Mediterranean Historical Review

Vol. 27, No. 1, June 2012, 423

The Achaemenid empire and the sea

Johannes Haubold
Department of Classics and Ancient History, Durham University, Durham, UK
This article looks at the conquest of the sea as a way of projecting world rule during the
Achaemenid period. It starts by tracing the ancient Near Eastern tradition whereby
successive rulers had to prove themselves by conquering the sea, from mythical kings
such as Gilgames and Sargon of Akkad down to Cyrus the Great and his successors.
It then considers more specifically some of the ways in which Darius and Xerxes staged a
conquest of the sea through symbolic gestures, building projects, and military
campaigns. In a final section, the article investigates how Greeks and Persians responded
to Xerxes defeat. Whereas patriotic Greeks appropriated and subverted the terms of
imperial discourse, the Achaemenids themselves adopted a two-pronged approach:
a continued emphasis on the sea in the imperial heartlands, and a new focus on
continental boundaries in the north-western theatre. The chapter as a whole draws on
recent research into social space and mental maps, and on Hayden Whites concept of
emplotment in history.
Keywords: Achaemenids; Babylonian World Map; Bitter River; Bosporus; Darius;
emplotment; Gilgames; Greece; Hellespont; mental maps; Persia; Salamis; Sargon of
Akkad; Scythia; social space; Xerxes

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 Amelie 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 historians 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
ISSN 0951-8967 print/ISSN 1743-940X online
q 2012 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09518967.2012.669149
http://www.tandfonline.com

Mediterranean Historical Review

emplotted before it unfolds.5 It is this idea of an advance emplotment of history, as we

might call it, that interests me here: the Achaemenids, I shall suggest, did not simply make
history in the sense of creating new realities and superseding old ones. Rather, they adopted
and enacted pre-existing scripts of world conquest which they found enshrined in tales about
mythical kings such as Gilgames and Sargon of Akkad. Those scripts had an important
spatial corollary. Long before the Achaemenids arrived on the scene, the co-ordinates of
world empire had been laid down in powerful mental maps.6 The Achaemenids inherited
those maps, and pursued what they regarded as their historical mission in relation to them. In
order to understand how they emplotted and made history, we need to reconstruct as much
as we can of their sense of space. Here I draw on the work of Henri Lefebvre and what has
been dubbed the spatial turn in the humanities and social sciences.7 Starting from the
assumption that (social) space is a (social) product,8 Lefebvre argues that we should look
at space not simply as a fact of nature but as a function of manifold and often complex
mediating processes:
a social space cannot be accounted for either by nature (climate, site) or by its previous
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.
Mental maps and symbolic gestures
One way of emplotting world conquest is to show that there are no limits to military
expansion. In practice there are of course always limits: it is hard to conquer the whole
world even Alexander had to turn back at some point. So what empires of all times have
tended to do is to set up test-cases for their military prowess. For example, Mesopotamian
world rulers prided themselves in crossing mountain ranges that normal human beings
could not master.14 Or they made a point of crossing the most inhospitable deserts.15 Or,
most relevant here, they crossed the sea. From early on, Mesopotamian rulers regarded the
Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf as the natural limits of the conquerable world. By the
same token, these waters challenged successive emperors to go beyond the shoreline and
prove that their power was truly without limits. In order to understand how this tradition
developed, and how it came to inform Achaemenid views of the sea, we must go all the
way back to Sargon of Akkad. Relatively few documents survive from the reign of Sargon
himself, and this is not the place to reconstruct what the historical Sargon, king of Akkad
in the late third millennium BCE, thought or did.16 Much more important for our purposes

J. Haubold

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 NeoBabylonian king, Nabonidus, excavated and displayed what he claimed was a statue of
Sargon in the main temple of Samas 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
shape mental maps of empire well into the first millennium BCE. Neo-Assyrian, NeoBabylonian, 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:
RA.MES sa ka-li-is kib-ra-a-ta is-tu tam-t`
[i-na qi-bi-ti-su] sir-ti nap-h ar LUGAL a-si-ib BA
e-li-t` a-di tam-t`_ sap-li-t` . . . ka-li-su-un bi-lat-su-nu ka-bi-it-t` u-bi-lu-nim-ma.
^

