THE EVIDENCE OF THE PERSEPOLIS TABLETS

Abstract

The Achaemenid Elamite texts found at Persepolis add a little flesh to the picked-over bones of early Achaemenid history. The fortification texts, which date from the thirteenth to the twenty-eighth year of Darius I, record many kinds of transfers of food products. The fortification texts were written at many sites in a region which, it seems, surrounds the Persepolis-Susa axis. The texts mention the names of many officials. By all evidence the chief economic official from the sixteenth to the twenty-fifth year of Darius was Pharnaces. In the assignment of work groups three persons are more frequent than any others: Irsena in the Susa area, Karkis and Suddayauda successively in the Persepolis area. In any case it would have been very difficult by the use of clay tablets to achieve an adequate accounting system for such varied and extensive operations. The problem might in the end have been solved by the use of records in Aramaic written on perishable materials.

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