PREHISTORIC IRAN
LONG before the great plateau was called Iran, it was well popuJ lated. Obsidian flakes have been found under the alluvial deposits from the last glacial period, while men of the late Stone Age left their crude flint implements in the open. By the fifth pre-Christian millennium, numerous tiny hamlets sheltered a peaceful agricultural population, which satisfied its aesthetic instincts through fine wheelmade pots decorated with superb painting; an elaborate though lively conventionalization of native flora and fauna betrayed more interest ‘in beauty of design than in exact representation and set the pattern for all subsequent art on the plateau. Burned settlements and changes in pottery styles indicate population shifts.1 Only Elam on the west affords us writing and, therefore, history,2 though tablets from the middle of the plateau inscribed in Elamite pictographs3 suggest that the same language was spoken there as at Susa, Elam’s most important city.
For further information on these early peoples, we turn to the Videvdat, the “Antidemonic Law/’ Although its form as it appears in the Avesta was written down shortly before our own era, it still retains the essential features of this prehistoric culture.4 At first view, it is a pleasant world in which we meet the housemaster richly endowed with cattle, fodder, hound, wife, child, fire, milk, and all good things, with grain, grass, and trees bearing every variety of fruit.
Waste lands were irrigated by the underground qanat9 and there was an increase of flocks and herds and plenty of natural fertilizer. But to obtain these blessings hard work was demanded: sowing and planting and laborious construction of the underground water channels. It was a world in which there was no place for the slothful.
We hear of skins in use for clothing or of woven cloth, of tents made of feeling such as those yet found in Central Asia, and of houses of wood like those which have left the ash mounds in the Urumia plain. We might rhapsodize over the high position of the dog, elsewhere in the Orient degraded and unclean, but on the plateau treated as an honoured member of the family with definite responsibilities and corresponding rewards. We might prepare to rejoice with the peasants when the long snowbound winter was over and the birds began to fly, the plants to spring up, the torrents to flow down the hills, and the winds to dry the earth,8 but we should completely misunderstand their mood.
EARLY RELIGIONS
Physically, the inhabitants belonged to their own subdivision of the Mediterranean race. Culturally, they were more akin to the peoples of Central Asia, especially in their religious thinking. Greek writers tell us something of the culture of primitive peoples who still survived to their day along the southern shore of the Black Sea; in the disposal of their dead in particular, they present strange analogies to the practices of the Antidemonic Law.
For example, among the Derbices, men over seventy were killed and eaten by their kinsfolk, and old women were strangled and buried; men so unfortunate as to die before seventy were merely inhumed. Among the Caspians, who gave their name to the sea formerly called Hyrcanian,10 those over seventy were starved. Corpses were exposed in a desert place and observed. If carried from the bier by vultures, the dead were considered most fortunate, less so if taken by wild beasts or dogs; but it was the height of misfortune if the bodies remained untouched. In Bactria, farther east, equally disgusting practices continued until Alexander’s invasion. The sick and aged were thrown while still alive to waiting dogs called in their language “burial details.” Piles of bones within the walls testified to burial customs quite as grim.
To understand the reason for these practices, set out in all their grisly minutiae by the Antidemonic Law, we must turn to read the still vaster magical literature of the Sumerians, immigrants into Babylonia from Central Asia, or the modern accounts of the Shamanism found to this day in the same regions.
To Magian thinking in its earliest form, there were no true gods, only a numberless horde of evil demons who constantly threatened the lives of the unhappy peasants and whose malign attacks could be prevented only by rites of aversion. Their home was in the north, from which more human enemies also threatened; after the Iranian conquest of Iran we are not surprised to find the Aryan storm-god Indra included among these demons.1As in Babylonia, the majority of the fiends were without name: “Perish, demon fiend! Perish, demon tribe! Perish, demon-created! Perish, demon-begotten! In the north shall you perish!’* Others personify the various forms of illness: “Thee, Sickness, I ban; thee, Death, I ban; thee, Fever, I ban; thee, Evil Eye, I ban,” and so on through a long series. Many more can be driven away if the worshiper knows the demon’s names;15 of these, the most dangerous is Aeshma, “Drunkenness.” One demon prohibits rain; there are fiends who seize the man’s incautiously trimmed hair and pared nails and from them raise lice to eat the grain and clothing.
