Читать книгу A Companion to the Achaemenid Persian Empire, 2 Volume Set - Группа авторов - Страница 20

D. T. Potts

Any attempt to describe the geography and climate of an empire faces a formidable challenge, for by definition such supra‐regional states were territorially vast and, in most cases, characterized by a wide range of physical features, ecosystems, and climates. The borders of the Achaemenid Empire transected what geographers have termed interior Asia, Europe, southwest Asia, and Africa (Brice 1966: Fig. 1). The empire included the entirety of the earlier Neo‐Assyrian Empire in addition to the Iranian plateau, a good portion of western Central Asia (as far east as Sogdia), the Indo‐Iranian borderlands, and parts of north Africa, including Libya to the west of Egypt and Kush (Nubia) to the south. Major bodies of water, including the Aegean, Mediterranean, Red, Black, Caspian, and Arabian Seas, the Persian Gulf, and the Gulf of Oman bounded the Achaemenid satrapies. Substantial mountain ranges, including the Taurus, Amanus, Lebanon, Anti‐Lebanon, Caucasus, Zagros, Kopet Dag, and Hindu Kush, constituted significant sources of timber and minerals, as well as impediments to travel, breaking up the empire into a series of basins, plateaus, and valleys connected by natural thoroughfares – seas, rivers, mountain passes, and tracks across plains and deserts.

The fundamental ecological “facts of life” did not change with the rise of the Achaemenids, of course. The Nile Valley was not suddenly more fertile, any more than the Mesopotamian plain was suddenly more saline than it had been. The cedars of Lebanon were no less abundant than they had been under the Assyrians, notwithstanding the fact that enormous quantities of timber had been harvested and sent to the Assyrian capitals; horses were no scarcer in Media than previously; bitumen no less abundant at Hit; and lapis lazuli was just as available in Afghanistan as ever. But the sheer size of the empire required an extraordinary effort to manage it effectively and no doubt tested the capabilities of the state administrative apparatus at the same time as it helped to build considerable managerial and logistical expertise. Efficient communication across enormous distances became a sine qua non of imperial success and demanded regular travel on a scale scarcely seen in any period of human history prior to the creation of the Achaemenid Empire.

Within the borders of the empire, the major mountain ranges are pierced by only half a dozen major passes and these have necessarily acted as conduits for travel across the millennia. Beginning in the east these are the Khyber pass, formed by the Kabul river as it flows through the mountains of Pakistan; the Bolan pass, which pierces the hills of southwestern Pakistan where the Nari river cuts through them; the Ardewan pass in the Hindu Kush, which opens up communication between Merv in Turkmenistan and Herat in western Afghanistan, thanks to the Kushk river; the Sefid Rud gap, which bursts through the Alburz mountains, giving access from the Caspian Sea to the Iranian plateau, near Rasht; the Zagros Gates, where the Diyala river cuts through the Zagros mountains near Bisitun, providing access from the Mesopotamian plain to the Iranian plateau in the east Tigridian region; and the Cilician Gates, where a branch of the Tarsus river pierces the Taurus mountains, providing access from the western Anatolian plateau to the Mediterranean (Brice 1966: p. 28). Other important passes include the Homs Gap or Syrian Gates, where the Orontes river has cut a gap linking the Mediterranean coast with the interior of Syria, dividing the an‐Nusayriyah mountains and Jebal Zawiyah, Lebanon and Anti‐Lebanon mountains; the Persian Gates, in the Mamasani region of western Fars, through which most east–west traffic has to pass between Mesopotamia and the southwest Iranian lowlands (Khuzestan) to the west and the highlands around Pasargadae and Persepolis to the east (Speck 2002); and the Kotal Dukhtar, the only pass that leads from Bushehr on the Persian Gulf northwards toward Shiraz and Persepolis (Potts 2009: p. 283). There were many more passes of local importance scattered across the Achaemenid Empire, but each of these major ones can be considered “active” before, during, and after the period in question.

