THE GROWTH OF PARTHIA
3
syrians knew the district which was later called Parthava is suggested by reports of a raid by Esarhaddon[1] which penetrated the country south of the Caspian Sea. Among those captured were Zanasana of Partukka and Uppis of Partakka. The raid must have taken place shortly before 673 b.c. Though Assyria's boundaries certainly did not include Parthava,[2] the latter perhaps formed a part of Media.[3] Cyrus the Great, who conquered the Medes, conducted a campaign in the eastern part of his newly won empire between 546 and 539 b.c.[4] He founded
- ↑ E. G. Klauber, Politisch-religiöse Texte aus der Sargonidenzeit (Leipzig, 1913), Nos. 21–22; R. Campbell Thompson, The Prisms of Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal (London, 1931), p. 21; E. Herzfeld, "Medisch und Parthisch," AMI, VII (1934), 26–29; George G. Cameron, History of Early Iran (Chicago, 1936), pp. 170–74.
- ↑ Cf. A. T. Olmstead, History of Assyria (New York, 1923), pp. 46–47; CAH, III, map facing p. 1. The following maps also may be of use: W. W. Tarn in CAH, IX, facing p. 612; British Museum, Catalogue of the Coins of Parthia, by Warwick Wroth (London, 1903), facing p. 1; British War Office, General Staff, Geographical Section, No. 2149, Persia and Afghanistan, 1 inch = 64 miles, a copy of which may be found in Sykes, Hist. of Persia, Vol. II; Heinrich Kiepert, Atlas antiquus; "Murray's Handy Classical Maps": The Eastern Empires and Asia Minor.
- ↑ Ctesias in Diod. Sic. ii. 2 and 34. Ctesias is not trustworthy; see Cameron, History of Early Iran, p. 176, n. 15. I am greatly indebted to Dr. Cameron for suggestions embodied in this chapter.
- ↑ An inference from Herod. i. 153, who says that Cyrus conquered the Bactrians and the Sacae; cf. Ctesias De rebus Persicis fr. 29. 3 f. (pub. with Herodotus, ed. Müller [1844]; Gilmore ed. not available), who places this event before the Lydian war (impossible), and Herod, i. 177, where the account of the conquest of Upper Asia immediately follows that of Lydia. The inclusion of Parthava in the Behistun inscription is almost certain evidence that it was conquered by Cyrus, since Cambyses after his accession went immediately to Egypt.
