Читать книгу A Companion to the Achaemenid Persian Empire, 2 Volume Set - Группа авторов - Страница 118

Rémy Boucharlat

Two of the four royal residences of Darius and his successors are located in southwestern Iran: Persepolis in the mountains of Fārs, the ancient Persia, the cradle of the Achaemenid dynasty; Susa in the lowlands of Khūzestān, an extension of Mesopotamia, a part of the ancient kingdom of Elam and the Achaemenid satrapy of Elam. Susa is halfway between Persepolis and Babylon in Mesopotamia, the ancient capital of the eastern world until Cyrus' conquest, and another Achaemenid residence. In this part of the empire, even carefully ruled as an “Itinerant state” (Briant 2002: p. 187) during the frequent and long journeys of the king, no city, not even Susa, is a permanent royal capital. This is probably the main reason why no cities in the true sense of the word, as we know them from previous Near Eastern empires, could be located at Persepolis or Susa, and why these two places were no more “urban” than Pasargadae, the residence of Cyrus, the founder of the empire.

Apart from these famous royal residences, the settlement pattern of the southwest of Iran is poorly known, not to speak of the religious monuments and cemeteries, though the situation has been changing slightly in recent decades. Newer discoveries fill some blanks on the archeological maps. This vast area covers three modern provinces: Fārs around Shiraz, Būshehr along the coast of the Persian Gulf, and Khūzestān to the west. Few sites occupied during the Achaemenid period are known outside the mentioned royal residences and a half‐dozen elite buildings using stone components. To be added are find spots of column bases, sometimes in situ. The settlements of ordinary people, yet very few, are gradually identified in the three provinces as they are explored and the archeological material becomes better known. Southwest Iran does not appear as densely populated at this time as some areas of the western parts of the empire, such as Egypt, Levant, and Anatolia, but these regions have certainly been more intensely covered by archeologists for some 150 years. As for the cemeteries, their absence is notable, apart from the royal tombs at Naqsh‐i Rustam and near the terrace of Persepolis. This absence of archeological evidence raises the question of religious practices and beliefs of the Persians and other populations in the heartland of the empire (cf. Chapter 85 The Heartland Pantheon and Chapter 87 Funerary Customs).