There never
was an Achaemenid Empire!
By Sabah DARA
Kent, UK. March 2015
gobekliteppe@gmail.com
Content
1.
Introduction
2.
The so-called
Achaemenid empire
3.
Evidences
disproving the existence of the Achaemenid Empire
4.
Circumstances
of emergence of the term Achaemenid Empire
5.
Medea,
the timid Empire that was raped by nomads
6.
Conclusion
Introduction
Though this article was sparked by the Voice of
Kurdistan’s editorial questioning the circumstances of the creation of the Nawroz
celebration, and despite the importance of this issue, I am not going to enter
into this detail, but rather go beyond, into scrutinizing the controversial and
rather fugitive status of the so called Achaemenid empire whose role has been
so exaggerated in traditional literature as to overshadow the role of the
authentic entity i.e. the Medean Empire!
Not only information related to the transition from the
Medean to the Achaemenid Empires was surrounded by a blurred atmosphere of
vagueness, but also nothing reliable is known about this important “earthquake”
in the political prehistory of the Near East.
N.B.
The term Parthian will be used in the rest of this article to imply this
people as well as the Achaemenids.
The so-called Achaemenid Empire
This empire according
to the traditional literature was founded in 550 B.C. by Cyrus the Great
following a palace coup d’état against his own uncle, the king of Medea.
Despite
being classified as a Persian empire, nothing in its description suggests to us
that it was dominated by the Achaemenids and/or the Persians!
If the
Parthians (Old name of the Persians) were mentioned in Medean and Assyrian
scripts as nomad, mercenaries and whose homeland was a vassal state, the word
“Achaemenid” on the other hand was and is still a fugitive word that nobody has
“deciphered” yet! It is possible that Achaemenid was the name of an ancient
tribe whose name was exploited by the Parthians as a “historic filler” of the
gap in their history in the Pre-Cyrus period.
What is
known or rather unknown about the Achaemenids is their ethnic origin, homeland,
and relationship to the Parthians, and the reasons behind sticking their name
on the Medean Empire.
A slightly
better depiction exists for the Parthians since their presence as nomad
migrants originating from north eastern and eastern Iran and their settlement
in northern Iran starting from the 9th century B.C. is already being
evidenced.
But these information
in no way would justify naming an empire that stretched from the Aegean Sea to
the Strait of Hormuz to a peculiar tribe like the Achaemenids, nor to give a
prominent position to the Parthians within the Medean Empire when their
(Parthians) role was confined to military activities similar to that of the
other 27 ethnic armies composing the Medean Imperial army.
The key
points that we intend to highlight here are the following;
·
Without
evidence, naming the Medean Empire as Achaemenid is considered a “fake” because
history is in essence based on evidences, without it it is considered as a myth
or a tale.
·
Parthians
were not Zagrosians and were ethnically un-related to the Elamites or the Medes
implying that they were of an alien ethnic origin; they spoke a different
language; their past activities is unknown; and their homeland never was cited
in any historical document belonging to that epoch.
Trying
to superpose this information on to the foundation of the so called “Achaemenid
Empire” would pose a problem so unrealistic as to provoke a “satiric smile”
which is not surprising because witty issues usually dissimulate awful events
and the issue in queston is not an exception as shown below.
Whatever the intension
of those behind the imposition of the terms “Achaemenids” and “Parthians” on
the history of Iran and Zagros was, the illegal deed they carried out left the
Zagrosians with an un-healed wound over the past two thousand years.
Replacing the Medean
Empire by the Achaemenid empire not only denied the authentic people of Medea
from their own right to the empire, but they “chopped off” this empire from the
prehistory of the Kurds, which in its turn left these latter devoid of any
connection with their own prehistory.
The Achaemenid issue
created such an impermeable wall between the Kurds and their past that the
history of this people is depicted by the regional peoples as a joke!
Evidences disproving the existence of theAchaemenid Empire
The best assumption that can
be made regarding the Parthians connection to the Medean Empire was their role
in the army from the early period of their settlement in northern Iran in the 9th
century B.C. apart from that, nothing else worthy of mention can be added!
