Aryandes

Aryandes († around 500 BC) was a Persian satrap who lived in the 6th and probably also in the early 5th century BC. Ruled in Egypt . He is one of the most famous satraps of the Achaemenid Empire .

Early years

In the year 525 BC The Persian great king Cambyses II conquered Egypt. He stayed personally in the country until 522 BC. In the heart of the empire, the administrative staff he left behind raised against him. As governor ( satrap ), Cambyses installed Aryandes and set out for Persia to put down the rebellion; on the way back he died and Darius I became the new great king.

The province of Aryandes consisted of the entire Nile area up to the first cataract , the oases of the Libyan desert and probably already the Cyrenaica . Aryandes commanded three Persian garrisons, in Elephantine , Daphne, and Marea . These locations, located on the borders of Egypt, were taken over from the time of the Saïten . After the accession of Darius to the throne, it came in 522 BC. About riots in Egypt that were sparked by a man named Petubastis . Aryandes was able to master them without the support of the great royal army, which at that time was suppressing revolts in the heartland.

These riots were taken very seriously by the great king, and in 518 BC. Darius visited the province both to make sure that peace was restored and, presumably, to make sure that Aryandes was loyal to him.

Later time

After this unrest, things remained calm in Egypt. To what extent this can be traced back to the politics of the Aryandes remains unclear, but it is certain that he was careful to maintain the laws of the Pharaonic times and respected the cultural and religious traditions of the country. According to the Greek historian Herodotus , Aryandes, convinced of this by Princess Pheretime , who came from Barka in Cyrenaica, initiated a campaign against the city that led to a siege. The Persians were able to conquer the city by cunning. It is possible that the Cyrenaica belonged to the Persian Empire before, which would make this campaign to put down an uprising.

According to Herodotus, Aryandes is said to have fallen out of favor with the Great King when he had his own silver coins minted based on his model. Dareios felt this was high treason and had Aryandes executed. When exactly this happened is unclear, but it must have happened after the conquest of Barkas and the introduction of the darikos , the great royal currency, in 512 BC. To have happened. The coins are unknown to numismatists, and it is possible that this event never took place, but Aryandes refused to offer military success to the great king in the wake of the Ionian uprising . No later than 492 BC Aryandes was no longer the satrap of Egypt, this year a man named Pherendates is occupied for the office.

swell

• Herodotus: histories . Translated by August Horneffer, edited and published by Hans-Wilhelm Haussig . Kröner, Stuttgart 1971, ISBN 3-520-22404-6 .

literature

• Edda Bresciani: Egypt and the Persian Empire . In: Hermann Bengtson (ed.): Greeks and Persians. The Mediterranean world in antiquity I (= Fischer Weltgeschichte . Volume 5). Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 1965, p. 311 ff.
• Richard Pietschmann : Aryandes . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume II, 2, Stuttgart 1896, Col. 1494 f.

Web links

• Aryandes at Livius.org