Ba-Yamim ha-Hem Ba-Zeman ha-Zeh: Were Jews Involved in Iran’s First Political Upheaval?

Aton M. Holzer

The Persian Empire was founded via the conquests of Cyrus II following his rise to the Anshan throne in 559 BCE. Cyrus, celebrated in the Hebrew Bible as the liberator whose decree permitted the Return to Zion, was succeeded by his son Cambyses, who is not mentioned in the Bible. Cambyses was followed for a brief period by his brother [or someone claiming to be] Bardiya (known in Greek sources as Smerdis or Tanyoxarces), until Darius I overthrew him.

The Behistun inscription of Darius I, an ancient trilingual text carved into a rock face at Mount Bīsotūn, which overlooks the main road from Babylon to Media, presents the case for Darius’s royal legitimacy. It begins by tracing Darius’s lineage back to the mythical royal ancestor Achaemenes and his son Teispes, great-grandfather of Cyrus, and then recounts his struggle against Gaumâta, a Median magus (priest) who, in Darius’s telling, impersonated royal heir Bardiya.

Gaumâta declared his rebellion on 14 Viyakhna (the eleventh month) from atop Mount Arakadris and was crowned on 9 Garmapada (the fourth month).^[1] He was ultimately defeated by a coalition of seven nobles, including Utana, son of Thukhra, and was executed by Darius on 10 Bagayad (the seventh month). Traditionally, modern scholarship has viewed Darius’s claims of royal ancestry and Smerdis’s imposture as fabrications to justify a coup d’état, but this assumption has recently been called into question.^[2]

²⁶ …Darius the King ²⁷ declares: This is what was done by me when the king ²⁸ I did become. The son of Cyrus, of our family, Cambyses by name — ²⁹ he was the king here. Of that Cambyses [there] was a brother, ³⁰ Smerdis by name, having the same mother and father as Cambyses. And then Cambyses ³¹ struck down that Smerdis. When Cambyses struck down Smerdis, ³² it did not become known among the people that [he] had struck down Smerdis. And then Cambyses ³³ went to Egypt. And when Cambyses went to Egypt, the people grew treacherous, ³⁴ and thus deceit rose rampantly in both Persia and Media and ³⁵ in the [Empire’s] other lands. Darius the King declares: Later, ³⁶ there was one man, a Magian, Gaumâta by name, and he rose up from Paishiyauvada. ³⁷ [There is] a mountain in Persia named Arakadri. From there, when fourteen days of the month of Viyakhna ³⁸ were completed, he rose up, [and] he deceived the people [saying] thus: ³⁹ “I am Smerdis, the son of Cyrus who [is] brother of Cambyses.” ⁴⁰ Thereupon, all the people became rebellious against Cambyses and went over to him, [Smerdis], ⁴¹ Persia and Media and the other lands, [and] he seized the kingdom. ⁴² Nine days were completed in the month of Garmapada [when] he seized the kingdom thus. ⁴³ And then Cambyses died by his own hand …

⁴⁸ … Darius the king declares: There was no man, ⁴⁹ neither Persian nor Median nor any among our family who could render that Gaumâta ⁵⁰ kingdom-deprived. The people feared him greatly, ⁵¹ lest he would strike down the numerous people who knew him previously as Smerdis; ⁵² lest he would strike down the people on account of this: “Lest he who would know me [would know that] I am not Smerdis, ⁵³ the son of Cyrus.” No one dared to say anything ⁵⁴ against Gaumâta the Magian until I came. After that, ⁵⁵ I asked Ahura Mazda for help, [and] Ahura Mazda bore me aid. ⁵⁶ Ten days of the month of Bagayad were completed when, with a small number of men, ⁵⁷ I struck down that Gaumâta the Magian and those men who ⁵⁸ were his foremost allies. [There was] a fortress called Sikayauvati, a land called Nisaya, ⁵⁹ in Media, [and] there I struck him down. I seized the kingdom [from] him, [and] by the will ⁶⁰ of Ahura Mazda, I became king. Ahura Mazda bestowed the kingdom to me…^[3]

