[2] Classical sources scholars have inferred that this land lay within the orbit of the Achaemenid Persian Empire.
Herodotus' list of the Achaemenid provinces, which places the proto-Georgian tribes within the 13th and 19th satrapies, is significant in this regard.
According to the modern historian Stephen H. Rapp, risen in the last phase of the Achaemenid Empire, Aryan Kartli was the first known autonomous kingdom in eastern Georgia.
[1] Rapp notes that Aryan Kartli "may well be associated with a remarkable palace built according to Achaemenid styles and techniques" at Gumbat'i in Kakheti in eastern Georgia.
[1] The early Georgian kingdom of Kartli/Iberia, which clearly emerges in historical accounts of Hellenistic period, seems to have shared the Iranian bonds of Aryan Kartli.