Evidences of
general nature
·
The Greek
never used the name Achaemenid Empire in their documents, while their
diplomatic and warfare affaires with the Medes used to be called “The Median
Affaires”.
·
Nothing in
the profile of the Parthians allows them to be attributed a leading role within
an Empire that was founded on Zagrosian homeland, whose authentic leaders were
from Anzan ([1]),
and the bulk of its army were ethnic Zagrosians Mede, Elamites, Lurs, and
Zagrosians from Anatolia.
·
Parthians were of nomadic background as
explained below:
·
Absence of any historical
records relating to this people prior to the inclusion of their region as a
vassal province attached to the Medean Empire.
·
Absence of any cultural
background.
·
Lack of any information
about their language or religion.
·
Lack of any indication
to their ethnic belonging, though their geographic location point to a region
inhabited by Turkic speaking people.
Evidences based on culture
- There was no pre-Achaemenid culture in the eastern
region of Iran from which the Parthian tribes came! Hence, there is no
logic in linking the Medean civilization with those tribes.
- How can we call the empire in question Achaemenid
or Parthians when the language, religion, homeland, culture, royal
dynasties, names of the dignitaries, city names were all of Medean-Elamite
background?
- Nawroz
is a Zagrosian celebration that dates back at least to the 4th
Millennium; Parthian adoption of this anniversary date is another
indication to the domination of the Medes in the Empire.
- Even if
the possibility of a Parthian military domination of the Empire was
assumed, that would change the overall picture since their low culture
would oblige them to abide by the desire of the much sophisticated Medes.
- Assuming
the Parthians were skillful and intelligent people that participated in
setting up the Empire; did they acquire this skill in their own homeland
or in southwestern Iran? The first possibility is inapplicable because the
Parthian homeland did not show any significant signs for cultural
activities, while if the skill is acquired in SW Iran, which was under the
control of the Medes, then the Parthians are considered as Medes and not
Parthians!
Achaemenid Monarchs were not
Achaemenids
- Neither
Cyrus the Great, nor any of the Monarchs that followed were of Achaemenid
origin.
- Evidence showing the Zagrosian origin of Cyrus:
- If Cyrus is taken as an Achaemenid,
what was the reason for having a name of Zagrosian origin (Kur + Ush = “Kurdish
belief” or “Kurdish blood” according to the dictionary of the Zagrosian
language of Mesopotamia i.e. Sumerian). In fact, all the kings of the
empire bore Zagrosian names.
- If Cyrus was Achaemenid,
what made him show off his Anshanic (Elami) origin?
- The Cyrus Cylinder which meticulously lists the
genealogy of this Emperor does not mention the word Achaemenids! Similar
ignorance of the Achaemenid is expressed in an inscription from
Pasargadae, ascribed to Cyrus. This means that the word Achaemenid must
have been inserted into the history of Iran at a later date most probably
during the reign of the Parthians in 247 B.C.
Language based evidences
·
Old
Iranian that was the official language of the Empire was in fact a Zagrosian
language whose vocabulary was entirely Kurdish. There is no trace of any alien
language in Old Iranian be it Achaemenid, Persian, or any other language. This
assertion is forcibly liable to resuscitate a question about the logic behind
claiming the existence of an empire whose official language is alien to the
people of that empire!
·
Since
language is a mirror of the cultural and power status of the people that speak
it and that it has an interactive relationship with the surrounding languages,
therefore strong languages influence weak languages. Superposing this on the
Parthian-Medean languages permits us to conclude that the former language was
entirely integrated within the second since no trace was left of the Parthian
dialects or language. Consequently, the power house of the empire in question
should have been located within the Medean camp.
·
Compared
to Kurdish that still preserves a rich vocabulary, Persian seems to have
undergone profound penetration of Arabic words (c, 50 %) that must have taken
place in the aftermath of the Moslem conquest of Iran in the 7th
century. This unusually high rate of loan words points to the existence of a
receptive environment instigated by the lack of intimate “symbiosis” between
the Persian speakers and their language! By the time of the Muslim conquest, Persians
within the Sassanid Empire might have realized that the language they spoke did
not belong to them but to the Kurds! This inference reminds us with an Old
Iranian proverb that says: “If you want to hear pure
Persian, go to Kurdistan”.
