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BRIEF COMMUNICATIONSArtaxerxes, Ardasir, and Bahman

Islamic sources and "ninth-century"Pahlavi books firmly link Ardasir, the founder of the Sasa-nian empire, to the legendary late Kayanid king, Bahman.This connection was a central element inthe Sasanian revolutionary ideology that included the revival of Zoroastrianism. I propose thatArtaxerxes II, to demonstrate his dedication to Zoroastrianism and to Vohu Manah, assumed theepithet Vahuman(Greek Mv!llov). Six centuries later, championingZoroastrianism,Ardasirharkedback to the memory of Artaxerxes under that theophoric epithet.

Artaxerxes(ApTaPMprlq)s the Greekrenderingof thethrone name of three Achaemenidmonarchs,Artaxsaqa,corresponding to the Old Iranian*Rtaxsa0ra("he whoreigns through Truth/Right Order"). It became a per-sonal namein Parthian imes and took the MiddlePersianform of Ardasir.1Of the three Achaemenids, Artaxer-xes II (404-358 B.C.E.)ruled the longest. Mary Boyce(1982: 209-63) has stressed the importanceof his longreign for the development of Iranianreligion. Inasmuchas her insistence on the Zoroastrianism of the Achae-menids is not universally accepted, the religious policyof Artaxerxes II becomes crucial to her interpretationof the history of Zoroastrianism.Althoughherargumentis inevitably highly inferential, we should accept herconclusion that the cumulative force of our scatteredevidence on the religious significance of Artaxerxes II'sreign "makes it probable that the later 'Ardasirs'of theZoroastrian community were named in pious remem-brance, following tradition, of this Achaemenian mon-arch, one of the most effective royal patrons .. whomthe faith has known"(Boyce 1982: 263).I believe there is an important additional piece ofevidence for the religious importanceof Artaxerxes IIand for his adherence to Zoroastrianismthat has beenoverlooked by Boyce and other scholars. As far as Iknow, no scholar has attached any significance to Ar-taxerxes II's Greek epithet, Mnemon. Plutarch beginshis life of Artaxerxes (Artaxerxes, 1) by saying that hewas surnamed"theMindful"(Mvripov).This epithethasnever been satisfactorily explained. Dandamaev (1989:

1Thelinguisticderivation f Ardasir'rthstl n theMiddlePersianinscriptions and 'rtsyl only in the Pahlavi books) fromthe Old Iranian*Rtaxsira,a two-stem hypocoristic name to thefull name, *Rtaxsa0ra, s demonstrated n Schmitt 1979.

274) suggests that "because of his exceptional memory,the Greeks called him Mnemon, 'the mindful one'." Ishall arguethatthere is a betteralternative.Mnemoncanand should be taken as a Greek translation of the theo-phoric name, Vahuman(New PersianBahman), whichhe assumed as a sign of his devotion to Vohu Manah("Good Thought"),the second of the ZoroastrianAme-sha Spentas ("Holy Immortals")."Bahman" appears in the epic tradition as the per-sonal name of one of the later Kayanids, the son of Is-fandiyar and the grandson of Zoroaster'spatron-king,Vistasp. According to one version of the Zoroastriantheory of the ages of the world, the sovereign of theSilver Age was "Ardasir the Kay who will be calledVahmani Spandyadan[= Bahman son of Isfandiyar]"(Zand-i WahmanYasn, 3.24 [p. 152]). Bahman, whomGardizi (p. 54) calls "the best of Persian kings," isconsideredthe posthumousfather(throughhis daughter/queen Homay) of Dara(echo of DariusI) and the grand-father of Dara, son of Dara(DariusIII), the last Kayanidmonarch. Both in the epic tradition and in the "ninth-century"Zoroastrianbooks, theking in questionis calledArdasir-Bahmanand Kay Ardasir.I believe the hithertounexplained epithet Mnemon enables us to establish thebasic identification of Ardasir-Bahmanwith ArtaxerxesII. The mythical Bahmanand the historical ArtaxerxesIIwere fused into a single prototype in an imaginativereconstructionof history by Ardasir, the founder of theSasanianempire.Few would dispute the significance of the rise of theSasanian empire under Ardasir. I have characterized it(forthcoming, ch. 6) as a revolution thatunified, througha long andviolent process andon the basis of an integra-tive ideology, the petty feudal kingdoms of Parthia intothe empire of Iran (Eransahr). Central to the ideologyof the Sasanian revolution was the invention, on Ar-dasir's behest, of a grandiose tradition that absorbed

