social and
religious restoration, the Akkadian text of the Cylinder occupies a central place in
modern discussions of Cyrus imperial policy.2 This famous document is also at the
heart of a lively scholarly controversy concerning the background of Cyrus
dynastic line.
The Persian monarch Darius I who rose to the throne approximately a
decade after the death of Cyrus the Great and who founded the ruling dynasty of
the Achaemenids placed great score on the Aryan (i.e., Iranian), Persian, and in
particular Achaemenid pedigree of his family.3 He also referred to his seat of rule
as Parsa the ancient Persian form of the name of modern Fars in southwestern
Iran, as well as the name of Darius royal capital, Persepolis, situated in the same
region.4
The Cylinder appears to draw a markedly different dynastic profile. In the
lengthy, relatively well-preserved text, which is partly expressed in the first person
singular, as an address by Cyrus himself, statements of Persian identity are absent.
The background, moreover, of the founder of the Persian empire is defined (lines
12 and 21) in terms of a royal lineage going three generations back (Cyrus
introduces himself as a son of Cambyses, grandson of Cyrus, and descendant5 of
Teispes) which does not include Achaemenes, the eponymous ancestor of Darius
family; and in terms of Cyrus and his forebears kingship over the city6 of
Anshan.
Lack of reference to Achaemenes in Cyrus royal lineage in the Cylinder
provides one of the main grounds for the now generally accepted distinctness of
Cyrus Teispid family and Darius Achaemenid line.7 In the opinion of a
1

For editions of the text, see Berger 1975 and Schaudig 2001: 550-56. The English translation
followed here is by I. Finkel in http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/article_index/c/
cyrus_cylinder_-_translation.aspx.
2
See, among others, Kuhrt 1983 and 2007: 173-78 and passim, with relevant bibliography.
3
E.g., Kent 1953: 138 (DNa 2).
4
Kent 1953: 119 (DB I 1) and s.v. Prsa- (2) on p. 196.
5
For the translation of I. Finkel followed here (i.e., descendant, as opposed to greatgrandfather which normally occurs in modern translations), see also de Miroschedji 1985: 281 n. 67
and 283 n. 76.
6
Cyrus dynastic title in the Cylinder is often rendered in translation as king of Anshan (see,
e.g., Pritchard 1969: 315-16 [trans. A. L. Oppenheim], Waters 2004: 94, Kuhrt 2007: 182) and is
actually formulated in other Akkadian documents as king of the land of Anshan or simply king of
Anshan (see below, n. 27). The determinative URU, however, which is consistently prefixed to
Anshan in the text of the Cylinder (see, e.g., Schaudig 2001: 552-553, lines 12 and 21) indicates that,
in this particular instance, the city itself of Anshan is meant.
7
See, among others, de Miroschedji 1985: 280-83; Young 1988: 27-28; Stronach 1997a,b,c;
Rollinger 1999. But compare Vallat 1997 and 2011.

-3-

number of scholars, the claim advanced in the Cylinder, and echoed elsewhere in
the Babylonian record, that Cyrus and his forebears were rulers of Anshan (instead
of Parsa) might signal still more crucial differences between Cyrus and Darius
families.
By the early 1970s various epigraphic and archaeological clues had begun to
indicate that the lost city of Anshan could be identified with the important ancient
urban center whose remains survive at Tall-i Malyan, in close proximity to
Pasargadae and Persepolis.8 In accord with this identification, the city of Anshan,
the ostensible city of rule of Cyrus and his forebears, can be seen to have been
located in the heartland of the Persian empire, named Parsa by Darius. The
Nabonidus Chronicle, wherein Cyrus royal domain is identified once as Anshan
and, a second time, as [land of] Parsu,9 can further be taken to imply that the two
toponyms served, at least near the middle of the sixth century BC, as viable,
alternate designations for the same territory.10 While Parsa, however, would have
spontaneously evoked a Persian milieu, the fortunes of Anshan were inextricably
linked from at least the second half of the third millennium onward with the world
of the Elamites, one of the most important groups in Iran, who were culturally and
linguistically distinct from the Persians. From just as early, and down to at least the
mid-seventh century BC, titularies involving Anshan were also germane to the
Elamite sphere.11 Justifiable though it might be in geographical terms owing to
Persian settlement in, and the ultimate takeover of, the region of the venerable
Elamite city of Anshan, Cyrus Anshanite dynastic title is bound to have resonated
with Elamite associations.
To date a unanimously satisfactory explanation for the contrasting (self-)representations of Cyrus the Great, on the one hand, as a king of Anshan and Darius
the Great, on the other hand, as a king of Persia has been impossible to procure.
There is nonetheless a consensus that, in contrast to the unambiguous Persian
pedigree of Darius kingship, the pronounced Elamite associations of Cyrus
Anshanite title ought to somehow acknowledge, at the very least, an awareness of
an Elamite historical context within which the line of Cyrus rose to prominence.
Taking into account the gradual decline of Elamite strength in the course of the
seventh century,12 when Cyrus Teispid dynasty would have risen to power,13 one
8

Reiner 1973; Hansman 1972.