…Says Darius the king: These (are) the men who were there then when I slew Gaumâta the Magian, who called himself Bardiya; then these men cooperated as my allies; Intaphernes (Vidafarnah) by name, the son of Vayaspara, a Persian; Otanes (Utāna) by name, the son of Thukhra, a Persian; Gobryas (Gaubaruva) by name, the son of Mardonius, a Persian; Hydarnes (Vidarna) by name, the son of Bagabigna, a Persian; Megabyzus (Bagabuxša) by name, the son of Daduhya, a Persian; Ardumaniš by name, the son of Vahauka, a Persian.^[4]

The information from the Behistun inscription is enriched by Herodotus and fragments from Ctesias’ now-lost Persica, which are preserved in the writings of the Byzantine scholar Photius. In Herodotus’ Histories (3.68-3.87), a Persian noble named Otanes is depicted as the chief conspirator against the impostor Smerdis/Gaumâta-Bardiya, rather than Darius, who is actually the last to join the conspiracy. It was Otanes’ daughter, Phaedyme, one of Smerdis’ wives, who discovered the imposture because Smerdis lacked ears, which had been removed by Cyrus as punishment for earlier misdeeds (in Ctesias’ account, it is not a queen, but a eunuch, who informs the entire army of the deception). Otanes invited Aspathines and Gobryas for a discussion, and each subsequently recruited another conspirator. Darius joined them last, but quickly became the most vocal. They entered Smerdis’ palace without difficulty, and carried out the assassination.

The subsequent events in Herodotus also differ from Darius’ account. According to Herodotus, The Seven convened shortly after Smerdis’ death to discuss the future form of government. Otanes proposed a democracy, Megabyzus suggested an oligarchy (or aristocracy), and Darius advocated for a monarchy. After four members sided with Darius in favor of monarchy, they then needed to determine who would become King. They agreed on a competition: the one whose horse neighed first at dawn would become King. Otanes declined, leaving six conspirators to meet the next day. Darius prevailed by means of a ruse, and thus became the King of the Achaemenid Empire.

While the Behistun inscription portrays Darius as an unquestionable leader and future King, Herodotus downplays his significance and adds numerous details to the events, though the eventual outcome and main points of the revolt, including the names, remain unchanged. The seven conspirators became the most important officers of the empire, and the families of each of these seven continued to play key roles in Achaemenid governance until Alexander’s conquest.^[5]

But one conspirator played an outsized role in the Empire’s affairs. Herodotus describes:

These were the three opinions presented at the meeting, and after the other four of the seven men decided in favor of the last one, Otanes, despite his eagerness to establish isonomy, recognized that he had lost the argument, and he now addressed them all: “My comrades, it is clear that one of us must become King, and whether he who will be entrusted with the administration of the kingdom is chosen by lot, by the majority of the Persians, or by some other method, I shall not compete with you, for I wish neither to rule nor to be ruled. So I now withdraw from this contest on the following condition: that neither I nor my descendants will be subject to you.” When he had stated this requirement, the other six agreed to it, and so he took no part in the competition among them but stood aside with an attitude of neutrality. And even now, Otanes’ family is the only free one among the Persians; it submits to rule only as much as it wants to, although it does not transgress Persian laws. The remaining six then deliberated about how they could most fairly establish one of themselves in the position of King. First they all agreed that if the kingship did go to one of them, Otanes and his descendants would be granted yearly allotments of Median clothing and every other gift thought to be most honorable in Persia. They decided to grant him these gifts because he had been the first to plan the conspiracy and bring them all together. And in addition to these perquisites for Otanes, they resolved to establish other privileges that they would share in common: they agreed that anyone of the seven would be allowed to go into the palace without an official to announce him, unless the King happened to be sleeping with a woman at the time, and that the King would not be permitted to marry a woman from any families other than their own… (Histories 3.83-3.84)^[6]

