A Short History of the World in 50 Lies

by Natasha Tidd

So, what actually happened to Bardiya? The likely answer is surprisingly simple. There was no fake Bardiya. Bardiya wasn’t killed in 525 BC but was in Persia acting as regent ruler while his brother was fighting in Egypt. From Babylonian documents, we can see that in 522 BC Bardiya appears to have started a campaign against his brother, being named ‘King of Babylon, King of Lands’ in the spring of that year, several months before Cambyses’s death and Bardiya’s official accession. As to why Darius the Great fabricated the story of the fake Bardiya, it’s another simple answer – to gain power. Much like Cambyses, Bardiya had no heirs, so if he died, the rule of the Achaemenid Empire would be up in the air. Darius almost certainly took advantage of this situation, killing Bardiya and creating the myth of the fake Bardiya to cement himself as the saviour of the empire and secure his place at the head of it.