Grayson 1975: 106-7, col. ii 1 and 15, respectively.
10
Cf., e.g., Hansman 1985a: 34; Stronach 1997c: 37-38; Waters 2004: 101 with n. 29. Compare
the different conclusions of, e.g., Vallat 2011: 280 and Potts 2011.
11
See conveniently the overviews of such titularies in the second millennium and the first half of
the first millennium, respectively, in Potts 2005: 15 and de Miroschedji 1985: 278. The chronology of
first-millennium Neo-Elamite rulers appears to remain rather fluid. If, as Waters (2000: 85-87,
discussed in Henkelman 2003b: 262 and 2008: 56) suggested, Atta-hamiti-Inshushinak (the last NeoElamite ruler known to have used the title king of Anshan and Susa) was none other than Atamaita,
an Elamite adversary of Darius I mentioned in the Bisitun inscription (Kent 1953: 134 [DB V 71]),
reference to Anshan in royal Elamite titles would have persisted down to the time of Darius
accession to the throne.
12
Useful overviews of the ancient evidence and modern interpretations concerning political
developments in the Elamite world (and the place of the Persians in it) during this period are offered,
among others, by Miroschedji 1985 and 1990; Potts 1999 (259-353) and 2005; Henkelman 2003a:
182-87 and 2003b.
13
According to two different modern estimates, the Teispids would have risen to power in the
course of the first (Weidner 1931-32: 5) or in the second (de Miroschedji 1985: 284-85) half of the
9

-4-

view posits a Persian ascendancy at that time over the long established Elamite
domain of Anshan, in Fars, which could have occasioned the adoption of an
Anshanite title. In the variant formulations of this hypothesis, such an adoption
would be, for instance, symbolic of an hritage lamite assum par les premiers
souverains perses14 and possibly allude to a Persian kingdom of Anshan that was
Elamito-Persian during this first stage of its existence;15 or would be specifically
aimed to [supply] legitimacy to a Persian dynasty that had been victorious over
indigenous Elamites;16 or would, perhaps, reflect a political rivalry with the NeoElamite kings,17 who styled themselves kings of Anshan and Susa.
The notoriously thin trail of historical evidence about the same period18
joined especially with the possibility of the Elamite origins of Cyrus name19 has
been seen by others as an indication that the first ruling dynasty (and hence, the
origins) of the Persian empire might not have been as strictly Persian as would
otherwise have been expected. Notably, as Daniel Potts has argued in a number of
studies since 1999, Cyrus family could have been rulers of a kingdom that was
predominantly ethnically Elamite and distinct from a predominantly ethnically
Persian entity of Parsa (ruled over by Darius family),20 and could have possessed
a far more Elamite cast than Darius .21 As a corollary to these contentions,
what we today call the Persian empire [could have been], in fact, originally an
Anshanite empire.22
Modern inclinations to explain the purported Anshanite dynastic identity of
Cyrus the Great within the frame of Elamite history23 would appear to be entirely
justified. Given the millennial history of the city and region of Anshan as a part of
the Elamite world taken over by the Persians, the toponyms prestigious place in
Elamite royal protocols, and not least the close co-existence and fusion of Elamite
and Persian elements in Fars,24 it is highly unlikely that the Cylinders references to
Cyrus and his forebears as kings of the city of Anshan merely possessed a neutral
seventh century BC. Concerning the viability of the former estimate (which was discredited by de
Miroschedji), see Shahbazi 1993 and Waters 1999: 105.
14
de Miroschedji 1985: 299; cf., among others, Briant 1996: 28, Stronach 1997c: 38, Kuhrt
2007: 178.
15
Expression owed to de Miroschedji 1985: 304.
16
Waters 2004: 95. See, however, the objection of Henkelman (2008: 56-57 n. 136) that [t]here
is not a shred of evidence for a military and/or political clash between pre-Achaemenid Persians and
Elamites.
17
Henkelman 2008: 56; cf. idem 2003a: 193-94,
18
For the relevant textual and archaeological testimony, see the works cited above, n. 12. The
general paucity of hard evidence concerning the history of the Persians before Cyrus also emerges
clearly from the treatments of Young 1988: 27-28 and Briant 1996: 23-38 and 905-909.
19
For this possibility, first suggested by Andreas (1904: 93-94) in 1902 and now widely favored,
see Stronach 1997c: 38 (based on Zadok 1991: 237 and 1995: 246); Henkelman 2003a: 194-96 and
2008: 55-57; Potts 2005: 21-22 (with references to the uncertainties surrounding the linguistic origins
of the names of Cyrus forebears in general); Tavernier 2011: 211-12 s.v. Kura.
20
Potts 2005: 19.
21
Potts 2005: 22.
22
Potts 2005: 23, cf. 17, 20-22 and idem 1999: 306-7.
23
Cf. de Miroschedji 1985: 297.
24
de Miroschedji (1985: 296, 299-306) first put forward a cogent hypothesis of a Persian
ethnogenesis based on the fusion of Elamite and Iranian elements. For phenomena of ElamiteIranian acculturation, see further Henkelman 2003a: esp. 187-96, with references.

