مطالعه کتیبه های هخامنشی و ساسانی با تاکید انگیزه های ساخت کتیبه های پادشاهی و شرایط تاریخی آنان

کتیبه‌های متعدد از دوران هخامنشی و ساسانی باقی‌مانده است؛ علت اصلی و هدف شاهان در ساخت آن‌ها مورد توجه و پژوهش قرار نگرفته است. علت ایجاد این کتیبه‌ها و صرف هزینه و وقت زیاد جهت ساخت آنان چه بوده که موجب شده است تا پادشاهان هخامنشی و ساسانی ساخت آنان را لازم دیدند. پرسش این پژوهش دربارۀ کارکرد و هدف از ساخت این کتیبه‌ها است؛ چنین کتیبه‌های سلطنتی برای بزرگداشت پیروزی بوده‌اند یا اثری جهت قدرت‌نمایی یا ابزاری جهت اطلاع‌رسانی بودند؟ ساخت چنین آثاری اهدافی بزرگ‌تر در نهان خود داشته‌اند که علت اصلی ساخت کتیبه‌ها بوده است. هدف این پژوهش این است که این کتیبه‌ها نوعی ابزار جهت کسب و اعلان مشروعیت شاه بوده است یا خیر؟ و در چه زمان ساخت آنان ضروری می‌شده است. نگارندگان تلاش کرده‌اند با مطالعۀ کتیبه‌ها و شرایط زمانی ساخت کتیبه‌ها پاسخی برای این پرسش‌ها بیابند. در این پژوهش نگارندگان کتیبه‌های دوران ساسانی و هخامنشی را براساس متغییر هایی هم‌چون تعداد فراوانی کتیبه، عوامل داخلی یا خارجی ارزیابی نمودند تا بتوان نیات و اهداف ساخت کتیبه‌ها را حدس زنند. بین شاهان دارای کتیبه و شاهان فاقد کتیبه و حوادث داخلی و خارجی و هم‌چنین میزان فراوانی کتیبه‌ها با میزان مشکلات هم‌بستگی وجود دارد. از این‌رو احتمالاً این کتیبه‌ها ابزاری جهت ابلاغ مشروعیت، تاکید بر لزوم فرمانبرداری و رفع شبهات درمورد قانونی بودن حکومتشان در بین مردم ساخته می‌شدند. در کل، این کتیبه‌ها به‌منظور کسب مشروعیت ساخته شده‌اند و در سه شرایط شاه ضرورت ساخت آن‌را حس می‌کرده است؛ نخستین آن، ارتباط مستقیم بین شاهانی که پس از بنیانگذار سلسله به ثبات و مشروعیت‌دهی می‌پردازند. دوم، پادشاهان پیروز در نبردهای بزرگ می‌باشند؛ و نمونۀ سوم، پادشاهانی که مشروعیت سیاسی آنان مورد شک و ابهام قرار گرفته بود دارای بیشترین ومفصل‌ترین کتیبه‌ها هستند.

Study on Achaemenid and Sasanian Inscriptions with Emphasis on the Motivation Make Royal Inscriptions and Their Historical Conditions

