Starting in the sixth century BCE, the conquests of the Persian kings Cyrus, Cambyses, and Darius transformed the lives of humans on a continental scale, as their empire reached from the Iranian plateau to eastern Europe, Central Asia, and North Africa. Beyond the imperial center, the kings’ vast territory was ruled by royal representatives known as satraps, who managed the practicalities of running the empire. In this book, Rhyne King explores how the empire was governed by investigating how the satraps and the structures supporting them—their “houses”—operated across great distances. Examining satrapal houses in Egypt, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and Central Asia, King demonstrates how these systems encouraged local self-interest and advancement even as they benefited the imperial whole. Ultimately, he argues, it was these Persian forms of transregional governance that were key in enabling the vast polity to endure for more than two centuries.
Rhyne King is an Arts and Science Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto. He has published a number of articles and chapters on the ancient Iranian world.
"Rhyne King's expert use of multilingual documentation makes the satraps and their houses, linked to the House of the King, part of a network that structures the relationships within the ruling class of the Achaemenid Empire and convincingly help us understand its solidity over more than two centuries."—Pierre Briant, Professor Emeritus of History and Civilization of the Achaemenid World and the Empire of Alexander the Great, Collège de France
"Taking readers on an exhilarating journey from northwestern Anatolia to central Bactria, King elucidates the institution of the satrapal house and its central importance to the functioning of the Achaemenid Empire. Relying on archaeological evidence found across this vast empire and on literary and documentary evidence preserved in five different ancient languages, King’s account is both clear and compelling. The House of the Satrap will be required reading for scholars and graduate students in the fields of Achaemenid and Greek history and should be of great interest to historians and historical sociologists who take a comparative approach to the study of empires."—Emily Mackil, author of Creating a Common Polity: Religion, Economy, and Politics in the Making of the Greek Koinon
“This splendid book by an exciting scholar elucidates the institutional backbone, primary building block, and main political actor of the Achaemenid Empire, uniting coherent bodies of evidence with distinct historical problems and detecting from the regional and material diversity an imperial commensurability and fractal-like scalability of the satrapal institution. It will have wide appeal and will be much cited.”—Paul Kosmin, Professor of Ancient History, Harvard University
334 pp.6 x 9Illus: 10 b/w figures, 3 maps, 7 tables
9780520416123$95.00|£80.00Hardcover
Jun 2025