10 - THE BABYLONIAN EVIDENCE OF ACHAEMENIAN RULE IN MESOPOTAMIA

Summary

To present the Babylonian evidence – cuneiform texts and archaeological remains — for the Achaemenian rule over the satrapy Babairuš is to write a history of Mesopotamia from 539 B.C. to 331 B.C. This task has not yet been seriously undertaken and seems, at the moment, to be well nigh impossible. There is simply not enough documentation available to erect more than a chronological framework based on dynastic facts, i.e., on the names, genealogies and dates (of accession and death) of the ten kings and, at least, five usurpers who were recognized in cuneiform sources as the legitimate rulers of the country. To write a history of Mesopotamia during these two hundred years would moreover necessitate the complete and critical utilization of contemporary and later classical sources (mainly Herodotus, Ctesias, Xenophon and Strabo) which for a number of reasons are quite abundant, and also those of the Old Testament which are so insufficient and contradictory that their investigation has produced but a bewildering array of hypotheses and interpretations. Much critical acumen and a very diversified philological competence would be needed to sort out the relevant facts from the complex literary traditions and historiographic conventions that dominate the development and the final form of both these sources of information. The same holds true with regard to the political, ideological and religious attitudes that determine the selection of topics, the distribution of emphasis and -above all — the reliability of the Old Persian texts available.

While the scarcity of cuneiform texts bearing directly or indirectly on the political and military events of this period is a known fact, the social and economic developments in Mesopotamia seem, at first sight, better documented inasmuch as there is available a rather large and steadily growing corpus of legal and administrative documents datable to the reigns of nearly every Persian king. Though several museums have already given us some of their documents, they have many more such texts stored unpublished. Therefore a systematic utilization of this material, for which statistic evidence – as to typology, provenience and dates – is as crucial as individual contents, is severely limited.