Mesopotamian Palaces: The Persian Empire

Introduction The harem is perhaps one of the most well known trappings of imperial power in the Near East, with its Western connotation arising largely from the Ottoman Empire. The concept of the harem deals with gender segregation and royal power, drawing from an archaeological and textual record that often leaves the investigating party wanting for more evidence. Several structures within Mesopotamian palaces of the first millennium BCE have long been identified as harems, specifically—and by name—the southeastern sector of the palace at Persepolis. This notion has been challenged by some scholars as flawed or entirely inaccurate for a myriad of reasons. This paper takes a closer look at the so-called “Harem of Persepolis”, placing it

Some time after the destruction of the Elamite empire (c. 639 BCE) the fledgling tribal civilisation who called themselves Pārsa succeeded—the Medes as the region’s ruling power (Wiesehöfer 2001: 2). Pasargadae, the leading tribe of the Persians, had been the most notable tribe for three generations when, in the fourth generation, Cyrus II (559-530 BCE) emerged as the founder of the Persian Empire (Brosius 2007: 19). The kings of the first Persian dynasty, the Achaemenids, ruled from 560-330 BCE, and it is under their rule that Persepolis was built. Persepolis, both the city and its palace,was a symbol of the grandeur of the Persian Empire itself (Wiesehöfer 2001: 21). The palace at Persepolis was conceived by Darius I, c. 518 BCE, with the intent that it would become the seat of power for the empire. The palace was further expanded by Xerxes (486–465 BCE), who also added on his own palace (Brosius 2006:

Especially in the Persian court,if we are to rely on classical sources, domestic space was, much like in classical Athens, separated by gender (Trümper 2012: 292). Perhaps the most stark physical representation of wider notions of gender separation is that of the harem, of which many were identified at royal Near Eastern cities of the Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian Empires. The identification of women’s quarters in a royal compound is straightforward enough (see below), however, there are ample reasons (e.g. the orientalist tendencies of seminal western scholars, and a lack of relevant textual data) to question the validity of a jump from women’s quarters to the identification of a harem. Indeed, many scholars have called the use of this term into question. As previously stated, this paper aims to explore this notion of a harem as identified at Persepolis, with an eye for the utility and shortcomings of this term as used in contemporary