-5-

geographical significance.25 On the other hand, however, it is at least a fact that the
divergent speculations about the Elamite affinities of Cyrus patrilinear line have
developed in a vacuum of reliable evidence.
Stated categorically in the Cylinder, and currently accepted as a marker of a
less-than-fully-Persian ideological and/or ethno-cultural identity, the entitlement of
Cyrus and his forebears as kings of the city of Anshan is arguably much more
likely to have accommodated ideological and political sensitivities of Cyrus nonPersian subjects than expressed native realities pertaining to the Teispid line.
The elusive royal Anshanite background of Cyrus the Great
Currently thought to offer insights into universally acknowledged facts about
Cyrus family history and dynastic identity,26 the tradition of the Teispid familys
royal association with Anshan recorded in the Cylinder is nonetheless exclusively
attested so far in Babylonian documents, all of which date, moreover, from the time
of Cyrus or later.27 Outside this Babylonian saga, there is no incontrovertible
evidence to suggest that any of Cyrus Teispid ancestors viewed themselves as
Anshanite monarchs or that any of them ruled from the city of Anshan.
In the opinion of several scholars the possibility that Cyrus and his immediate
forebears were rulers of Anshan materializes in the contents of an Elamite legend
of a seal, now preserved by impressions on a handful of tablets from the Persepolis
Fortification archive28 and supposedly belonging originally to Cyrus the Greats
25
Cf. Henkelman 2008: 56. This approach would also rule out (see also de Miroschedji 1985:
296-98, Stronach 1997c: 37-38 and 2000: 684) a view, which was especially favored in the course of
the 1970s and in the first half of the 1980s, that references to Anshan in the dynastic title of Cyrus
attested in Babylonian sources were merely meant to make Cyrus Persian homeland more readily
recognizable by a Mesopotamian audience (Harmatta 1974: 34); or that they merely manifest a
tenacity of the Late Babylonian scribal and learned circles to traditional terminology going back to
the third millennium (Eilers 1974: 27), when Anshan is first attested in the Mesopotamian record.
26
See, e.g., Stronach 1978: 284; de Miroschedji 1985: 298; Stronach 1997c: 38; Potts 2005: 14;
Henkelman 2008: 55.
27
The relevant references are clearly set out in Waters 2004: 93-94. As we can glean from his
presentation, in addition to the Cylinder of Cyrus, the Teispids royal Anshanite connections are
attested in two further official contexts: namely, a brick inscription from Ur (Schaudig 2001: 549,
lines 1 and 3) and the Sippar Cylinder of Nabonidus (Schaudig 2001: 417, line 108), the last
Babylonian ruler displaced by Cyrus. The brick inscription, referring to Anshan (in this case, a
land/country [KUR]) as the domain of rule of Cyrus the Great and his father, Cambyses, evidently
postdates Cyrus accession to the Babylonian throne. The Sippar Cylinder, which is dated between the
thirteenth and sixteenth regnal years of Nabonidus (543/542 BC-540/539 BC) (Schaudig 2001: 415),
refers to Cyrus as a king of the land/country (KUR) Anshan in a context which is dated to the
beginning of Nabonidus third year (summer 553 BC) and suggests that an Anshanite title was
already used by Cyrus before his campaign and triumph against the Median king Astyages. One last
reference to Cyrus as a king of Anshan occurs in the Chronicle of Nabonidus (Grayson 1975: 106,
col. ii 1), in a context dated to 550 or 549 BC, thus putatively a decade before Cyrus conquest of
Babylon, though also during his reign. For the probable editing of this text, however, by the
entourage of Cyrus following the Persian conquest of Babylon, see Zawadzki 2010.
28
The seal (PFS 93*) is attested on Persepolis Fortification Tablets 692-695, dated to years 19,
21 and 22 of Darius I, and 2033, dated to year 20[+x] of the same monarch (Hallock 1969). See also
Garrison 1991: 3-7; Garrison and Root 1996: 6-7 and fig. 2a-c, and the recent, wide-ranging study of
this artifact by Garrison (2011). Concerning variant readings of line 3 (bearing on the significance of
the reference to Anshan) of the seal legend, see also Garrison 1991: 4; Henkelman 2003a: 193 n. 39
and 2008: 55; Waters 2011: 290.

-6-

grandfather.29 There is no direct evidence concerning the provenance of the seal.

The inscription, reading Kurash [i.e., Cyrus] the Anshanite, son of Teispes,
admittedly presents us with a suggestive analogy for the names of Cyrus
grandfather and ancestor (or great-grandfather) recorded in the Cyrus Cylinder,
as well as for these individuals purported association with Anshan. Although the
seal is featured on tablets dated from the 19th regnal year of Darius I (or 503 BC)
onward, and its date of production is debated to this day,30 M. Garrisons recent
thesis, that the seal belongs stylistically, compositionally, and thematically to an
Anshanite glyptic environment that emerged in Fars at a late Assyrian date (second
half of the seventh century),31 would appear to further support the possibility that
this artifact was produced during the time, and was a possession, of Cyrus
grandfather. The bearing of this document on Cyrus family history remains
difficult to assess, however. Neither the Kurash of the seal nor his father, Teispes,
are identified as royal individuals.32 Thus, if the seal actually belonged to Cyrus
grandfather, its legend falls short of corroborating the royal Anshanite status, let
alone the actual royal title, of the homonymous ancestors of Cyrus mentioned in
the Cylinder and could induce suspicion that Cyrus the Greatexaggerated his
royal lineage33 in the latter document. Or, since neither the name Cyrus nor the
name Teispes can be presumed to have been uncommon,34 the question of the
intrinsic connection of this seal to Cyrus earlier family history could remain
open.35
The reliability of the sum of the extant references to the traditional dynastic
identification of the Teispids with Anshan can also be put to doubt. A muchdiscussed passage in the annals of Ashurbanipal mentions a certain Kurash (i.e.,
Cyrus), king of the land of Parsumash, who, following Ashurbanipals victory
over the Elamites (c. 646 BC), sent his tribute and surrendered his son, Arukku, to
the Assyrian monarch.36 Nothing more is reported about this Kurash, and our
Assyrian sources create ambiguity about the exact location of his royal domain
(which is merely described as being, from the Assyrians northern Mesopotamian
perspective, on the far side of Elam37), as they do in general with toponyms of
29

