Far away from Pārsa: Empire, Borders, and Ideology in Achaemenid Bactria

Abstract

Recently, a corpus of primary sources related to the Northeastern fringes of the Achaemenid Empire (courtly-style seals bearing narrative depictions of warfare between representatives of the King and Central Asians) has been used to support the hypothesis that, at least from Xerxes’ reign, the people of the eastern satrapies provided a constant threat to the Empire in these crucial regions and, consequently, to its stability. Given its implications (e. g., in the light of evidence like the ADAB documents, from which a different picture emerges), such a statement deserves closer scrutiny. After having summarized the main arguments supporting it, the paper problematizes it, while arguing for a dialectical framework as the theoretical paradigm better suited to understand the relationships between Achaemenid power and the people(s) living at its Central Asian borderlands.