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Athamaita

Elamite rebel leader against Darius I, Elam, about 520-519 BCE

In the game: Level 5: The Charter

Athamaita led the third rising of Elam against Darius I, in the king's second and third years. Darius's general Gobryas defeated the rebels, captured Athamaita and brought him to the king, who had him killed. He is known only from column V of the Behistun inscription, a late addition that shows how Darius kept recording his victories after the great revolts of 522-521.

In the game: The game's chronicle note matches the inscription: Athamaita led Elam's third revolt, and Gobryas beat and captured him, as column V of Behistun records. The date of about 520-519 is the usual modern estimate.

Elam's third revolt

In the record

Column V of the Behistun inscription says that in Darius's second and third year Elam rose again and made a man called Athamaita its chief. Elam had already rebelled twice. The first rising, under Açina, was quickly put down. In the second, under Martiya, the Elamites killed their own leader as Darius approached. This third rising came after the main wars of succession were over, which suggests Persian control of Elam remained fragile.

DB §71; compare DB §16-17 and §22-23

Defeat by Gobryas

In the record

Darius says he sent an army under Gobryas, a Persian and one of the six men who had helped him take the throne. Gobryas fought the Elamites, defeated them and took Athamaita prisoner. He brought him to Darius, who put him to death, and the king says Elam then became his again. The text adds that the Elamites had been faithless and did not worship Auramazda, a charge Darius makes in this column but not in the earlier accounts of revolt, where he blames the Lie.

DB §71-73; compare DB §68

A late addition to the rock

In the record

Column V was carved after the first four columns and exists only in Old Persian, without the Elamite and Babylonian versions that accompany the main text. It records the Elamite campaign and a campaign against the Saka. The captive Saka leader Skunkha was added to the end of the line of bound rebels on the relief, but no figure of Athamaita appears there.

R. Schmitt, The Bisitun Inscriptions of Darius the Great: Old Persian Text, 1991

Who was he

Disputed

No Greek writer mentions Athamaita, so everything rests on Darius's short report. Some scholars connect him with Atta-hamiti-Inshushinak, an Elamite king known from an inscription found at Susa, which would make him a member of a local royal line. Others date that king earlier, in the Neo-Elamite period before Darius, and treat the likeness of the names as coincidence. The question remains open.

W. Henkelman, The Other Gods Who Are, 2008; P. Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander, 2002