For a representative sample of scholarly discussions concerning the attribution of the seal, see
conveniently the references cited in Potts 2005: 18-19 and Garrison 2011: 378 n. 4.
30
According to different earlier assessments of the style of carving and iconography of the seal,
this artifact could have been produced, for instance, in the late seventh century or no earlier than 600
(de Miroschedji 1985: 286-87; cf., e.g., Potts 1999: 306 and 2005: 20, and Stronach 2003: 138 with n.
4) or shortly before its use on the Persepolitan tablets (Young 1988: 27). Thus, it might date from
some moment during the lifetime of Cyrus grandfather to as much as three or four generations later.
An overview of the different earlier opinions concerning the dating and attribution of the seal is
offered in Potts 2005: 19-20. Most recently, Quintana (2011: 175-77 and 188 [English summary])
opts for a date during the reign of Darius I, while Garrison (2011: 400) sees the seal as representative
of a glyptic art whose origins are to be found in the (re)emerging political state of Anan/Frs
under the Teispids in the second half of the 7th century B.C..
31
Garrison 2011.
32
This circumstance is widely noted but the uncertainty is thought to be counterbalanced by the
attested uses of the seal in transactions made in the name of the king (de Miroschedji 1985: 285-86),
in an explicit elite context (Henkelman 2008: 56 n. 135; cf. Garrison 2011: e.g., 383, 400).
33
Waters 2011: 292.
34
For the name Cyrus/ Kura, see Zadok 1976: 63; Tavernier 2011: 211-12, s.v. Kura.
35
Cf. Young 1988: 27.
36
Borger 1996: 191-92 and 250; Weidner 1931-32: 4-5.
37
After Waters 1999: 105.

-7-

apparent relevance to the Persians.38 The date of the event (set, at the latest, to
some three years after 646) does not preclude, however, a correlation with the reign
of Cyrus the Greats grandfather.39 In the opinion of a number of scholars, the
Assyrian evidence does not preclude, either, that the Parsumash of Ashurbanipals
annals was, or was located in, Fars.40 If Parsumash was indeed a reference to Fars,
and the mid-seventh-century Kurash of Parsumash was none other than the
grandfather of Cyrus the Great,41 this would mean that at least one of the early
Teispids was recognized during his lifetime, notably in a Mesopotamian context, as
a Persian, rather than an Anshanite, ruler. This incongruity with the testimony of
the Cylinder has been explained away on the grounds that different labels from
different sources cannot be reduced to a single standard of comparison.42 In the
lack of incontrovertible evidence, however, about the status and titulary of Cyrus
grandfather, one ought to at least allow for the obvious alternative: namely, that the
Cylinder might be attributing to the grandfather of Cyrus the Great a royal protocol
that was alien to his own titulary and the same could be true in the cases of
Cyrus two other forebears, Teispes and Cambyses, who are also depicted in the
same text as kings of the city of Anshan, but whose actual titularies are not
otherwise attested.
Doubts about the accuracy of the claims advanced in the Cylinder also arise
from the archaeological domain. Intriguingly, while the Cylinder affirms the rule of
Cyrus and his forebears over the city of Anshan itself (as the predeterminative
URU [city] of Anshan in the Cylinder indicates), so far at least, the
archaeological picture of the site at Tall-i Malyan during the seventh and the first
half of the sixth century when Cyrus forebears were ostensibly in power is
one of a city that was completely deserted.43 The very idea, furthermore, that the
early Teispids could have been rulers of any urban center in Fars is rendered
doubtful by current archaeological surveys, which suggest that habitation in the
38

For presentations of the relevant textual evidence (and contrasting conclusions), see, e.g., de
Miroschedji 1985: 271-78 and Waters 1999.
39
See above, n. 13.
40
See, e.g., Waters 1999: 104-105 and 2011: 286. For a contrary view, see de Miroschedji 1985:
271-78.
41
For the ongoing debate concerning these identifications, see de Miroschedji 1985: 268-85;
Potts 1999: 287-88 and 2005: 18; Rollinger 1999; Henkelman 2003a: 184 n. 9 and 196 n. 49, all with
further references.
42
Waters 2011: 292.
43
Indeed, the general absence of vestiges corresponding to the period of Teispid rule at Tall-i
Malyan led Sumner (1986: 11; echoed by Abdi 2005) to comment that though [s]ome early kings of
the Achaemenid (sic!) dynasty were styled Kings of Anshanit is not clear that the name refers to a
city or settlement rather than the land over which the kings ruled (cf. de Miroschedji 1985: 299). To
date the archaeological picture at Malyan in the first half of the first millennium has not altered in any
significant way (see, e.g., Carter 1994: 66; Abdi 2005; Boucharlat 2005: 230-31). Given the
ambiguity of the Elamite determinative A (which could refer to either a city or a region), the
suggestion (Potts 2011: 41) that references to a city, rather than the region, of Anshan can be
recognized in Persepolitan tablets is difficult to accept at face value (cf. the note of caution in
Henkelman 2008: 348 [who also inclines, however, to suppose that, in these particular contexts the
references are to a city] and the reservations of Waters [2011: 288, based on Steve 1988]). Such
textual references to Anshan (Hallock 1969: 668) and rare archaeological finds from the area of Tall-i
Malyan dated to the Achaemenid period (Abdi 2001 and 2005; Boucharlat 2005: 231), do not easily
lend themselves to a hypothesis of a continuing existence of the city of Anshan through the seventh
and the first half of the sixth century and of Cyrus the Great and his forebears rule over it.