[On his (i.e. Marduks)] exalted [orders], all the kings who sit on thrones in the entire world,
from the upper sea (i.e. the Mediterranean) to the lower sea (i.e. the Indian Ocean), . . . they
all brought me their heavy tribute.24

There could be no better illustration of the fact that Sargons mental map of empire was
alive and well in the Persian period: for Cyrus too, world rule was still defined by two
maritime frontiers, one above and one below. Yet, those frontiers had become
permeable. Sargon himself had left room for ambiguity in his inscriptions, by claiming that
the gods had given him the upper and lower seas themselves, rather than just the lands
between them:
s[ar-ru-G]I [LUGA]L [KALAM.MA].KI [su den-l]l m[a-h i-r]a la i-d`-nu-sum6 ti-a-am-tam
a-l-tam u` sa-pi[l-tam i-d`-nu-sum6]
^

Sargon, lord of the land, to whom the god Enlil gave no rival, and to whom he gave the upper
and the lower sea.25

It is not entirely clear what Sargon means to suggest here: control of the seashore only? Or
perhaps a conquest of the sea and the lands in it? One suspects the ambiguity was
deliberate, and it certainly became productive, partly because the idea of a maritime border
became a provocation to later kings, and partly because the Sargonic idea of an empire
between the seas was contaminated with another tradition in which crossing the sea had
always played a central role: every Mesopotamian schoolboy knew that Gilgames had
crossed the sea near sunrise.26 What is more, they knew that his quest for life reached its
climax when he crossed the waters of death near the edges of the world. Gilgames was not
just another model king (sutur eli sarr, he surpassed all kings, as the opening line of
the Old Babylonian epic claimed); he was also a model human being. To audiences of the
Epic of Gilgames and related texts, crossing the sea was no longer merely a matter of
unchecked outward expansion but exemplified the heightened humanity that only great
kings could claim for themselves.

Mediterranean Historical Review

We do not know whether the Persians were aware of Gilgames as a hero in his own
right.27 What we do know is that by the sixth century BCE the Sargon and Gilgames
traditions had coalesced to the point that conquest of the sea was central to both.28 Later
authors who updated Sargons 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-ku`ki kap-ta-raki matatu(kur.kur) eberti(bal.ri) [tam]ti elti(an.ta)
tilmunki ma-gan-naki matatu(kur.kur) eberti tamti saplti(ki.ta)
u` matatu ultu st dsamsi(dutu.e`.[a]) adi ereb dsamsi(dutu.su.a)
sih irti(nigin)ti _matati kalsina(kur.du`.a.bi)
sa sarru-ken sa`r kissa[ti] (ki[s]) adi 3-su qat-su ik-su-du
Anaku (, ?) and Kaptara (, Crete?), the lands across the Upper Sea,
Dilmun and Magan, the lands across the Lower Sea,
and the lands from sunri[se] to sunset, the sum total of all the lands,
which Sargon, the King of the Univer[se], conquered three times.30
^

The Sargon Geography was compiled in Neo-Assyrian times (eighth/seventh century

BCE), and reflects Assyrian views of imperial space.31 Yet, those views were given
normative force by being traced back to Sargon, the model king who challenged his
successors to follow in his footsteps. As Sargon himself is made to say in another late text:
a-ga-n[a s]ar-rum sa i-sa-a[n-na]-na-an-ni
sa a-na-ku at-ta-al-l[a]-k[u]
su-u li-it-ta-la-ak
Lo, the king who wants to equal me,
where I have gone,
let him also go!32

Many kings followed what they perceived to be Sargons lead: they still regarded the
seashore as a natural limit to human expansion, but they also placed exceptional symbolic
value on going beyond it.33
Darius and the sea
The Persians soon discovered the attractions of that new paradigm. We have seen that
Cyrus in his Cylinder described his empire as stretching from the upper to the lower sea,
as yet without claiming expansion beyond the shoreline.34 But already Cyrus successor
Cambyses was known among Persians as the king who had conquered the sea. Herodotus
tells us this in connection with Cambyses Egyptian campaign.35 The same link between
conquering Egypt and mastering the sea emerges one generation later under Darius. The
relevant inscription deserves attention:
uatiy: Darayavaus: XS: [ . . . ] adam: niyastayam: imam: yauviyam: katanaiy: haca: Pirava:
nama: rauta: tya: Mudrayaiy: danuvatiy: abiy: draya: tya: haca: Parsa: aitiy: pasava: iyam:
yauviya: akaniya: avaua: yaua: adam: niyastayam: uta: nava: ayata: haca: Mudraya: tara:
imam: yauviyam: abiy: Parsam: avaua: yaua: mam: kama: aha
Darius the king says: [ . . . ] I gave order to dig this canal from a river named Nile which flows
in Egypt, to the sea which goes from Persia. Afterwards this canal was dug thus as I had
ordered, and ships went from Egypt through this canal to Persia thus as was my desire.36