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lingeringmemories of importantAchaemenidkings intothe Zoroastrian-Kayanidsacred history. The SasanianArdasir,posing as the restorer of the Zoroastrianreli-gion, sought to identify with the Ardasir-Bahmanof itssacred history, from whom he claimed descent as heirto the Kayanids, avenger and the reviver of their glory.The Bundahisn traces Ardasir's genealogy as follows:"Artaxsahr MSS rt'ystl, `rthstl] son of Papak, whosemother(was) the daughterof Sasan son of Vehafrit(sonof) Zarir son of Sasan son of *Artaxsahr[MSS rt"l ='rtystlfor'rthstl?],who is calledVahuman, on of Spend-dat"(cf. Ankelsaria 1956: 297-98).2 My hypothesis isthat the "*Artaxsahr who is called Vahuman,"and thespelling of whose name is curiouslyarchaized, s the Ar-taxerxes II surnamedMnemon (Vahuman).Throughthemythical Bahman,Ardasir thus connected with the otherhistoric patron-kingof Zoroastrianism,his Achaemenidnamesake, Artaxerxes II.The Islamic sources leave little room for doubt thatthe identification of Ardagir with Bahman was a coreelement of the Sasanian integrative ideology. One ofArdasir'sdecrees, transcribedby al-MasCudi Muruj, 1:289) begins with the phrase, "From Ardasir-Bahman,King of Kings."The identification of the two figures isattestedin the Letter of Tansar,Ardasir'schief ideologueand advisor on religious policy, to Gusnasp, the king ofTabaristanand one of the last of the petty kings tosubmit to Ardasir. Gusnasp had sought to impress theZoroastrian herbad with the dignity of his royal rankby claiming descent from Bahman:

Thenyoudeclared: Ihavekinshipandblood-tieswiththe Kingof Kings throughArdasir on of Isfandiyarwho s calledBahman."Myanswer oyouis that or methis latterArdasiri.e., the Sasanian]s of fargreaterdignity han heArdasir f old.(IbnIsfandiyar, arikh,38;tr.Boyce1968:66, slightlymodified).

As the identification of Ardasirand Bahmanplays nopartin later Sasanianpolitics that could possibly accountfor a laterfabricationor alteration,we must accept theseincidental attestationsby MasCtdiand Ibn Isfandiyarasan authentictradition.So successful was this identifica-tion in the Sasanian propaganda hat the two figures ofArdasirand Bahman are fused in the historiographyofthe Islamic era. Al-Tabarireportstwo differenttraditionsin which this fusion is evident. The first states that theepistles of Ardasir-Bahmanb. Isfandiyar "were issued'From Ardagir,worshipper of God' [presumably,maz-

2 I owe this emendation f Ankelsaria's ublished ext toP. OktorSkjaerv0,rom whose comments this articlehasbenefited onsiderably.

desn]."3Accordingto the second tradition,Bahman was"the most distinguishedand successful Persianking; hisepistles and covenants excelled those of [the Sasanian]Ardasir"(al-Tabari, Ta'rikh, 1: 687; English tr., 4: 82,modified). IbnKhurdadhbihn the ninthcentury,and fol-lowing him al-ThaCalibied. Zotenberg[1900: 378, 485])in the tenth, attributes o the mythical Kayanidthe Sasa-nian empire-builder'szeal for the Zoroastrianreligion aswell as the use of the title Kay Ardasir n official corre-spondence.Both figuresare furthermore redited with thefounding of the city of Bahman-Ardasir.4Vohu Manah is the most important of the AmeshaSpentas, ranking only after Ahura Mazda himself inthe Zoroastrian divine heptad. As the [spirit of] GoodThought, he is the hypostasis of AhuraMazda, and Zo-roasterdeclareshim AhuraMazda's son (Yasna45.4). Heis namedimmediatelyafter AhuraMazdain the calendar,the second dayof the monthbeing devoted to him. Thereare traces from Hellenistic times that he was also wor-shippedin popularreligion. We find evidence for the at-tachment of the eclectic ArtaxerxesII to Vohu Manahinthe spread of the worship of Omanus/VohuManah inCappadociaand Pontuswhere,threecenturies ater,Strabostill saw wooden statuesof Omanus('Ou[tdvoq) eing car-ried in processions (Boyce and Grenet 1991: 270).As Grenetpoints out (1983: 376), the epigraphic evi-dence from late fourth-centuryB.C.E. Ai Khanoum isimportant as the first unequivocal instance of a theo-phoric Zoroastrianpersonal name in Bactria. It is, how-ever, possible thatArtaxerxes II assumed the theophoricepithetVahumansome half a centuryearlier. The epithet"Vahuman" s a theophoricshortenedname, in its Greekform 'OuLtdvogor 'Ouladvrq), s attested in the Ai Kha-noum inscriptions from the end of the fourth centuryB.C.E. (Grenet 1983: 375-76), and thenceforth in otherregions (Boyce and Grenet 1991: 181; 249; 264). As ashortenedtheophoricname, it could mean "createdby orfaithful to Vohu Manah,"as suggested by Grenet(1983:376). It is true that the later Bactrianinstances are re-cordedonomatopoetically in the Greek form of Omanus.But this does not preclude an earlier rational transla-tion of the epithet Vahuman ("of Good Thought") asMnemon ("mindful one"). This term later appears inArabic as dhu'l-tadbir and mudabbirin Birtni and BarHebraeus,respectively(Yarshater1976: 62). If my argu-