If Achaemenid administrators and military commanders felt that a tyranny of distance operated within the empire, it was at least mediated by effective communications that facilitated the movement of private individuals (Waerzeggers 2010), couriers (Herrenschmidt 1993; Briant 1992), armies, and officials (Hallock 1969) on foot, camel, horse, donkey, cart, barge, and boat. For the most part, travel was undertaken along roads already in existence. These included major routes that had been traversed since prehistoric times, from southern Babylonia, up the Euphrates and Tigris, and across northern Mesopotamia, descending into Syria and the southern Levant (Hallo 1964: Fig. 6); routes leading up the Tigris from Assyria to the Anatolian heartland (Hallo 1964: Fig. 6; Nashef 1987; Barjamovic 2011: p. 34); routes leading from the Levant southward into Egypt (Gardiner 1920; Potts 1982; Figuera 2000); and routes leading from southern Babylonia eastward through the Zagros Gates, on to and across the Iranian plateau (Herzfeld 1907), bound for Central Asia. Local routes, already well‐trodden by the Bronze Age (e.g. Ur 2009), almost certainly continued to be used as well. Guides, fast couriers, and guard stations had been known since the Bronze Age (Barjamovic 2011: pp. 38–51) and it is unlikely that the basic modalities of travel were significantly different in the Achaemenid period. Indeed, judging by the extant literary testimonia, travel in the Achaemenid period was as efficient as it was at any time prior to the development of motorized transport.

Millions of years of erosion of the folded mountain chains throughout the Achaemenid Empire, supplemented by ongoing alluviation, resulted in the infilling of numerous plains and plateaus, and the creation of large salt basins like the Dasht‐e Lut and Dasht‐e Kavir in Iran. True deserts like the African Sahara or the Arabian Rub’ al‐Khali generally lay outside the bounds of the empire, except in Libya, but gravel plains are particularly prevalent in the eastern reaches of the Achaemenid Empire. Nor were these generally mediated by appreciable rainfall, though it is clear that precipitation varied enormously across the length and breadth of the region controlled by the Achaemenids. This is scarcely to be wondered at in an empire spanning so many degrees of latitude and longitude. From the Indo‐Iranian borderlands to Libya, and from the Caucasus to Oman, an enormous range of ecosystems existed within the borders of the Achaemenid Empire (Wilkinson 2003).

Generally speaking, the climate of most of the empire may be characterized as a drier, continental variant of the Mediterranean regime (Brice 1966: p. 36). Rainfall across most of the Achaemenid Empire fell in winter, the exceptions being in parts of Central Asia (Choresmia, Sogdiana), the Indo‐Iranian borderlands (Sattagydia, India), the Caucasus (Armenia), and Egypt, where summer rains, influenced in the southern districts by the monsoon, were the norm. Pockets of territory in central Anatolia, around Lakes Van and Urmia, the central Iranian plateau, Sistan, and Afghanistan received rain in both seasons (Brice 1966: Fig. 9). Just as it has been in recent times (Kouchoukos et al. 1998: p. 480), inter‐annual variability in precipitation was probably great. Hyper‐arid zones may have received only a few dozen millimeters of rainfall each year, while sub‐tropical areas like Gilan and Mazanderan received enough rainfall to enable double‐cropping (e.g. growing rice in summer and wheat/barley in winter). To cite just one extreme, modern example of inter‐annual variability, unusually heavy rainfall in 1968 saw the level of Lake Urmia rise by no less than 2 m. (Bottema 1986: p. 243). Fluctuations of this sort are generally not recorded in ancient sources, with the exception of the Babylonian astronomical diaries. In addition to containing observations on the height of the Euphrates (Slotsky 1997: pp. 88–98), these mention a wide range of meteorological phenomena, including rain showers, lightning, thunder, and tornados (e.g. Sachs and Hunger 1988: p. 71, no. 384) that characterized the Babylonian winter of 384 BCE.