The passage is taken from one of the inscriptions that Darius set up to commemorate his
building of the Red Sea Canal.37 What we have here is not simply the idea that a true world
ruler needs to conquer the sea. Rather, Darius can literally reinvent geography and turn the
sea from an obstacle to his ambition into a bond between two otherwise separate worlds.38

J. Haubold

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
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-bel-il.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 nagu.
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

Mediterranean Historical Review

Figure 1. The Babylonian World Map.

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
ta-rapastim.50
Sargon is supposed to have done when he travelled to the land of U
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 nagu 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 nagu so much as on the intervening water.
We recall that in the Babylonian World Map, the world is surrounded by the Bitter River,

10

J. Haubold

Akkadian dmarratu. 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:
dU-ru-ma-az-da ra-bi sa ra-bu-u ina muh-h i DINGIR.MES gab-bi sa AN-e u KI-t` ib-nu-u
UN.MES ib-nu-u sa dum-q gab-bi id-di-nu-ma UN.MES ina l`b-bi bal-tu- sa a-{na} mDa-ari-ia-mus LUGAL ib-nu-u u a-na mDa-a-ri-ia-mus LUGAL LUGAL-u-tu id-din-nu ina qaqqar a-ga-a rap-sa-a-tu4 sa KUR.KUR.MES ma-di-e-tu4 ina l`b-bi-su kurPar-su kurMa-da-a-a
u KUR.KUR.MES sa-ni-ti-ma li-sa-nu sa-ni-tu4 sa KUR.MES u ma-a-tu4 sa a-h a-na-a-a aga-a sa dmar-ra-tu4 u a-h u-ul-la-a-a ul-li-i sa dmar-ra-tu4 sa a-h a-na-a-a a-ga-a sa qaq-qar
su-ma-ma-i-tu4 u a-h u-ul-la-a-a ul-li-i sa qaq-qar su-ma-ma-i-tu4
_
_
Ahuramazda is great. He is the greatest among all the gods. He made the sky and the earth. He
made the people, and bestowed all prosperity so that people may live by it. He made Darius
king and gave to King Darius the kingship of this wide earth with many lands in it Persia,
Media, and the other lands and other populations [literally other tongues], of the mountains
and the plains, of this side of the Bitter River and the far side of the Bitter River, and of this
side of the desert [literally Land of Thirst] and the far side of the desert.54
^

This extract comes from a group of monumental texts from Persepolis (two in Old Persian,
one each in Elamite and Akkadian), which are not translations of each other but which
nonetheless seem to have been conceived as a unit. In his unfinished doctoral dissertation,
Donald Murray (11 June 1983 10 July 2011) discusses the relationship between these
texts and their specific outlook on Achaemenid rule. The Old Persian inscriptions, he
argues (DPd and DPe), emphasize Persian military prowess, whereas the Elamite
inscription (DPf) introduces Darius as a builder-king. In the Akkadian language
inscription (DPg) Darius takes up a specifically Mesopotamian discourse of world
conquest when he describes his rule as stretching beyond the desert (literally the Land of
Thirst); and beyond the Bitter River, precisely the term used for the ocean in the
Babylonian World Map.55 The parallel is no mere accident: in his lists of subject peoples,
Darius used the same term Bitter River to articulate the geography of his empire. Most
notably, he located the Scythians not just across the sea, but more specifically across the
Bitter River, illustrating by example the more general claim of the Akkadian Persepolis
text that the great king held sway on both sides of the ocean.56
Christoph Ulf once remarked that we can easily imagine a Babylonian looking at the
World Map and pointing out the place where Gilgames crossed the marratu . . . in order to
reach Utnapishtim.57 Darius, I argue, did something similar at the Bosporus, except that
he no longer put Gilgames or Sargon on the map, but rather himself: by bridging the
Bitter River, and invading the lands beyond it, Darius proved himself a heroic conqueror
of the world, one of those figures who dared to venture beyond the central field on the
Babylonian World Map, into the triangles, as it were. It helped that reality and ideology
came together at the Bosporus: here the Mediterranean really did form a (bitter) river. But
landscape is never meaningful on its own: landmarks need to be identified and interpreted,
and movement through space needs to be dramatized so that it becomes significant. That, it
would seem, is what Darius did at the Bosporus.