3 "Mazda-worshipping,"he epithetwhichappears or thefirst imein historyon the coinsof Ardasir afterhis corona-tion(Gobl1971: ableXV).4 Theuse of thisnames attestedn 544C.E.Bahman-Ardasirwas alsocalledFuratMaysan, specially n theIslamicperiod(Morony1989).

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ment is correct, the assumption of the epithet "Vahu-man"by Artaxerxes II adds considerably to the weightof evidence for his devotion to Zoroastrianism.5The same theophoric epithet, Vahuman,became theNew Persian Bahman, the epithet of the fictitious lateKayanidArdasir-Bahman,who was made the archetypeof Ardasirson of Papak in Sasanian ideology. Ardasirwas not entirely original in claiming descent from Ar-taxerxes II in mythical disguise. The Arsacids, too, haddone so before him, but without the mediation of themythical Bahman.The astounding loss, by the thirdcenturyC.E., of thehistorical memory of the Achaemenids is well knownand much discussed. Its best explanationis thatthe Sasa-nians based their historiographyentirely on the Zoroas-trian sacred history that had developed in northeasternIran and for that reason incorporated only faint andconfused echoes of the western Iranian tradition thatcontained the heritageof the Achaemenids. As Yarshaterpoints out (1971: 518; 1976: 59), the memories of Cyrusand Artaxerxes I Longimanus are attached to the figureof the late KayanidBahman. I think this confusion wascaused by the fact that Artaxerxes(Artaxsa;a) was thethrone name and Cyrus the original, personal name ofArtaxerxes I (Schmitt 1982: 92). If my hypothesis isaccepted,furtherconfusion of Artaxerxes I (andthroughhim of Cyrusthe Great)with Artaxerxes II would not bedifficultto explain. Esther,variously given as the motherboth of Cyrus and Bahman (al-Tabari, Ta'rikh, 1: 653,688), is also consideredArtaxerxes'Jewish wife in somesources (Yarshater1976: 62). Furthermore,most sourcesput heavy emphasison the Jewish exploits of Cyrus, whois confused with Bahman.Artaxerxes II, the historical figure metamorphosedinto Bahman by the Zoroastriantradition, had alreadybeen chosen by the Parthiansas the Achaemenid ances-tor of the Arsacids some two centuriesbefore the rise ofArdasir,presumably n theirhostility towardHellenisticculturaldomination(Wolski 1974: 171-75). The geneal-ogy of the Arsacids transmittedby the Muslim sourcestypically traces it back to Darius as the last of the

5 To these formal considerations, one can add that, substan-tivelytoo,"Vahuman"s a personal amemakes ense nviewof the Gathic deathat each individual as a shareof VohuManah,whichunderlies hedefilement ndcleansingof VohuManah n theritual Videvdat 9.20-23). InManichaeanexts(citedin Widengren 945: 13), too, we findthe term n theplural, as in the "vahmans of light" (vahmanan rosnan). FortheManichaeans,hemicrocosmicahman,he ndividualmind/spirit nous),battles inanddefilement ndattains alvation yreceiving nosisorrevelationrom he GreatVahmanmacro-cosmic nous).