Chief of all the demons was Angra Mainyu, the “Evil Spirit” without qualification, the creator of all things evil and of noxious animals; for this reason the Magi accumulated high merit by killing the earthly representatives of these evil spirits—ants, snakes, creeping things, frogs, and birds—by stopping up their burrows and destroying their homes. It is also through the incantations of the Magi, fortified by perfumes and the magic furrow,19 that man was freed from his ailments and his uncleanness.
But powerful as was the Evil Spirit and his hordes of demons, in daily life the most feared was the Nasu Druj, the “Corpse Fiend,” to whom the greater part of the Antidemonic Law refers. Burial or cremation of the dead might be practiced by neighbors or enemies, but such easy disposal was not for the followers of the Magi. Despite all precautions, it was inevitable that the Corpse Fiend should envelop the living with her corruption, infection, and pollution. From the very instant when breath left the body, the corpse was unclean, for the Corpse Fiend hovered over to injure the survivors. Only by the most rigid observance of the prescribed ritual was their safety: the dead must not pollute holy earth or water; corpses must be exposed, carefully tied down by feet and hair, on the highest points of land where they could be devoured by dogs and vultures. Only when the bones had been thus freed from all dead and therefore dangerous matter might they be collected in an ossuary (astodan) with holes to permit the dead man still to look upon the sun. This taint of the charnel-house permeates the whole later Zoroastrian literature and, with the host of malignant spirits, makes it depressing reading.
THE INFLUENCE OF GEOGRAPHICAL FEATURES
The majority of the Aryans left their homes in southern Russia for the plains of Central Asia; only the near-Iranian Scyths and a few genuine Aryans remained there. The Hyrcanians settled along the northern slope of Alborz and the coastal plain below, south of the sea to which they gave their name. This plain, slightly below sea-level and swept by torrential rains up to sixty inches per year, was semitropical, but dense forests on the slopes sheltered the lion and tiger for hunting. Other Iranians ascended the plateau, rimmed in by mountains on every side. To the west towered Zagros; on the north Alborz.
Eastward the plateau rose steadily to the roof of the world in the Himalayas, while a lower range shut off the southern ocean. Within this rim, lesser ranges separated the subdivisions, which varied only to the degree in which the common elements in them—mountain, desert, and fertile strip—were combined. In the centre were great deserts, difficult to traverse and covered in part by salt lakes, in part by brownish-red, salt-impregnated soil.
Equally barren were the mountains, generally devoid of trees or even shrubs. Between mountain and desert was good soil, needing only water—but the water was a rare and precious treasure. If the mountains shut off potential enemies, they also shut off the rains; only through such passes as that between Resht and Qazvin could a few clouds penetrate. Here the rainfall might reach eight inches; elsewhere, as at Isfahan, four inches or less. Nowhere was this rainfall sufficient to bring crops to maturity, but melting snows, fortunately, ran down from the barrier mountains.
During the greater portion of the year, the sun blazed with intense heat from a cloudless sky. By September the air cooled a trifle; by November the nights were uncomfortably cool. Autumn rains were followed by mists and snows and finally fierce blizzards, creeping down lower and lower from the mountains until they reached the plain. The midday sun, when seen, remained hot, and thawed out sufferers frozen by night. By January the passes were filled, and villages hidden in the snows were isolated for the winter. In spring the snows melted almost without warning. Their waters poured down the bare slopes, destroying the trails and once more isolating the villagers. The stream beds were filled with roaring waters, each precious drop utilized by the irrigation ditches until again the beds were dry.
Thereafter water was sought in the seemingly dry hills; lest the precious fluid is lost by evaporation, it had to be carried underground in qanats. Thus, at a tremendous expenditure of time and labour, a few more square feet of the former desert were won for cultivation. This eternal search for water left a permanent impress on the Persian mind. In the sacred Avesta, hymning Anahita, goddess of a thousand rills, and in later poetry, singing the joy of flowing stream and garden, the theme is constantly repeated. To strangers from happier lands, the rivers may appear insignificant, the rows of poplars, cypresses, and plane trees scant, the garden “paradise” sickly; the contrast with desert, bare plain, and snow-capped peaks is needed to render them beautiful.