Mediterranean Historical Review

11

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:
Dar1io6 1` p1it1 por1yom1no6 k Soysvn pik1to th6 Kalxhdonih6 pi` to`n
Bosporon na z1ykto g1wyra, nu1yt1n sba`6 6 n1a pl11 pi` ta`6 Kyan1a6
kal1ym1na6, ta`6 prot1ron plagkta`6 llhn16 wasi` 1 nai, zom1no6 1` pi` i
uh 1 ito to`n Po nton o nta jiou 1 hton. p1 lag1 vn ga`r pa ntvn p1 wyk1
uvmasivtato6.
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
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 issuris(musen)ris-ma man-ma qe-reb-si-na ul i-[du-u]
[.. w]ings like a_ _bird, which/whom no one can com[prehend.]
[x x x x x] x: qe-reb-si-na man-ma la i-[du-u]
[ . . . ..].: which no one can compre[hend]61

Unfortunately, the context of these lines is broken, but enough text survives to show that
they describe a world so remote and strange that only the most exceptional of men can
grasp it. Sargon was certainly such a man: he is one of only three human beings mentioned
in the Mappa Mundi texts as venturing into the ocean.62 Darius, it would seem, liked to
think of himself as another such man.
Detlev Fehling finds it rather absurd to imagine that Herodotus had any information
about Darius trip to the Black Sea, but he misrepresents the balance of probability.63 We
have seen that mythical Near Eastern kings were thought to have done precisely this sort
of thing (the first line of SB Gilgames springs to mind: sa nagba muru, he who saw the
deep), and that Achaemenid kings modelled their own actions on those of their mythical
forebears. Pace Fehling, it seems entirely plausible that Darius put out stories about a
trip to the Black Sea; and that those stories survived in the memory of Aegean Greeks.
We cannot know what really happened, but we do know that the ancient plot of the king
venturing into the unknown was of crucial importance to Mesopotamian and Persian
rulers. One way of spreading the word was to put on a performance. Darius was adept at
performing what we might call public stunts, symbolic gestures that broadcast his
prowess as a warrior king. His bridge across the Bosporus bears all the hallmarks of such
a stunt, as does his alleged trip to the mouth of the Black Sea: why not allow that he
really did dramatically, self-consciously go and explore this most marvellous of
all seas?
When Darius crossed the Bosporus, he crossed an imaginary line between the known
world on one side of the water and an ill-defined beyond on the other. In so doing, he
proved himself a true conqueror of the world, somebody who could bridge even the ocean