In Herodotus’ account, Otanes advocates for Persia to transition to a democracy. Scholars^[7] often view this debate as an apocryphal reflection of Herodotus’ own thoughts on governance, influenced by the democracy-oligarchy conflicts at the onset of the Peloponnesian War. Nonetheless, Herodotus himself notes contemporaneous skepticism, and asserts that Otanes nonetheless championed democracy (6.43). When outvoted in favor of maintaining the monarchy, Otanes relinquishes any claim to kingship, requesting only that he and his descendants be granted independence from royal rule (3.83). Ultimately, Darius triumphs among the six remaining contenders by resorting to deceit in a contest. Otanes, identified as “one of the seven,” reappears in Herodotus (Histories 3.141.1) as a commander of the Persian army. He is further noted as the father of Amestris, Xerxes I’s wife, and as the general during the campaign against the Greeks in 480 (7.61.2). This is forty-two years after the conspiracy – at which time Otanes already had a grown daughter in Bardiya’s harem – which would make Otanes, if living, quite old for such a task.

Pierre Briant^[8] argued that the Otanes who led the campaign in 480, whom Herodotus identifies as the father of Amestris, was a different individual altogether. Rüdiger Schmitt posits that Herodotus may have been mistaken about the general in 480, who probably was one of Otanes’ sons, but maintains that Amestris was indeed Otanes’ daughter – such a royal marriage would have made good sense, in order to further cement the Darius-Otanes lineal alliance.^[9]

In the Biblical Book of Esther, Xerxes’ wife is Esther. The historicity of Esther, once roundly rejected in scholarly circles, has recently gained some support. A recent article by faculty at the University of Tehran (!)^[10] highlights numerous details within the Masoretic text of Esther that could only have arisen from direct familiarity with “the details of the administrative system, rules, and customs of the Achaemenian Empire and court,” without mediation by Greek sources. Coupled with the fact that Esther contains many Persian loanwords but no Greek ones, this evidence supports dating Esther, at the latest, to the end of the Achaemenid empire or the very beginning of the Hellenistic period—i.e., a time when the Achaemenid dynastic line was still a living memory. Scholars have suggested that the name Esther might be an apocopated form of Amestris, and the name given for her father, avi hayil, meaning ‘father of the soldiers,’ could be a title rather than a proper name, indicating a military commander.^[11]

Following out this line of thinking – granting historicity to both the book of Esther and Persian and Greek sources, to the maximum extent possible – leads to some interesting possibilities.

In the Biblical book, Esther’s apparent selection through a contest might have been a strategic charade by Xerxes, a king known for cosmopolitanism and promoting equality among his subjects,^[12] to give the impression of being open to marriage alliances with his diverse peoples, even as the contest for chief queen was really among a much smaller pool – since he preferred to marry a Persian from one of the seven families, in consonance with the agreement of the seven. (Otanes is explicitly identified as a Persian in the Behistun inscription.)

But how could Esther be both Persian and Judean?

One might suggest that Otanes’ Persian credentials were fabricated. The “Persians” were not averse to fabricating their own fictional ancestries; indeed, some skeptics suggest that even Darius I might have done so concerning his royal lineage as depicted in the Behistun Inscription.^[13] Or perhaps Amestris was a product of intermarriage, Persian by her father but of a Judean mother — the question of whether ethnicity is passed in a patrilineal or matrilineal manner was unresolved in the early years of empire, both are reflected in the evidence, and concerns with the details of adjudicating conflicts of ethnicities are actually hashed out in the “constitutional laws,” data of Darius, as preserved at Behistun and Naqsh-e Rostam.^[14]

But none of this is necessary. Recent studies argue that Persian ethnicity, in the early Achaemenid period, was actually a new construct:

