The Achaemenid Dynastic Myth

Abstract The beginning of the Persian period was steeped in a complicated process of annexing past traditions within the new imperial context begun by Cyrus the Great. This was intensified as the Achaenemid dynasty came to power under Darius I, who commemorated his triumph with the forging of the Behistun Inscription. As Darius tells it, the will of the deity Ahuramazda was subverted by the introduction of the cosmic foe Drauga (“The Lie”) into the realm beginning with the questionable reign of Cambyses; it is only through Darius’s triumph over the ensuing chaos that Drauga was eliminated from the empire and that the will of Ahuramazda was secured. The inscription provided a foundation myth for the empire but also became the keystone of a dynastic mythology through the recycling of its terms and taxonomies in subsequent Achaemenid inscriptions. These inscription highlighted the cosmic typology of the Achaemenid emperor, the spatiality of the empire as coextensive with the entirety of the ordered world, and imperial statecraft as a fulfillment of all international histories and cultural destinies. This mythology was disseminated through the adoption of both Mesopotamian sacral scholarship and various local myths and ideologies as part of a collective scribal curriculum that secured imperial power across the vastness of the realm.