-8-

region largely lapsed into a nomadic or semi-nomadic mode from about 1000 BC
until the time that Cyrus initiated construction at Pasargadae.44 As Daniel Potts
cautiously points out, one day the progress of archaeological explorations may
produce traces connected with the purported rule of the Teispids over Anshan in
hitherto unexcavated parts of the mound of Tall-i Malyan or elsewhere in Fars.45
The cumulative impression one forms, however, from the extant morass of
uncertain evidence is that the reality of the claim of an age-old royal Anshanite
affiliation of the Teispid dynasty remains difficult to confirm.46
The family background of Cyrus the Great was subject to widely divergent
interpretations in antiquity.47 For instance, in the fifth-century writings of
Herodotus (1.107), the founder of the Persian empire is represented as the son of
the princess Mandane, daughter of the last native king of the Medes, Astyages, and
a certain Cambyses who, far from being identified as a king of Anshan, is referred
to as a Persian of good familywhom [Astyages] looked on as much inferior to a
Mede of even middle condition.48 According to Ctesias,49 Cyrus was the son of a
poor Mardian couple. In yet another version of Cyrus ancestry, attested by brief
inscriptions at Pasargadae and also echoed in the Bisitun inscription50 and
Herodotus (7.11), Cyrus was, like Darius I, a member of the Achaemenid family.51
Current speculations on the ideological and/or ethno-cultural Elamite affinities
of Cyrus line are based on a presumption that the testimony of the Cylinder
which, after all, bears an official stamp of Cyrus approval stands apart from
these other versions, which are largely perceived as popular re-workings of Cyrus
family history among the empires subjects informed by different nationalist
agendas;52 or, in the cases of the laconic Pasargadae inscriptions stating Cyrus
Achaemenid origins, as a part of an elaborate propaganda of legitimation
undertaken by Darius I upon his enthronement.53
Official is not always the same as historically accurate. In as much as
concrete references to the royal connection of Cyrus family with the city of
Anshan only emerge in Cyrus time and in Babylonian sources, it would seem
legitimate to explore the significance of this connection with closer reference to the
44

See de Miroschedji 1985: 291-95; Sumner 1986; de Miroschedji 1990: 52-65; Carter 1994: 6567; Boucharlat 2005: 225-32. Cf. the similar tenor of Hdt. 1.125, with the comments of Briant 1984:
75-76 and 105-108.
45
Potts 2005: 21. In the case of Malyan, however, cf. Sumners (1986: 11) remark that [m]uch
of the western half of the sitecovered by a Sasanian-Islamic depositcould conceal a large
Achaemenid settlement. However, no Achaemenid sherds were found in any of the surface sampling
units.
46
The uncertainties which surround the affiliation of Cyrus family with Anshan cannot be
remedied by means of appeals to the probable Elamite origin of the name Cyrus (and conceivably
of the names Cambyses and Teispes), the implications of which are at least as uncertain (see, in
particular, the observations of Henkelman 2008: 55-57), and to an, at least so far, strictly hypothetical
dichotomy between an Anshanite/Elamite and a Persian political authority in Fars which were
associated, respectively, with Cyrus and Darius families.
47
See, e.g., Briant 1996: 25-26 and 905 (II).
48
Trans. Rawlinson 1942.
49
Jacoby 1961: 90 [Nikolaos von Damaskos] F66.2-4.
50
Kent 1953: 119 (DB I 10).
51
Kent 1953: 116 (CMa, CMb, CMc).
52
For instance, for an interpretation of Herodotus account of Cyrus origins as a piece of
Median propaganda, see, among others, Briant 1984: 75.
53
See, among other discussions by this scholar, Stronach 1997b: 326 and 1997c: 39.

-9-

events of Cyrus reign and the aims of his policy in the Babylonian domain. The
relevance of such an alternative frame of reference is suggested, among others, by
a famous Achaemenid artifact which clearly demonstrates that the official image of
Persian royalty was just as adaptable, as popular accounts of the vitae and gestae of
Persian kings, to the different political and cultural perceptions and expectations
current among the empires subjects.
Darius as a king of Egypt
The magnificent, more-than-life-size statue of Darius the Great, now conserved
in the Tehran Archaeological Museum, was excavated at Susa in 1972.54
Inscriptions on the body of the statue and on the plinth indicate that it was
commissioned in Egypt; it likely stood initially in a temple in Heliopolis, the sacred
city of the Egyptian god Atum mentioned in the texts of the statue.55
The head and part of the upper body are missing, but the remainder of the
statue depicts Darius as a stereotypical Persian monarch.56 In common with
representations of Persian royalty on Achaemenid reliefs, coins and seals, the king
is shown in the pleated ceremonial Persian robe with wide sleeves and possesses a
short, pointed sword placed in a scabbard with scalloped edge.
In the trilingual cuneiform text carved down the pleats on the right side of the
robe,57 the invocations of Darius Iranian patron deity,58 Ahuramazda, the proud
proclamation that the Persian man has conquered Egypt,59 and Darius dynastic
credentials as a great king, king of kings, king of countries, king in this great
earth, son of Hystaspes, an Achaemenian,60 all echo faithfully the tenor of known
inscriptions of Darius in the Persian homeland. The work as a whole, however,
displays a mixture of Persian and Egyptian elements.
Recorded in cuneiform on the pleats of the robe, the name of Darius is also
rendered twice, for instance, on the tassels of the belt in Pharaonic fashion: in the
form of a cartouche with hieroglyphic signs.61 At the same time, in the hieroglyphic
inscriptions and the figured decoration of the base of the statue, Darius status is
adjusted to native Egyptian formulations of royal authority.
On the front and back sides of the plinth, the identical representations of two
fecundity figures, binding together a lotus and a papyrus the plants symbolizing
Upper and Lower Egypt reiterate a traditional Egyptian motif of royal power
which conveyed the notion of the unification of Egypt under one rule.62 Here this
54

See Kervran et al. 1972 and the articles dealing with the excavation, iconography and
inscriptions of the statue in the fourth issue of the Cahiers de la Dlgation Archologique Franaise
en Iran, published in 1974.
55
Yoyotte 1974: 182, lines 1-2 of the hieroglyphic text (texte 2) carved vertically on the pleats
of the robe of Darius.
56
For a detailed analysis of the iconography of the statue, see Stronach 1974 and figs. 20-21.
57
Vallat 1974.
58
Vallat 1974: 162-163, lines 1 and 4 of the Old Persian version and lines 1 and 3 of the Elamite
and Akkadian versions.
59
The notion of conquest emerges more clearly in the Elamite version (Vallat 1974: 163).
Observation owed to David Stronach (personal communication). Cf. Kent 1953: 138 (DNa 4).
60
Vallat 1974: e.g., 162, lines 3 and 4 of the Old Persian version. Cf., e.g., Kent 1953: 138 (DNa
2).
61
Yoyotte 1974: 181 with fig. 24a and pl. XXV.2.
62
For a discussion of this motif, see Roaf 1974: 74 with fig. 22 and pl. XXX.

