Achaemenids, Royal Power, and Persian Ethnicity 179however, inherently about the management of difference (Barfield 2001), and the
Achaemenid Persian policy was quite clearly to construct definitions of ethnic and
cultural identity both for themselves—what it meant to be Persian—and to project
essentialized ethnic identities onto the landscape of the empire as a way of organizing
and controlling their subject peoples.
From Cyrus to Darius: Formulating
a Persian Identity
The formation of Persian ethnic identity can be accessed through the lens of royal
self-presentation and the writings of outsiders, including a number of sources (Xenophon,
Herodotus, and others) that belong to the Classical tradition. The problem of cultural
identity is, to a certain extent, embedded in the mythic origins of the Persian Empire
and the tensions revealed at moments of crisis, particularly the succession of Darius I.
The founder of the empire, Cyrus (II) the Great (620–590BCE), was (according to the
tradition as recorded by Herodotus 1.107–108) a figure born of a Median mother and
Persian father. His identity was hidden, and he was raised by a shepherd, only to emerge
as the ruler of the Persians and conqueror of the Medes, uniting the two peoples of
his birth under his rule. Although there were many versions of the “Cyrus saga” (with
its echoes of the Sargon legend; see Kuhrt 2003) in the Classical and Near Eastern
traditions, Herodotus clearly thought of Cyrus as a Persian, even though he was closely
associated with the Medes (Frye 2010; Waters 2010).
Although Herodotus casts Cyrus in the role of a unifying figure, the picture offered
by the available non-Classical sources is quite different. Cyrus himself did not, at least in
the few extant sources, insist on his Persian (as opposed to Median or other) ethnicity,
but rather presents himself in terms designed to justify his rule across a range of cultural
traditions (Lanfranchi, Roaf, and Rollinger 2003; Kuhrt 2007a; Waters 2010; Henkel-
man 2011). The most famous example of this ethnic code-switching is the text of the
so-called Cyrus Cylinder (539BCE), on which Cyrus is portrayed in terms that link him
to Babylonian and Elamite political traditions:
I am Cyrus, king of the world, great king, mighty king, king of Babylon, king of Sumer and
Akkad, king of the four quarters, the son of Cambyses, great king, king of Anshan, grandson
of Cyrus, great king, king of Anshan, descendant of Teispes, great king, king of Anshan, of an
eternal line of kingship, whose rule Bel and Nabu love, whose kingship they desire for their
hearts’ pleasure. When I entered Babylon in a peaceful manner...(CB 21–22, translation
from Hallo et al. 1997).^1In this document, Cyrus clearly emphasizes his connection to Anshan, an Elamite
polity with obscure and controversial connotations in this context (Kuhrt 1995; Waters
2004; Potts 2005). This aspect of this text and other Babylonian examples including
the Nabonidus Chronicle highlight how little is known about the ethnogenesis of