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Achaemenid - Empire - and - The Sea
Achaemenid - Empire - and - The Sea
Johannes Haubold
To cite this article: Johannes Haubold (2012) The Achaemenid empire and the sea,
Mediterranean Historical Review, 27:1, 5-24, DOI: 10.1080/09518967.2012.669149
Introduction
The Achaemenid empire claimed to encompass the entire world. The Persian king was
‘king of kings’, and ruled over ‘the lands of every language’.1 How did he substantiate
those claims? Modern scholars often point out that the Achaemenid empire was in fact the
largest the world had ever seen, which may or may not be true. Ultimately, it is a moot
question, for no one has ever been in a position to settle it one way or the other. In any case,
even the Persian empire did not encompass the entire world, not even the parts of it that
were known to the Persians at the time. So, what the Achaemenids did, and had to do, was
to project plausible images of world rule. There were various ways in which they achieved
this, from their famous lists of subject peoples to the special relationship they claimed with
the creator god Ahuramazda.2 These strategies, it is fair to say, are now well understood,
thanks primarily to the work of Pierre Briant and Amélie Kuhrt.3 What needs further
attention is the role of the sea in Achaemenid imperial discourse.
In tackling this issue, I take inspiration from two bodies of scholarship. First, I build on
the work of Hayden White, whose concept of historical ‘emplotment’ invites us to view
history not as an archive of events but as an arena of competing narratives.4 White himself
was most interested in the historian’s task of constructing narratives from hindsight, but
scholars such as Phiroze Vasunia have argued persuasively that history may also be
*Email: j.h.haubold@dur.ac.uk
history. Nor does the growth of the forces of production give rise in any direct causal fashion
to a particular space or a particular time. Mediations, and mediators, have to be taken into
consideration: the action of groups, factors within knowledge, within ideology, or within the
domain of representations.9
What Lefebvre suggests at a general level, Christoph Ulf has recently applied to the study of
water in the ancient world. Ulf argues that ‘water does not carry its meaning within itself’;
and that ‘it is often the space in which water is located, or the space as which it is envisaged,
that gives it its specific meaning’.10 Ulf rightly notes that rulers and scholars of the Assyrian
period used the sea to fashion mental maps of the world, and the same point has recently
been argued in detail by Martin Lang and Robert Rollinger.11 Building on their argument,
I ask how the Achaemenid kings and their map-makers conceived of the sea, and how they
used their conceptions as ‘a tool of thought and of action’.12 I will not be looking at the
practicalities of maritime trade and warfare, the ‘hard’ facts, as it were, behind the imperial
rhetoric. These have been studied elsewhere,13 but, apart from establishing how the
Achaemenids actually controlled the sea, we also need to understand what drove them to
produce what we now call history: we need to know what they thought they were doing –
and said they were doing – and we need to know how others responded to them.
is Sargon as a traditional figure. He was the ultimate superstar, the king to outshine all
kings before and after.17 To the modern reader it may seem difficult to accept that tales
about this semi-mythical Mesopotamian monarch would have mattered to the
Achaemenids, but there can be no doubt that Sargon, and the literature about him,
loomed large in the first millennium BCE.18 We know, for example, that the last Neo-
Babylonian king, Nabonidus, excavated and displayed what he claimed was a statue of
Sargon in the main temple of Šamaš at Sippar, restoring it ‘out of respect for the gods and
for kingship’.19 Nabonidus proceeded to set up a cult for Sargon, which continued to be
observed under Cyrus and Cambyses.20 Cyrus himself was cast as a Sargon redivivus in
popular stories about his childhood.21
By common consent, Sargon had taught humankind what it meant to unite the world
under one rule. Many of the ideas associated with his reign remained influential down to
the time of Darius and Xerxes. Most important for our purposes, Sargon was known to
have singled out the shores of ‘the upper and lower seas’ (i.e. the Mediterranean and the
Persian Gulf) as defining borders of his realm.22 The image of the two seas continued to
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shape mental maps of empire well into the first millennium BCE. Neo-Assyrian, Neo-
Babylonian, and Persian rulers all defined their realm as spanning ‘the entire world’, and
explained what this meant by adding ‘from the upper to the lower sea’.23 Here is how
Cyrus described the extent of his dominions in the Cyrus Cylinder:
[i-na qi-bi-ti-šú] sir-ti nap-h ar LUGAL a-ši-ib BÁRA.MEŠ ša ka-li-iš kib-ra-a-ta iš-tu tam-tı̀
^
We do not know whether the Persians were aware of Gilgameš as a hero in his own
right.27 What we do know is that by the sixth century BCE the Sargon and Gilgameš
traditions had coalesced to the point that conquest of the sea was central to both.28 Later
authors who updated Sargon’s achievements in light of their own changing priorities
claimed – historically incorrectly – that he too had crossed the ocean and conquered
countries on the other side. Here is an extract from a first-millennium text known as the
Sargon Geography:29
a-na-kùki kap-ta-raki mātātu(kur.kur) eberti(bal.ri) [tâm]ti elı̄ti(an.ta)
tilmunki má-gan-naki mātātu(kur.kur) eberti tâmti šaplı̄ti(ki.ta)
ù mātātu ultu sı̄t dšamši(dutu.è.[a]) adi ereb dšamši(dutu.šú.a)
sih irti(nigin)ti _mātāti kalı̄šina(kur.dù.a.bi)
^
By the normal rules of geography, Egypt was barely reachable from Persia. Besides lying
far to the west, it required travellers to cross a dangerous desert. Joining up the sea ‘which
goes from Persia’ with the Nile and hence Egypt, Darius could short-circuit normal
geography: Egypt and Persia had effectively become neighbours.
