What are the Persepolis Tablets— and Why are They Important for the Study of Assyrians Post-Empire?
Persepolis Fortification Archive Project, Oriental Institute, University of Chicago.
The ancient city of Persepolis, located in the province of Fārs, south-western Iran is among the most iconic sites of the ancient world. Founded by Darius I “the Great” (c. 522–486 BCE), it was the ceremonial capital of the Persian Empire, then ruled under the Achaemenid dynasty.
By 1931, the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago appointed the German archaeologist Ernst Emil Herzfeld as excavation director to lead the first ever scientific exploration of this ancient city. The objective of the mission was to excavate and to carry out conservation efforts throughout the site.
One of Herzfeld’s greatest achievements was the unearthing of the eastern staircase, which, contrary to the northern one, was well preserved. Deposited within the fortification wall at the edge of the great stone terrace, Herzfeld’s team made a startling discovery— an estimated 30,000 artefacts consisting of clay tablets, fragments, and sealings were uncovered.
These artefacts, known as the Persepolis Fortification Tablets, were later transferred to the Oriental Institute, on loan for further study and analysis. Individually, the tablets document the movement and expenditure of commodities in the region of Persepolis, however, collectively, the archive represents the single most important primary source for the understanding of the administrative, economic, and social organisation of the Persian Empire.
In 1969, American Assyriologist Richard Treadwell Hallock began the painstaking task of analysing, translating, and publishing over 2,000 tablets consisting of mostly Elamite texts. Hallock’s work forms the largest coherent body of material on Persian administrative texts extant.
The large body of texts contain references to ethnic Assyrian kurtash “workers”— among others —operating at various sites, such as Kermān and Persepolis. These Assyrians were connected to major architectural and infrastructural projects striving to connect the Persian capitals and provide irrigation for fields in the agricultural territories.
Workers were assigned specific tasks according to their skills. For instance, major canal construction works connected with the Assyrians were conducted in and beyond the Persian heartland, some of which were excavated by Herzfeld at Persepolis.
According to Tablet Fort. 1204–101, “beer rations were given to 624 Assyrians” and Tablet PF NN. 1160 where “sesame rations were given to 560 Assyrian workers” as compensation for their duties. Tablet PF. 1574, on the other hand, records a group that “went from the king to Assyria” on royal business which by Persian Achaemenid rule served as a subject-nation or province (satrapy).
The Persepolis Fortification Tablets not only yield significant insight of Assyria as a territorial reality but furthers our understanding of the Assyrians and their interrelationships with the Persians. The wealth of information contained in these tablets are an essential resource not only for Assyriologists, archaeologists, and historians but particularly scholars interested in the history of the Assyrians post-empire.
For example, the Persepolis Fortification Tablets were composed in Elamite, the language of the Persian chancellery. The Elamite toponym and ethnonym for Assyria and the Assyrian/s are attested as Āshūrā and Āshūrīyā, corresponding with the Akkadian Āshūr and Āshūrāyū.
In Old-Persian, on the other hand, it is Āthūrā and Āthūrīyā that are most pre-eminent. Remarkably, the Aramaic names Āthōr and Āthōrāyā may be a product of language contact derived directly from the Old-Persian, in use until present day.
The fifth century BCE can be seen as a transition period during which the Assyrians may have replaced their endonym in adoption of the Old-Persian exonym as a self-designation. In fact, the use of these variant forms begins to enter Aramaic texts during the Achaemenid period as we have seen in the Elephantine Papyri.
In 2019, a New York Supreme Court judge ordered that almost 2,000 artefacts belonging to the Persepolis Fortification Tablets be returned to the Islamic Republic of Iran following eighty-years of study and analysis at the Oriental Institute.
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Tavernier, Jan, (2002), Non Elamite Individuals in Achamenid Persepolis, Akkadica 123: 145- 152.
Richard T. Hallock, Persepolis Fortification Tablets (Illinois: The University of Chicago Oriental Institute Publications: 1969).
Kuhrt, Amélie. “The Assyrian Heartland in the Achaemenid Period.” Pallas, no. 43, 1995, pp. 239–54. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43660582. Accessed 19 Jan. 2024.