12

J. Haubold

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.
Xerxes: acting out the ancient script
Xerxes followed in the footsteps of his charismatic father, in his treatment of the sea as in so
many other respects.64 He too based his claims to world rule on the idea of controlling the
ocean; and once again focused his efforts on the western regions of Egypt and the Black Sea.
Herodotus tells us that Xerxes sent an expedition from Egypt around the whole of Africa under
Sataspes.65 Some aspects of the story are suspect, but as a story it fits well with Achaemenid
claims to control the world by controlling the sea.66 Like his father, Xerxes also bridged the
Bitter River in the far north-western corner of his realm, though not on his way to Scythia.
Xerxes target was the mainland Greeks, in many ways the ultimate ocean dwellers, from a
Near Eastern perspective. In one of his inscriptions, Xerxes explicitly claimed to rule over the
Greeks on either side of the Bitter River. I quote the Akkadian version:
d
Hi-si--ar-si LUGAL i-qab-bi ina GIS.MI sa dA-h u-ru-ma-az-da- KUR.KUR.MES an-ni-e-ti
sa a-na-ku LUGAL-su-nu e-lat kurPa-ar-su [ . . . ] kurMa-da-a-a kurNIM.MAki kurAr-ra-h u-ut
kur
Ur-as-tu kurZa-ra-an-ga kurPa-ar-tu-u kurAr-ri-e-me kurBa-a-h a-ta-ar kurSu-gu-du kurHu-ma_ kurDIN.TIRki kurAs-sur kurSa-at-a-gu-us kurSa-pa-ar-da kurMi-sir kurIa-a-man-na sa
-ra-za-am
ina dmar-rat as-bu-u u sa a-hu-ul-lu-u sa dmar-rat [rat] as-bu-u kurMa-ak_ kurAr-ba-a-a kurGanda-ar kurIn-du-u kurKa-at-pa-tuk kurDa-a-an kurGi-mi-ir u-mar-ga kurGi-mi-ir ti-gr-h u-u-du
kur
Is-ku-du kurA-ku-pi-i-is kurPu-u-tu kurBa-an-ni-e-su kurKu-u-su
_
Xerxes the King says: By the favour of Ahuramazda, these are the countries whose king I am,
over and above Persia [ . . . ]: Media, Elam, Arachosia, Urartu, Drangiana, Parthia, Aria,
Bactria, Sogdia, Chorasmia, Babylonia, Assyria, Sattagydia, Sardis, Egypt, the Greeks [lit.
Ionians] who dwell in/by the Bitter River and who dwell on the far side of the Bitter River,
Maka, Arabians, Gandara, India, Cappadocia, Dahai, Amyrgian Scythians [lit. Cimmerians],
Pointed-Cap Scythians [lit. Cimmerians], Skudra, Akaufaka, Libya, Caria, Ethiopia.67
^

There has been much debate about this inscription, and its mysterious programme of
religious reform. Fascinating as it is, that debate does not concern me here.68 My point
is this: whatever else Xerxes might have hoped to convey in the Daiva Inscription, he
certainly used it to claim sovereignty over the Greeks who lived across the ocean
(Bitter River, in Akkadian), as well as those who lived in it, or by its shores. The
Greeks were unique in this regard: none of the other people whom Xerxes mentioned
were located on the far side of the Bitter River, not even the Scythians who so exercised
his father. There is a close and suggestive fit between Xerxes view of the Greeks in his
Daiva Inscription and his Greek campaign: like his father, Xerxes needed to be seen to
rule on either side of the water. The Greeks were to furnish the ultimate test of his
achievement.
And so Xerxes built another bridge across the Mediterranean, this time at Abydos:
bridging the ocean as his father had done perfectly expressed the political and ideological
purpose of his Greek campaign. Long before Xerxes, the Greeks across the sea had
become a test case for imperial expansion. The Assyrian king Sargon II, for example,
prided himself in catching them out of the sea like fish:
le-e tam-h a-ri sa i-na qabal(murub4) tam-tim kurIa-am-na-a-a sa-an-da-nis ki-ma nu-u-ni
i-ba-ru-ma u-sap-si-h u mat(kur) Qu-e u` uruSur-ri
_
(Sargon) . . . expert in battle, who like a fisherman caught the Iamnaeans [Ionians, i.e. the
Greeks] in the midst of the sea like fish and thus gave peace to Cilicia and Tyre.69
^

Mediterranean Historical Review

13

Already in the late eighth century BCE subjecting the Greeks was seen as a way of
asserting the empires 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. u1hsasuai, uv
ma) suggest
that this was understood by Herodotus as a direct counterpart to Darius trip to the mouth of the
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:
sarrani mes[.ni] a-si-bu-te tam-tim sa durani mes-su-nu tam-tim-ma e-du-u sal-h u-su-un sa kima gisnarkabti giseleppa rak-bu ku-um sse mes.e sa-an-du par-ri-sa-ni pal-his ul-ta-nap-sa-qu
l`b-ba-su-nu i-tar-rak-ma i-ma-u mar-tu ul ib-s_i sa-ni-ni ul im-mah -h a-ru giskakki-i[a] u` ina
ma-al-ki a-lik mah -ri-ia la im-su-la a-a-um-ma
^

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 kings entire

14

J. Haubold

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 kings 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
Here is what becomes of the time-honoured image of the imperial fisherman:
toi` d st1 uynnoy6 tin xuyvn bolon
gaisi kvpvn uraymasin t r1ipivn
paion rraxizon, o mvgh` d moy
kvkymasin kat1ix1 p1lagian la,
v6 k1laino`n nykto`6 mm w1il1to.
The Hellenes seized fragments of wrecks and broken oars
and hacked and stabbed at our men swimming in the sea
as fishermen kill tunnies or some netted haul.
The whole sea was one din of shrieks and dying groans,
till night and darkness hid the scene.81