From the beginning of his reign, Darius took a keen interest in the sea and its symbolic
potential, above all in connection with his campaigns in Scythia.39 Already in his Behistun
inscription, Darius reports crossing the sea in pursuit of the Scythians with the pointed
cap.40 In his very last inscription, on his tomb at Naqsh-e Rustam, he lists the ‘Scythians
from across the sea’ as his most far-flung conquest.41 Darius made sure his subjects could
experience this idea first-hand when he bridged the sea at the Bosporus, en route to his
campaign against the Scythians of southern Russia.42 To mark the occasion, he set up two
stelae featuring a description of his empire in the form of a list of subject peoples.43
Darius’ bridging of the Bosporus is important for two reasons. First, it confirms that he
experimented with different ways of staging a conquest of the sea: to bridge the
Mediterranean as though it were a river was just as effective a way of making the point as
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was linking up two oceans by means of the Red Sea Canal. Second, Darius signalled that
he regarded the Scythians across the sea as the ultimate challenge to his rule: by bridging
the Bosporus the king not only combined the conquest of the sea with that of Scythia, the
two defining achievements of his reign according to Plato,44 but he also bridged the gap
between the imperial world and uncharted territories ‘beyond’. The so-called Babylonian
World Map or Mappa Mundi (Figure 1) helps us understand better what was at stake.45
As well as being a fascinating example of early map-making in its own right, the
Babylonian World Map is of vital importance to our understanding of Achaemenid
perceptions of the sea. It is preserved on a single tablet, kept in the British Museum (BM
92687). Its exact provenance is not known, nor is its date of composition, though it was
certainly produced in the first millennium BCE.46 The tablet is inscribed on both sides. The
obverse (see Figure 1) contains a fragmentary description of the ocean and the monsters
that dwell in it, followed by a schematic map of the world. The reverse is taken up with a
description of far-flung places across the sea, including distances between unspecified
locations. A colophon on the reverse informs us that the tablet is a copy made by the son of
Issuru, descendant of Ea-bēl-ilı̄.47 At first sight it may seem as though the map on the
__
obverse of the tablet is meant as an illustration of the text on the reverse. There are,
however, differences between map and text, and it is likely that the tablet as a whole is a
compilation of related but distinct geographical materials.
The map itself is highly stylized. Roughly speaking, north is at the top, south at the
bottom, and two lines that cut across the central area represent the Euphrates, with
Babylon the large rectangle above the centre point. Towards the bottom of the inner field
we find two other bodies of water labelled ‘channel’ and ‘swamp’, the latter evidently
representing the marshes where the Euphrates issues into the Persian Gulf. At the top there
is an area representing the mountains of Armenia, while on either side of the Euphrates we
find a selection of places in and around Mesopotamia which are arranged in a circle.
Clockwise from the top these are: Assyria, Der, Bit-Yakin and Habban. The circle at the
bottom of the map represents the Elamite capital Susa. All this is surrounded by a circular
body of water called the ocean or, literally, the ‘Bitter River’. Beyond it, space splinters
into triangle-shaped regions called nagû.
It is immediately apparent that the Babylonian World Map does not offer a realistic
representation of geographical space. Rather, it provides us with a template for what we might
call ‘outer space’. The named locations in the inner field do little more than direct us to the
surrounding ocean and outlying regions, whose importance is further emphasized by
10 J. Haubold
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descriptive labels attached to them. Most labels give the distance between unspecified
locations: ‘six leagues in between’, ‘eight leagues in between’.48 Perhaps these figures refer to
the distance between the central continent and the outlying areas. We cannot be certain, and
ultimately it does not matter, for the point here is not to guide us on some actual journey but to
create reality effects for an area that is removed from normal human experience. One label
draws attention to a ‘Great Wall’, and a ‘place where the sun is not seen’. Whatever wall is
being envisaged here, reference to the sun indicates an area that lies beyond the known world,
even by the ambitious criteria of Near Eastern imperial geography. As well as invoking the
‘upper and the lower sea’, Near Eastern kings in the tradition of Sargon often defined their
empire as stretching ‘from sunrise to sunset’.49 A place where the sun is not seen lies outside
even that most inclusive definition of imperial space – or rather, such a location challenges the
emperor to venture even beyond the natural limits of that space: for that is precisely what king
Sargon is supposed to have done when he travelled to the land of Ūta-rapaštim.50
The Babylonian World Map, then, charts outer space specifically as a challenge to the
conquering king. Historical rulers certainly responded to the challenge: Assurbanipal and
Nebuchadnezzar, for example, both claimed to have incorporated remote nagû in or across
the sea into their empire.51 The Achaemenids too boasted that they had ventured across the
ocean, though their rhetoric focused not on the nagû so much as on the intervening water.
We recall that in the Babylonian World Map, the world is surrounded by the ‘Bitter River’,
Mediterranean Historical Review 11
Akkadian ı́dmarratu. That term is already attested in the Neo-Assyrian period but became
much more common under the Achaemenids, as a way of referring to the sea in the
Akkadian language.52 It is worth recalling here that Darius and subsequent Persian kings
published their inscriptions in three languages, Old Persian, Elamite and Akkadian,
sometimes adding a fourth in outlying regions such as Egypt or Greece. Past scholars have
tended to focus on the Old Persian texts, on the assumption that they come closest to the
meaning intended by the king. There is, however, no reason to believe that the Akkadian
versions were any less important.53 Indeed, one of Darius’ most explicit statements of the
extent and nature of his realm is written in Akkadian only. It uses precisely the term ‘Bitter
River’ to articulate the range of his power:
d
U-ru-ma-az-da ra-bi šá ra-bu-ú ina muh-h i DINGIR.MEŠ gab-bi šá AN-e u KI-tı̀ ib-nu-ú
^ ^
UN.MEŠ ib-nu-ú šá dum-qı́ gab-bi id-di-nu-ma UN.MEŠ ina lı̀b-bi bal-tu-’ šá a-{na} mDa-a-
ri-ia-muš LUGAL ib-nu-ú u a-na mDa-a-ri-ia-muš LUGAL LUGAL-ú-tu id-din-nu ina qaq-
qar a-ga-a rap-šá-a-tu4 šá KUR.KUR.MEŠ ma-di-e-tu4 ina lı̀b-bi-šu kurPar-su kurMa-da-a-a
u KUR.KUR.MEŠ šá-ni-ti-ma li-šá-nu šá-ni-tu4 šá KUR.MEŠ u ma-a-tu4 šá a-h a-na-a-a a-
^
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ga-a šá ı́dmar-ra-tu4 u a-h u-ul-la-a-a ul-li-i šá ı́dmar-ra-tu4 ša a-h a-na-a-a a-ga-a šá qaq-qar
^ ^
We can better appreciate just how important the ocean was for Darius’ self-portrayal as
a conqueror king by looking at his alleged exploration of the Pontus before crossing into
Europe. This is how Herodotus describes the episode:
Dar1ĩo6 1̀ p1ít1 por1yóm1no6 k Soýsvn pík1to th̃6 Kalxhdoníh6 pì tòn
Bósporon na z1ykto g1́wyra, nu1ỹt1n sbà6 6 n1́a pl11 pì tà6 Kyan1́a6
kal1ym1́na6, tà6 prót1ron plagktà6 llhn16 wasì 1 nai, zóm1no6 1̀ pì í
uh 1 ĩto tòn Pónton ónta jiou 1́ hton. p1 lag1́ vn gàr pántvn p1́ wyk1
uvmasiv́tato6.
