History of Egypt, Chaldæa, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12)

Volume Ix.

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THE IRANIAN CONQUEST

THE IRANIAN RELIGIONS--CYRUS IN LYDIA AND AT BABYLON; CAMBYSES IN EGYPT--DARIUS AND THE ORGANISATION OF THE EMPIRE.

The constitution of the Median empire borrowed from the ancient peoples of the Euphrates: its religion only is peculiar to itself--Legends concerning Zoroaster, his laws; the Avesta and its history--Elements contained in it of primitive religion--The supreme god Ahura-maza and his Amesha-spentas: the Yazatas, the Fravashis--Angro-mainyus and his agents, the Daivas, the Pairikas, their struggle with Ahura-mazda--The duties of man here below, funerals, his fate after death---Worship and temples: fire-altars, sacrifices, the Magi.

Cyrus and the legends concerning his origin: his revolt against Astyages and the fall of the Median empire--The early years of the reign of Nabonidus: revolutions in Tyre, the taking of Harran--The end of the reign of Alyattes, Lydian art and its earliest coinage--Croesus, his relations with continental Greece, his conquests, his alliances with Babylon and Egypt--The war between Lydia and Persia: the defeat of the Lydians, the taking of Sardes, the death of Croesus and subsequent legends relating to it--The submission of the cities of the Asiatic littoral.

Cyrus in Bactriana and in the eastern regions of the Iranian table-land --The impression produced on the Chaldaean by his victories; the Jewish exiles, Ezekiel and his dreams of restoration, the new temple, the prophecies against Babylon; general discontent with Nabonidus--The attach of Cyrus and the battle of Zalzallat, the taking of Babylon and the fall of Nabonidus: the end of the Chaldaean empire and the deliverance of the Jews.

Egypt under Amasis: building works, support given to the Greeks; Naukratis, its temples, its constitution, and its prosperity--Preparations for defence and the unpopularity of Amasis with the native Egyptians--The death of Cyrus and legends relating to it: his palace at Pasargadae and his tomb--Cambyses and Smerdis--The legendary causes of the war with Egypt--Psammetichus III., the battle of Pelusium; Egypt reduced to a Persian province.

Cambyses' plans for conquest; the abortive expeditions to the oceans of Amnion and Carthage--The kingdom of Ethiopia, its kings, its customs: the Persians fail to reach Napata, the madness of Cambyses--The fraud of Gaumata, the death of Cambyses and the reign of the pseudo-Smerdis, the accession of Darius--The revolution in Susiana, Chaldaea, and Media: Nebuchadrezzar III. and the fall of Babylon, the death of Oraetes, the defeat of Khshatrita, restoration of peace throughout Asia, Egyptian affairs and the re-establishment of the royal power.

The organisation of the country and its division into satrapies: the satrap, the military commander, the royal secretary; couriers, main roads, the Eyes and Ears of the king--The financial system and the provincial taxes: the daric--Advantages and drawbacks of the system of division into satrapies; the royal guard and the military organisation of the empire--The conquest of the Hapta-Hindu and the prospect of war with Greece.

Chapter I--the Iranian Conquest

Drawn by Boudier, from the engraving in Coste and Flandin. The vignette, drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a statuette in terra-cotta, found in Southern Russia, represents a young Scythian.

The Iranian religions--Cyrus in Lydia and at Babylon: Cambyses in Egypt --Darius and the organisation of the empire.

The Median empire is the least known of all those which held sway for a time over the destinies of a portion of Western Asia. The reason of this is not to be ascribed to the shortness of its duration: the Chaldaean empire of Nebuchadrezzar lasted for a period quite as brief, and yet the main outlines of its history can be established with some certainty in spite of large blanks and much obscurity. Whereas at Babylon, moreover, original documents abound, enabling us to put together, feature by feature, the picture of its ancient civilisation and of the chronology of its kings, we possess no contemporary monuments of Ecbatana to furnish direct information as to its history. To form any idea of the Median kings or their people, we are reduced to haphazard notices gleaned from the chroniclers of other lands, retailing a few isolated facts, anecdotes, legends, and conjectures, and, as these materials reach us through the medium of the Babylonians or the Greeks of the fifth or sixth century B.C., the picture which we endeavour to compose from them is always imperfect or out of perspective. We seemingly catch glimpses of ostentatious luxury, of a political and military organisation, and a method of government analogous to that which prevailed at later periods among the Persians, but more imperfect, ruder, and nearer to barbarism--a Persia, in fact, in the rudimentary stage, with its ruling spirit and essential characteristics as yet undeveloped. The machinery of state had doubtless been adopted almost in its entirety from the political organisations which obtained in the kingdoms of Assyria, Elam, and Chaldaea, with which sovereignties the founders of the Median empire had held in turns relations as vassals, enemies, and allies; but once we penetrate this veneer of Mesopotamian civilisation and reach the inner life of the people, we find in the religion they profess--mingled with some borrowed traits--a world of unfamiliar myths and dogmas of native origin.

The main outlines of this religion were already fixed when the Medes rose in rebellion against Assur-bani-pal; and the very name of Confessor--Fravartish--applied to the chief of that day, proves that it was the faith of the royal family. It was a religion common to all the Iranians, the Persians as well as the Medes, and legend honoured as its first lawgiver and expounder an ancient prophet named Zarathustra, known to us as Zoroaster.* Most classical writers relegated Zoroaster to some remote age of antiquity--thus he is variously said to have lived six thousand years before the death of Plato,** five thousand before the Trojan war,*** one thousand before Moses, and six hundred before Xerxes' campaign against Athens; while some few only affirmed that he had lived at a comparatively recent period, and made him out a disciple of the philosopher Pythagoras, who flourished about the middle of the fifth century B.C.