- 10 -

ancient Egyptian notion is referred to Darius, to whom, as it is stated in the twin

texts carved on either side of the motif, Upper and Lower Egypt were given.63 A
further reference in these texts to all the lands of the plains and the mountains
reunited under [Darius] sandals64 an obvious allusion to Darius status as a
ruler of a world empire finds a matching expression in the Egyptian-style figures
carved on the long sides of the plinth, all representing subject peoples the Persian
empire.65
Remarkably, there are no references in the hieroglyphic texts to Darius
Persian identity, let alone to a Persian domination of Egypt; and even Darius
elsewhere consistent association with the chief Iranian deity, Ahuramazda, is here
replaced by references to his divine affiliation with Atum and Re, divine patrons
par excellence of Egyptian kings.
Although it may be incongruous with representations of Persian royalty in a
homeland Iranian setting, the incorporation of traditional Egyptian motifs in the
statue of Darius was not a unique phenomenon. It is also attested in other known
monuments of the same ruler, which, like the statue, were executed in Egypt and
were addressed to the Egyptian people.66 The sum of these monuments bears
testimony to a substantial dialogue between the Persian and Egyptian worldviews.67
They eloquently express Darius familiarity with and respect for native Egyptian
ideology and Egyptian political sensitivities. Simultaneously, they allude to an alltime imperative to legitimize Persian imperial authority among the empires
subjects by making (strategic) allowances for different local norms of legitimate
rule and different native notions of royal behavior.
There is arguably good reason for proposing that the representation of Cyrus
the Great and his forebears in the Cylinder as kings of the city of Anshan was
meant to address analogous delicate ideological requirements, this time, in a
Mesopotamian context.
The inscription of the Cylinder of Cyrus as a text of legitimation
As a number of earlier commentators have pointed out, the utterances of the Cyrus
Cylinder reverberate with the notion of Cyrus legitimate right to rule and are cast
in accordance with traditional Mesopotamian expressions of legitimate kingship.68
Royal descent and divine sanction were universal qualifications for legitimate
kingship. These qualifications are articulated in the Cylinder by the proems
reference (lines 11-12) to Cyrus as a ruler chosen by Marduk (the chief god of the
Neo-Babylonian pantheon) and by overlapping assertions, made later on in the text,
63

Yoyotte 1974: 183, texte 4, line 3.

Yoyotte 1974: 183, texte 4, line 2.
65
A detailed analysis is offered by Roaf 1974, with fig. 23 and pls. XXXI-XXXVI.
66
See, for instance, the stelai erected along Darius canal connecting the Nile with the Red Sea,
Posener 1936: 51, 66, 180-81 and pls. IV and V, and the commentary of Roaf 1974: 79-84. For
further examples and commentary, see Briant 1996: 490-500 and 973-75.
67
Concerning the dialogue in general between the ideology, arts, and practices of the Persians,
on the one hand, and their various subjects, on the other hand, see, among others, Root 1979 and
Briant 1987.
68
See, in particular, Kuhrt 1983 (stressing, like Harmatta [1974] before her, the particularly
close stylistic parallels of the Cylinder text with the Babylonian inscriptions of the Assyrian monarch
Ashurbanipal) and 2007: 173-76.
64

- 11 -

that Cyrus was at once the son, grandson, and descendant of kings, as well as
the eternal seed of royalty (lines 20-22).
Reference to Marduk (rather than to Cyrus own Iranian god[s]) as the divinity
that made Cyrus a world ruler (lines 11-12) is a telling indication of the particular
Babylonian perspective from which Cyrus legitimacy is interpreted in this context.
It is a perspective that surfaces unerringly throughout the text.
Articulated as programmatic announcements of the new lord of Babylon and
certainly consistent with the spirit of Persian imperial proclamations statements
of respect and restoration (e.g., lines 22, 25-26, 30-32)69 were also germane to
traditional Mesopotamian formulations of legitimate kingship from the third
millennium onward.
The elaborate royal titulary, with which Cyrus was endowed upon his
accession to the throne of Babylon, was also meant to confer upon Cyrus authority
the widest possible gamut of historical Mesopotamian protocols of sovereignty.
Proclaimed king of the universe, the great king, the powerful king, king of
Babylon, king of Sumer and Akkad, king of the four quarters of the world (line
20), Cyrus, a newcomer to Mesopotamia, was effectively assuming legitimate
succession to all major regimes that had arisen in the land between the Tigris and
the Euphrates in the course of the preceding millennia.
Although it points specifically to western Iranian and, in particular, Elamite
rather than Mesopotamian dynastic realities, the identification of Cyrus as a king
of the city of Anshan was perhaps the most crucial touch to the elaborate
representation of Cyrus as a normative Mesopotamian ruler. It arguably supplied
a basis for accommodating a further important requirement for legitimate kingship
over Mesopotamia. This requirement can be traced as far back as the late third
millennium BC.
The testimony of the Sumerian King List and Herodotus
The Sumerian King List,70 probably composed around 2100 BC, but known from
later copies from Mesopotamia and Susa, offers a description of the origins and
early history of kingship in Mesopotamia.
The text comprises two main sections, which purport to document,
respectively, the chronological order in which different cities and rulers held power
in Mesopotamia before and after the Flood, giving specific numbers of years for
the regnal period(s) of each city and (usually) each individual king. There is a
repetitive pattern. In the beginning of each section it is stated that kingship
descended from heaven to a particular city (at first, at Eridu; then, after the Flood,
at Kish). The transfer of power from one city to another is expressed by fixed
formulae: city X fell and the kingship was taken to city Y, in the section relating
events before the Flood; or city X was defeated and the kingship was taken to city
Y, for the period after the Flood. A summary, concluding each section, gives the
total number of cities and kings that ruled before and after the Flood, and the
overall time span during which kingship was exercised. Thus, in 5 cities 8 kings
ruled for 241200 years before the Flood (lines 36-39); and there were 11 cities
69

Cf. Kent 1953: 120 (DB I 14).

