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11 - The Persian Near East

from Part II - Early Mediterranean Economies and the Near East

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
Peter Bedford
Edited by
Walter Scheidel ,
Ian Morris  and
Richard P. Saller
Peter Bedford
Affiliation:
Edith Cowan University
Walter Scheidel
Affiliation:
Stanford University, California
Ian Morris
Affiliation:
Stanford University, California
Richard P. Saller
Affiliation:
Stanford University, California
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Summary

introduction

The Achaemenid Persian empire at its greatest extent covered an area from the Indus river in the east to Macedonia in the west, from the Aral Sea in the north to Elephantine in Egypt in the south. It was the largest polity that had yet existed in the world. Cyrus II laid the foundation of the empire when he led a successful Persian rebellion against his Median overlord in 553–550, going on to conquer Lydia in 546 and Babylon, which gave him control of the Near East, in 539. Later kings, notably Darius I (522–486) extended Persian hegemony westwards into Europe and eastwards across Central Asia. In a series of battles over 333–331 Alexander defeated the Persians to lay claim to their empire. The Achaemenid Persian empire thus lasted for slightly over two hundred years. It incorporated a myriad of languages and cultures (some seventy peoples and tribes according to Hdt. 3.90–4), as well as diverse forms of economic subsistence. This chapter focuses on one major region of the empire, the Near East.

Given that the Achaemenid Persian empire inherited and adapted pre-existing economic structures in the Near East, some reaching back into the second millennium, if not earlier, and that any consideration of economic growth cannot be confined to just an analysis of the Persian period, it is necessary to draw out the economic history of the Near East in the centuries preceding the rise of the Achaemenid Persian empire, specifically the period of the Neo-Assyrian (c. 950–612) and Neo-Babylonian (612–539) empires.

Keywords

Persian Near Eastinstitutional frameworkeconomic growthAchaemenid Persian empirepopulation levelsurban centers
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The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World , pp. 302 - 330
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

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