Xerxes’ Canal at Mount Athos and the Achaemenid Administrative and Economic System
Xerxes’ Canal at Mount Athos and the Achaemenid Administrative and Economic System

Summary/Abstract: The paper analyses the evidence of Herodotus on the digging of a canal across Mount Athos through which the Persian fleet passed on its way to Macedonia and Attica. The written Greek evidence is compared with the archaeological explorations of the region, as well as with Persian sources shedding light on the legal status of the workers in such activities. It becomes clear from the analysis of the available Greek source data, compared to the Persian sources on the economic and administrative system of Achaemenid Iran, that the persons involved in the digging of the canal across Mount Athos were both soldiers in the Persian army and recruited indigenous Balkan population: Thracians and Greeks. They had the legal status of dependent workers: kurtaš. They were paid for and fed with rations out of the Persian treasury, securing for them products from the royal warehouses located along the Thracian Aegean coast, which in turn were supplied from Persian warehouses “all over Asia.” The same people, most probably military men engaged in construction, were ordered to build bridges over the Strymon river as well.

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