With every type of environment from the sub‐tropical in the north to the semi‐arid steppe, arid desert, and humid coasts along the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea in the south, Iran itself is a microcosm – if one can use such a term to describe an area three times the size of France – of the diverse range of ecosystems found across the empire. In the higher ranges of the Zagros mountains, where peaks in excess of 3000 m. above sea level can be found, heavy snowfall, perennial streams, and abundant springflow are well‐attested, while on the borders of Khuzestan, Sistan, Kerman, and Baluchistan, arid conditions exist in which dry‐farming is impossible without the aid of irrigation. The northerly winds of the summer, coming almost entirely from the north, cause the region to become overheated. Extreme examples, such as the 120 days' wind in Sistan (Drangiana) or the shamal in Mesopotamia (Assyria, Babylonia) and the Gulf region (the satrapy of the Erythraean Sea and Maka), while useful for sailors, are inhibitors of agricultural development. Still, in coastal areas where agriculture was unviable except in winter, fishing and pearling, not to mention trading, were pursued in summer. Living with drought in the more southerly satrapies of the empire would have been the norm for six months of the year whereas in the more temperate latitudes a far more Mediterranean climate was conducive to continuous agricultural production, punctuated by severe winters with heavy frosts and snowfalls, rather than hyper‐arid summers.

Climate and topography necessarily had an enormous influence on flora and fauna throughout the Achaemenid Empire. Once again, given its size, it is scarcely surprising that the empire spanned the Mediterranean, Euro‐Siberian, western and central Asiatic, and Saharan‐Indian floristic zones. The more central portions of the empire contained an enormous range of flora, including desert, steppe, and semi‐desert vegetation; sub‐tropical savannah; Pistacia and Quercus woodlands; scrublands dominated by almond and juniper; conifer forests; and sub‐alpine and alpine vegetation (Breckle 2007). Following the last glaciation the Zagros and Alburz mountains in Iran and the Hindu Kush/northern Afghanistan provided refuge for a large number of tree species, many of which later spread across Iran, Anatolia, and into Europe. Indications of ancient environments within the Achaemenid Empire are provided by both Achaemenid epigraphic and Greek literary sources as well as archeological data.

One of the most well‐known Achaemenid sources is Darius' exposition (DSf) of the materials used in the construction of his palace at Susa (Lecoq 1997: pp. 234–237). According to Darius, the cedar used in the palace came from the mountains of Lebanon; the sissoo wood (OP yakâ; see Gershevitch 1957) from Gandhara (northwest Pakistan) and Kerman (southeastern Iran); and the ebony (Dalbergia melanoxylon) from Egypt. In ancient usage, however, it is often the case that the geographical descriptor attached to a commodity is the supplier of the material rather than the actual land in which it grew or was mined. This is true in the case of Darius' ebony, the actual provenance of which was probably somewhere in sub‐Saharan Africa (the current range extends from Senegal in the west to Eritrea/northern Ethiopia in the east and to Angola and the Transvaal in the south; see Hepper 1996: p. 6).

Minerals used in the palace at Susa included gold from Lydia, probably the alluvial gold of the Pactolus river (Muhly 1983: p. 7) or the slopes of nearby Mt. Tmolus (Forbes 1939: p. 244), and Bactria (northern Afghanistan and southern Uzbekistan); lapis lazuli and carnelian (?) from Sogdia; and turquoise from Chorasmia. It is doubtful whether the lapis lazuli mines at Sar‐e Sang in the Hindu Kush mountains of northern Afghanistan, the major source in all periods of ancient Near Eastern history, lay within the bounds of Sogdia, which centered on the Ferghana Valley further north in what today is Uzbekistan. Herzfeld reckoned the mines were located in eastern Bactria (Herzfeld 1968: p. 323). It is perfectly reasonable to suppose, however, that the Sogdians had access to lapis lazuli from Sar‐e Sang, though not that they necessarily controlled its extraction as has sometimes been assumed (La Vaissière 2004: p. 22). It is also questionable whether high‐quality carnelian was available anywhere in Sogdia and more likely that if carnelian is indeed the correct translation of the term in question (OP sinkabru, El. sinkabruš, Akk. Ṣingabrû), it came from Gujarat (La Vaissière 2004: p. 21). Herzfeld suggested that carnelian was not meant here at all. Rather, he drew a parallel between the ancient term and cinnabar and suggested that this was “used for making the colours of the enamelled bricks of Susa” (Herzfeld 1968: p. 323, no. 3). As Pliny noted (Nat. Hist. 29.8), cinnabar (Gr. κιννάβαρι) or mercuric sulfate (HgS), was often confused in antiquity with minium, or lead oxide (Pb₃O₄), which was indeed a source of red pigment (Theophrastus, De Lapidibus 8.60; Eichholz 1965: p. 128). Although in the Roman and medieval periods lead oxide came mainly from Spain (Porter and Vesel 1993: p. 147; cf. Strabo, Geog. 12.2.10, where the Iberian is said to rival the Cappadocian variety), another source must have been available to the Achaemenids, for analyses of glazed bricks in the Louvre, presumably originating in Darius' palace or one of the later royal Achaemenid buildings at the site (Boucharlat 2010: pp. 374–384), have shown the presence of lead oxide (Bouquillon et al. 2007: pp. 132–134). Interestingly, mercury was detected in some of the bricks in the so‐called Šāhūr palace of Artaxerxes II at Susa and this implies a source of cinnabar from which mercury was obtained (Boucharlat 2010: p. 408). The Chorasmian turquoise cited by Darius most probably came from the mines in the Kyzyl Kum, southeast of the Aral Sea and north of Zerafshan (Tosi 1974: pp. 149–150).