Ever since prehistoric areas, even during the huntersgathers communities and developments to maintain order and security in his society. Such communities had to obey some individual to preserve balance and interactions both at inter social level of their own communities as well as the international level with other societies over the world. Such rulers (to be obeyed) were usually selected based on some rules and methods. Moreover, the privilege to reign was transmitted to their sons or handed over to some other people. Along with formation of governments and considerable increase of the rulers’ powers, which played the same role as the former rulers of small communities, as well as extension of their geographical area with more population of different cultures under their reign, the situation became more complicated. Gradually, there was more ambition even among the people close to kings to gain the reign and rule on societies. It was of extra ordinary significance for the kings to keep on their rules and realms, because any disability in controlling the population or foreign threats even in regional events would cause some doubts in the king’s qualification and might result in his assassination or deposition. Thus, the leaders of societies, in the course of time, even before the formation of governments, would take some measures to make peoples not only obey their rules and orders, but to defend their reign and substitutes against the internal and external enemies too. The leaders of different eras and various regional societies were of different nature, such as a priest, a martial expert, a charismatic person or an intelligent professional one.Keywords: Achaemenian, Sasanian, Legitimacy, History Course, Inscriptions Usage. IntroductionThese leaders occasionally restored to their fathers and ancestors, as they played a great role in the nation’s destination, to use their popularity and sociability in the way of their own followers and supporters extension. Such a set of variance in the governments’ natures and the development of social structures in the course of time caused a set of necessities to be absolute parts of a leader’s qualification. Such necessities for people to become rulers or governors are called legitimacy in politics. Although the term legitimacy is somehow modern, the ancient governments were unconsciously aware of such a method and continuously tried to gain the most possible legitimacy for themselves and make nations aware of their enemies as being exetainers. In fact, legitimacy was the spinal cord of a government and if it was lost for any reason, the ruler would be de positioned in a short time, much the worse he would be killed. Despite the significance of this issue, no comprehensive investigation was performed about the necessary qualities of reign in ancient Iran. Therefore, the authors have tried to investigate such qualities in this study. The authors believe that these inscriptions are of giving legitimacy to the king. They also study their utility in Iran’s ancient society. In this course, the inscriptional contents of these kingdoms as well as the association between the inscriptions and historical events in ancient Iran was investigated. Two of most important dynasties of Iran were Achaeminid and Sasanid. Persians had tribal social structure but Sasanian had a civilized structure and settled in big cities and was priest of temple. These dynasties have very different social background and different political situations when raised.  A number of royal inscriptions of Achaemenid and Sasanian eras have been left in different parts under their kingdom. These inscriptions have helped the researchers to learn about the language, history, culture and archaeology in learning about different aspects of sociopolitical situation of the time. The questions to be answered in this study are: the reason to make such inscriptions in a great cost of time and money, the necessity felt by Achaemenian and Sasanian kings to make them, have they been made to celebrate a victory? Either a way to show the power, or a tool for advertisement? Or making these inscriptions carry an important secret in them that has caused them to be made? This study has aimed to find out if these inscriptions were a means to gain and declare the king’s legitimacy and when their make have become obligatory? The authors have tried to study the inscriptions as well as their contents and also their historical time to be made to find the answer to the question. The authors have also studied the inscriptions of Achaeenian and Sasanian periods based on variabilities such as the frequency of the inscriptions of the kings as well as internal factors (such as uprisings against the king or the kings’ uprising against his former counterpart) or the occurrence of foreign conflicts with the level of their victories in addition to the contents mentioned in them, to make a possible guess of the aim behind making these historical inscriptions. To achieve this goal, the authors gathered both the kingdoms’ inscriptions. They managed to compare the contents translated of the inscriptions by different translators and picked up the best reliable text out of them. We extracted the significant contents of each inscription. These contents included the inscription construction and the terms as well as the sentences expressed by the king. However, the inscriptions demonstrating merely the name of the king mostly engraved on the margin of mobile tools were put aside by us. In several steps, those inscriptions which only demonstrated the name of the king with no helpful information or content in giving new clues to the authors, they were ignored due to their unimportance in being put aside from the research procedure. These briefly written inscriptions were of no significance in the process of the investigation analysis and statistics. After studying the inscriptions, the internal and external situation of the empires during their rule with emphasis on the kings with the most duration of reign as well as the longest inscriptions were investigated. Furthermore, the results in the forms of separate tables and comparing the events and their consequences were provided in order to facilitate the data as well as correlation among the variability, the investigation findings in short word is that a correlation exists among the kings with inscriptions and the kings without any inscriptions with internal and external event. The inscriptions frequency and the extension of problems (troubles occurred under the kingdom) proved to be correlated. ConclusionsThus, it can be claimed that (most probably but not absolutely) these inscriptions were made to declare their legitimacy in government and obliterate and doubt about their legal right to rule among the population and also make them to observe and obey their orders. In general, these inscriptions have been made to gain legitimacy and the king has felt the necessity to make them under three conditions, first, the direct relation between the founder and his next kings, which gives legitimacy to their rules. Second, the victorious kings of big conflicts of which we can name the first Sasanian Shapur. Third, the kings whose legitimacy had been somehow doubted, for example the Dariush the Great, Dariush II and Ardeshir II, in other words, the kings of such a condition have made the most inscriptions entitled in words, while the rest have either no inscription left or their names have much briefly been engraved on a tool.