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Wild ducks

Waterfowl of the rivers, marshes and pools of the empire, 559-479 BCE

In the game: Level 1: The Founder's Tomb, Level 3: The Lie, Level 4: The Terrace, Level 5: The Charter, Level 6: The Bridge of Boats, Level 7: Sardis Burns, Level 8: The Bay of Marathon, Level 9: The Canal, Level 10: The Hot Gates, Level 11: The Finale

Wild ducks lived on the rivers, lakes and marshes of the lands the Persian kings ruled. Ancient writers of the period say almost nothing about them, and no Achaemenid text is known to record a duck hunt. What can be said rests on the natural setting and on a few indirect clues.

In the game: The game draws wild ducks as scenery on the land the town has not taken, on ten levels from Pasargadae to Plataea, with duck calls heard on the water near them. No rule reads them.

What the sources do not say

Ancient account

No ancient source of the period lists the water birds of any region of the empire. Which species were present, and in what numbers, is therefore inferred from modern ornithology and from the geography of wetlands. Rivers, lake margins and marshes in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Anatolia and Greece all offered habitat, but this is an inference and not a record.

P. Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander, 2002

Ducks as food in Egypt

Ancient account

Herodotus says the Egyptians ate some birds raw after salting them, naming quails and ducks together with small birds. He wrote some decades after the Persian conquest and reports what he learned in Egypt. His words show that ducks were eaten there in his day. They do not describe Persian practice.

Herodotus 2.77

Fowling in Egyptian art

In the record

Egyptian tomb paintings and reliefs, mostly from centuries before the Persians, show fowling in the marshes with throw-sticks and nets. They show that waterfowl were long a source of food and sport in Egypt, the country Cambyses conquered. They are Egyptian evidence, not Persian.

Excavated tomb scenes of Egypt, cited generally

Parks and game

Ancient account

Xenophon describes a walled park with wild animals at Celaenae, kept by Cyrus the Younger, and uses the Greek word paradeisos for it. The animals he mentions are mammals, and no source says that ducks were hunted in such parks. Any picture of royal duck-shooting would be a guess.

Xenophon, Anabasis 1.2.7