“To be ‘Persian’ is unlikely to have denoted partaking in a cultural identity that was the direct heir and linear continuation of a migrant Indo-Iranian identity; instead, it meant to subscribe to a relatively new and inclusive identity, informed by both Elamite and Indo-Iranian traditions and developed and transformed pari passu with the incredible dynamism from which the Persian empire emerged… Of course, it may well be that in certain aspects of being ‘Persian’ the Indo-Iranian side was or became dominant, but that is not the essence: what matters is that both founding traditions were transformed and merged to the extent that one may speak of a new ethnicity or ethnic identity – the Persian ethnogenesis.”^[15]

Judean ancestry or worship of the God of Israel, even if professed, would not have posed a barrier, in Achaemenid eyes, to identification with the constructed Persian ethnicity; Mazdaism, in whatever form it may have taken, was not confirmed as the ruling class’ religion until or after Darius,^[16] and many cults continued to be worshipped in the Persian heartland.^[17] The possibility that Amestris’ late “Persian” father-Darius co-conspirator Otanes, the commander of Persian forces, was of Judean ancestry and even creed, is thus not at odds with any Achaemenid imperial marriage policy. Nonetheless, once Darius embraced Zoroastrianism as the official state religion, and “Judaism” emerged as a distinct ethnicity,^[18] the Persian nobleman’s family would have had reason to hide both.

If Otanes is indeed the character identified in the Megillah as avi hayil, a “crypto-Jew”, he might just have been the greatest shtadlan of all time. According to the Behistun inscription, Gaumâta had either destroyed or halted work on temples of which he disapproved — “the temples which Gaumâta, the Magian, had destroyed, I restored to the people.” Whether or not the disruption of Cyrus’s promise to rebuild the Jewish Temple was a motivating factor in Otanes’ conspiratorial intervention, Darius’s unusually fervent and forceful insistence on the reconstruction of the Jewish Temple (Ezra 6:11-12) makes good sense if a repayment of a debt to his good friend and benefactor.

This could potentially also resolve a longstanding crux interpretum in Esther (3:2-4): why did Mordechai refuse to bow to Haman? If we consider Herodotus’ account – which indicates that Otanes’ family remained free from subjugation to Darius’ descendants – it might explain why Mordechai^[19] chose to uphold the privilege their ancestor had secured and refrained from bowing before the king or his representatives.

In a highly original and ambitious article^[20] published some time ago, which rejects Herodotus in favor of the historicity of Esther (and Daniel), Chaim Heifetz posited that Gaumâta—as a magus-priest and religious absolutist linked to the ancient Median religion—was engaged in a religious conflict against the abstract (imperial form of) Zoroastrianism, which Jews and their religion found to be a more natural ally. He suggests that Haman “the Agagite” was a literary-theological construct derived from historical memory of Gaumâta. According to this reading, the very first Persian regime change—the overthrow of genocidal religious fanatics—bears a striking resemblance to the last, kein tihiyeh lanu.