Turning to some of the Greek literary sources, Xenophon's Anabasis is replete with geographical and topographic information, including the names of rivers crossed and places visited, but when describing, for example, Cyrus the Younger's passage from Cilicia to Thapsacus on the Euphrates, it scarcely offers any description of the country traversed (Xenophon, Anab. 1.4.11). Upon reaching “Arabia,” i.e. northern Mesopotamia (Donner 1986), more description is given. According to Xenophon, “In this region the ground was entirely a plain, level as the sea. It was covered with wormwood, and whatever other kinds of shrub or reed grew on it, were all odoriferous as perfumes. But there were no trees. There were wild animals, however, of various kinds; the most numerous were wild asses [onagers, Equus hemionus]; there were also many ostriches, as well as bustards and antelopes” (Anab. 1.5.1–2). Further south, as they approached Babylonia proper, “there was neither grass, nor any sort of tree, but the whole country was completely bare. The inhabitants, who quarried and fashioned millstones near the river [Euphrates], took them to Babylon, and sold them, and lived upon corn which they bought with the money” (Anab. 1.5.5). This extreme barrenness is a perfectly accurate description for the time of year in which Cyrus' passage into Babylonia occurred. This has been dated to the very end of August (Watson and Ainsworth 1883: p. 260), which, with respect to the ancient Mesopotamian agricultural calendar, was after the annual harvest in July/August (Potts 1997: Table III.1). Some scholars have been puzzled by the absence of any reference to pastoral nomads and their herds in this description (e.g. Donner 1986), but from the general floral, faunal, environmental, and agricultural point of view, the description accords well with the semi‐arid nature of the steppic environment in this region during the late summer. In the fourteenth/fifteenth centuries, Turcoman nomads, such as the Aq‐qoyunlu, wintered in precisely this area – the steppe between Mosul on the Tigris and Raqqah and Bireçik on the Euphrates, north as far as Diyarbakır – but summered further north over an area extending from the east of Erzurum to the west of Erzincan, and almost as far north as the Black Sea (Woods 1999: Map 2). It is likely, therefore, that when Cyrus the Younger passed through, any pastoral nomads that might have frequented the region in winter had long since moved north to more temperate areas in Anatolia.

