DARIUS TRIUMPHANT – BISITUN REVISITED

Darius’ victory in 522–521 BCE was by no means a sure thing. The Bisitun Inscription makes plain the widespread extent and ferocity of the resistance Darius faced. Darius repeated several times (DB §56, §57, §59, and §62) that he accomplished the defeat of the nine rebels in “one and the same year,” though his own dating seems to belie this claim: Gaumata was slain in late September 522, and Darius’ generals were still subduing the last of the rebels in December 521. A great deal of scholarly ingenuity has been applied to reconciling Darius’ statements. Rather than insist on the literal truth – which is not a vain enterprise, because Darius himself makes much of it – one might instead ask why the “one and the same year” was so important to Darius that he made the claim. In the end, it was another way to solidify his legitimacy: by divine favor (of course), by descent (exaggerated), by fitness to rule (standard for any king), and by military might (ultimately, the key element).

As always, one must examine earlier traditions for parallels, of which there are many. The “nine kings in one year” motif occurs several times in the Akkadian king Naram-Sin’s inscriptions, more than sixteen centuries earlier. Darius tapped into an ancient convention. Part of the Persian genius lay not only in their successful co-opting of the past but also in their innovations based on it. The Persians had great respect for their Mesopotamian and Elamite forebears, and they borrowed (and modified) both textual and iconographic modes of expression. The Bisitun relief’s imagery hearkens back to elements of the stele of Naram-Sin (reigned c. 2213–2176), among many others (Figure 5.1). Naram-Sin’s stele had been plundered from Sippar in the early twelfth century by the Elamite king Shutruk-Nahhunte I, who took it to Susa and added his own inscription in Elamite.