But Darius, when he came to that place in his march from Susa where the Bosporus was
bridged in the territory of Calchedon, boarded a ship and sailed to the so-called Dark Rocks,
which the Greeks say formerly moved; there, he sat on a headland and contemplated the Black
Sea, which is a striking sight. For it is the most marvellous sea of all.58
Some scholars have argued that Herodotus wholly invented this episode.59 He certainly
casts it in typically Herodotean terms when he describes the Black Sea as ‘the most
marvellous sea of all’.60 Yet, this is not a piece of idle sight-seeing, nor is its sole purpose
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to give Herodotus an excuse for digressing on the Pontus. Rather, what seems to be at issue
here is Darius’ ability to comprehend what others cannot grasp. Once again the
Babylonian World Map provides an instructive parallel. The two texts that accompany the
map describe in detail the sea near the edges of the world, its precise measurements, and
the marvellous creatures that dwell in it. Significantly, both texts also end by describing
phenomena that cannot be known, or, more precisely, whose nature nobody comprehends:
[x x k]a-ap-pi issuriš(mušen)riš-ma man-ma qé-reb-ši-na ul i-[du-ú]
[.. w]ings like a_ _bird, which/whom no one can com[prehend.]
and grasp its deepest secrets. This was imperial conquest as drama and, like all drama, it
had a strong element of make-believe about it. The Persians and their allies were of course
aware that the world did not end at the Bosporus, but the practicalities of imperial rule and
the ideologies that helped sustain it were two quite separate issues.
Greeks on either side of the Bitter River. I quote the Akkadian version:
d
^
Hi-ši-’-ar-ši LUGAL i-qab-bi ina GIŠ.MI šá dA-h u-ru-ma-az-da-’ KUR.KUR.MEŠ an-ni-e-ti
^
Already in the late eighth century BCE subjecting the Greeks was seen as a way of
asserting the empire’s grip on the sea. Xerxes took up this idea. To be sure, he did not
march against Greece simply because he wanted to be seen to conquer the ocean. He
continued what his father had begun, and posed as the avenger of Priam in a belated sequel
to the Trojan War.70 Several different stories could be and were told about his campaign,
not all of them equally relevant to every observer. References to the Trojan War would
have interested Greek audiences more than others. By comparison, the conquest of the
ocean had broader resonance, and Xerxes made sure he publicized it to the widest possible
audience. Major building projects, such as the canal through Mount Athos and, later on,
the unfinished mole across the Saronic Gulf to Salamis, advertised his conquest of the sea
in terms that were meaningful across linguistic and cultural boundaries.71
Xerxes’ campaign was, it seems, also cast as an exploration of the western ocean.
According to Herodotus, he too went on a sightseeing trip, this time to the mouth of the
Peneius.72 A number of close structural and verbal parallels (e.g. u1h́sasuai, uṽma) suggest
that this was understood by Herodotus as a direct counterpart to Darius’ trip to the mouth of the
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Black Sea. Sceptics have again doubted the historicity of Xerxes’ excursion, on the grounds
that it was ‘futile’, and that Herodotus cannot have had ‘any authentic record of a conversation
between Xerxes and his Greek guides’.73 The second objection is irrelevant here: Herodotus’
use of speeches has no bearing on the question of whether Xerxes really did sail to the Peneius.
The first objection too is misleading, as we have seen when considering Darius’ earlier trip:
this is precisely the kind of gesture we would expect from the heroic king as he opened up new
worlds. To call it ‘futile’ is to misjudge the performative nature of Achaemenid kingship.74
Xerxes’ expedition to the Peneius, then, is entirely in keeping with his programme of a
conquest of the sea. As for Salamis, George Cawkwell has shown that Xerxes staged the
battle quite deliberately as imperial drama, though he misses the significance of the event
when he attributes it to Xerxes’ misguided quest for glory.75 In truth, the king was once
again acting out an ancient script:
šarrâni meš[.ni] a-ši-bu-te tam-tim ša dûrâni meš-šú-nu tam-tim-ma e-du-u šal-h u-šú-un ša ki-
^
ma gišnarkabti gišeleppa rak-bu ku-um sı̂sê meš.e sa-an-du par-ri-sa-ni pal-hiš ul-ta-nap-šá-qu
^
lı̀b-ba-šú-nu i-tar-rak-ma i-ma-’u mar-tú ul ib-ši_ šá-ni-ni ul im-mah -h a-ru giškakki-i[á] ù ina
^ ^
Kings who dwelt in the sea, making the sea their walls and the waves their fortress, who rode
ships like chariots and yoked rowers instead of horses – they were very afraid. Their hearts
pounded, and they vomited gall. There was none like me, my weapons are irresistible. Among
my princely forebears none could equal me.76
This passage is taken from an inscription of Esarhaddon, one of the last great kings of
Assyria. It shows well what was at stake when Xerxes set up his throne on Mount
Aigaleos, to watch his fleet defeat the Greeks who ‘rode ships like chariots and yoked
rowers instead of horses’.77 Cawkwell may well be right that in strictly military terms the
Persians did not need to risk a battle at Salamis. But no campaign is ever fought in ‘strictly
military’ terms, and in the context of Xerxes’ quest for world rule, the opportunity of
staging a comprehensive victory at sea was, one suspects, quite irresistible: if all went well
at Salamis, Xerxes could rightfully claim to have surpassed his ‘princely forebears’ –
perhaps even his swashbuckling father.