Later Greek sources compiled in the wake of Alexander's conquest provide a snapshot of environments found in the different satrapies of the Achaemenid Empire, naming rivers, mountain ranges, and other notable physical features as well as resources. The lost but heavily cited Geographika of Eratosthenes (Roller 2010), the later compendium of Strabo (Biffi 2002), and the histories of Alexander's campaigns (especially Arrian's Anabasis) are invaluable sources of material on the landscapes of the late Achaemenid Empire. Even some of the most arid regions, like Gedrosia, produced economically (and medicinally) important resources. The flora of Gedrosia was described in considerable detail by Theophrastus (Theophrastus, Hist. Plant. 4.4.12–13; cf. Arrian, Anab. 6.22.4–8; Strabo, Geog. 15.2.3; Pliny, Nat. Hist. 12.33) and included, in the interior, a myrrh‐like aromatic (bdellium), triangular spurge (Euphorbium antiquorum), spikenard (sweet rush or ginger grass, Cymbopogon schoenanthus), asafoetida (Scorodosma foetidum), oleander (Nerium odorum), and the date palm (Phoenix dactylifera) as well as mangrove (Avicennia marina) along the coast (Eggermont 1975: pp. 120–125; cf. Bretzl 1903). Many of these species were found in Aria, Arachosia, and Parapamisadae as well (Eggermont 1975: p. 123). Such accounts, while valuable, obviously present only the smallest fraction of the economically valuable flora, let alone the complete flora of these areas. There were many more species of great utility that went unmentioned, as a glance at the literature on the economic botany of, for example, eastern Iran clearly shows (Aitchison 1890). To mention just one wood that was highly prized for woodworking, Pakistani rosewood (Dalbergia sissoo), known widely as sissoo throughout the region, went unmentioned, although it was common throughout the Indo‐Iranian borderlands (Tengberg and Potts 1999).

Finally, archeological and in particular archeobotanical and paleoenvironmental studies at individual sites, along with regional surveys, have contributed to our knowledge of the climate and environment of the Achaemenid Empire. Studies around Gordion, in the ancient satrapy of Phrygia, for example, point to the existence of extensive non‐deciduous forests, containing pine (Pinus sylvestris), cedar (Cedrus libani), and yew (Taxus baccata), around the site about 2500 years ago (Erinç 1978: p. 97). Deforestation of these forests only began later, accelerating during the Roman period (Brice 1978).

It is clear from analyses of cores taken from Lakes Zeribar and Mirabad in northwestern Iran that there are few signs of climatic fluctuation in the region after about 3500 BCE (van Zeist 1967: pp. 310–311; Bottema 1986: p. 259; Jones 2013). Moreover, those indications of climatic shifts that do appear at Lake Mirabad all postdate the Achaemenid period (Griffiths et al. 2001: p. 761).

However, all across the Achaemenid Empire human intervention and modification of the landscape also must have played a role. This would have included the alteration of ecosystems through agricultural intensification, including olive cultivation in Fars (Jones et al. 2015; Djamali et al. 2016) and the expansion of irrigation systems involving the building of dams, qanats, and canals. There is a widespread if often unacknowledged belief that agricultural intensification was actively pursued by the Achaemenids, e.g. in the Deh Luran region, which lay astride the Royal Road between Susa and Babylon (Wright and Neely 2010: Fig. 6.6), but water management features are notoriously difficult to date, particularly when local masonry styles are not easily attributed to a particular period and commemorative or foundation inscriptions are absent (Boucharlat 2001: p. 178). Thus, the attribution of hydraulic features, attested archeologically, to the Achaemenid period is difficult. Moreover, even when hydraulic works mentioned in cuneiform or literary sources, or discovered in excavation, can be dated to the Achaemenid period, it is often unclear whether they resulted from centrally mandated imperial or locally driven investment, or indeed from a combination of the two. Evidence of local investment spurred by central governmental incentives can be found in Polybius' well‐known discussion of qanats in Media. According to Polybius (History 10.28), “in this tract of country there is no water (anhydria) appearing on the surface, though there are many subterranean channels (hyponomoi) which have well‐shafts (phreatiai) sunk to them, at spots in the desert unknown to persons unacquainted with the district. A true account of these channels has been preserved among the natives to the effect that, during the Persian ascendancy, they granted the enjoyment of the profits to the inhabitants of some of the waterless districts for five generations, on the condition of their bringing fresh water in; and that, there being many large streams flowing down Mount Taurus [Alburz], these people at infinite toil and expense constructed these underground channels through a long tract of country in such a way that the very people who now use the water are ignorant of the sources from which the channels are originally supplied.”

