A Companion to the Achaemenid Persian Empire, 2 Volume Set. Группа авторов. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

Автор: Группа авторов
Издательство: John Wiley & Sons Limited
Серия:
Жанр произведения: История
Год издания: 0
isbn: 9781119071655
Скачать книгу
stage when the Assyrian Empire fights a final struggle for existence in the last third of the seventh century BCE. Our main source for these events is a Babylonian chronicle, the so‐called “Fall of Nineveh Chronicle” (Grayson 2000: pp. 90–96). Although the Chronicle reveals a Babylonian perspective on the events, it does not deny that it was not only the Babylonian forces under their usurper king Nabopolassar (626–605 BCE) that brought the Assyrian super power to an end but a coalition of Medes and Babylonians, who even concluded a formal treaty of alliance (Rollinger 2003a, 2010; Fuchs 2014). The Medes are described as Ummān‐manda and led by a certain Umakištar (Cyaxares in Greek). Obviously they “descend” to Assyria but the origin and reach of Umakištar's reign remain obscure. They destroy the city of Assur in 614 BCE and, together with the Babylonians, Nineveh in 612. With this event Umakištar disappears again from the historical scene, although some Medes may have participated in the Neo‐Babylonian campaign to the last Neo‐Assyrian residence Harran to deliver the failing Assyrians their final blow (Rollinger 2003a).

      With this event the Medes do not disappear from cuneiform sources. Media has a coda in Darius' Bisitun inscription (Rollinger 2005). It figures as a kind of supra‐regional entity reaching from eastern Anatolia to central western Iran and farther to the east, and as far as the southern Caspian Sea. At first glance, one may take this as evidence for the extension of a former Median “empire.” But a closer look reveals that this is still a politically fragmentary and heterogeneous area, where several individual uprisings with different usurpers took place, only one claiming to be a descendant of the already legendary Umakištar. This evidence is thus best explained as a reflection of the reach of a very short‐termed confederation that owes its brief existence mainly to the special historical circumstances around the fall of the Neo‐Assyrian Empire.

      King Cyrus (II) of Parsu mustered his army and crossed the Tigris downstream from Arbēla (Erbil) and, in the month of Iyyar, [march]ed to X [???]. / He defeated its king (or: put its king to death), seized its possessions, [and] set up his own garrison [there]. After that, the king and his garrison resided there

      (Nabonidus Chroncile ii 15–18; Grayson 2000: p. 107).

      We know that Darius I and Xerxes set up inscriptions not only in their favorite residences, like Persepolis and Susa, but also in residences of those former political entities that were conquered by Cyrus and in which the early Achaemenids presented themselves as true and legitimate successors of their Teispid predecessors (Rollinger 2015: pp. 118–120). This is true for Hamadan and Babylon, for example, but also for Van. The inscription placed at a steep rocky flank of the former Urartian capital was obviously tremendously important, for Xerxes explicitly mentions that his father Darius already intended its construction, but only he was able to achieve this. The inscription only makes sense, however, if the choice of the location commemorates the former capital of a substantial political entity that ended through Teispid conquest. Together with the evidence from the Nabonidus Chronicle, this means that in the