ABSTRACT
Cyrus (old Pers. Kūruš, reigned 558-530 B.C.), the founder of the Persian Empire, bears in the oldest written records in the Babylonian language the name of “Kurash 1 , the great king, the mighty king, the king of Babel, the king of Sumir and Akkad, the king of the four countries, son of Kambuziyani the great king, the king of Anshān, the great-grandson of Shishpish, the great king, the king of Anshān.” (Cyrus Cylinder Journ. Asiat. Soc. XII, 1880, 87). In the annals of Nebunid Cyrus is called king of Anshān before the conquest of the Medes, later (9th year of Nabunid) he is called king of Parśu; in Babylonian private records (contract tablets) he is called king of Babel. 2 This means that Cyrus is a king of the Persians but that his paternal kingdom lay in Anshān or Anzān 3 , northern Elam (Susiana) with Susa as its capital. It may be conjectured that the eldest Cyrus and his brother Ariaramnes, the sons of Teispes had been allies of the Medes at the time of the overthrow of the Assyrian kingdom and that the Persians (Parsua) under the leadership of their Achæmenian princes abandoned the territory south of Manna where the Assyrians were in contact with them and had taken possession of Susiana and Persis. The sons of Teispes founded two lines, 4 one of which exercised sovereignty from the valley of Murghāt (Medus, Pulwār) over the districts of Pārs and Kermān; the other took to itself the kingdom of Susa where king Ummanaldash, 640 B.C., had exchanged for voluntary exile his shadow-kingdom built on the ruins of the territory that had been devastated by Assurbanipal in a great war. The oracle in Jeremiah (49, 34) of 596 B.C. has been considered to refer to the occupation of Elam by the Persians. However the whole of the country of Susiana does not seem to have come into his possession till after the death of Abradatas who fell in the battle of Sardes as an ally of Cyrus (Xenoph. Kyrop. 7, 1, 32). When the Median Empire was conquered by Cyrus the Great in 550 B.C. Persis also passed under his rule and since he did not, like the Assyrians, destroy the kings whom he conquered but everywhere grasped the sceptre himself, Arsames, the son of Ariaramnes, accordingly lost his position as monarch or it passed over to Cyrus perhaps after the death of Ariaramnes and we find his son Hystaspes later as Satrap of Parthia. The title “King of Anzān 1 ” could not therefore have been exchanged for that of “King of Persia” before the time of Cyrus. Susa, the capital of Elam, remained still the royal seat of the Persians while Pasargada in Persis 2 , but after Darius Persepolis, with the imperial palace for great state ceremonies, with its altar, for the sacred fire and the royal sepulchres was regarded as the sacred city. The outstanding position of Elam, the later province of Hūza (in old-Persian written Uvza, Susiana) explains amongst other things the fact that the Persian Inscriptions of the Achæmenids are accompanied by an Anzano-Susian and therefore Babylonian translation, that even the builders’ record of Persepolis on the eastern side of the Terrace is engraved only in the Susian language. (Oppert, Records of the Past 9, 73; Le peuple et la langue des médes 196.) This language which is related neither to the Persian nor the Babylonian tongue is a somewhat later form of that which appears in those inscriptions of the indigenous princes which have been discovered at Aidadsh on the plain of Mâl-Amīr on a tributary of the upper Qārūn. These princes 3 call themselves “King of the peoples and of Anzān while their country they call Hapirti and this latter name in the Susian translation of the Achæmenid Inscription is the rendering of the Persian Hūža which, originally the name of the Uxians, the eastern neighbours of the Kissians (Kashshi of the inscriptions) or Susians, came in course of time to designate the entire country (New Persian Xūzistān, Arabic Hūz in the plural Ahwāz, one of the chief towns on the Rapids of the Pasitigris or Qārūn, the Aginis of Arriān). Thus also the name Anshān, which on a Babylonian gloss is explained as Elamtu, seems to have been transferred from a northern district to a great part of Susiana, and Rawlinson has discovered the name Assān applied to the district surrounding Shushtar (Sosirate 1 ). The identification of Anzān or Anshān is difficult and has given rise to keen controversy in which most of the scholars who have busied themselves with the newly discovered Cyrus-Inscriptions have taken part 2 .
