On torture and the Achaemenids.

• Author: Kozuh, Michael
• Position: Report

The thesis of Bruce Lincoln's new book is stated on p. xv:

In the chapters that follow, I hope to show how Achaemenian Persia perceived itself as God's chosen instrument for the project of world salvation, and, as such, supreme benefactor of the peoples it conquered. Beyond this, I am led to argue that such a perspective led the Achaemenians into severe contradictions, which they attempted to suppress and deny, using some rather desperate measures toward that impossible end. This analysis suggests comparison to certain contemporary data. This book takes on a very weighty project, one presenting both historical arguments and reflections on empire in general. Working backward through the thesis, the book attempts to contemplate the Achaemenid empire in a way that sheds light on current events--particularly the American occupation of Iraq starting in 2003. Although this is only a small part of the book, it frames the argument (and appears in the title) and therefore deserves careful consideration. As a historical argument, I find this part of Lincoln's thesis unpersuasive; it relies upon an outmoded view of the Achaemenid empire, yet his general reflections on empire certainly strike home, and are poignant and jarring. Yet I think these also miss the mark when he applies them to Achaemenid history. While certainly correct in general, they fail to take into account the complexities of power in empire.

The unifying theme of this book is the use and justification of torture as an instrument of imperial control, and Lincoln bookends his argument with two shocking descriptions, the first Achaemenid: According to Ctesias (in Plutarch Artaxerxes 16.1-4), Artaxerxes II subjected a Persian soldier to the ordeal of the troughs for revealing how Cyrus the Younger died in the battle of Cunaxa. The second is the American treatment of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. The parallels between these two forms of torture, especially when juxtaposed against the lofty ideals of empire ("the pursuit of paradise," p. 2), led Lincoln to investigate the relationships among religion, torture, and empire.

The introduction (chapter one), which serves to provide a historical overview of the first three kings of the Achaemenid empire (Cyrus, Cambyses, and Darius), contains a troubling discrepancy. Lincoln states outright that, with regard to Cyrus' genealogy in the Cyrus Cylinder, "none of the names that enter this list--his own included--have an identifiable etymology, least of all one that would place them in the Iranian language family" (p. 3). This intimates that Cyrus was something other than Iranian (in the ethno-linguistic sense), but Lincoln makes nothing more of it. Although he skillfully describes Darius' incorporation of Cyrus' Teispid line into the Achaemenid, he skips over the thorny problem of the ethnicity of Cyrus and Cambyses.

This is by no means an easy issue, but Lincoln wants it both ways. On the one hand, he needs Cyrus to be an outsider to the Persian tradition, so that he can stress Darius' ushering in of new traditions (see pp. 12f. and 44) or his fronting of the Persianness of his empire in contradistinction to Cyrus (see, for example, pp. 22ff.). On the other hand, he also wants Cyrus to be Persian in order to tie his deeds into distinctly Persian traditions (see, for example, pp. 28f. and 95). This leads to unfortunate internal contradictions. On one page Lincoln states that Cyrus and his ancestors do not have Iranian names (p. 3), and on another, in reference to Cyrus' birth legend in Herodotus, that "Cyrus' father and patriline were unambiguously Persian" (p. 33, emphasis mine).

The problem here is real. This book strives hard to read motives into the deeds of Cyrus and Cambyses, yet can we attribute Mazdaean thought patterns to kings who, for all we know, rose out of the ethno-cultural Iranian/Elamite mix of southwest Iran in the mid-first-millennium B.C., kings who never mention the Wise Lord? Kings with non-Persian names? One could make the argument that Greek and Biblical evidence represents a re-conceptualization of Cyrus and Cambyses--one arising under the control of Persocentric court scribes in power after 522--but Lincoln does not pursue that argument. It would also move us further away from understanding the actual motives of these kings in history, a theme which figures largely in this book.

A second issue is more problematic. Lincoln's historical sketch of the empire after Xerxes' accession--about 150 years of history--is but two paragraphs long (p. 14). The native Persian sources, it is true, all but die off after the reign of Xerxes, and Lincoln does give the usual warning of not falling prey to the "Orientalizing tropes as regards Persian luxury, decadence, despotism, and palace intrigue" (p. 14) that one finds in Greek and biblical sources. Yet this is not good enough, as Lincoln makes a distinct...