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Cunaxa, Sippar, and the Canal of the King
#1
The location of Cunaxa, where Cyrus the Younger was in September 401 defeated by his brother king Artaxerxes II Mnemon, has always been a mystery, and I do not claim to solve the problem without having visited Iraq. Still, I think that the publication of cuneiform tablet BM 36742 enables us to say something more than until now was possible.

Essentially, identification of Cunaxa is complicated by the fact that we have two sometimes contradictory sources about the battle: Xenophon and the notoriously unreliable Ctesias of Cnidus, who stayed in Mesopotamia for some time. However, the latter was not a military man and offers little useful information. Where his battle narrative contradicts Xenophon, the latter must be preferred.

Xenophon offers more topographical detail, but he visited the place only for a couple of hours, during the battle. Worse, he had to be informed by translators about what he saw. It is well-known that he visited Nineveh without recognizing it (Anabasis 3.4.10); that he confused Sittace and Opis in his account of the retreat of the Ten Thousand; and that in his description of the battle itself, he writes that he saw his enemies, but that people explained to him what he was observing (Anab. 1.8.9). In brief, Xenophon did not always understand what he saw.

In my opinion, Anabasis 1.7.14-16 is the key for the identification of the battle site. It says that the invaders crossed a canal that had been dug "by the king" when he heard that Cyrus was approaching. It connected the Euphrates with the Tigris, we read, and at the point where it reached the Euphrates was a dam, which was used by Cyrus' army. Cyrus expected to fight the decisive battle at this point.

The presence of this dam proves that the canal was not dug by Artaxerxes for military purposes: it is like closing the door but leave it ajar. The canal must have been made for irrigation and the dam must have been there to regulate the water levels. It has been assumed that Artaxerxes had ordered his soldiers to clean the canal, but this is unlikely: what's the use of cleaning a canal and leaving the dam intact?

About a parasang and a half beyond the canal, Cyrus built the camp from which he was to proceed to Cunaxa, the army moving, as Xenophon notes, without discipline.

The distance from Cunaxa to Babylon is, according to Anabasis 2.2.6 (possibly a gloss) about 360 stades. (Plutarch says 500 stades, which would mean that the battle was fought near modern Fallujah. This can not be harmonized with Xenophon's description of the final stages of the march to Cunaxa, nor with Xenophon's statement that he visited Sittace = Opis.)

Is there a canal between Euphrates and Tigris at about 360 stades upstream from Babylon? A canal that could be blocked by a dam? The answer is yes. It is the "Canal of the King", or Naarmalcha. I assume that the army passed this canal, and that people told our historian that this canal was dug by a king, and that Xenophon understood that it was made by the king.

[size=75:pt87kd26](Misunderstandings like these are common. An interesting parallel can be found in Curzio Malaparte's La Pelle, in which he tells how in 1944, US general Clarke proceeds along the Via Appia to Rome, and halts at the Mausoleum of Caecilia Metella. Malaparte explains that this was the tomb of the wife of Sulla; someone asks who Sulla was; Malaparte replies that he was an ancient Mussolini, after which the rumor spreads that this is the ruin of the tomb of Mussolini's wife.)[/size]

Assuming that this canal is indeed the canal crossed by Xenophon, many things become understandable, because the ancient hydrology of this area has been reconstructed. After it had crossed the dam, Cyrus' army was in a narrow strip of land. To its right hand was the Euphrates, flowing to the ESE (and not, as today, to the SSE); in the army's rear was the canal, which flowed to the east for about 5 kilometers, and then also turned to the ESE, in which direction it continued for about 15-20 km, until it reached the city of Sippar, where it turned to the east. There was no reason why Cyrus' army should proceed in a regular order, because it was covered on both flanks. For the first time in weeks, the soldiers could enjoy some leisure.

The significance of Sippar is easy to understand. This city was the key to Babylonia. From the recently published cuneiform tablet BM 36742, we learn that in 363 BCE, when an unknown enemy (probably a mountain tribe) invaded Babylonia, Artaxerxes II sent the crown prince to Sippar, from where he had to continue the war. If Artaxerxes regarded Sippar as a city of supreme strategic importance at the end of his reign, he can have known its significance at the beginning of his reign, and his brother could have guessed it too.

A further point to consider is that a march to the Canal of the King is not without parallel. Julian the Apostate made almost the same march in 363 CE. Ammianus Marcellinus tells us that the army reached the Median Wall, in the extreme NW of Babylonia, at a town called Macepracta. The first town that Xenophon calls Babylonian, is called Pylae, 'Gates', a good name for a city in a wall.

After Pylae, Cyrus covered twelve parasanges in three days (1.7.1), which brought him to a point in front of the Canal. Assuming that Pylae = Macepracta and Xenophon's Canal = Canal of the King, the first and second camps of the three days' march may have been the Pirisabora and Phissenia mentioned by Ammianus Marcellinus before his reference to the place where the canal branches off from Euphrates (24.2-3; the Jewish village in 24.4 must have been Nehardea, which is mentioned in the Talmud as protected by the river and the Canal of the King).

This is my hypothesis, for now. I know that there is an identification of Cunaxa with a Tell Kuneise, but I do not know where this is.
Jona Lendering
Relevance is the enemy of history
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