CONQUEST BY NORTHERN HORDES
Archeology shows the first trace of the northerner when the fine, painted pottery of the earliest inhabitants is supplanted by a bettermade pottery of a funereal black. Judging from their skulls, Nordic tribes make their appearance. Fresh hordes continue to drift down. A great fortified structure is built at Damghan; it is assaulted and taken. The bodies of the men who defended this fortress, with those of their wives and children, have been found by the excavator on the spot where they perished.
Episodes from the conquest of Iran, well mixed with good Aryan mythology, are found in the earliest sections of the Yashts; there we read the first version of the Persian traditional history, best known to the West through the magnificent epic, the Shah Nameh or “Book of Kings,” produced by the great Moslem poet Firdausi.
The story begins with Gaya Maretan (Gayomarth), “Mortal Man,” who was ancestor of the Aryan people. Next comes Haoshyaha (Hosheng), the first king of the Paradata (Peshdadyan) dynasty, who from a mount to the east named Hara conquered the demons of Mazana and the fiends of Varena.26 This is generally considered a reminiscence of the subjugation of the spirit worshipers of Varkana or Hyrcania (later Mazandaran). However this may be, we do know that Zadrakarta, the capital of Hyrcania in Iranian days, was probably located on a mound whose partial excavation has shown repeated settlements of Iranians over native sites of a still earlier period.
Next to Haoshyaha followed Yima, the good shepherd, son of Vivahvant, who first pressed out the sacred haoma juice. In Yitna’s reign there was neither cold nor heat, neither old age nor death, for he brought to man immortality. He also freed man from hunger and thirst, teaching the food animals what they should eat and preventing the plants from drying up. But although he lived on the sacred mount Hukairya near the sea Vouru-kasha, the Iranian Paradise, he sinned—Zoroaster later was to declare that his sin consisted in giving to men flesh of the cattle to eat30—and Yima himself was sawed asunder by his wicked brother Spityura. Another brother, however, Takhma Urupa, succeeded in riding over the earth for thirty years the evil spirit, Angra Mainyu, who took the form of a horse.
At this time Azi Dahaka, the three-headed, three-mouthed, six-eyed dragon, with the thousand senses, carried off Yima’s two beautiful daughters and made them his wives; the dragon was killed and the ladies were rescued by Thraetaona (Fcridun), son of Athwya, from Varena, now safely Aryan. A second exploit of the hero Thraetaona was related, telling how he hurled into the air the wise seaman Paurva in the guise of a vulture.
Keresaspa, son of Sama, was a hero who avenged the death of his brother Urvakhshaya, the judge and lawgiver, by killing the assassin Hitaspa and carrying home the corpse in his own chariot. To him also was attributed the slaughter of various enemies both human and monster, like the golden-heeled Gandareva, who lived in the sea Vouru-kasha, and the poisonous yellow sea serpent on whose broad back Keresaspa unwittingly cooked his meal. Hitaspa bears a good Iranian name; perhaps he was an enemy nomad, a Turanian. The next enemy mentioned is also a Turanian: Frangrasyan (Afrasiab), who from his cleft in the earth swam across Vouru-kasha in a vain attempt to steal the Awful Royal Glory which conferred sovereignty. Captured and bound by a loyal vassal, he was brought to be slain by the Kavi Haosravah (Kai Khosrau).
Thus the Kavis, the local kinglets, enter the traditional history. Of the eight members of the dynasty listed, we learn more only of the founder Kavi Kavata (Kai Kobad), of his son Kavi Usan (Kai Kaus), possesser of stallions and camels and controller of the ship-bearing sea, and of Kavi Haosravah (Kai Khosrau), who came from the salt sea Chaechasta (Lake Urumia), subdued the Aryan lands, and became a great hero.
THE EARLIEST MEDES AND PERSIANS
Medes and Persians are first discovered in written annals when in 836 the Assyrian, Shalmaneser III, received tribute from kings of “Parsua,” west of Lake Urumia, and reached the lands of the “Mada” southeast of its waters. Henceforth the two peoples are frequently mentioned. By 820, Shamshi-Adad V found them in what is now called Parsuash, well to the south beyond modern Kirmanshah. In 737 Tiglath-pileser III invaded the original Parsua and received tribute from Median chiefs as far east as Mount Bikni, the *’mountain of lapis lazuli,” as he named majestic Demavend from the deep blue of its snow-covered peak.
