should become the permanent residence for him and his successors, the central-point of his kingdom and of his government, and that Pliny and Aelian say decidedly that Darius built Susa, the king's city of Persia, and that the inscriptions confirm this saying. For, to begin with the latter statement, an inscription found in the ruins of a palace at Susa, according to the deciphering of Mordtmann (in der D. morgl. Ztschr. xvi. pp. 123ff.), which Duncker cites as confirming his statement, contains only these words: “Thus speaks Artaxerxes the great king, the son of Darius the son of Achämenides Vistaçpa: This building my great-great-grandfather Darius erected; afterwards it was improved by Artaxerxes my grandfather.” This inscription thus confirms only the fact of the building of a palace in Susa by Darius, but nothing further, from which it is impossible to conclude that Darius first founded the city, or built the first tower in it. Still less does such an idea lie in the words of Aelian, nat. animal. i. 59: “Darius was proud of the erection of a celebrated building which he had raised in Susa.” And Pliny also, taken strictly, speaks only of the elevation of Susa to the rank of capital of the kingdom by Darius, which does not exclude the opinion that Susa was before this already a considerable town, and had a royal castle, in which Cyrus may have resided during several months of the year (according to Xenophon, Cyrop. viii. 6. 22, Anab. iii. 5. 15; cf. Brissonius, de regio Pers. princ. p. 88f.).[1]
The founding of Susa, and of the old tower in Susa, reaches back into pre-historic times. According to Strabo, xv. 2. 3, Susa must have been built by Tithonos, the father of Memnon. With this the epithet Μεμνόνια Σοῦσα, which Herod. vii. 151, v. 54, 53, and Aelian, nat. anim. xiii. 18, gives to the town of Susa, stands in unison. For if this proves nothing more than that in Susa there was a tomb of Memnon (Häv.), yet would this sufficiently prove that the city or its citadel existed from ancient times - times so ancient that the mythic Memnon lived and was buried there.
The city had its name שׁוּשׁן, Lily, from the lilies which grew in great abundance in that region (Athen. Deipnos. xii. p. 409; Stephan.
- ↑ Pliny, hist. nat. vi. 27, says regarding Susiana, “In qua vetus regia Presarum Susa a Dario Hystaspis filio condita,” which may be understood as if he ascribed to Darius the founding of the city of Susa. But how little weight is to be given to this statement appears from the similar statement, hist. nat. vi. 14 (17): “Ecbatana caput Mediae Seleucus rex condidit,” which plainly contains an error, since Ecbatana, under the name of Achmeta, is mentioned (Ezr 6:2) in the time of Darius Hystaspes, in the tower of which the archives of the Persian kings were preserved.