Imperial literature from the eighth century BCE onward had likened the Greeks to fish, and
in so doing had emphasized their natural affinity with water, as well as their helplessness
when confronted with the arts of civilization: the net as a prime symbol of cultures control
over nature signalled the emperors civilizing mission.82 In Aeschylus, the image is
subverted to suggest the Persians own floundering in water as an element that they cannot
control. What is at issue here is the empires ability to rein in local culture and sever its ties
with nature. Once again a passage from an Assyrian inscription of king Esarhaddon is
instructive:
Su-te-e a-si-bu-te kul-ta-ri sa a-sar-su-nu ru-u-qu ki-ma ez-zi ti-ib me-h e-e as-su-h a su-ru[us]-su-un sa tam-tum a-na dan-nu-ti-su sadu u a-na e-mu-qi-su is-ku-nu ina sa-par-ri-ia a-aum-ma ul u-s i na-par-su-du-um-ma ul ip-par-sid sa tam-ti a-na sad i sa sad i a-na tam-tim a_
sab-su-nu aq-bi
ina q-bit dAs-sur beli-ia man-nu sa it-ti-ia is-sa-an-na-nu a-na sarru-u-ti u`
mes(.ni)
abbe mes-ia sa ki-[i]-ia-a-ti-ma sur-ba-ta be-[e]-lu-su ul-tu qe-reb tam-tim
ina sarrani
lu
nakruti mes-ia ki-a-am iq-bu-[u]-ni umma selibu la-pa-an dSamas e-ki-a-am il-lak
^

The Sutu, 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 Sutu who dwell in tents;
unnamed populations who inhabit the mountains; and finally people who dwell in the sea.

Mediterranean Historical Review

15

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.
Esarhaddons 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 seadwelling Iauna.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 kings own insistence upon conquering the sea had turned those
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 kings 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:
pai6 d mo`6 tad o kat1idv`6 nys1n n1vi uras1i,
sti6 llhsponton ro`n doylon 6 d1smvmasin
lpis1 sxhs1in 1onta, Bosporon, oon u1oy,
kai` poron m1t1rryumiz1 kai` p1dai6 swyrhlatoi6
p1ribalv`n pollh`n k1l1yuon nys1n pollvi stratvi,
unhto`6 n u1v
n d1` pantvn i1t o k 1 boyliai
kai` Pos1idvno6 krat1hs1in. pv6 tad o noso6 wr1nvn
1 x1 paid mon;
And this was achieved by my son, uncomprehending in his youthful audacity,
the man who thought he could contain with fetters, like a slave,
the sacred flowing Hellespont, the divine stream of the Bosporos.
He altered the very nature of the strait, and by casting around it hammered shackles
furnished a great road for his great army;
although only a mortal, he foolishly thought he could overcome all the gods,
including Poseidon. Surely this must have been some disease affecting
my sons mind?86

745

750

745

750

Aeschylus here attacks Xerxes bridge as contrary to nature (745 8), and as a foolish
attempt to defeat the gods (749 50). He is not entirely wrong: after all, Xerxes really did

16

J. Haubold

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 pyu1to 1rjh6, d1ina` poi1ym1no6 to`n llhsponton k1l1ys1 trihkosia6
pik1suai mastigi plhga`6 kai` kat1inai 6 to` p1lago6 p1d1vn z1ygo6. dh d1` koysa 6
kai` stig1a6 ma toytoisi p1p1mc1 stijonta6 to`n llhsponton. n1t1ll1to d1 n
apizonta6 l1g1in barbara t1 kai` tasuala pikro`n dvr, d1spoth6 toi dikhn
pitiu1i thnd1, ti min dikhsa6 o d1`n pro`6 k1inoy dikon pauon. kai` basil1y`6 m1`n
J1rjh6 diabhs1tai s1, n t1 sy g1 boyl n t1 mh. soi` d1 kata` dikhn ra o d1i`6
pvn uy1i, 6 onti kai` uol1r kai` lmyr potam . thn t1 dh` ualassan
nurv
n1t1ll1to toytoisi zhmioyn kai` tv
n p1st1vtvn t z1yji toy llhspontoy potam1in
ta`6 k1wala6.
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. Francois 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 (barbara) and outrageous ( tasuala) 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

Mediterranean Historical Review

17

perhaps be made. Starting with the Achaemenid royal inscriptions, we note that the only
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
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. Gilgames 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 emperors 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.
2.
3.
4.