These two groups of Iranians were still on the move. Each mountain valley held its tribe, ruled from a high battlemented tower by a “king” who now and then paid tribute to Assyria—when compelled by an inroad. Parts of the Median country were formed into a province, though its boundaries were fluctuating and it was never effectively organized. Subject to raids, the other Medes and all the Persians retained their full independence. Through the whole of their earlier history the Iranians were primarily pastoral, though agriculture was not neglected. Almost contemporary Zoroastrian writings divide the people into fourfold local units, the home (demand), the clan (vis), the district ([shoithra), and the land (dahyu).39 Socially, there is a threefold division: kbvaetu> vm%tna> and airyaman.40 Only the last represented the ruling class, which was subdivided into priest (athravan), chariot-driving noble (rathatshtar), herdsman (vastrya fshuyant), and artisan (huiti). Apparently the lower classes were recognized as distinct in race, for the name of the caste was “color” (jtishtra).
One of the local Median kinglets, Daiaukku by name, was captured and deported to Syria in 715; he is the same Deioces whom tradition made founder of the Median empire! The next traditional ruler is Cyaxares I; he is the Uaksatar who paid Sargon tribute in 714; in the time of Sennacherib, in 702, he himself attacked the Assyrian province of Harhar. Contingents from Parsuash and Anzan opposed Sennacherib at Halulina in 681; presumably their leader was that Achaemenes (Hakhamanish) whom later monarchs claimed as eponymous ancestor and who gave his name to the whole Achaemenid dynasty.43 His son Teispes (Chishpish) was “great king, king of the city Anshan”—-as the more ancient Anzan was now called, still located northwest of Susa on the Kerkha River, but at present lost to the Elamites. Obviously, the Persians were still on their way south.
Born to Teispes were two sons—Ariaramnes (Ariyaramna) and Cyrus (Kurash) I. A gold tablet of the former shows that Persian was already written in cuneiform; if the suggestion came from Assyria or Elam, there was no direct imitation in the script. For the first time in cuneiform writing, each word was set off by a diagonal wedge. Ideograms for king, earth, land, god, and for the chief god Ahuramazda followed the method (though not the form) of the neighbor-scripts.
The remaining signs afforded a crude alphabet. Three signs for a, /, and u poorly represented the wealth of Iranian vowels. Twenty-two were syllables in which a was preceded by a consonant; in four signs an /-vowel followed a consonant, in seven, a //-vowel. When sometimes these vowels were not pronounced, the sign possessed a purely consonantal value.
THE RELIGION OF THE IRANIANS
Iranian religion44 had thus far remained simple Aryan nature worship of daevas, or true gods. At the head of the pantheon stood the sky, whose name of Dyaosh was cognate of the Greek Zeus; more often he was the ”Lord,” Ahura, or the “Wise,” Mazdah. In time these manifestations of the supreme power were united as AhuraMazdah, the “Wise Lord.”45 “Says Ariyaramnes the king: This land Parsa which I hold, which possesses good horses and men, the great god Ahuramazda granted me. By the favor of Ahuramazda I am king of this land. May Ahuramazda bring me help.” Thus was set the
formulary for kings to come.
Second only to the all-embracing sky was Mithra, worshiped long since by fellow-Iranians in Mitanni and by other Aryans in India. Like all the Iranian Yazatas, he was a god of the open air. In one of his numerous manifestations he was the Sun himself, in modern proverb the “poor man’s friend,” so welcome after the cold nights of winter, so terrible in summer when all vegetation parched. Other passages connect him with the night sky. Again, he was first of the gods, the Dawn, who appeared over Hara, Mount Alborz, before the undying swift-horsed Sun; he was therefore the first to climb the beautiful gold-adorned heights from which he looked down upon all the mighty Aryan countries that owed to him their peace and well-being. Over these Aryan lands ruled Mithra as lord of broad pastures. It was he who protected the columns of the high-built house and made firm the doorposts. To the house with which he was pleased he granted herds of cattle and male children, beautiful women and chariots, and well-spread cushions. For his people he was the god of justice, and when his name was used as a common noun it was synonymous with “agreement,” of whose execution he was protector. He could not be deceived, for his thousand ears and ten thousand eyes were spies which were ever watching the breaker of the agreement.