Backlash
Xerxes, however, was defeated and withdrew to Sardis. Greek propaganda cast his retreat
as a panicked flight, which was of course wide of the mark.78 But the king’s entire
Mediterranean Historical Review 15
approach to the campaign, down to his presence at Salamis, suggests that the Persians had
lost far more than merely a battle.79 They had been robbed of a narrative that underpinned
the king’s prowess as a warrior in the Sargonic tradition, and indeed Achaemenid claims to
world rule more generally. Enough reason, then, to end Xerxes’ immediate involvement
and withdraw the fleet: for the time being, the Persians would pursue the war without
grand pretensions to conquering the sea.
Soon after Xerxes wound down his role as master of the ocean, Greek authors began to rub
salt in his wounds, as it were: Xerxes’ campaign had shown the opposite of what he had
intended to demonstrate. The Persians could not control the sea, indeed they were essentially
land-lubbers. The Greeks, by contrast, had proven their proverbial affinity with water and, by
defeating the Persians at Salamis, had established themselves as beyond the reach of the
empire, and indeed free by nature. To make the point, successive Greek authors appropriated
the language and imagery of imperial discourse and turned it against the invaders. As one
might expect, some of the more dramatic gestures of reversal attached to the defeat at Salamis
itself. Thus, Edith Hall draws attention to the ironic use of sea imagery in Aeschylus’ Persae.80
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[us]-su-un ša tam-tum a-na dan-nu-ti-šú šadû ú a-na e-mu-qi-šú iš-ku-nu ina sa-par-ri-ia a-a-
um-ma ul ú-s i na-par-šu-du-um-ma ul ip-par-šid šá tam-ti a-na šadı̂ i šá šadı̂ i a-na tam-tim a-
_
šab-šú-nu aq-bi ina qı́-bit dAš-šur bêli-ia man-nu šá it-ti-ia iš-šá-an-na-nu a-na šarru-u-ti ù
meš(.ni)
ina šarrâni abbê meš-ia ša ki-[i] ia-a-ti-ma šur-ba-ta be-[e]-lu-su ul-tu qé-reb tam-tim
lú
nakrûti meš-ia ki-a-am iq-bu-[u]-ni umma šêlibu la-pa-an dŠamaš e-ki-a-am il-lak
The Sutû, tent-dwellers, whose home is afar off, like the onset of a mighty storm I tore up by
their roots. Those who had made the sea their stronghold, the mountain their rampart, none
escaped my net, not a fugitive got away. Those of the sea I bade make the mountain their
home, those of the mountain, the sea. By command of Assur, my lord: what man was there
who contended with me for kingship? Or, who was there among the kings, my fathers, whose
rule was as great as mine? From out of the sea my enemies spoke thus: ‘Where shall the fox go
before the sun?’83
Esarhaddon adduces three limit-cases for his power: the Sutû who ‘dwell in tents’;
unnamed populations who inhabit the mountains; and finally people who dwell in the sea.
16 J. Haubold
All these groups live in marginal locations, and adopt lifestyles that make them hard to
control: the tent-dwellers because they are ‘afar off’; the inhabitants of the mountain and
the sea because they turn their inhospitable surroundings into ‘strongholds’ and
‘ramparts’. Nature here conspires with culture to create pockets of resistance to the
homogenizing thrust of empire.
Esarhaddon’s response was to break the bond between nature and culture: the
mountain-dwellers were settled in the sea and vice versa. This is where Xerxes failed:
nature prevailed at Salamis, and so did its ally, local culture. The essentialism of imperial
discourse thus gave way to the essentialism of the Greek response. As Edith Hall shows,
swimming became a source of patriotic pride among Greeks during and after the Persian
Wars, a phenomenon that put a whole new spin on the ancient stereotype of the sea-
dwelling Iaunā.84 In many ways, this response was quite artificial: when Timotheus
depicts a drowning barbarian in his Dithyramb Persae, he ignores the obvious fact that
Greeks were fighting, and drowning, on both sides.85 But regardless of what had actually
happened at Salamis, the king’s own insistence upon conquering the sea had turned those
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who successfully opposed him into sea-dwellers par excellence. The imperial plot was
being rewritten.
Of course, I am not suggesting that Greek observers knew the written texts which, to an
Achaemenid audience, explained what it might mean to conquer the sea. They were
unfamiliar with the Sargon Geography or the Mappa Mundi; and will not have
encountered even such classics of imperial Mesopotamian literature as the Epic of
Gilgamesh. What they encountered, rather, were the public gestures that made the imperial
drama visible to all: the bridges and canals, and the stories that attached to them; the
battles, and especially Salamis, the climax of the maritime campaign. They also heard
about the king’s exploits in the western ocean: Xerxes at the Hellespont and the Peneius.
One can exaggerate Greek knowledge of Achaemenid realities, but one can hardly
exaggerate Greek exposure to this onslaught of symbolic gestures.