1. Incidentally, the anniversary of the date recorded in II Melakhim 25:3 as that of the breaching of the walls of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar. 14 Adar is of course Purim, and 10 Tishrei is Yom Kippur – fascinating but not more than that, given no evidence of Judean-Persian calendrical synchronization. ↑
2. Amir Ahmadi, “The Bīsotūn Inscription-A Jeopardy of Achaemenid History.” Journal of Archeology and Ancient History 27 (2020) 1-55; .‏Zarghamee, Reza. “A Contribution to the Discourse Regarding a Teispid-Achaemenid Dynastic Divide.” Ancient History Bulletin 39 (2025) 3-4, 86-124. ↑
3. Translation by Scott L. Harvey, Winfred P. Lehmann, and Jonathan Slocum, Old Iranian Online, Lesson 8: Old Persian, archived at https://lrc.la.utexas.edu/eieol/aveol/80 and accessed January 14, 2026.↑
4. Translation by Herbert Cushing Tolman, The Behistan Inscription of King Darius (Vanderbilt University, 1908),‏ 35. ↑
5. Libor Pruša, “Seven Against Mage: Darius and His Co-Conspirators,” Sapiens ubique civis 3 (2022), 27-56.‏ ↑
6. Translations of Herodotus are from Robert B., Strassler, ed., The Landmark Herodotus: the Histories (Vintage, 2009). ↑
7. Farane Zaidi, “The Controversies and Skepticisms of the Constitutional Debate in Herodotus 3.80-82.” Ipso Facto: The Carleton Journal of Interdisciplinary Humanities 3 (2024), 49-62; Breno Battistin Sebastiani, “Herodotus’ Allusions to Democracy in Books 7 and 8: Between Heuristic Device and Purposeful Action,” Greece & Rome 72:2 (2025), 203-223.‏ ↑
8. Pierre Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire (Eisenbrauns, 2002), p. 135. ↑
9. Rüdiger Schmitt, Iranische Anthroponyme in den erhaltenen Resten von Ktesias’ Werk (Verlag der ÖAW, 2006), 174-176.‏ ↑
10. Morteza Arabzadeh Sarbanani, “Revisiting the Book of Esther: Assessing the Historical Significance of the Masoretic Version for the Achaemenian History.” Persica Antiqua 3:4 (2023), 19-32. ↑
11. Robert Gordis, “Religion, wisdom and history in the book of Esther: a new solution to an ancient crux.” Journal of Biblical Literature 100:3 (1981), 359-388; Mitchell First, “The Origin of Ta ‘anit Esther.” AJS Review 34:2 (2010), 309-351. ↑
12. Kristin Kleber, “Taxation in the Achaemenid Empire.” Oxford Handbooks Online. Classical Studies. Oxford University press, 2015. See also Aton Holzer, “Esther, Feminist Ethics, and the Creation of Jewish Community,” The Lehrhaus, March 13, 2022, archived at https://thelehrhaus.com/scholarship/esther-feminist-ethics-and-the-creation-of-jewish-community/ and accessed January 15, 2026. ↑
13. Pierre Briant, “Achaemenids.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Classics, 2015. ↑
14. Hilmar Klinkott, “How to Govern an Empire? The Inscriptions of Darius I As a Constitutional Program,” archived at https://pourdavoud.ucla.edu/video/how-to-govern-an-empire-the-inscriptions-of-darius-i-as-a-constitutional-program/ and accessed February 22, 2023. ↑
15. Wouter FM Henkelman, “Humban and Auramazda: Royal Gods in a Persian Landscape,” in Henkelman, Wouter FM, and Céline Redard, eds., Persian Religion in the Achaemenid Period-La religion perse à l’époque achéménide. (Harrassowitz Verlag, 2017), 302. ↑
16. Philip G. Kreyenbroek, “Zoroastrianism under the Achaemenians: A non-essentialist approach.” In J. Curtis, St. J. Simpson. L., eds., The world of Achaemenid Persia: history, art and society in Iran and the ancient Near East (I.B. Tauris, 2010), 103-109. ↑
17. Wouter FM Henkelman, “Practice of worship in the Achaemenid heartland.” A Companion to the Achaemenid Persian Empire 2 (Wiley, 2021), 1243-1270. ↑
18. Aton M. Holzer, “Esther, Empire, and the Emergence of Jewish Ethnicity,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 56:4-5 (2025), 371-395.‏ ↑
19. And possibly others from Otanes’ family, had they been stationed at the king’s gates rather than leading armies — see Herodotus Histories 7.62 and 7.82. ↑
20. Chaim S. Heifetz, “Malkhut Paras U-Madai be-Tekufat Bayit Sheini u-Lefaneha – Iyun Mehudash,” Megadim 14 (1991), 78-147. ↑