Bardiya and Gaumata: The Usurper Question

In 522 BCE, while Cambyses II was away in Egypt, a man ruling as Bardiya, the younger son of Cyrus the Great, was accepted as king across much of the Persian Empire. Within seven months he was killed by seven Persian nobles led by Darius, who then declared that the king had really been a Magian priest called Gaumata impersonating a prince Cambyses had secretly murdered. Whether that is true is one of the oldest open questions in Persian history.

Darius’s version at Behistun

The fullest and earliest account is Darius’s own, carved on the cliff at Behistun within a year or two of the events. It is short and firm. Cambyses, it says, had a brother Bardiya “of the same mother, of the same father”, and killed him before setting out for Egypt, and the people did not know the brother was dead. While the king was abroad “the Lie became great” in the land. Then a Magian named Gaumata rose up at a place called Paishiyauvada, at a mountain called Arakadri, and told the people: “I am Bardiya, son of Cyrus, brother of Cambyses.” Persia, Media and the other lands went over to him.

No one, Darius says, dared to say anything against Gaumata, because he killed many who had known the real Bardiya. Then Darius, with a few men, killed him in Media and “took the kingdom from him”. He adds that Gaumata had destroyed places of worship and seized pastures, herds and household workers from the people, and that he, Darius, restored them.

Herodotus: the magus with no ears

Herodotus, writing about seventy years later, tells a longer and more novelistic story with the same core. Cambyses dreamed that his brother Smerdis sat on the royal throne, so he sent his trusted courtier Prexaspes to kill him. Back in Persia, a magus named Patizeithes, left in charge of the palace, put his own brother on the throne, who happened to look like the dead prince and even shared his name.

The fraud was uncovered by Otanes, a nobleman, because the new king never left the citadel or received leading Persians. Otanes’s daughter Phaidime was one of the royal wives. He asked her to feel her husband’s head while he slept: Cyrus had once cut off the magus’s ears as a punishment. She found he had none. Otanes then recruited six other nobles, and Prexaspes, who knew the truth, announced it from a tower and threw himself down. Herodotus also says the false Smerdis was popular, because he freed the subject peoples from military service and tribute for three years, and that people in Asia mourned him.

Other ancient versions

The Greek doctor Ctesias, who lived at the Persian court around 400 BCE, gives the prince the name Tanyoxarkes and the impostor the name Sphendadates. The Roman-era writer Justin has yet other names. All of them keep the idea of a Magian double, which shows how widely Darius’s story had spread, but they do not offer independent confirmation of it.

What the Babylonian tablets add

In Babylonia, business documents were dated by the reigning king. Tablets dated to “Barziya, king of Babylon, king of the lands” appear from the spring of 522 BCE, while Cambyses was still alive, and continue until the autumn. They show that the new ruler was recognised in the empire’s richest province quickly and without visible resistance. They cannot tell us who he really was.

The case for doubt

Many modern historians find Darius’s story hard to accept at face value. The main arguments are these:

• Darius was the one who benefited. He was not the son of a king, and a story that the reigning king was an impostor turned a palace killing into a rescue of the dynasty.
• The murder of the real Bardiya was secret, according to Darius himself. It is odd that a substitute could fool the royal family and the court for months.
• The physical resemblance, the shared name and the earless head look like features of a folk tale.
• Darius took Bardiya’s daughter Parmys as a wife, along with Cyrus’s daughters Atossa and Artystone, which fits a usurper building a claim to Cyrus’s line.
• Within a few months, a second “Bardiya” (Vahyazdata) rose in Persia itself, suggesting that many Persians believed the son of Cyrus was alive or wished he were.

The case for Darius

Other scholars, among them Muhammad Dandamaev, accepted the core of Darius’s account. They point out that the inscription was published across the empire, in several languages and on papyrus copies, while people who had known Bardiya were still alive. The Magi were an important Median priestly group, and a Median-backed attempt on the throne is not unlikely in itself. Herodotus’s report that Bardiya’s government cancelled tribute could also fit a ruler who needed support after seizing power, whoever he was.

Where things stand

The question cannot be settled with the evidence we have, since every surviving version goes back, directly or indirectly, to Darius’s side. Pierre Briant and many others now treat the impostor story as unproven royal propaganda while accepting that it cannot be disproved. What is clear is the result: a king recognised throughout the empire was killed by a group of nobles, and the man who emerged as king had to fight for more than a year to hold the throne. The conspiracy is told on Darius the Great Takes the Throne, and the wars that followed on the Great Revolts of 522–521 BCE.

Herodotus adds that Persians later held a yearly festival he calls the Magophonia, “the killing of the Magi”, when no Magian dared appear in public. Darius’s own inscription, the source of all this, is described on the Behistun Inscription page.