The poor man, robbed of his rights, prayed to him with uplifted hands; whether his cry was loud or a whisper, it went over the whole earth and ascended to heaven, where it was heard by Mithra, who brought quick retribution, such as leprosy, on the offender.46 No priest was needed for his worship; the master of the house invoked Mithra with libations and the haoma drink, the “Averter of Death/’ Part of the devotions to him consisted of nocturnal sacrifice of a bull,47 for Mithra could be as evil for his creatures as he could be good. Similar animal sacrifices continued to be offered into Achaemenid times. At the New Year’s Day, Nesaean horses were offered in his honor; they represented the sacred white horses of his solar chariot.48 Once a year, on the Mithra festival, the Achaemenid ruler was obliged to become drunk on the intoxicating haoma and dance the “Persian/* a survival
of the war dance of more primitive days.49 But it was as the war-god that Mithra was most vigorously and most picturesquely invoked by the still untamed Aryans. By force they had won the plateau and by force they had to defend it against the aborigines. The hymn devoted to Mithra pictures the peaceful herdsmen attacked by flights of eagle-feathered arrows shot from well-bent bows, of sharp spears affixed to long shafts, and of slingstones, and by daggers and clubs of the Mediterranean type. Even more dangerous were the spells sent against them by the followers of the Magi.
We see the bodies pierced, the bones crushed, and the villages laid waste, while the cattle are dragged beside the victor’s chariot into captivity in the gorges occupied by the opponents of Mithra. The hymn continues, as the lords of the land invoke Mithra when ready to march out against the bloodthirsty foe, drawn up for battle on the border between the two contending lands. The men on horseback pray to Mithra and the drivers ask strength for their teams, for, like all early Aryan nobles, they still fight from their chariots. In his residence on high, shining Haraiti, the mountain with many gorges, Mithra hears their cry for aid. As the evildoer approaches, with rapid step he quickly yokes the four shining horses to the pole of his golden solar chariot; these horses are all of the same white color, shod with gold and silver, and immortal because fed with ambrosia. Against the weapons of the demon worshipers, Mithra has affixed to the chariot sides a thousand well-made bows, a thousand gold-tipped, hornshafted arrows, whose vulture feathers pollute as well as pierce the enemy, a thousand sharp spears, a thousand two-edged battle-axes of steel, a thousand two-edged swords, a thousand iron maces for hurling, and a huge club, cast from the yellow metal, with a hundred bosses and a hundred cutting faces. Of their own volition all these fly down through the air onto the skulls of the demons and their followers.
Standing up in his chariot, swinging the whip, and brandishing his club, Mithra, protected by a silver helmet and a gold cuirass, plunges down against the enemy, and by his superior power wards off the weapons and the curses of the liars against his majesty.60 He does not go alone. To his right marches forth Sraosha, “Obedience” (to the feudal levy), beautiful, powerful, and armed with another mighty club.51 On his left goes tall, strong Rashnu, the “Truest True,” god of the ordeal.62 Around him are the waters, the plants, and the Fravashis, the souls of the dead ancestors.53 Before im runs the god Victory, Verethraghna, in the form of a sharp-toothed, sharp-jawed boar with limbs of iron; accompanied by the goddess of bravery, he clings to the fleeing foe with dripping face until he has snapped the backbone, the column of life and the source of life’s strength, until he has cut to pieces the limbs and mingled with earth the bones, the hair, the brains, and the blood of those who have lied to Mithra.64
But Verethraghna had other manifestations: he was the Wind (Vata or Vayu), the gold-horned Bull, the gold-eared Horse, the Camel, the Raven, the wild Ram, the Buck; or he might appear as youth or mature man. Not only did he give victory to the Aryans and protect the sacred Ox Soul; in addition, he granted to men virility and health.55 Though sometimes usurped by Mithra,56 to Verethraghna belonged of right the bestowal and withdrawal of the Awful Royal Glory (Khvarenah) when he appeared in the form of the Wind or of the Bull.
