Semenenko CANAL STELAE OF DARIUS I IN THE CONTEXT OF THE IMPERIAL POLICY OF THE ACHAEMENID STATE
CANAL STELAE OF DARIUS I IN THE CONTEXT OF THE IMPERIAL POLICY OF THE ACHAEMENID STATE
I. O. Semenenko
Undergraduate Student Charles University in Prague 560/5, Ovocný trh, Prague 1, 116 36, Czech Republic semenenko.illia99@gmail.com
The reign of Darius I was the heyday of the Achaemenid Empire. To successfully unite the entire Near East into a single state the king of Persia had to recognize local cultures and forms of political organization and to emphasize the fact that his subjects belonged to different ethnic groups, spoke different languages and had different ways of life. The integration of individual civilization centers into the general imperial trade and political system was an important goal to achieve. One of the most important activities in this concern was the (re-)digging of a canal by Darius I, which connected the Nile with the Red Sea. This canal successfully illustrates Persian policy in the subordinate territories. It ran through the dry wadis of the Eastern Desert and the Isthmus of Suez, where, long before the founding of the Achaemenid state, several different waterways existed, created by the pharaohs of the 26th, 19th and possibly 9th Dynasties. Acting within the framework of local customs and using the experience of successfully functioning administration system of Egypt, Darius I, with the use of enormous resources of his empire, for the first time in history created the phenomenon that significantly changed the map of the Red Sea trade routes for centuries. This article deals with several bilingual stelae which were installed on the promontories along the canal. Their cuneiform and hieroglyphic inscriptions glorify the construction of the canal by Darius and transmit his imperial titles in Ancient Egyptian, Old Persian, Babylonian and Elamite. The study of the motifs and texts depicted on the stelae sheds a new light on the process of (re-)digging of the canal and on the imperial policy of the Achaemenid state in the region.
Keywords: Achaemenid Empire, Darius I, Canal of the Pharaohs, Red Sea, Old Persian, cuneiform
Preislamic Near East 2021, (2):113-124
https://doi.org/10.15407/preislamic2021.02.113
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