3D reconstruction of Salt Man 4's clothing

Stumbled across this on Google recently:  Salt Man 4 (405-380 BCE): computer reconstruction of clothes and accessories.  This reconstruction by Aleksei Moskvin provides a much clearer view of many details that might be difficult to interpret for those of us who can only look at the mummy through the odd online photograph.  Of note:

-  The mummy wears a round cloak similar to those sported by Cappadocians in the Persepolis reliefs, but it's made of animal fur and is fastened with cords at the neck instead of a fibula.

-  The tunic is woven in a single cross-shaped piece, including the sleeves, then stitched along the undersides of the sleeves and down the sides of the body.  Its neckline is straight, not round, and is quite wide.  Its body is also wide and not flared.

-  The trousers have a lot of extra fabric between the legs.  This makes a lot of sense if you keep in mind that they were developed for riding horses; this cut would ensure that no seams are strained and busted when sitting astride the horse.

-  The sash appears to have weights sewn into the ends.  Other details throws all my old ideas about how the sash was constructed into doubt.

-  The mummy had a pair of small clay pots tied to the belt by cords looped tightly below the rims of the pots' openings.

-  A knife in a curved sheath was also tied to the belt, which I had not noticed before, but I'm pleased to see that it's more-or-less in keeping with the way I wore my knife at Marathon 2015 and Plataea.

Ceramic food bowl by Pamela Cummings

Carinated pots and bowls with wide, steep flared rims became common in West Asia in the Iron Age.  Moorey in his Deve Hüyük catalogue attributes the style's origin to the Neo-Assyrian empire.  They were made of pottery, metal, glass and even stone.  While not uniquely Achaemenid, they serve as a good example of a kind of foodware that is often found at Achaemenid sites, and thus will prove useful both as an educational display and, of course, any time you need to eat at an event that's open to the public.  Their international status should also make them more versatile for portrayals of people from elsewhere in West Asia in our time period.

I commissioned this bowl from Pamela Cummings, the Harrisburg, PA-based artisan who also made my water bottle last year.  It's primarily meant as a personal bowl for barley, stew, porridge (I've recently become a big fan of pease porridge) and other spoon foods, but it could also serve as a small common bowl for nuts or dates.  We designed it to be about the size of a cereal bowl, about 4-1/2 inches (11.4cm) across at the narrow carinated point, 6 inches (15.2cm) across at the rim, and 3 inches (7.6cm) deep on the outside.  It's based on a number of finds, both metal and ceramic, from Persepolis and Deve Hüyük.

In construction, it closely matches the water bottle.  Its walls are of medium thickness - thicker than china but thinner than, for instance, the heavier styles of American stoneware.  Also like the bottle, it's made of a faintly speckled, greyish-brown clay with a matte glaze to resemble unglazed, burnished pottery, yet meet modern food safety standards.  (If your local potter works in different types of clay, buff and terra cotta would also be acceptable colors.)  The compact, deep shape and the rim make it convenient to hold, but it has enough of a flat base to sit on a table.

Also as before, I enjoyed working with Pamela on this project, and highly recommend her work.  Her prices are also very reasonable for such important camp items.

Ceramic water bottle by Pamela Cummings

Over the years, I've come to see pottery as a somewhat neglected area of reenactment gear.  We focus on war to a great extent, but you can't present a realistic image of ancient peoples without also showing how they lived day-to-day, and in that sense, the objects of day-to-day life are just as important as weapons.  Indeed, the majority of individuals would have used weapons rarely if at all, while everyone would have used wares for eating and drinking on a daily basis.

For some years, I've wanted a ceramic water container to replace the leather ones I used at Marathon 2011 and 2015.  Ceramic bottles and canteens are much better-documented than the molded leather ones, and a simple wheel-thrown jug is of comparable price or even less expensive than a commercially-made leather costrel.  (Not to mention, waxed leather can be damaged if left out in the sun - ceramic won't be.)  A water container of a convenient size for carrying is essential, so it's my view that that's the logical place to start your pottery collection.  You need to drink, of course; why duck into a tent to sneak a sip out of a plastic bottle when you could be drinking out of an authentic container in public?

There is some reproduction pottery on the market for Classical reenactors, but as usual, for material specific to the Persian empire, you'll need to go custom most of the time.  I commissioned this bottle from Pamela Cummings of Harrisburg, whom I met at the 2018 Crafts in the Meadow fair at Tyler Park last October.  Pam was a pleasure to work with, and very understanding and accommodating as we worked out the design, delivery and payment.