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.
For country lists and other means of projecting Achaemenid imperial space, see Briant, Cyrus
to Alexander, 172 83; for the king as Ahuramazdas chosen, see Lincoln, Religion, Empire
and Torture, 33 49.
E.g. Briant, Cyrus to Alexander; Kuhrt, Persian Empire.
See White, Metahistory; idem, Content of the Form.

18
5.

6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.

16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.

22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.

29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.

J. Haubold
Vasunia, Gift of the Nile. Vasunia shows that Greek ideas about Egypt decisively shaped
Alexanders 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 preexisting narratives.
For this concept, see further Gould and White, Mental Maps; also Akerman, Imperial Map.
For an overview see Warf and Arias, Spatial Turn.
Lefebvre, Production of Space, 26.
Ibid., 77.
Ulf, Vom Anfang des Kosmos, 143.
Ibid., 156; Lang and Rollinger, Im Herzen der Meere.
Lefebvre, Production of Space, 26 7.
E.g. Wallinga, Ancient Persian Navy; idem, Naval Installations; idem, Ships and Sea-Power,
Hogemann, Das alte Vorderasien, 311 19 (the Achaemenid fleet); Schiwek, Der Persische
Golf; and Hogemann, Das alte Vorderasien, 286 8 (maritime trade).
The tradition can be traced all the way back to Gilgames; 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).
A particularly impressive example may be found in Esarhaddons 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 Gilgames, where digging wells is
a crucial aspect of the journey to the Cedar Forest; cf. George, Gilgamesh, 94 5.
For the historical Sargon, see Gadd, Dynasty of Agade; Frayne, Royal Inscriptions, collects
the inscriptions of Sargon.
Liverani, Model and Actualization; Westenholz, Legends, 1 3, with further literature.
For the literary tradition about Sargon, see Lewis, Sargon Legend; Westenholz, Legends; also
Longman, Autobiography; Horowitz, Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography, chs 2 and 4.
Royal Chronicle iv.1 2 (Schaudig).
Beaulieu, Nabonidus, 133 6.
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
lvarez-Mon and Garrison, Elam and
Root, The King and Kingship; Kuhrt, Cyrus Cylinder; A
Persia.
Sargon E2.1.1.1, ll. 7385; E2.1.1.2, ll. 7791; E2.1.1.11, ll. 113; E2.1.1.13, ll. 1822 (Frayne).
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).
Cyrus Cylinder K2.1.29 (Schaudig).
Sargon E.2.1.1.2 71 81 (Frayne).
Epic of Gilgames (SBV) I.37 40.
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 Gilgames; idem, Beware of Dim Cooks.
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 Gilgames
ta-napisti and U
tatraditions, see George, Gilgamesh, 20 and 93 4 (Cedar Forest); 152 3 (U
rapastim); Henkelman, Birth of Gilgames (birth narrative).
Edition, translation and commentary in Horowitz, Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography, 67 95.
Sargon Geography 41 4 (Horowitz).
For a date of composition under Sargon II or his immediate successors, see Horowitz,
Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography, 93.
Res Gestae Sargonis 121 3 (Westenholz); see also Sargon Birth Legend 22 31 and King of
Battle 21 (Westenholz).
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.
Cyrus Cylinder K2.1.29 (Schaudig).
Hdt. 3.34.

Mediterranean Historical Review

36.
37.
38.
39.

40.
41.
42.
43.

44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.

54.
55.

56.

DZc (the Kabret Stela), Old Persian Version (Kent).

