Prince of Parsua in the territory of Bactra; a relation among the mythical Persian kings, archaeological evidence of Yaz culture and the content of Assyrian incriptions

Firouzi, Sorena; Mehrafarin, Reza; Mousavihaji, Seyed Rasool

doi:10.22034/jgk.2023.342276.1051

Prince of Parsua in the territory of Bactra; a relation among the mythical Persian kings, archaeological evidence of Yaz culture and the content of Assyrian incriptions

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Sorena Firouzi ¹

Reza Mehrafarin ²

Seyed Rasool Mousavihaji ³

¹ PhD Student, Department of Historical Period Archaeology, Faculty of Art and Architecture, University of Mazandaran, Iran

² b) Professor, Department of Archaeology, Faculty of Art and Architecture, University of Mazandaran, Iran

³ Professor, Department of Archaeology, Faculty of Art and Architecture, University of Mazandaran, Iran

10.22034/jgk.2023.342276.1051

Abstract

Following an examination of Mesopotamian inscriptions, Shalmaneser III, in the second half of the 9th century BC, for the first time refers to the political presence of the ancestors of the Persian people as a "coalition of twenty-seven kings of Parsua." On the one hand, in Iranian mythological history, we encounter a list of unknown kings referred to as the dynasty of the Kings of Persia, who, based on chronological data from those same texts, are not associated with the southern Zagros region (Fars) but must belong to the era before the migration of the people of Parsua from the central Zagros to the south. On the other hand, according to part of Iran's mytho-epic history, Kay Khosrow, son of Siyâvash and grandson of Kay Kāvus, and the ruler of Balkh, designated his heir not as one of his own children, but as Lohrâsp, son of Zâv, who was the son of the then-current and mythical king of Persia. The related texts provide no answer as to why this occurred in the mythological stories and traditional king-lists of Iranian history. Based on the findings of the present research, firstly, a meaningful connection can be established archaeologically between part of the mythological information in Iranian history and the archaeological data of the Yaz Culture in the eastern lands; and based on this, a correlation can be proposed between the identity of the mythical Persian kings and the data from Neo-Assyrian texts. This research demonstrates that following a severe assault by the Assyrians, a flight of the Parsua royal family towards the eastern expanse of Balkh took place, which led to a new period in Iranian mythological history.

Keywords

Archaeology of Myths, Parsua, Balkh, Yaz Culture, Lohrâ

Subjects

Historical geography, culture, society, history and civilization of Greater Khorasan

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