Circumstances of emergence of the term Achaemenid Empire
In brief, we believe that the Achaemenid
and/or Persian issue was inserted into the history of Iran during the Parthian
period (247 B.C.-224 A.D).
In
order to give a clear picture to illustrate the circumstances surrounding the
intrusion of this people into a world created by the Zagrosians from a scratch
since the Farming Revolution of the 10th Millennium, we have divided
the development leading to the final coercion of the term Achaemenid empire in
the traditional literature into four stages:
·
The Assyrian
stage (9th -6th century B.C.)
·
The
Greek stage (6th-4th century B.C.)
·
The
Selucide stage (312-247 B.C.)
·
The
Parthian stage (247 B.C.-224 A.D.)
The
Assyrian stage (9th -6th century B.C.)
From their early period of
settlement in northern Iran in the 9th century B.C., the Parthians
seemed to be playing on all cords in order to accomplish their goal of putting
an end to their nomad way of living by settling in their new promised land.
While playing mercenary
soldiers roles with the Elamites and the Medes, they were tempted to flirt with
the Assyrians through accepting vassalage to that Mesopotamian each time the
Zagrosian reign of power was shaken.
That “5th column
role” played by the Parthian tribes might have played decisive roles in
facilitating the frequent Assyrian incursion into Zagros.
Over the centuries that
followed, Parthian settlements increased, their name and role started gradually
to be familiarized in Iran, and they started to adapt themselves to the local
customs and tradition particularly the Elamite/ Medean language and they
created a language for themselves through the distortion of the Elamite/Medean
language.
Hence the beginning of the end
of the nomadic way of life started and an embryo of the future Parthian people
was born.
Absence of evidence about the
linguistic or cultural features of the Parthians oblige us to assume that they
adopted everything from the Elamites/ Mede civilization that had been around
for many centuries.
Parthian activities throughout
this period seems to have been sidelined or insignificant or that their role
was restricted to the role of mercenaries.
The
Greek stage (6th century -331 B.C.)
Following the defeat of the
Assyrians in 609 B.C. at the hands of the Medes, these latter started to expand
their empire westward and eastward to cover the region extending from Greece to
Baluchistan.
Though historical record
mainly of Greek origin do not mention a great deal about the Parthians despite
their participation in the Medean Imperial army, it is suspected that their 5th
column activities would have been reactivated with the Greek and that they
might have played a decisive role in the defeat of the Medes at the hands of
Alexander the Great in 331 B.C.
Our justification for the
accusation brought against the Parthians is based on the following arguments:
·
If the
Parthians did not hesitate to collaborate with the Assyrians, nothing would prevent
them from repeating it with the Greeks.
·
Their
nomadic way of life would have encouraged them to be “flirting” with any party
wishing to employ their services.
·
Parthians
best skill was as mercenary soldiers which are a term sufficient to identify
the profile of those involved in it.
·
The relatively
quick rise of the Parthians to power and the foundation of a state of their own
indicates that during the Greek period and that of the Seleucids that followed,
Parthians were not suffering from the invaders as was the case with the Medes
who were subjected to a systematic plan of revenge, plunder, deportation,
ruin.... Alexander the Great army came to Zagros to take revenge from the
Medes.
·
There was
no common denominator between the highly cultured Medes and the nomad Parthians;
this distinctly sharp contrast between the profile of these two groups and the
superiority in social and official rank of the Medes would have created a great
deal of grudges among the Parthians.
The
Selucide stage (312-247 B.C.)
Parthian
collaboration with the Seleucids is highly probable and corroborated by their
prompt response in founding the Parthian state in 247 B.C.
If the
Parthians were subjected to hardship during this period, they would n’t have
been able to set up their own state as soon as the Seleucid rule ended.
The
Parthian stage (247 B.C.-224 A.D.)
This period was accompanied by
the introduction of the Greek styled Phoenician abjadi that literally put an
end to the use of the cuneiform in which Medean and Elamite scripts were
written up to that time.
Consequently, the region became
“history-less” because from that time on, no body was able any more to read the
cuneiform and history had to be written anew by those making the law i.e. the
Parthians.