Unsurprisingly, the Greeks felt the need to respond in kind. Xerxes’ bridging of the
Hellespont came in for particularly harsh criticism because it was a particularly stunning
gesture of world conquest. This is certainly how Greek authors perceived it – except that
they turned the intended message on its head, misreading as a banal act of transgression
what was for the Achaemenid empire a defining act of transcendence:
paĩ6 d’ mò6 tád’ o kat1idv̀6 nys1n n1́vi urás1i,
sti6 llh́sponton ròn doỹlon 6 d1smv́masin 745
lpis1 sxh́s1in 1́onta, Bósporon, óon u1oỹ,
kaì póron m1t1rrýumiz1 kaì p1́dai6 swyrhlátoi6
p1ribalv̀n pollh̀n k1́l1yuon nys1n pollṽi stratṽi,
unhtò6 n u1ṽn d1̀ pántvn i1t’ o k 1 boylíai
kaì Pos1idṽno6 krath́s1in. pṽ6 tád’ o nóso6 wr1́nvn 750
1 x1 paĩd’ món;
portray his mission as a conquest of nature. Whether that constitutes an act of hybris is of
course a different question: the Persians and their loyal subjects (including, one suspects,
allied Greeks) will not have seen it that way.87 As for the gods, there is no reason to believe
that Xerxes ever claimed to have defeated Poseidon or other Greek deities: he will have
respected them as a matter of policy. But slander of the cruder sort was meted out to
whoever lost a power struggle in the ancient world: the Persians themselves were masters
of the game, and their ostentatious interest in some aspects of Greek religion may have
played its part in provoking the backlash.88
The same close connection between imperial discourse and local response can be
observed in Herodotus’ portrayal of Xerxes at the Hellespont:
6 d’ pýu1to 1́rjh6, d1inà poi1ým1no6 tòn llh́sponton k1́l1ys1 trihkosía6
pik1́suai mástigi plhgà6 kaì kat1ĩnai 6 tò p1́lago6 p1d1́vn z1ỹgo6. dh d1̀ koysa 6
kaì stig1́a6 ma toýtoisi p1́p1mc1 stíjonta6 tòn llh́sponton. n1t1́ll1to d1̀ n
apízonta6 l1́g1in bárbará t1 kaì tásuala “ pikròn dvr, d1spóth6 toi díkhn
pitiu1ĩ th́nd1, ti min díkhsa6 o d1̀n prò6 k1ínoy dikon pauón. kaì basil1ỳ6 m1̀n
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J1́rjh6 diabh́s1taí s1, n t1 sý g1 boýl n t1 mh́. soì d1́ katà díkhn ra o d1ì6
nurv́pvn uý1i, 6 ónti kaì uol1r kaì lmyr potam .” th́n t1 dh̀ uálassan
n1t1́ll1to toýtoisi zhmioỹn kaì tṽn p1st1v́tvn t z1ýji toỹ llhspóntoy potam1ĩn
tà6 k1walá6.
This made Xerxes furious. He ordered his men to give the Hellespont three hundred lashes and to
sink a pair of shackles into the sea. I once heard that he also dispatched men to brand the
Hellespont as well. Be that as it may, he did tell the men who were thrashing the sea to revile it in a
barbaric and outrageous way: ‘Bitter water’, they said, ‘this is your punishment for wronging your
master when he did no wrong to you. King Xerxes will cross you, with or without your consent.
People are right not to sacrifice to a muddy, brackish river like you!’ So the sea was punished at his
orders, and he had the supervisors of the bridging of the Hellespont beheaded.89
This is one of the climactic moments in the Histories, and one of the few where Herodotus
portrays Xerxes in an entirely negative way. François Hartog rightly points out that it
conforms to a more general pattern in Herodotus, whereby eastern despots display their
delusion by crossing various bodies of water.90 But the details of the scene are nonetheless
curious, for what appears to outrage Herodotus more than anything else is Xerxes’ insult to
the sea, calling it a ‘murky and brackish river’ undeserving of worship. Why does he single
out these words as ‘barbaric’ (bárbara) and ‘outrageous’ ( tásuala) when he could
have focused on Xerxes’ cruelty in beheading his engineers? It seems hardly sufficient to
say (as many have done) that the Persians abhorred salt water; nor is there much evidence
to suggest that Herodotus himself regarded the Hellespont as a kind of river.91 It was the
Persians who did: they called the Mediterranean as a whole ‘the Bitter River’ and made a
point of treating it as a river by bridging it at the Bosporus and the Hellespont. In
Herodotus’ portrayal of a raving Xerxes we find yet another example of a Greek author
mocking Achaemenid ideas of a conquest of the sea.
As one would expect, the Persians themselves did not comment on their setbacks: the
inscriptions remain silent, including Xerxes’ own Daiva Inscription, which may well have
been published after Salamis.92 Yet, Salamis hit the empire where it hurt: control of the sea
had been a cornerstone of Persian imperial aspirations since Cambyses. After Salamis, those
aspirations were compromised – not because the geo-political balance of power had
suddenly shifted but because an important way of emplotting world rule had lost its traction.
With that in mind, it is perhaps possible to pierce through the silence of the Achaemenid
sources and ask what it meant for the Persians to lose the sea less than 50 years after
Cambyses had won it for them. The task is fraught with difficulty, but some progress can
perhaps be made. Starting with the Achaemenid royal inscriptions, we note that the only
18 J. Haubold
extant country list from the time after Xerxes claims control over the Scythians from across
the Bitter River, not the Greeks. One single inscription is not much to go by, but it is at least
interesting that Artaxerxes (II or III, we cannot be sure) reverted to an older – and by now
largely obsolete – template for world rule.93 In truth, it was the Greeks, not the Scythians,
who had proven themselves the ultimate test to the emperor who would conquer the world
by conquering the sea, and the Persians had failed it. Back on the north-western frontier, the
Achaemenids and their allies seem to have acknowledged as much. The opening chapters of
Herodotus may offer an insight into the new dispensation: here Greeks and Persians share
the world between them, with the sea acting as a line of demarcation.94 That line is crossed
by Greek and Phoenician sailors, but not by the Persians themselves. It is only after the
Greeks send an army to Asia that the Persians fight back. We could not be further from
Xerxes’ ambition of conquering the sea: the Achaemenid state presupposed in the opening
chapters of Herodotus is essentially land-based.