Kayanids.6A tradition ransmittedby the Greeksources,however, traces this alleged Kayanid descent furtherback, making Arsak andTiridates,the two brotherswhofounded the dynasty, descendants of the Persian KingArtaxerxes (see Wolski 1974: 171-72 for the paralleltexts of the variants by Arrian and Syncellus). Thistradition is corroborated n the Nisa documents, whichmention a vineyard(artaxsahrakan),which, accordingtoDiakonoffandLivshits (1960: 20), "was probablynamedin honor of the legendary ancestor of the Arsacids, Ar-taxerxesII."Whatis even moreintriguing s the claim bythe greatking AntiochusI of Commagene(69-31 B.C.E.)to descend fromArtaxerexesII throughhis daughter seeBoyce 1990: 24). This evidence is remarkable or estab-lishing Artaxerxes II, who incidentally had one hun-dredandfifty sons andthree hundredandsixty-six wivesand concubines (Dandamaev 1989: 306-7), as the cho-sen ancestor of royal claimants to Achaemenid descentby the firstcenturyB.C.E. t is also intriguingfor tracingroyal descent through the daughter of Artaxerxes II,whom the Zoroastrian radition n due course turned ntothe one and only legendary female Kayanid monarch,Homay. Note that the thirteenth-centuryepic, Darab-namah, refers to Bahman interchangeably as Ardasir,7especially when narratinganepisode of dragon-slaying,8and identifies the legendaryHomay as "Homaydaughterof Ardasir" Tartisi, Darabnamah 1: 8-10).There is one last and deep-seatedrationalebehind theselection of ArtaxerxesII, alias Bahman, n Ardasir'sge-nealogical enterprise.The connection between the twoacross six centuries througha theophoric epithet is re-inforced by another affinity: devotion to the cult ofAnahita. Plutarch(Artaxerxes,3) tells us that the reignof Artaxerxes II was inaugurated with a ceremony at"a sanctuary of a warlike goddess whom one mightconjectureto be Athene."Boyce (1982: 201-3) identifiesthis warlike goddess, "thePersianDiana,"as the westernIraniangoddess Anahiti/Ishtarwho, accordingto Boyce,was assimilated to the Avestan yazata *Harahvaiti,knownby hercult-epithets,Aredvi SuraAnahita("moist,mighty, pure"), as the goddess of the waters. Havingbeen inaugurated n her temple, ArtaxerxesII promotedthe cult of Anahita. Royal inscriptions prove the in-vestiture of Artaxerxes II by Anahita, alongside Ahura

6 Forotherinesof Kayanid escent, eeYarshater971:523n.41.7 At least one manuscriptexplicitly gives Ardasir as the titleof Bahman on of Isfandiyar: ShahBahmanwhowascalledArdasir"Tartusi, arabnamah:6).8 Theslayingof thedragonking,Kirm,occupiesa conspic-uousplacein thelegendof theSasanianArdasirKarnamak,chs. 10-13).

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Mazda and Mithra. Furthermore, the wide spread of thecult of Anahita and adoption into it of her statues andeffigies date from his reign (Boyce 1982: 217, citing thethird-century B.C.E. Berossos).It is reasonable to assume that the martial features ofAnahita (Ishtar) assured her popularity in the subsequentcenturies among the warrior classes of Parthian feudal-ism. Ardasir and his father, Papak, were the lords andpriests of the fire temple of Anahita at Staxr. By thistime (the beginning of the third century), Anahita's head-gear (kolah) was worn as a mark of nobility (Mosig-Walburg 1982: 31-37). This suggests that she was thegoddess of the feudal warrior estate; and Ardasir wouldsend the heads of the petty kings he defeated for dis-play at her temple (al-Tabari, Ta'rikh, 1: 819).

Like his namesake, Ardasir was invested by Anahita,and celebrated his investiture by her as the King of Kingson his coins (Gobl 1971: 42 and table Ia; Mosig-Walburg 1982: 31). The divine patronage of Anahita, thegoddess of the feudal estate, was essential to Ardagir'sproject of unification of Iran and to his (and his son's)imperial expansion beyond Iran. That he should haveharked back to the Achaemenid Artaxerxes II, the name-sake who had promoted Anahita and spread her cult,makes sense; but more so once we dispel enough of thehaze surrounding the mythic figure of Ardasir Bahmanto discern the pentimento of Artaxerxes Mnemon.

SAfD AMIR ARJOMANDSTATEUNIVERSITYOFNEW YORK AT STONY BROOK

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