Pam based the bottle on several finds from Persepolis, found in that ever-useful repository of information, Oriental Institute Publications 69.  I requested it in a 12-ounce capacity, the same as a can of soda.  We consciously deviated from the originals in two ways:  1)  they were made of brown clay with several partial washes of various dull colors, but to simplify things, this reproduction doesn't have additional colors, and 2)  the originals, as with almost all Achaemenid pottery, were unglazed, whereas Pam applied a clear matte glaze, both to make hers waterfast and more comfortable to drink out of (people often find that unglazed pottery is rough against the lips).  While it may look glossy in my photographs, in person it has a more mild sheen and could perhaps pass for being lightly burnished, which is also a technique known in Achaemenid pottery.

Pam normally includes a small initial stamp on her works.  Understanding that some reenactors don't want this on their gear, she offered to leave it off.  Personally, I think that if a trademark isn't large and distracting, it's not a problem - no one thinks we're eating and drinking out of actual ancient museum pieces anyway - and I see it as a segue to discussing how we go about obtaining our items and the fact that these ancient arts are still very much alive.

A bottle like this can be stopped with a tapered cork from the hardware store, and cork is a fairly ancient material - the oak species it comes from is native to the Western Mediterranean - though I'm not sure exactly how widespread it was in our period.  I suspect a waxed wood stopper would be more authentic for an item coming from the Iranian plateau.

Deve Hüyük - the full catalogue

Following Friday's post, I found Roger Moorey's catalogue of finds.  It was embarrassingly easy and I don't know why my earlier searches didn't turn it up, but here goes anyway.  Although most of what's shown is in the form of line drawings, it's still a rich gallery of objects common to our time period.

An important note on time periods:  The site as a whole comprises several phases.  Deve Hüyük I seems to be Neo-Assyrian, while Deve Hüyük II is Achaemenid.  There's also a few Arsacid-period graves in phase II; these are termed Deve Hüyük III.  Therefore if you're interested in any particular object, you need to confirm which phase it belongs to.

Moorey states, on the basis of the long sword and hilt fragments from Persepolis (see OIP #69), that the flanged dagger was used throughout the Achaemenid period.  He also lends some credence to something I've long suspected, that this dagger is the same as the "Elamite" dagger worn by robe-clad Persians and Elamites in period art.

There's a lot of highly decorated pottery, including several "flasks" shaped like pointed amphorae but without handles.  A canteen broadly similar to the ones from Persepolis but slightly different in detail is here described as a "pilgrim flask," while another, highly decorated glazed one is considered to be of Egyptian influence.

Those looking to add more flare to high-class impressions may look to the variety of bronze bracelets, anklets, rings and earrings, many of which should be simple to fabricate from metal rod or strips with annealing and filing.  Beads of all sorts of materials appear, as well as small, ceramic human head and animal pendants.

Among toiletries are a pair of tweezers, several circular bronze mirrors, and tubes and applicator sticks for kohl, a kind of eyeliner.  The kohl tubes and sticks are not necessarily feminine accessories, as Xenophon claims that Astyages, like other Median men, wore "pencillings beneath his eyes."  (Some of the attached codes may clarify this but I'm only skimming for the time being.)

Achaemenid bronze bowls, rhytons, iron akinakai, sagarides, arrowheads, tanged javelin heads, a second gorytos cover decoration, snaffle bits, arm fibulae and cylinder seals mostly reinforce what we already know.  One socketed trilobate arrowhead is attached to a bronze chain for some reason, and most of the spearheads run to proportionally rather narrow, though they may have corroded at the edges.  There's also a bronze bell described as a horse fitting.

Making a gorytos, part I

Over the coming months I'm planning to make an all-new gorytos for Marathon 2015.  While the gorytos was used for many centuries and came in several shapes, I only know of one that is attested in Persian art.
Relief on the Persepolis apadana

One of essentially the same shape is attested in some Greek pottery.  As near as I understand, these were made of soft leather with a wood spine sewn into the top to prevent sagging
Archer and hoplite kylix
Scythian on an amphora
Another Scythian

The upper edge is seamed; the main body may be a single piece folded up from the bottom or a front and back half.  Note in the second image that the bottom edge (the side facing down when the bow staff is worn horizontally) appears somewhat shaped to the bow staff.  This may be the result of leather being stretched, or it may be that the leather is seamed there - it's my understanding that fat-cured leathers don't mold well like veg-tan, and failing to stretch the leather sufficiently would leave the bow difficult to remove.  Many gorytoi seen in Greek art are shaped in this manner

A more extreme example that clearly illustrates the principle:
The bow- finding of olon kurin gol- some additional experiences and thoughts
This one is made with a wide, external wood spine.