Conclusion
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I have treated history as driven by powerful narrative templates, and looked at the conquest of
the sea as an important Near Eastern imperial narrative. Gilgameš crossed the sea, and so did
Sargon, thus setting an example for later emperors. The Achaemenids inherited this narrative
and embraced it with growing zeal. From Cambyses to Darius to Xerxes, the sea, and especially
the Mediterranean, became increasingly important as a way of projecting world rule. One can
see why: the idea was as simple as it was powerful. And it was flexible too: control of the ocean
could usefully be associated with specific regions such as Egypt, Scythia and Greece, each of
which served as a stage for the imperial drama of world conquest. The landscape held out
opportunities too: spectacular canals, bridges and moles materially enacted the emperor’s power
in ever new constellations. Defeat at Salamis, however, and the subsequent unravelling of
Xerxes’ Greek campaign, brought that narrative of imperial expansion sharply to a close.
Patriotic Greek authors appropriated and reversed the terms of the imperial narrative. The
Achaemenid kings continued to claim the sea for themselves, but without ever again mentioning
the Greeks on the other side. In the north-western theatre, a new doctrine of strategic
containment seems to have prevailed, confining Greeks and Persians to separate continents.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Paola Ceccarelli for organizing the Durham workshop on ‘Water and Identity in
the Ancient World’, where this paper was first delivered, and the participants in the workshop for
their comments. Particular thanks are due to Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, for his helpful feedback.
Finally, I would like to record my gratitude to Donald Murray (11 June 1983 – 10 July 2011), whose
research very much inspired my own.
Notes
1. King of kings: DB I, 1 –2, etc.; ruling over the lands of every language: Dar. Pers. a and g §§ 1
and 2 (Weissbach), etc. For further passages see Haubold, ‘Xerxes’ Homer’, 50 n. 16.
2. For country lists and other means of projecting Achaemenid imperial space, see Briant, Cyrus
to Alexander, 172– 83; for the king as Ahuramazda’s chosen, see Lincoln, Religion, Empire
and Torture, 33 – 49.
3. E.g. Briant, Cyrus to Alexander; Kuhrt, Persian Empire.
4. See White, Metahistory; idem, Content of the Form.
5. Vasunia, Gift of the Nile. Vasunia shows that Greek ideas about Egypt decisively shaped
Alexander’s conquest of the country. For his debt to Said, Orientalism, see Moyer, Egypt, 8. See
also Allen, ‘Lands of Myth’ and Grafton, New Worlds, Ancient Texts, on exploration and pre-
existing narratives.
Mediterranean Historical Review 19
6. For this concept, see further Gould and White, Mental Maps; also Akerman, Imperial Map.
7. For an overview see Warf and Arias, Spatial Turn.
8. Lefebvre, Production of Space, 26.
9. Ibid., 77.
10. Ulf, ‘Vom Anfang des Kosmos’, 143.
11. Ibid., 156; Lang and Rollinger, ‘Im Herzen der Meere’.
12. Lefebvre, Production of Space, 26 – 7.
13. E.g. Wallinga, ‘Ancient Persian Navy’; idem, ‘Naval Installations’; idem, Ships and Sea-Power,
Högemann, Das alte Vorderasien, 311– 19 (the Achaemenid fleet); Schiwek, ‘Der Persische
Golf’; and Högemann, Das alte Vorderasien, 286– 8 (maritime trade).
14. The tradition can be traced all the way back to Gilgameš; see George, Gilgamesh, 93 – 4.
Sargon too was known to have conquered mountains; cf. E2.1.1.11, ll. 20-8 and E2.1.1.12, ll.
13’-21’ (Frayne).
15. A particularly impressive example may be found in Esarhaddon’s Nineveh texts, Ep. 17
(Borger, Inschriften, 56). Other kings were more restrained: Nebukadnezar Nr. 14 col. i.24
(Langdon); Nr. 15 col. ii.22– 3 (Langdon); Nr. 19 col. iii.14 (Langdon); cf. DPg (monolingual
Akkadian). Once again, the tradition goes back to the Epic of Gilgameš, where digging wells is
a crucial aspect of the journey to the Cedar Forest; cf. George, Gilgamesh, 94 – 5.
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16. For the historical Sargon, see Gadd, ‘Dynasty of Agade’; Frayne, Royal Inscriptions, collects
the inscriptions of Sargon.
17. Liverani, ‘Model and Actualization’; Westenholz, Legends, 1 – 3, with further literature.
18. For the literary tradition about Sargon, see Lewis, Sargon Legend; Westenholz, Legends; also
Longman, Autobiography; Horowitz, Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography, chs 2 and 4.
19. Royal Chronicle iv.1 – 2 (Schaudig).
20. Beaulieu, Nabonidus, 133– 6.
21. Drews, ‘Sargon’; Kuhrt, ‘Making History’. The wider context here includes efforts on the part of the
Persians themselves, and of colluding subject populations, to legitimize Persian rule by emphasizing
continuity with Assyrian, Babylonian and Elamite imperial traditions: see further Root, The King and
Kingship; Kuhrt, ‘Cyrus Cylinder’; Álvarez-Mon and Garrison, Elam and Persia.
22. Sargon E2.1.1.1, ll. 73–85; E2.1.1.2, ll. 77–91; E2.1.1.11, ll. 1–13; E2.1.1.13, ll. 18–22 (Frayne).
23. Two examples will suffice to illustrate what is an extremely widespread habit: Assurbanipal
Prism B §6, I 41 (Borger); Nebukadnezar Nr. 14 col. i.21 (Langdon).
24. Cyrus Cylinder K2.1.29 (Schaudig).
25. Sargon E.2.1.1.2 71 – 81 (Frayne).
26. Epic of Gilgameš (SBV) I.37 – 40.
27. The epic certainly continued to be copied in the Persian period, and Mesopotamian audiences
will have known it well, if not in written form then certainly through oral storytelling:
Henkelman, ‘Birth of Gilgameš’; idem, ‘Beware of Dim Cooks’.