For discussion, see Lloyd, Darius I in Egypt, 99 107, with further literature.
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.
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. Hogemann,
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.
DB, column 5 (monolingual Old Persian), para. 74 (Kent).
DNa Dar. NRa (Bab.), Section 3 (Weissbach).
Hdt. 4.83 and 4.85 9; Ctesias F 13 (21) (Lenfant).
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.
Pl. Menex. 239c 240a.
Edition and commentary in Horowitz, Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography, 20 42; see also
Horowitz, Babylonian Map of the World; Murray, Waters.
Horowitz, Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography, 25 6 (no older than the ninth century).
The Babylonian Map of the World, Text on the Reverse 28 29 (Horowitz).
Horowitz, Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography, 21 2, labels 18, 19 and 22.
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, Lesestucke, 68; Antiochus Cylinder col. ii.17 18 in
Kuhrt and Sherwin-White, Aspects, 76.
ta-rapastim:
The sun is said to have gone dark when Sargon of Akkad reached the land of U
Sargon, the Conquering Hero ll. 60 2 in Westenholz, Legends, 70 1.
Horowitz, Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography, 30 3, with passages and discussion.
For passages, see CAD s.v. marratu A; discussion in Murray, Waters.
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.
DPg (monolingual Akkadian), Section 2 (Weissbach).
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 p. 91.
However, Darius description of his empire would also have spoken to audiences who were
entirely unfamiliar with the tenets of Zoroastrian religion.
DSe 3 (Bab.) and DNa Dar. NRa (Bab.), Section 3 (Weissbach): the Scythians (Saka/Gimirri)
from the other side of the Bitter River ([KUR Gi- ]mir-ri sa a-h i ul-lu-a-a sa ID mar-ra-tu4).
Ulf, Vom Anfang des Kosmos, 155.
Hdt. 4.85; translations of Herodotus are taken from Waterfield, Herodotus, with modifications.
Fehling, Herodotus, 185; also Corcella, Book IV, 642.
Hdt. 4.85; for uv
ma, marvel, as a central category of Herodotean inquiry, see Munson,
Telling Wonders, 232 65; for parallels, see Corcella, Book IV, 642 and below pp. 10.
The Babylonian Map of the World, Text on the Obverse 11 and Text on the Reverse 27
(Horowitz).
^

57.
58.
59.
60.
61.

19

20
62.

63.
64.
65.
66.

67.
68.
69.

70.
71.

72.
73.
74.
75.
76.
77.
78.

79.
80.
81.
82.
83.
84.
85.
86.
87.
88.

J. Haubold
The other two are his traditional opponent Nur-Dagan, king of the distant country of
ta-napisti, the survivor of the flood, who dwells across the waters of death
Bursahanda; and U
(SB Gilg. X XI); see The Babylonian Map of the World, The Text on the Obverse 10
(Horowitz).
Fehling, Herodotus, 184.
For a sympathetic assessment of Xerxes reign, and his relationship with his father, see Kuhrt
Persian Empire, 238 43.
Hdt. 4.43.
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 Nechos expedition seems well conceived and intelligently executed, Sataspes is
marred by transgression, violence and intrigue.
XPh (the so-called Daiva Inscription), Akkadian version, Section 3.
Kuhrt, Persian Empire, 242 and 304 6, with further literature.
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
also Hdt. 1.141 (Cyrus and the Greeks of Asia Minor), with discussion in Hirsch, Cyrus
Parable; Ceccarelli, La fable.
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.
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 kings continued commitment to the naval campaign. As such, it is
perfectly plausible.
Hdt. 7.128 30.
Fehling, Herodotus, 31.
On this issue, see further the papers collected in Jacobs and Rollinger, Achamenidenhof /
Achaemenid Court, especially Section 4.
Cawkwell, Greek Wars, 108 9.
Borger, Inschriften, 57, Ep. 18, iv.82 v.2.
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.
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, 5315.
Pace Cawkwell, Greek Wars, 10910.
Hall, Persians, 21.
Aesch. Pers. 424 8.
For the symbolic significance of the net, see Ceccarelli, La fable, esp. 36 9.
Borger, Inschriften, 58 (Ep. 18, v.10 25).
Hall, Drowning Act.
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, Beitrage, 2167, with the Akkadian texts referenced there.
Aesch. Pers. 743 51; cf. 721 6.
See Hdt. 4.87 8 and the inscription of Mandrocles that he quotes there.
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).

Mediterranean Historical Review

89.
90.
91.
92.
93.
94.

21

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 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.
Hdt. 7.35.
Hartog, Mirror, 331.
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.
Kuhrt, Persian Empire, 305.
A?P, Ethnic labels on the tomb of Artaxerxes II or III, OP Version (Kent).
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.

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