Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 1 Sources and their uses
- 2 Sparta as victor
- 3 Persia
- 4 The Corinthian War
- 5 Sicily, 413–368 B.C.
- 6 The King's Peace and the Second Athenian Confederacy
- 7 Thebes in the 360s B.C.
- 8 Regional surveys I: Persian lands and neighbours
- 8a Asia Minor
- 8b Mesopotamia, 482–330 B.C.
- 8c Judah
- 8d Cyprus and Phoenicia
- 8e Egypt, 404–332 B.C.
- 9 Regional surveys II: the West and North
- 10 Society and economy
- 11 The polis and the alternatives
- 12 Greek culture and science
- 13 Dion and Timoleon
- 14 Macedon and north-west Greece
- 15 Macedonian hegemony created
- 16 Alexander the Great Part 1: The events of the reign
- 17 Alexander the Great Part 2: Greece and the conquered territories
- 18 Epilogue
- Chronological Table
- BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Index
- Map 1: Greece and Western Asia Minor
- Map 9: Egypt
- Map 20: Alexanders campaigns
- References
8b - Mesopotamia, 482–330 B.C.
from 8 - Regional surveys I: Persian lands and neighbours
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
- Frontmatter
- 1 Sources and their uses
- 2 Sparta as victor
- 3 Persia
- 4 The Corinthian War
- 5 Sicily, 413–368 B.C.
- 6 The King's Peace and the Second Athenian Confederacy
- 7 Thebes in the 360s B.C.
- 8 Regional surveys I: Persian lands and neighbours
- 8a Asia Minor
- 8b Mesopotamia, 482–330 B.C.
- 8c Judah
- 8d Cyprus and Phoenicia
- 8e Egypt, 404–332 B.C.
- 9 Regional surveys II: the West and North
- 10 Society and economy
- 11 The polis and the alternatives
- 12 Greek culture and science
- 13 Dion and Timoleon
- 14 Macedon and north-west Greece
- 15 Macedonian hegemony created
- 16 Alexander the Great Part 1: The events of the reign
- 17 Alexander the Great Part 2: Greece and the conquered territories
- 18 Epilogue
- Chronological Table
- BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Index
- Map 1: Greece and Western Asia Minor
- Map 9: Egypt
- Map 20: Alexanders campaigns
- References
Summary
Xerxes and his successors succeeded in consolidating imperial control over Mesopotamia. There is, at least, no explicit record of Babylonian resistance to Achaemenid rule after the revolts in the early years of Xerxes’ reign (CAH iv 73–5, 133–5). Later political disturbances were not matters of provincial reaction, but struggles among members of the Achaemenid dynasty and the imperial aristocracy. Even these left few plain marks in Babylonian texts.
The available Babylonian texts are similar in kind to those from the early Achaemenid reigns, but there are fewer of them. They include few fragments of historiographic texts and royal inscriptions. Most are legal and administrative documents. Among about 1,100 published texts of these kinds from the last 150 years of the Achaemenids, a few are temple records, but most belonged to the private archives of Babylonians – in fact, nearly two thirds of them come from a single source, the Murashû archive (454–404 B.C.) – and, although they record contacts with agencies of the provincial government, they are not documents from the conduct of government as such. What they divulge is limited by the concerns of city-based businessmen. They are conservative in form, almost oblivious to political events, and often enigmatic in their allusions to contemporary institutions. They are a rich source of detail on local conditions, but an episodic source on the history of their times.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Ancient History , pp. 234 - 260Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1994
References
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