It was a concept which was to dominate political thought in later political theory.57 There were other gods among the nature-worshiping Aryans, of whom we catch occasional glimpses. Among the most honored was Tishtrya, the brilliant white Sirius, lord and overseer of all the stars, who in the clear air of the plateau shone so brightly. As the year came to an end, all awaited his rising, from the aged counselor among men to the wild beasts of the hills and the tame ones of the plain, and they wondered: “Will he bring a good year for the Aryans?” He delayed, and in their disappointment they asked: “When will the bright glorious Tishtrya arise for us? When will the springs of water, larger than a horse, flow down anew?” Tishtrya himself appeared. He too asked: “Will the Aryan lands have a good year?” for there were difficulties to be faced. The “Seven Stars” had to remain on guard against the magicians from the north, who attempted to prevent Tishtrya’s advance by hurling down the hostile shooting stars.
Vanant, the leader of the starry hosts of the south, had to protect him from want and hostility.58 For ten nights Tishtrya appeared as a beautiful fifteen-year-old youth and gave to men their male children. Ten nights more he was like a golden-horned bull, and the cattle increased. For the third ten nights he assumed the form of a goldeneared white horse. He went down to the sea Vouru-kasha, where there descended against him the black horse Apaosha, the incarnation of Drought. Three days and three nights they fought, and Tishtrya was worsted. Then, renewed by his worshipers* sacrifices, Tishtrya re-entered the fray, and by noon of the first day Drought had to flee.
Then the sea began to boil and mists covered the island in its midst. They came together to form clouds which Wind pushed south. Apam Napat, the “son of waters” and lord of the females, the cloud-born Lightning,59 assigned to the various earth-regions the health-giving waters. If the Aryan peoples duly poured libations to Tishtrya and sacrificed cattle to him, all of one colour, never would pestilence or disease, never would the army of the foe with his chariots and his high-raised standard, invade the lands of the Aryan people. In Achaemenid times some of these functions were usurped by an ancient nature-goddess, Anahita, who from her mountain heights brought down the waters which transformed a desert into field and orchard.61 As she was pure, so must be her rivers, which might not be polluted even by the washing of hands.62 Other water divinities survived to become wives of Ahura.
Still other nature-gods were recognized. The bright Moon (Mah) by her waxing caused the green plants to spring upon the Earth, who was herself a potent divinity.64 Within her the Moon held the seeds of the Bull,65 while the Cow was also honored.66 Vayu, the Wind, sweeping down from the hills to refresh the plains in summer, but icy cold in the winter blasts, was likewise revered.67 Atar, the Fire which carried the sacrifices to the gods, was himself a major deity,68 and everywhere one might see fire altars for his worship; he was worthy of all honor, for he was sorely needed in winter when fuel was scarce and expensive. Haoma, the sacred intoxicating drink that 4 ‘drives death afar,” always played a large part in Aryan ritual.69 Libations and hymns pacified the underworld gods.70 Except for the sacred fire, the Iranians felt no need for temples and altars. Moreover, their minds could conceive the divine beings independent of any symbols such as statues. Sacrifices were offered Ahura on the bare mountain peaks, beautiful only when covered with snow, and thus close to the generally cloudless sky. Crowned with myrtle, the sacrificer led the victim to an open place ritually pure, where he invoked by naming the god, cut up the victim, and boiled the flesh. The pieces were piled upon a carpet of tenderest herbs, preferably alfalfa; a Magian then chanted a hymn which related the traditional origin of the gods.71 Afterward the sacrificer took away the flesh to do with it what he pleased. Such is the account of the contemporary Herodotus.
Karapan and Usij priests are named, as also the Manthra speakers, but more and more the ritual practices were falling into the hands of the Magi—the usual victory of the older priestly class over the invaders. As yet, the Magi remained a separate Median tribe, entirely distinct from the Aryan nobility. Their pernicious effect on the nobler Aryan paganism was far in the future.
