Royal road
SARDIS (Ancient city) TURKEY
According to the Greek researcher Herodotus of Halicarnassus (fifth century
BCE) the road that connected the capital of Lydia, Sardes, and the capitals
of the Achaemenid empire, Susa and Persepolis.
From cuneiform texts, other royal roads are known. Herodotus describes
the road between Sardes and Susa
in the following words (Histories 5.52-53).
As regards this road the truth is as follows. Everywhere there are
royal stations with excellent resting places, and the whole road runs through
country which is inhabited and safe.
- Through Lydi and
Phrygia there extend
twenty stages, amounting to 520 kilometers.
- After Phrygia succeeds the river Halys, at which there is a gate which
one must needs pass through in order to cross the river, and a strong guard-post
is established there.
- Then after crossing over into Cappadocia
it is by this way twenty-eight stages, being 572 kilometers, to the borders
of Cilicia.
- On the borders of the Cilicians you will pass through two sets of gates
and guard-posts: then after passing through these it is three stages, amounting
to 85 kilometers, to journey through Cilicia.
- The boundary of Cilicia and Armenia
is a navigable river called Euphrates. In Armenia the number of stages with
resting-places is fifteen, and 310 kilometers, and there is a guard-post on
the way.
- Then from Armenia, when one enters the land of Matiene, there are thirty-four
stages, amounting to 753 kilometers. Through this land flow four navigable
rivers, which can not be crossed but by ferries, first the Tigris, then a
second and third called both by the same name, Zabatus, though they are not
the same river and do not flow from the same region (for the first-mentioned
of them flows from the Armenian land and the other from that of the Matienians),
and the fourth of the rivers is called Gyndes [...].
- Passing thence into the Cissian land, there are eleven stages, 234 kilometers,
to the river Choaspes, which is also a navigable stream; and upon this is
built the city of Susa. The number of these stages amounts in all to one hundred
and eleven.
This is the number of stages with resting-places, as one goes
up from Sardes to Susa. If the royal road has been rightly measured [...]
the number of kilometers from Sardes to the palace of [king Artaxerxes I]
Mnemon is 2500. So if one travels 30 kilometers each day, some ninety days
are spent on the journey.
This road must be very old. If the Persians had built this road
and had taken the shortest route, they would have chosen another track: from
Susa to Babylon, along the Euphrates to the capital of Cilicia, Tarsus, and
from there to Lydia. This was not only shorter, but had the additional advantage
of passing along the sea, where it was possible to trade goods. The route
along the Tigris, however, lead through the heartland of the ancient Assyrian
kingdom. It is likely, therefore, that the road was planned and organized
by the Assyrian kings to connect their capital Nineveh with Susa. Important
towns like Arbela and Opis were situated on the road.
It is certain that the Assyrians traded with Kanesh in modern
Turkey in the first half of the second millennium BCE. The names of several
trading centers and stations are known and suggest that the route from Assyria
to the west was already well-organized. This road was still in existence in
the Persian age.
A traveler who went from Nineveh (which was destroyed by the Medes
and Babylonians in 612) to the west, crossed the Tigris near a town that was
known as Amida in the
Roman age (and today as Diyarbekir). This was the capital of a country called
Sophene. Further to the west, he crossed the Euphrates near Melitene,
the capital of a small state with the same name, which may have been part
of the Persian satrapy Cilicia. It is probable that the ruins of the guardhouse
mentioned by Herodotus are to be found near Eski Malatya.
The border between Cilicia and Cappadocia was in the Antitaurus
mountain range. The last town in Cilicia, and probably the place of the 'two
sets of gates and guard-posts' mentioned by Herodotus, was at Comana,
a holy place that was dedicated to Ma-Enyo, a warrior goddess that the Greeks
identified with Artemis.
The route continued across the central plains of modern Turkey,
a country that was called Cappadocia. The exact course of the road is not
known, but it is likely that it passed along the capital of the former Hethite
empire, Hattusas.
The Halys was crossed near modern Ankara -which may well have
been a guard-post along the road- and the next stop was Gordium, the capital
of another kingdom that had disappeared in the Persian age, Phrygia. The road
has been excavated at this site and was 6 meters wide. Crossing the Phyrgian
plain and passing though Pessinus, a famous sanctuary dedicated to the goddess
Cybele, and Docimium, famous for its pavonazetto marble, the Royal road reached
Sardes.
At Persepolis, many tablets were found that refer to the system
of horse changing on the Royal road; it was called pirradazis. From these
tablets, we know a lot about the continuation of the road from Susa to Persepolis
-23 stages and a distance of 552 kilometers- and about other main roads in
the Achaemenid empire. No less important was, for example, the road that connected
Babylon and Egbatana, which crossed the Royal road near Opis, and continued
to the holy city of Zoroastrianism, Rhagae. This road continued to the far
east and was later known as Silk road.
Herodotus describes the pirradazis -for which he uses another
name- in very laudatory words:
There is nothing mortal which accomplishes a journey with more speed than
these messengers, so skillfully has this been invented by the Persians. For
they say that according to the number of days of which the entire journey
consists, so many horses and men are set at intervals, each man and horse
appointed for a day's journey. Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor darkness
of night prevents them from accomplishing the task proposed to them with the
very utmost speed. The first one rides and delivers the message with which
he is charged to the second, and the second to the third; and after that it
goes through them handed from one to the other, as in the torch race among
the Greeks, which they perform for Hephaestus. This kind of running of their
horses the Persians call angareion
[Histories 8.98]
To the Greeks, this was most impressive. There is a story by Diodorus of
Sicily that between Susa and Persepolis, even greater communication speeds
were reached: Although some of the Persians were distant a thirty days' journey,
they all received the order on that very day, thanks to the skilful arrangement
of the posts of the guard, a matter that it is not well to pass over in silence.
Persia is cut by many narrow valleys and has many lookout posts that are high
and close together, on which those of the inhabitants who had the loudest
voices had been stationed. Since these posts were separated from each other
by the distance at which a man's voice can be heard, those who received the
order passed it on in the same way to the next, and then these in turn to
others until the message had been delivered at the border of the satrapy.
[World history 19.17.5-6]
The bridge at Diyarbakir We can not establish whether this is
true. If it is, it is the ultimate tribute to the Persian talent to organize
this; if it is a mere fantasy, it is a beautiful compliment. The road, although
without the pirradazis system, was still in use in Roman times. The bridge
near Amida (modern Diyarbakir in eastern Turkey) is an illustration.
Jona Lendering, ed.
This text is cited July 2003 from the Livius Ancient History Website URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks.