Because writing the history of
Iran anew meant the history of the Zagrosians starting with the Medes, and
since exposing the past in this manner would nullify the role of the Parthians,
therefore, these latter invented their own history through the glorification of
their role and the inertion of the Achaemenid Empire.
Medea, the timid Empire that was raped by nomads
Contrary to what is being
diffused in traditional literature about the Medean Empire in emphasizing that
it was around for a short period of time before being taken over by the
Achaemenids.
We wish here to emphasis the
fact that the duration of the Medean Empire was from 615 B.C. to 331 B.C. which
implicitly denies the role of the fictitious entity called Achaemenid.
This empire was composed of
twenty eight semi-autonomous states including that of Parsua, the Parthians
homeland.
Reasons to emphasis the Medean
identity of the Empire that was falsely called Achaemenid:
·
Recalling
once again that the language used in the Medean Empire was Old Iranian that is
almost concordant with modern Kurdish.
·
The entire
list of the emperors cited in relation to Medea and the so called Achaemenid
Empire were bearing Zagrosian names and of Zagrosian origin
- Medean civilization was not “parachuted” into the Near East from
the sky; it was the offspring of more than 10,000 years of cultural
dynamism that produced Gobekli Tepe, the Farming Revolution, the
Indo-European Migration and language, the Sumerian Civilization, the
Ziggurats, the first religion in the world (Zoroastrian), and the 1st
empire in the world. How dare pseudo-historian snatch the Medean
civilization on behalf of some fugitive nomads whose names are not even
mentioned in historical books?
- If the Parthian were so advanced and powerful as to found an empire
and a civilization:
- What stopped them from
carrying out that task in their own country?
- Why did they found it in
Zagros?
- Why were they so shy to
use their own language in that empire?
- How is it that their own
homeland in Parsua is “history-less”?
- Why were the imperial
capitals (Susa, Acbatan, Persepolis, Pasargade) situated within and
around Zagros?
- Why did they adopt the
Zoroastrian religion?
Conclusion
- Cyrus
the great was a Medean monarch belonging to a proud dynasty from Anzan! He
did not need to attach his origin to a fugitive name like Achaemenid.
- The
Parthians in 550 B.C. were neither more powerful than the war hardened
Elamites or Medes, nor their nomadic way of life had anything worthy to
compete with that of the Zagrosians.
- Medean
Empire could not have vanished on behalf of some nomad tribes!
- All that is said
at this stage is that the Achaemenid Empire is a fake because there is no
contemporaneous evidence proving its existence under that name.
· Whatever the identity of the Achaemenid people, the
civilization behind the empire recorded in their name was entirely the work of
the Medes
·
In the
same way that Old Iranian was a fabricated as a replacement for Medean
language; the Achaemenid Empire was similarly “doctored” to replace the Medean
Empire.
- Herodotus, and the fugitive history he
created around the Medes: All the
history of the Medean Empire had Greek records particularly that of
Herodotus as reference. This source
of information cannot have been unbiased or precise for the following
reasons:
o Contrary to the common belief about Herodotus
as being the Father of History, this man was in reality far from this profile
since his historic accounts particularly those concerning the Near East were
full of errors. Moreover, his own compatriots used to nickname him “The father
of lies!”.
o
Herodotus
was Greek and his region was vassalized on behalf of the Medean Empire for
several centuries. It would have been unimaginable to consider his writing or
the writing of any other Greek of that epoch neutral because of the grudges
created against the Medes as a result of their domination to their country.
- The way Herodotus used to refer to those
belonging to the Medean Empire was either as Persians or Medes! His
ignorance of the Medean or Parthian dialect and the fact that he never
set foot in the Near East would not have put him in a position to write
about these two peoples.
- Apparently Greek writers
did not differentiate between Medes and Persians, and hence their mention
would have depended on the location of the author, and presence of this
or that type of Medean soldiers in the area in question.
- In fact for an ancient
Greek, too close attachment to the occupiers of their region was
articulated as Medeanized which is an implicit denial to the Persian role
within the Imperial army.([2])
[1] This is a historic
town in central Zagros near Elam.