Es kundet Dareios der Konig ...: Vom Leben im persischen Grossreich.

AuthorBrosius, Maria

H. Koch's lavishly illustrated monograph aims to give a vivid picture of the life at the Persian court at Persepolis using the evidence of the Persepolis Fortification Texts (hereafter PFT), and by describing the major archaeological sites. Despite the grand scale on which the book has been published, it lacks the accuracy of a carefully researched study.

Three factors seem$to have shaped the author's thinking about the Persian Empire, which in turn have shaped the monograph: 1) a naive perception of Darius as a morally good king; 2) an apparent lack of familiarity with recent secondary literature; and 3) a western European approach to the PFT. Without any critical note on the propagandistic purpose of royal inscriptions, Koch presents an image of Darius I which reveals a simplistic approach to Persian history. If the purpose of Darius' inscription at Pasargadae indeed was to honor Cyrus (p. 74), how do we explain the damnatio memoriae of Cyrus in the Bisitun inscription? In her depiction of Darius as a morally good and just king, expressed in sentences like: "Fursorge fur den einzelnen und Schwachen und absolute Gerechtigkeit fur alle, das waren die Grundprinzipien des Konigs" (p. 298), Koch idealises his kingship on the basis of Darius' own inscriptions as well as her interpretation of the PFT. By failing to apply a critical approach to the sources, her study leads to distorted views such as the claim that Darius' court was a kind of social welfare state (cf. Sancisi-Weerdenburg 1993, 11).

Her historical and archaeological discussion has limited value because it does not build on the results of recent research but is based in many instances on superseded scholarship. For example, contrary to Koch's view (p. 7), there is no evidence for locating Parsua near Lake Urmia or to assume a connection between Persians settled in the western Zagros region and those settled in Parsa/Fars (Levine 1974, 106-12; Briant 1984, 81-82; Miroschedji 1985, 269-70). Her argument that the seventh-century archive of Susa reflects the extent of Persian control (p. 9) is inconclusive because we do not know who was in charge of this archive (Steve 1986, 8).

Koch is correct to stress the value of the PFT to historians, and a discussion of the Persian court on the basis of this material is much needed, but the drawback of the present monograph is Koch's approach to the sources which is marked by a traditional, ethnocentric outlook. A judgmental attitude towards the...

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