This clearly indicates that the Achaemenid government actively provided incentives for local investment in qanat construction and maintenance in Media. Less certain is whether or not the same policy operated elsewhere in the empire. Many scholars have inferred from Polybius' statement that under the Achaemenids, “qanat technology spread well beyond the confines of the Iranian Plateau” and, as a result of the policy of land grants, “thousands of new settlements were established and others expanded” as “qanats were constructed from Mesopotamia to the shores of the Mediterranean as well as southward into parts of Egypt and Arabia” (English 1998: p. 189; cf. Goblot 1979: pp. 70–71; Rahimi‐Laridjani 1988: pp. 445–447; Lightfoot 2000: p. 218). As Briant has stressed, however, it is important to remember that Polybius explicitly attributed the investment in qanats to private enterprise, rewarded with long‐term land tenure (over five generations), not state investment (Briant 2001: p. 18). The recently excavated qanat system at ‘Ayn Manāwīr in the Kharga Oasis (Egypt), constructed during the fifth century BCE according to Demotic ostraca dated in the reigns of Artaxerxes I and Darius II, may reflect “a decision issued from the court at Memphis” and “could have been the decision of the Persian central power under the control of the Satrap of Egypt and his administration” (Wuttmann et al. 2000: pp. 3–5), but this is far from proven. A decentralized approach to water capture and management, even if disseminated from the top down, may have been left to local administrators to implement (Cruz‐Uribe 2003: p. 543).

Even in Babylonia, a satrapy of central importance, both fiscally and agriculturally, to the Achaemenid crown, “the extent to which the crown itself was responsible for the improvements in the [irrigation] system rather than merely benefiting from them by right of conquest” is unclear (Adams 1981: p. 187). Although A.L. Oppenheim believed that Achaemenid Babylonia was characterized by “new installations, new techniques, [and] better utilization of the available water” (Oppenheim 1985: p. 578), and the Great King owned many canals (Dandamayev 1992: p. 13), it is not always clear whether the contributions of the crown to canal construction were greater than those of private landowners (Joannès 2004: pp. 214–216). Indeed, in comparison with the number of references to canal construction and maintenance in the Neo‐Babylonian period credited to individual kings (Cole and Gasche 1999: pp. 102–105), the paucity of references in the Achaemenid period could be construed as a sign that the Achaemenids were content to use the infrastructure they had inherited in Babylonia without investing much in the upkeep or expansion of the canal system themselves, notwithstanding the fact that the agricultural yields there continued to be impressive (Wiesehöfer 1999: p. 174). This, however, would be wrong. Like their predecessors, the Achaemenid administrators responsible for Babylonia attended to the upkeep and expansion of the irrigation network, but they were able to see that the great institutions in the land, principally the temples, bore the lion's share of the costs. Thus, in one text concerning a rent farmer, dated to the second year of Darius I's reign, reference is made to “digging on the main canals at the expense of the treasury of Eanna” (i.e. the large temple complex at Uruk). Another text (Dar. 9) from the reign of Darius attests to the involvement of the Shamash temple at Sippar in the digging and cleaning of canals that ran through its property, as well as the involvement of a consortium identified as “the chiefs of the chariots” (van Driel 1988: p. 129, citing TCL 13: 182). In van Driel's opinion, these were major maintenance projects “supervised by the royal administration which shared out the burden among the great institutional and private landholders who in their turn had to make their financial, material, and human resources available” (van Driel 1988: p. 129). At the same time, as van Driel has noted, “Temples and owners of big estates were certainly capable of digging branch canals of lesser importance on their own” (van Driel 1988: p. 130). Finally, it is telling that the central administration in Achaemenid Babylonia leased entire canals, “from intake to tail,” to entrepreneurs, a handy source of income, and that these private persons aggressively established date plantations on land adjacent to canals and rivers (van Driel 1988: p. 145). This anthropogenic expansion of gardens, previously much less visible in the cuneiform record, undoubtedly altered the micro‐environment of the region, just as afforestation has in many parts of the world (e.g. Abu Dhabi) in our own time.