28. Thus, Sargon is said to have ‘crossed the sea at sunrise’ in the Chronicle of Early Kings No. 39,
line 3 (Glassner). For other instances of contamination between the Sargon and Gilgameš
traditions, see George, Gilgamesh, 20 and 93 – 4 (Cedar Forest); 152– 3 (Ūta-napišti and Ūta-
rapaštim); Henkelman, ‘Birth of Gilgameš’ (birth narrative).
29. Edition, translation and commentary in Horowitz, Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography, 67 – 95.
30. Sargon Geography 41 – 4 (Horowitz).
31. For a date of composition under Sargon II or his immediate successors, see Horowitz,
Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography, 93.
32. Res Gestae Sargonis 121– 3 (Westenholz); see also Sargon Birth Legend 22 –31 and King of
Battle 21’ (Westenholz).
33. E.g. Assurbanipal B §6 i.44 – 5 (Borger); Nebukadnezar Nr. 17, col. ii.12 –37 (Langdon). Both
kings also use the sea as a limit of their realm: see above n. 23. For further passages and
discussion, see Lang and Rollinger, ‘Im Herzen der Meere’.
34. Cyrus Cylinder K2.1.29 (Schaudig).
35. Hdt. 3.34.
36. DZc (the Kabret Stela), Old Persian Version (Kent).
37. For discussion, see Lloyd, ‘Darius I in Egypt’, 99 – 107, with further literature.
38. A similar idea seems implied in Herodotus’ account of an expedition down the Indus, at Hdt.
4.44. Notice the link between territorial expansion, maritime exploration and ‘making use of
the sea’; discussion in Corcella, ‘Book IV’, 613– 14.
20 J. Haubold
39. Most scholars now accept, with Ctesias, that there was more than one such campaign; see
Gardiner-Garden, ‘Dareios’ Scythian Expedition’. Herodotus reports that Darius also explored
(Hdt. 3.135 –8), and conquered (Hdt. 3.139– 49) lands in the Mediterranean; and that he was
susceptible to the lure of exotic islands (Hdt. 5.31 and 5.106.6– 107. Pl. Menex. 239c – 240a
claims that Darius was the first Persian king to conquer ‘the sea and the islands’; cf. Högemann,
Das alte Vorderasien, 319. However, he never campaigned in the Mediterranean in person.
Ceccarelli, ‘Sardaigne’, discusses the portrayal of islands in Herodotus and their significance to
ideas of maritime control.
40. DB, column 5 (monolingual Old Persian), para. 74 (Kent).
41. DNa = Dar. NRa (Bab.), Section 3 (Weissbach).
42. Hdt. 4.83 and 4.85 – 9; Ctesias F 13 (21) (Lenfant).
43. Hdt. 4.87. I see no reason to doubt the historicity of the two stelae, pace Fehling, Herodotus,
137– 8. Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander, 198, is sceptical about the stelae themselves but
concedes that Herodotus correctly understood their function as that of ‘staging’ the empire
(his term); for full discussion, see idem, 196– 200.
44. Pl. Menex. 239c –240a.
45. Edition and commentary in Horowitz, Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography, 20 – 42; see also
Horowitz, ‘Babylonian Map of the World’; Murray, ‘Waters’.
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46. Horowitz, Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography, 25 – 6 (‘no older than the ninth century’).
47. “The Babylonian Map of the World”, Text on the Reverse 28’– 29’ (Horowitz).
48. Horowitz, Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography, 21 – 2, labels 18, 19 and 22.
49. For Sargon ‘himself’ (i.e. in Sargonic myth), see above p. 4; for historical kings, see e.g.
Sennacherib, Annals col. i.13 – 14 in Borger, Lesestücke, 68; Antiochus Cylinder col. ii.17– 18 in
Kuhrt and Sherwin-White, ‘Aspects’, 76.
50. The sun is said to have gone dark when Sargon of Akkad reached the land of Ūta-rapaštim:
Sargon, the Conquering Hero ll. 60 – 2 in Westenholz, Legends, 70 – 1.
51. Horowitz, Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography, 30 – 3, with passages and discussion.
52. For passages, see CAD s.v. marratu A; discussion in Murray, ‘Waters’.
53. On the use of Akkadian in the Achaemenid Royal Inscriptions, see Stolper, ‘Achaemenid
Languages’. Donald Murray argues in an unpublished paper delivered at the Annual
Conference of the Classical Association 2011 that Achaemenid Akkadian inscriptions should
be regarded as the inscriptional counterpart to the Aramaic language versions that circulated in
Egypt and presumably elsewhere.
54. DPg (monolingual Akkadian), Section 2 (Weissbach).
55. For the Mesopotamian motif of crossing deserts, see above n. 15. It may be significant that both
the ‘Land of Thirst’ and the ‘Bitter River’ are characterized by a lack of drinking water. On a
Zoroastrian reading, that associates them with the Hostile Spirit; see Boyce, Zoroastrianism,
166. The precise relationship between Achaemenid imperial ideology and Zoroastrian religion
continues to be debated, but there is a growing consensus that Zoroastrianism was indeed
crucial for Persian imperial rhetoric; see Boyce, Zoroastrianism; Ahn, Herrscherlegitimation;
Lincoln, Religion, Empire and Torture. It is plausible that Zoroastrian notions of sweet and
salty water informed Achaemenid ideas of what it meant to conquer the sea; see below n. 91.
However, Darius’ description of his empire would also have spoken to audiences who were
entirely unfamiliar with the tenets of Zoroastrian religion.
56. DSe § 3 (Bab.) and DNa=Dar. NRa (Bab.), Section 3 (Weissbach): ‘the Scythians (Sakā/Gimirri)
from the other side of the Bitter River’ ([KUR Gi-]mir-ri ša a-h i ul-lu-a-a ša ÍD mar-ra-tu4).
^
64. For a sympathetic assessment of Xerxes’ reign, and his relationship with his father, see Kuhrt
Persian Empire, 238– 43.