Jacobsen 1939 is the classic treatment of the List. Here references are to The Electronic Text
Corpus of Sumerian Literature, in http://www-etcsl.orient.ox.ac.uk/section2/tr211.htm.
70

- 12 -

in which the kingship was exercised, and a total of 134 (or 139) kings, who ruled
(according to the more extensively preserved text) for over 28876 (or 3443?) years
after the Flood (lines 426-30).
There is little to commend the overall commitment of the List to historical
accuracy.71 The statement that kingship descended from heaven is difficult to
interpret as an objective description of the circumstances that led to the emergence
of sovereign rule. Quoted in figures of over 18000 and up to 43200 years (lines 135), individual reign lengths before the Flood are obviously entirely fictitious; and
the same holds true of subsequent, lesser reign lengths (of, e.g., over 100 and up to
1200 years, lines 43-129) down to the third millennium (i.e., the first rule of Unug
[Uruk]). The personalities and activities of some of the rulers mentioned are the
stuff of legend (e.g., lines 112-114: Gilgamesh, whose father was a phantom (?),
the lord of Kulaba). The idea of the transmission of rule over the span of millennia
in a single sequence of cities, which held power in (linear) succession to one
another, also appears to follow a convention that did not acknowledge the existence
of rival political authorities. In a sense, there may not have even existed a
standard version acceptable to all cities in all periods. Variations, observed
among the different copies with respect to the arrangement of the entries and the
details of the summaries, might speak for the simultaneous currency of different
interpretations of the history of kingship in Mesopotamia that were meant to
privilege the respective cities in which the various copies were composed and/or
the dynastic interests of different kings. Despite its partially dubious standing,
however, as a document about early Mesopotamian political history, the Sumerian
King List offers valuable perspectives on timeless principles of the Mesopotamian
royal tradition.
Set to around 2100 BC, the initial composition of the text would belong to a
time when the several, initially autonomous Mesopotamian cities had already
experienced unification under one rule. It has long been suggested, therefore, that
the primary purpose of the account was to demonstrate that [Sumer] had always
been united under one king though these kings were ruling successively in
different capitals.72
The contents of this famous account, however, also lead to important
inferences about fundamental notions of ancient Mesopotamian kingship: namely,
that in the Mesopotamian worldview there was only ever a single, divinely
sanctioned (and, hence, legitimate) line of kingship; and the right to rule was,
above all, the prerogative of cities.
Down to the first half of the first millennium, Mesopotamian documents testify
to the rise to power locally of different ethnic/linguistic groups. The boundaries of
Mesopotamian political control also fluctuated with time, encompassing at the
height of the Neo-Assyrian empire a very substantial part of the Near East. The
notion, however, that the (same!) kingship which had descended from heaven
was transferred from city to city was perpetuated, projecting an impression that the
71

Among earlier commentaries concerning the tendentious character of this composition, see
Michalowski 1983, with references.
72
Pritchard 1969: 265. For the history of this interpretation, see Michalowski 1983: 240, who
further argues (p. 242) that the emergence of [t]he fiction that each city in Mesopotamia in turn held
the bala, the turn of office was due, to begin with, to the inability of the rulers of Isin to base their
claims to legitimate rule on a proper genealogical charter.

- 13 -

succession of different states, and even different ethnic groups, to power in

Mesopotamia was largely a matter of a geographical relocation of the seat of rule.
This Mesopotamian interpretation of the right to rule arguably survived
down to the time of Cyrus and is echoed, outside the Mesopotamian sphere, by a
passage in the work of the fifth-century Greek historian Herodotus. In Histories
Book 1, prefacing a brief account of the history of Babylon and a narrative of
Cyrus capture of this city, Herodotus indicates that, in the time of Cyrus, Babylon
was the most famous and the strongest of the numerous, great polismata of
Assyria, as well as the city (polis) where the royal dwelling (or the kingship73)
was established after Nineveh was laid waste.74
By the term Assyria Herodotus is obviously designating in this instance, not
just the territory of the Assyrian heartland around the city of Ashur in northern
Mesopotamia, but the wider Mesopotamian region the quintessential land of
numerous, great cities, including Babylon. The city of Nineveh, whose fall is
mentioned in the text, was the very last major capital of the Neo-Assyrian state. Its
destruction was brought about by a joint Babylonian and Median assault in 612 BC
and had spelt the final demise of Assyrian power. On the other hand, in the time of
Cyrus to which the passage refers (some seven decades after the fall of Nineveh),
Babylon was the center of power of the extended Neo-Babylonian kingdom an
entity that had a patently non-Assyrian political identity and had emerged
following the collapse of Assyria. Strictly speaking, Herodotus designation of
Mesopotamia by the term Assyria is anachronistic.75 The passage, referring to
Babylon, in Cyrus time, as a city of Assyria and as the successor capital (in
Assyria) to Nineveh, would also appear to be confounding two distinct historical
eras and two distinct kingdoms.
The description, however, of Babylon (the political center of the NeoBabylonian kingdom) as the successor to Nineveh (which was the last capital of the
preceding Assyrian empire) can be easily explained on the basis of the fundamental
notion, repeatedly evoked in the Sumerian King List, of a single legitimate
kingship that passed from one Mesopotamian city to another a political
continuum to which a further allusion might be recognized in the Herodotean
reference to the numerous great cities that existed in Assyria, of which
Babylon was the the most famous and the strongest in Cyrus time.
73

For this sense, see Powell 1960: s.v. : , (2).

