Ägypto-persische Herrscher- und Herrschaftspräsentation in der Achämenidenzeit

The study is based on the author's PhD thesis Egypto-Persian elite display in the time(s) of Achaemenid rule over Egypt, conducted at the universities of Munich, Vienna and Basel, supervised and refereed by Prof.es Michael Roaf (Munich), Helmut Satzinger (Vienna), Susanne Bickel (Basel) and Edda Bresciani (Pisa). The monograph focuses on the iconographic and epigraphic sources of the Achaemenid period, which display the Persian Great King as ruler over Egypt. Major results include a much more diversified spread of royal artefacts in Egypt -- deriving from the western oases, the Nile valley, the Nile delta and the canal joining the delta via the Wadi Tumilat with the Red Sea -- than is often drawn upon in Achaemenid studies. At least for Darius I, they allow a detailed analysis of the strategies employed to display different roles of the king: He is depicted as Persian Great King, Egyptian pharaoh, Egyptian god as well as Egypto-Persian king. Particular importance is given to the latter category, and especially to the question of how the incompatible dual role of Great King and Pharaoh – each concept implies an absolute ruler over the whole world – is iconographically integrated into a single Egypto-Persian kingship. The sources from Persia are much less forthcoming: here, monumental art focuses on the Achaemenid royal realm, i.e. on the kingship role of the Persian Great King. Whether additional aspects of an Egypto-Persian kingship were put on display in Persia already under Darius~I, cannot be argued conclusively, but they were circulated throughout the empire at least from the reign of Xerxes I onwards. The specific iconographic concepts developed for the Egyptian setting under Darius I were taken up again under Artaxerxes III and adapted into a cross-regional kingship iconography in the context of re-consolidating Achaemenid power in the Levant and re-conquering Egypt.