Persian Domination

PERSIAN DOMINATION When Cyrus entered Babylon in 539 B.C. he posed as the de liverer of the land and the chosen of its gods; his son Cambyses fulfilled the duties of every Babylonian king at the New Year festival of 538 B.C. Rebuilding of the temples at Erech and Ur was undertaken as a sign of the king's piety. As time passed the country was left increasingly to the administration of the governor of the satrapy called Ebir-nari, "Beyond the river," and on the death of Cambyse's, Babylonia, like many other provinces, rebelled against the Persians and had to be reconquered by Darius. The province thereafter gave repeated trouble, but remained fairly prosperous, and was made to pay a very large sum into the royal treasury yearly. Towards the end of the Persian domination an outbreak of Zoroastrian fanaticism seems to have led to the destruction of many of the great temples. The zikkurat at Babylon was a mass of debris when Alexander first saw it, though it had been in a good state when Herodotus wrote ; the zikkurat at Borsippa must have been burnt about this time; the temple at Ur everywhere shows marks of incendiary destruction, after which the site was deserted, save for stray fugitives. There is every sign that Persian rule in Babylonia was unpopular from the time of Darius I., and that by the time of Darius III. the land had suffered from a religious persecution. There are some signs of a change of burial customs, long rectangular brick tombs in which the body was laid at full length, and the face sometimes covered with a gold mask, or the mouth, eyes and nose covered by thin gold strips may belong to this or a later period. The most typical, and only numerous, objects are the seals and tablets.

Seals.

In shape and cutting the seals closely resemble those of the late Assyrian period; the treatment of the themes alone is typical. The theme of the hero struggling with animals is adopted and becomes the king killing lions; the hunt of Sagittarius becomes the royal lion-hunt. Or sometimes the hero is converted into the ludicrous Bes, possibly with the intention of ridiculing the pagan religion. Contemporary scenes might also be treated, a custom already observed in Assyria; a seal shows a Persian soldier killing a Greek, a memorial perhaps of Darius' war. The treat ment of the human body on some of these seals is unsurpassed in any gem-cutting; without the extreme detail favoured by the Assyrians, the forms are indicated with truth and delicacy. The cone seals have themes peculiar to them; the bird-man is a con stant subject, as is also the king holding two animals, in the old heroic style. These seals are also very finely cut.