Based on these, I've come up with some possibly reconstruction methods.

The choice between one- and two-piece construction and the exact widths required informs the choice of hides.

Peoples of the empire: The Arachosians

Arachosia (O.P. Harauvatiyâ) was located just to the south of Aria and Bactria, around the Arghandab River and straddling modern Afghanistan and Pakistan.  The name is cognate to Sanskrit Sarasvati and refers to bodies of water (rivers or ponds).

History
Arachosia enters history with the Behistun inscription, wherein it is already a Persian satrapy under a Vivâna, who successfully put down the rebellion in that area in 522-521 BC in the midst of the chaos that followed Darius' killing of Gaumâta.  The leader of the rebellion, Vahyazdâta, was (so said Darius) a Persian who claimed to be the deceased Bardiya/Smerdis and sent his army into Arachosia.  Thus there is no reason to suppose that Arachosia itself was a rebellious satrapy.  After being defeated, Vahyazdâta was brought back to Persia and crucified.  Vivâna's successor was Bakabaduš.

Herodotus does not mention Arachosians among the participants in the invasion of Greece.  However, Rüdiger Schmitt suggests that the people of Arachosia were known to Herodotus as the Thamanaei, while the later writer Ptolemy refers to several tribes, the Parsyetae, Sydri, Rhoplutae and Eoritae.

Currently an editor at Wikipedia is saying that the Arachosians were Pactyes (who are probably the same as the Pashtuns), this sounds plausible, especially as Persian sources do not mention Pactyes and they clearly come from around the same area.  But I'm not willing to assume that this is the case, since neither Iranica nor Livius.org give it any mention.  The quote from Isidore of Charax's Parthian Stations, "And the Parthians call this Pakhtara...", is very suspect indeed since the vast majority of translations have him say, "And the Parthians call this White India..."  I can't track down a copy of the original Greek online, but for the record, if the usual translation is correct, the original should read Indike Leuke.  For the time being, I am treating the Arachosians and Pactyes as different peoples.

At Persepolis, the Arachosian delegation appears bearing ornate pottery and leading a Bactrian camel adorned with a bell.

Little or nothing is known of the history of the region from the time of Vivâna and Vahyazdâta until Alexander's invasion, when in March of 329 he visited the satrapy, then ruled by someone named Barsaëntes, who joined Bessus in opposing Alexander.  According to Jona Lendering, Alexander renamed the satrapal capital Kapisakaniš as Alexandria in Arachosia.

(Some historians believe that this city is identical to modern Kandahar, and its name derives from a mutation of "Alexandria"; others believe the name comes from the nearby land of Gandhara, while others think connect it to the Persian and Pashto word for "candy" because the area is known for producing fruit.)

Like many regions, Arachosia was fought over by a series of kingdoms from the Seleucids onward.  The Indo-Scythians settled in Arachosia and Drangiana in the 2nd century BC, giving the region the alternative name of Sakastan ("land of the Saka"), which was later contracted to Sistan.  Like Aria, the rule of Sistan was contested in recent centuries by Iran and Afghanistan.  This time, the dispute was arbitrated by the British (who were heavily involved in the region at the time) and the region divided into modern Sistan and Baluchestan Province in Iran and Nimruz, Kandahar and Zabul provinces in Afghanistan.

I can find virtually nothing about the religion or language of Arachosia in Achaemenid times, though it is plausible that Eastern Iranian languages were dominant.  From the Islamic conquest of Iran until the 11th century, Arab writers said that the Sistanis worshipped a god named Zun, of whom was made a golden statue with ruby eyes.

Clothing and arms
Arachosians and Drangians, who are portrayed identically at Persepolis and Naqš-e Rostam (the tomb of Darius) wear close-fronted tunics like the Medes and Persians, combined with baggy trousers seen more among Eastern Iranians.  Like the Arians, their trousers are tucked into pull-on boots with pointed, upturned toes, similar to heel-less cowboy boots.  The ones at Persepolis come up to just over the ankle, those at Naqš-e Rostam are knee-high.  Some of the Persepolis boots have little cords hanging over the front of the boot tops, possibly a forerunner of blousing bands.

Persepolis also provides some excellent illustrations of Arachosian accessories.  Instead of hats, they wear headbands with square ends, tied in the back, and the hanging ends pulled up and tucked in.  They also wear distinct earrings consisting of a ring from which hang two beads and then a long inverted-teardrop pendant.

Almost nothing is shown of their weapons other than the one at Naqš-e Rostam who wears an akinakes.  Spears and B-style bows carried in gorytoi are plausible but I can neither confirm nor deny at this time.