* The name Zarathustra has been interpreted in a score of different ways. The Greeks sometimes attributed to it the meaning "worshipper of the stars," probably by reason of the similarity in sound of the termination "-astres" of Zoroaster with the word "astron." Among modern writers, H. Rawlinson derived it from the Assyrian Ziru-Ishtar, "the seed of Ishtar," but the etymology now most generally accepted is that of Burnouf, according to which it would signify "the man with gold-coloured camels," the "possessor of tawny camels." The ordinary Greek form Zoroaster seems to be derived from some name quite distinct from Zarathustra.

** This was, as Pliny records, the opinion of Eudoxus; not Eudoxus of Cnidus, pupil of Plato, as is usually stated, but a more obscure personage, Eudoxus of Rhodes.

*** This was the statement of Hermodorus.

According to the most ancient national traditions, he was born in the Aryanem-vaejo, or, in other words, in the region between the Araxes and the Kur, to the west of the Caspian Sea. Later tradition asserted that his conception was attended by supernatural circumstances, and the miracles which accompanied his birth announced the advent of a saint destined to regenerate the world by the revelation of the True Law. In the belief of an Iranian, every man, every living creature now existing or henceforth to exist, not excluding the gods themselves, possesses a Frohar, or guardian spirit, who is assigned to him at his entrance into the world, and who is thenceforth devoted entirely to watching over his material and moral well-being,* About the time appointed for the appearance of the prophet, his Frohar was, by divine grace, imprisoned in the heart of a Haoma,** and was absorbed, along with the juice of the plant, by the priest Purushaspa,*** during a sacrifice, a ray of heavenly glory descending at the same time into the bosom of a maiden of noble race, named Dughdova, whom Purushaspa shortly afterwards espoused.

* The Fravashi (for fravarti, from fra-var, "to support, nourish"), or the frohar (feruer), is, properly speaking, the nurse, the genius who nurtures. Many of the practices relating to the conception and cult of the Fravashis seem to me to go back to the primitive period of the Iranian religions.

** The haoma is an Asclepias Sarcostema Viminalis.

*** The name signifies "He who has many horses."

Zoroaster was engendered from the mingling of the Frohar with the celestial ray. The evil spirit, whose supremacy he threatened, endeavoured to destroy him as soon as he saw the light, and despatched one of his agents, named Bouiti, from the country of the far north to oppose him; but the infant prophet immediately pronounced the formula with which the psalm for the offering of the waters opens: "The will of the Lord is the rule of good!" and proceeded to pour libations in honour of the river Dareja, on the banks of which he had been born a moment before, reciting at the same time the "profession of faith which puts evil spirits to flight." Bouiti fled aghast, but his master set to work upon some fresh device. Zoroaster allowed him, however, no time to complete his plans: he rose up, and undismayed by the malicious riddles propounded to him by his adversary, advanced against him with his hands full of stones--stones as large as a house--with which the good deity supplied him. The mere sight of him dispersed the demons, and they regained the gates of their hell in headlong flight, shrieking out, "How shall we succeed in destroying him? For he is the weapon which strikes down evil beings; he is the scourge of evil beings." His infancy and youth were spent in constant disputation with evil spirits: ever assailed, he ever came out victorious, and issued more perfect from each attack. When he was thirty years old, one of the good spirits, Vohumano, appeared to him, and conducted him into the presence of Ahura-mazda, the Supreme Being. When invited to question the deity, Zoroaster asked, "Which is the best of the creatures which are upon the earth?" The answer was, that the man whose heart is pure, he excels among his fellows. He next desired to know the names and functions of the angels, and the nature and attributes of evil. His instruction ended, he crossed a mountain of flames, and underwent a terrible ordeal of purification, during which his breast was pierced with a sword, and melted lead poured into his entrails without his suffering any pain: only after this ordeal did he receive from the hands of Ahura-mazda the Book of the Law, the Avesta, was then sent back to his native land bearing his precious burden. At that time, Vishtaspa, son of Aurvataspa, was reigning over Bactria. For ten years Zoroaster had only one disciple, his cousin Maidhyoi-Maonha, but after that he succeeded in converting, one after the other, the two sons of Hvogva, the grand vizir Jamaspa, who afterwards married the prophet's daughter, and Frashaoshtra, whose daughter Hvogvi he himself espoused; the queen, Hutaosa, was the next convert, and afterwards, through her persuasions, the king Vishtaspa himself became a disciple. The triumph of the good cause was hastened by the result of a formal disputation between the prophet and the wise men of the court: for three days they essayed to bewilder him with their captious objections and their magic arts, thirty standing on his right hand and thirty on his left, but he baffled their wiles, aided by grace from above, and having forced them to avow themselves at the end of their resources, he completed his victory by reciting the Avesta before them. The legend adds, that after rallying the majority of the people round him, he lived to a good old age, honoured of all men for his saintly life. According to some accounts, he was stricken dead by lightning,* while others say he was killed by a Turanian soldier, Bratrok-resh, in a war against the Hyaonas.

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