Food, Rations and Feasting in Achaemenid Lands

Under the Achaemenid Persian dynasty (about 550–330 BCE), royal administrators moved food through regional stores to workers, officials, travellers and cults. The richest surviving administrative records for these arrangements come from Persepolis, a royal centre in Persis, in modern Fars province of southwestern Iran. The Fortification Tablets are clay administrative records written in Elamite; they document transactions from 509 to 494 BCE across Persis and eastern Elam, in southwestern Iran. The Treasury Tablets, a second archive, cover 492–458 BCE. Greek literary reports offer a different view of dining at the royal court under Artaxerxes II (r. 405/404–359/358 BCE).

A ration entry records what an institution issued, not necessarily what one person ate at a meal. Grain, flour, wine and livestock could provision a work group, a traveller, a cult or an animal; for workers, these goods also served as payment in kind.

Persepolis stores and distributions

Local administrators recorded deliveries and transfers of grain, flour, fruit and livestock, then sent accounts to a central office at Persepolis. There, scribes compiled separate transactions into journals that followed a department’s expenditure over months or years. Large shipments moved commodities between locations to meet economic needs or build reserves and seed funds; registers also recorded provisions issued to royal-economy workers, state officials and animals. The records connect the movement of food with named recipients and the administrative offices responsible for it.

Barley was a staple, but the accounts name flour, dates, other fruit, beer, wine, sheep, goats and fowl as well. One storekeeper brought 3,000 bar of barley into Persepolis. Since a bar held about ten litres, this was roughly 30,000 litres entering a central store. Some issues were flour instead of grain. The tablets mention bread-making, and historian Rüdiger Schmitt notes that barley was roasted and seems also to have been used for brewing beer. These entries show commodities at different stages of preparation and distribution without describing a standard meal.

The archives also record specific allocations from palace stores. A personal decree of Darius I (r. 522–486 BCE) ordered 100 sheep and 200 marriš of wine for Queen Irtašduna, one of his wives. A marriš measured about ten litres, so the decree assigned roughly 2,000 litres of wine as well as sheep to the queen’s household. The order used the royal stores to provision a named recipient, just as other records tracked issues to workers and officials.

Rations for workers, travellers and animals

Ration amounts varied by role. One travel account lists 27 “gentlemen” receiving 4.5 bar of flour each for a month, while 15 servant boys received 3 bar each. For a later twenty-day leg, the same account gives the gentlemen 3 bar each and the servants 2. The different scales show how records allocated provisions by a traveller’s place in the party.

Women also appear as workers and supervisors in the Persepolis records. Historian Maria Brosius notes that women doing less-skilled work generally received one-third less food than men, while women and men doing skilled work received equal rations according to qualification. Mothers of newborn children received extra food, with mothers of boys allocated twice the amount given to mothers of girls. A ration could therefore reflect both a work category and an infant’s needs.

Animals travelling on royal business had their own supplies. In 500 BCE, Bawukšamira received 9.9 bar of flour for 33 royal camels. He carried a sealed document from Parnaka, the senior administrator at Persepolis, while travelling to the king at Susa in southwestern Iran. A companion record says the camels consumed three qa each on the return journey from Susa to Persepolis; one qa equalled one tenth of a bar. Provisions for the caravan could thus be issued and accounted for separately from the food for human travellers. On major routes, storehouses stood about a day’s journey apart, and officials recorded vouchers when authorized travellers drew provisions.

A contrasting agricultural example from Babylon appears in Babylonian grain and date production.

Dining at the royal court

The Greek writer Heracleides of Cyme, active around 350 BCE, described Persian customs under Artaxerxes II. His account survives in fragments quoted by Athenaeus, a writer who lived in Rome around the beginning of the third century CE. In the surviving passage, attendants bathe and wear fine clothes before serving at supper. Heracleides says the king usually ate alone, though his wife or sons sometimes joined him.

The invited diners did not all occupy the same space. Some ate outdoors, where onlookers could see them. Others dined in a room opposite the king’s; a curtain across the doorway allowed him to see them, while they could not see him. At some feasts, everyone ate in the same large room. After the meal, a group of about a dozen companions might be summoned to drink with the king. They received different wine and sat on the ground while he reclined on a couch.

Heracleides also describes what happened to the food. Guests were served moderate portions and could carry away what they left for breakfast. Most of the meat and bread was taken into the courtyard and divided equally among the king’s spearbearers and light-armed troops. The account presents their food as pay for royal service, “as if it were money.”