THE MEDIAN EMPIRE
New hordes from Central Asia, Gimirrai or Cimmerians and Ishguzai or Scythians, followed their Iranian cousins up the plateau and left their horse trappings, knives, and maceheads in Luristan. Assyrian cavalry in search of fresh mounts reached the land of Patusharri76 on the edge of the central salt desert and carried off city lords named Shidirparna and Eparna, in the former we recognize the first Chithrafarna or Tissaphernes. More important was Khshathrita, also called Fravartish or Phraortes, who, according to Herodotus, ruled Media fifty-three years —actually from about 675 to 653.77 He began as a village chief of Kar Kashi, but after attacking various Assyrian settlements he ultimately formed an anti-Assyrian coalition of Medes and Cimmerians.
Ariyaramnes, son of Teispes, tells us that Ahuramazda gave him Parsa, good of horses and good of men; he is describing the conquest of the future Persian homeland, known to the Greeks as Persis and to us as modern Fars. To his brother Cyrus he permits only their father’s title, “great king of the city Anshan”; he himself, as superior, is “great king, king of kings, king of Parsa.” But his superiority was brief, for the Medes entered the country and the Persians became Median vassals. The gold tablet of Ariyaramnes was probably deposited as loot in the capital which was already Hangmatana (Ecbatana).
This city lay on the last slopes to the east of Mount Aurvant (Orontes),78 a granite peak which towers more than twelve thousand feet above sea-level and which is part of an almost impassable range extending north and south and broken only by the high pass leading to the Babylonian alluvium. In summer the climate is delightful, for Ecbatana lies 6,280 feet above the sea; Aurvant hides the afternoon sun and sends down his melting snows in many little rushing streams to irrigate the lovely gardens and orchards below the city and the fertile grain fields of the wide plains beyoncL Still farther out on rougher ground great herds of sheep and goats and the famous Nesaean horses could be pastured.79 In winter the blizzards howl as
the temperature sinks to twenty below zero. The snow reaches two or three feet on the level ground and fills the passes twenty feet high.
Communication with the outside world is shut off on every side. But Hangmatana commanded the one tolerably easy road from the west up to the plateau and its continued importance is witnessed by the flourishing state of its successors, Ecbatana and Hamadan. From Hangmatana, the great road continued northeast to Qazvin and then east to Raga, from which a second Media took its name, Teheran, the capital of present-day Iran, is the true successor of Raga, though the ancient site is somewhat to the south, where it was followed by the Rages of the Greeks and the Rai of medieval times. Raga in turn was the successor of a prehistoric settlement under the shelter of an isolated east-west comb of rock; further protection from the chill north winds of winter was afforded by the high east-west chain of Alborz, which often reached the height of ten thousand feet and, to the east of Raga, culminated in Demavend, twenty thousand feet at the summit. Alborz shut off also the rain-bringing winds from the north but, in compensation, sent down the snows in gullies which reached the salt deserts over gravel stretches. Mounds along the edges of the plain testify to prehistoric and later occupation.
Raga, like Ecbatana, was always an important road center. From it ran the second road to the west. Through Qazvin, with side branch to the Hyrcanian Sea, the main line continued west through Tabriz to the plains about Lake Urumia or down the Rowanduz gorge into Assyria. The country traversed formed a third Media, not yet entitled Media Atropatena or Adharbaigan; here we meet toward the end of the eighth century the Medes and Persians first known to the Assyrians. Soon this territory was to be revered as the birthplace of Zoroaster. Not far east of Raga, the road turned north through the Caspian Gates and passed under Demavend; again turning eastward, it traversed other Iranian tribes and then from Bactria ran northeast
into Central Asia or southeast to India.
The three Medias were inhabited by Median tribes—Busae, Paretaceni, Struchates, Arizanti, and Budii—to which was added the nonIranian priestly tribe of the Magi.81 These Medes were still half-nomads. On the Assyrian reliefs, they are depicted with short hair confined by a red fillet and with a short curled beard; over a tunic is worn the sheepskin coat, still the traveller s best friend in the bitter winter of the plateau, which also required high-laced boots to plow through the deep snows. They were armed with only the long spear and were defended by the rectangular wicker shield. With these seminomads, aided by the Persians, Phraortes dared to attack Assyria, only to meet defeat and death in battle (653).
