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But our chariot doesn't just tell us about travel and communications; it sums up the diversity that was at the heart of the Persian imperial system. Although found on the eastern frontier near Afghanistan, the technique of its metal-working shows that it must have been made in central Persia. The driver and his passenger wear the costume of the Medes, and on the front of the chariot, prominently displayed, is the head of the Egyptian god Bes. Now Bes, a dwarf figure with bow legs, is perhaps not your most likely candidate for a divine protector, but he looked after children and people in trouble, and he was a good god to have guarding your chariot on long journeys. I suppose he's the equivalent of a modern-day saint or talisman dangling from the car mirror.
But what, you might ask, is an Egyptian god doing protecting a Persian on the frontiers of Afghanistan? Well, it's a perfect demonstration of the Persian Empire's striking capacity to tolerate different religions and indeed, on occasion, to adopt them from the people that they conquered. This unusually inclusive empire was also perfectly happy to use foreign languages for their official proclamations. Here's Herodotus again:
"No race is so ready to adopt foreign ways as the Persian; for instance, they wear the Median costume as they think it handsomer than their own, and their soldiers wear the Egyptian corselet." (Herodotus, History I. 135)
The multi-faith, multi-cultural approach that's summed up in our little chariot, when combined with huge military power, created a flexible imperial system that lasted for over two hundred years. It gave the king the opportunity to present the image of a friendly empire - whatever the facts on the ground might actually have been. So, when Cyrus invaded Babylon, near modern Baghdad, in 539 BC, he could issue a grandiloquently generous decree - in Babylonian - presenting himself as the defender of the people that he had just conquered. In his own words:
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