Hdt. 1.178.1: ,
,
.
75
This is not the place to elaborate on the complex historiographic background of Herodotus
anachronistic reference to Mesopotamia which, properly speaking, was Babylonian territory at the
time by the name of the long obsolete Assyrian state. Considering the phenomenal expansion of
the Assyrian empire and its lasting impact on the Near Eastern world, it is possible, for instance, that
Herodotus references to Babylon and Mesopotamia as an Assyrian domain reflect actual NeoBabylonian claims of legitimate inheritance of the former Assyrian realm (and perhaps also echo
intense, centennial processes of homogenization (Assyrianization) [Parpola 2004] in the territories
under Assyrian rule?). Or, Herodotus characterization of the Babylonians as Assyrians could derive
from an Iranian interpretation of the succession of kingdoms in Asia, which, like the Sumerian King
List, did not acknowledge parallel rules, and which co-opted the Neo-Babylonian kingdom into the
Assyrian regime taken over by the Medes. For a more detailed presentation of these suggestions,
see Zournatzi, in press.
74

- 14 -

The spirit of the Sumerian King List was very much alive when Cyrus
conquered Babylon, and when the text of his Babylonian Cylinder was composed.76
Even without direct evidence to this effect, it is most unlikely that the timeless
prescripts of the List on the nature of Mesopotamian kingship would have been
overridden in the context of representations of Cyrus as a legitimate king of
Mesopotamia addressed to a Mesopotamian audience. This brings us back to the
perplexing characterization of Cyrus and his forebears as kings of the city of
Anshan.
Cyrus the Great as a city ruler
As we have seen, there is no indication beyond the evidence in the Babylonian
record to the effect that any of Cyrus ancestors identified themselves as rulers of
Anshan or that they actually ruled from the city of Anshan. Barring the latter
possibility, the archaeological and written record77 does not allow certainty, either,
that the traditional Mesopotamian definition of kingship as the prerogative of cities
could be fulfilled in a concrete manner by the circumstances of Persian settlement
in Fars unless one takes into account Cyrus royal capital at Pasargadae, the
earliest known Persian city and a setting appropriate for royalty in terms of
Mesopotamian standards. Following these leads to Cyrus time, one could suggest
that, in the particular formulation of Cyrus title as king of the city of Anshan
attested in the Cylinder, Anshan was an alias for Pasargadae,78 whose beginning
date of construction cannot be determined with precision but is currently estimated
by David Stronach to some five years before Cyrus conquest of Babylon.79
Be that as it may, the uncertainties which surround the testimony of the ancient
record should not stand in the way of appreciating at least the abstract, ideological
value of the dynastic association of Cyrus with the city of Anshan in a
specifically Mesopotamian political context, and especially in a text whose various
details aimed to promote an image of Cyrus as a legitimate Mesopotamian king.
Owing to the venerable place of Anshan in the political history of Fars and the
Elamite world at large, Anshanite royal titulary might well have been a part of
official representations of Cyrus royal authority in a western Iranian/Elamite
environment before his conquest of Babylon. The special emphasis on Cyrus
dynastic association with the city (rather than the land) of Anshan in the
Cylinder might also be presupposed by the Middle Elamite royal title king of
Anshan and Susa, which was revived in the Neo-Elamite period, and which, as
76

Further reflections of the presence of the mentality of the King List in a Babylonian
environment down to the era of Cyrus might be offered by the usual title, king of Babylon, of NeoBabylonian rulers. According to Harmatta (1974: 36), this title which sounds very modest by
comparison to the expansive Assyrian royal titularies would imply a Neo-Babylonian awareness
that their kingdom (then in the shadow, as he states, of the powerful Median empire) could not
aspire to grandeur. The seemingly modest title king of Babylon might have possessed, however,
great prestige through an alignment with the age-old Mesopotamian perception of legitimate kingship
as the prerogative of cities.
77
See above, p. 7 and n. 44.
78
Cf. the statement of Potts (1999: 311) that Cyrus founded a new Anshanite capital at
Pasargadae. An ancient perception of Pasargadae as the city of Anshan could have emerged from a
similar reasoning.
79
Stronach 2008: 168.

- 15 -

Wouter Henkelman considers, clearly refers to the two capital cities.80 The point
is, however, that a characterization of Cyrus as a king of Anshan, and in particular
of its capital city, would have been especially apt in the context of a representation
of Cyrus as a normative Mesopotamian monarch. Anshan had been charted as a
part of the wider Mesopotamian political realm from as early as the third
millennium,81 and the important urban history of the city of Anshan certainly
fulfilled the Mesopotamian urban requirement for legitimate rule. Whether or not
the depiction of Cyrus and his forebears as city rulers agreed with historical
realities, from the perspective of the Mesopotamian apologists of Cyrus accession
to the Mesopotamian throne, an association of Cyrus line with the city of Anshan
could be justified (just as it could be in a western Iranian/Elamite environment) by
the undeniable fact of Persian settlement in the territory of this once prominent
Elamite center.
Cyrus characterization as a king of the city of Anshan in the Cylinder would
have linked the new, foreign lord of Babylon with the earliest strata of
Mesopotamian political existence.82 Like the rest of the utterances of the Cylinder,
it would have been aimed to summon local respect for Persian rule by enabling the
adoption of Cyrus in the native Mesopotamian continuum of kingship.
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