65. Hdt. 4.43.
66. The historicity of the voyage is accepted by Corcella, ‘Book IV’, 612, with further literature.
Herodotus’ account shows the contested nature of Persian claims, and the resistance they
encountered in some quarters: not only is Sataspes’ expedition presented as a failure, but it is
also compromised by the lurid palace intrigue that occasions it. Xerxes himself shows no
particular interest in the voyage, reverting to his original plan of executing Sataspes as soon as
he is back. Herodotus relates the story immediately after his account of a successful expedition
which the Egyptian king, Necho, sent around Africa. The juxtaposition is hardly innocent:
whereas Necho’s expedition seems well conceived and intelligently executed, Sataspes’ is
marred by transgression, violence and intrigue.
67. XPh (the so-called Daiva Inscription), Akkadian version, Section 3.
68. Kuhrt, Persian Empire, 242 and 304– 6, with further literature.
69. Sargon II (of Assyria), Cylinder from Khorsabad, Zyl. 21 (Fuchs); compare the other passages
collected in Ceccarelli, ‘La fable’, 39 – 42. For discussion of ‘Greeks’ in the Assyrian and
Babylonian sources more generally, see Brinkman, ‘Akkadian Words’; Kuhrt, ‘Greeks’ and
‘Greece’; Rollinger, ‘Herkunft und Hintergrund’. For the image of the imperial fisherman, see
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also Hdt. 1.141 (Cyrus and the Greeks of Asia Minor), with discussion in Hirsch, ‘Cyrus’
Parable’; Ceccarelli, ‘La fable’.
70. For Darius’ Greek policies leading up to Xerxes’ attack, see Cawkwell, Greek Wars, 87 – 8; for
Xerxes and the Trojan War, see Haubold, ‘Xerxes’ Homer’.
71. Canal: Hdt. 7.22 – 4; bridge: Aesch. Pers. 744– 8 etc., Hdt. 7.33 – 7, Ctesias F 13 (27) (Lenfant);
mole: Hdt. 8.97, Ctesias F 13 (30) (Lenfant). Cawkwell finds the story of the mole ‘too absurd
to excite criticism’ (Cawkwell, Greek Wars, 92), and complains that building such a structure
was not feasible in the circumstances. However, Herodotus merely presents it as a diversionary
tactic, intended to signal the king’s continued commitment to the naval campaign. As such, it is
perfectly plausible.
72. Hdt. 7.128– 30.
73. Fehling, Herodotus, 31.
74. On this issue, see further the papers collected in Jacobs and Rollinger, Achämenidenhof /
Achaemenid Court, especially Section 4.
75. Cawkwell, Greek Wars, 108– 9.
76. Borger, Inschriften, 57, Ep. 18, iv.82– v.2.
77. For Xerxes on Mount Aigaleos, see Hdt. 8.90.4; cf. Aesch. Pers. 466– 7. For ships like chariots,
see Od. 4.708 – 9; cf. Od. 13.81 – 5.
78. As Herodotus had already pointed out; cf. Hdt. 8.119– 20. Briant, ‘La date’, argues that Xerxes
faced a revolt in Babylon in 479 BCE. We now know that this cannot be used to explain his
departure from Greece: the king stayed in Sardis and oversaw the campaign until after the
battle of Mycale; see Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander, 531–5.
79. Pace Cawkwell, Greek Wars, 109–10.
80. Hall, Persians, 21.
81. Aesch. Pers. 424– 8.
82. For the symbolic significance of the net, see Ceccarelli, ‘La fable’, esp. 36 –9.
83. Borger, Inschriften, 58 (Ep. 18, v.10– 25).
84. Hall, ‘Drowning Act’.
85. Not to mention the Phoenicians, who made up much of Xerxes’ fleet, and who were themselves
often portrayed as natural sea-dwellers: e.g. Esarhaddon Nin. A-F Ep. 5 (Borger); Assurbanipal,
‘Das Westland’, in Borger, Beiträge, 216–7, with the Akkadian texts referenced there.
86. Aesch. Pers. 743– 51; cf. 721– 6.
87. See Hdt. 4.87 – 8 and the inscription of Mandrocles that he quotes there.
88. For Persian propaganda against ‘enemies of the gods’, see, e.g., the Cyrus Cylinder and the
so-called Persian Verse Account, both aimed against Nabonidus: K2.1 and P1 (Schaudig).
For Persians honouring Greek gods, see Hdt. 6.97–8 and 118 (offerings to Delian Apollo), 7.43
(sacrifice to Athena of Troy), 7.191 (sacrifice to Thetis and the Nereids), 8.54 (unspecified
sacrifices on the Athenian acropolis). In literature throughout the ancient world the ocean was
populated by monsters and demons of various kinds; e.g. “The Babylonian Map of the World ”, The
Text on the Oberse 3’-5’ (Horowitz). Imperial observers would have found it easy to make the
22 J. Haubold
imaginative leap from victory over the sea to victory over those divine forces that inhabited it. By
the same token, hostile Greeks like Aeschylus could denounce the entire project as blasphemy.
89. Hdt. 7.35.
90. Hartog, Mirror, 331.
91. Abuse of rivers is un-Persian: Evans, Herodotus, 63, with ref. to Hdt. 1.138. Contempt for salt
water is eminently Persian: Boyce, Zoroastrianism, 166; Ahn, Herrscherlegitimation, 118– 9;
Keaveney, ‘Persian Behaviour’, 33 – 8.
92. Kuhrt, Persian Empire, 305.
93. A?P, Ethnic labels on the tomb of Artaxerxes II or III, OP Version (Kent).
94. Hdt. 1.1– 5, with discussion in Gruen, Rethinking the Other, 38. For the Persians claiming Asia
but not Europe, see especially Hdt. 1.4.4; cf. Hdt. 9.116.3.
Notes on contributor
Johannes Haubold is Senior Lecturer in the department of Classics and Ancient History at Durham
University. He has published widely on Homer and Hesiod, including, most recently, a commentary
on Iliad 6 in the Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics series (with Barbara Graziosi). He is currently
working on a monograph entitled Greece and Mesopotamia: Dialogues in Literature, soon to appear
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