Parsa again became independent. Two years later (651), Cyrus I joined with Elam in sending aid to Shamash-shum-ukin of Babylon, who was in revolt against his brother Ashur-bani-apal of Assyria; for Parsa the Assyrian scribe uses the ancient name of Guti.83 Then an Assyrian official at Uruk reports the return of the Elamite king Humbanigash to the land of Hidalu, together with peoples from the land of Parsuash. Another mentions the Elamite Tammaritu and quotes an enemy letter: “The men of Parsuash do not advance; quickly send them. Elam and Assyria are yoursP* News of Elam forwarded to Ashur-bani-apal by his viceroy in Babylonia, Bel-ibni, includes the capture of Parsuash.84
Shortly after his conquest of Elam and the destruction of its capital Susa—so Ashur-bani-apal assures us—Cyrus, king of Parsuash, heard of the might the Assyrian king had established over Elam and sent his eldest son Arukku with his tribute to Nineveh to make submission and to beseech his lordship.85 There were more weighty reasons for the embassy. Cyaxares (Uvakhshatra) had succeeded his father Phraortes; appropriately he bore the surname of the war-god Verethragna.86 The army was remodeled along modern lines and was divided into spearmen, bowmen, and cavalry. It would seem that it was Cyaxares who also changed the clothing and weapons. Two quite different forms are regularly illustrated on the sculptures at Persepolis. The Mede is at once distinguished by the wearing of the more original Iranian costume. On his head is the round, nodding felt cap with neck flap. A tight, long-sleeved leather tunic ends above the knee and is held in by a double belt with round buckle; over the tunic might be thrown on ceremonial occasions a cloak of honor. Full leather trousers and laced shoes with projecting tips indicated that their wearers spent much of their time on horseback. A short, pointed beard, a moustache, and hair bunched out on the neck were all elaborately curled, while earrings and necklace gave added ornament. The chief offensive weapon remained the spear of cornel wood with a flanged bronze point and the base held by a metal ferrule. To this spear, many warriors added the bow, held in an extraordinarily elaborate bow case and serviced by arrows from a quiver. The Median costume is sharply contrasted with the form labelled Persian, distinguished by the fluted felt hat, the ankle-length flowing robe, and the low-laced shoes.
With the Median army reorganized, the threat to Assyria became extreme. Ashur-bani-apal died, and even weaker successors did not dare to dissipate their strength by aiding their nominal allies such as Parsa. The successors of Ariaramnes and Cyrus were again forced to become vassals of Cyaxares. Once more the Assyrians were driven ‘ back, and Nineveh was actually under siege by the Medes when news arrived that Scythians had poured through the gate between the Caucasus Mountains and the Caspian Sea. Defeated by their chief, Madys, son of Protothyes, Cyaxares had to pay tribute for twentyeight years until he killed their drunken leaders at a banquet.87 Nineveh was destroyed in 612. Amid the ruins, Cyaxares, now known in Babylonia as king of the Umman Manda (from his conquest of the Scythian hordes), made peace with Nabopolassar. Two years later, by the defeat of Ashur-uballit at Harran, Cyaxares destroyed the last pretense of Assyrian rule and won all northern Mesopotamia.
Since the road to the south was closed by the alliance with the Chaldean, who also held Susa, Cyaxares followed the Zagros as it bends westward into the cold uplands of Armenia, where other Iranian bands had destroyed the kingdom of Haldia and introduced their own Indo-European speech.89 The fertile valleys of Armenia led down through the Anti-Taurus into the broad plains of Cappadocia and to the river Halys, frontier of Lydia. Five years of warfare ended in a drawn battle at the time of a solar eclipse (May 28, 585) and a peace by which the Halys remained the boundary.90 The Cadusians along the Hyrcanian Sea refused submission, but the ruler of Parthia admitted himself a vassal. Four great powers—Media, Chaldaea, Lydia, and Egypt—divided among themselves the whole of the Near East, but, of these, only Media could be called an empire. Far more significant, Media represented the first empire founded by northern warriors who spoke an Iranian language and thought in northern terms. All the more unfortunate is the sad fact that no site of Median times has been excavated. When their capital Ecbatana has received proper attention, we may venture to hope that the mound at Hamadan will grant us full details of Median culture and even permit the Medes to speak for themselves in their own Iranian tongue.