intercalation, and whose reigns, e.g. Artaxerxes I, often coincide with specific
intercalation schemes—rather than by the astrologers. The fact thatfixed
intercalation schemes were introduced precisely from the beginning of the
Achaemenid period, early in Cyrus’reign, suggests beyond doubt a deliberate,
dynastic policy. Why the Achaemenids promoted the regularization and
fixation of the intercalation, eventually with a 19-year cycle, is by no means
self-evident. In political terms, indeed, this policy should have been regarded
as disadvantageous: to the kings,fixed cycles meant loss of control over
intercalation and of the ability to order it at will.Why this ability was forfeited
in favour offixed cycles must therefore be explained.
Brown (2000) 170 and n. 195 argues that the Babylonian calendar, and
more particularly intercalation, were regulated in order to facilitate the work
of astronomical prediction. But although astrological omens, which often
depended on astronomical predictions, were given considerable importance
in Babylonian society and in royal decision-making and policy, it seems
unlikely that the convenience of astrologers (who were responsible for these
predictions) was the only or main reason why the intercalation wasfixed.
The regularization andfixation of the intercalation was, far more likely, the
result of much larger-scale developments in Babylonian society. As we have
seen, already in the Assyrian period the calendar of Babylon was no longer
local or civic, but had become an official imperial calendar. Its use in the
Assyrian Empire was hindered, however, by the difficulty of communicating
the king’s calendrical decisions (such as whether or not to intercalate) from
Assyria to Babylonia in good time: in one case, for example, the decision to
intercalate a second Ululu arrived in Babylonfive or six days late.^128 The
territorial expansion of the empires only exacerbated this problem. In the
Achaemenid Empire, in particular, the use of the Babylonian calendar for
official, administrative purposes is attested far to the east in Elam, Persia,^129
and Bactria (Afghanistan),^130 far to the west in Asia Minor (Xanthos, in Lycia,
and Sardis in Lydia); and far to the south in Egypt, as far as the imperial,
southernmost outpost of Elephantine.^131 The Babylonian calendar was also
disseminated through population movement within the Empire: thus, it is
(^128) See above, n. 85.
(^129) At least inasmuch as it strongly influenced the Elamite and Old Persian calendars, which
soon became assimilated to it (these calendars are attested in thefirst half of the 5th c.BCE: see
Hallock 1969, and further Ch. 4). The biblical books of Esther (2: 16, 3: 7, 3: 13, 8: 9, 8: 12, 9: 1)
and Nehemiah (1: 1, 2: 1) suggest the official use of the Babylonian calendar in Susa, capital of
Elam, in the early Achaemenid period; this is likely to be true, even if these literary Jewish sources
do not necessarily constitute reliable evidence.
(^130) Shaked (2004) 42–5, Naveh and Shaked forthcoming, documents from the late Achaeme-
nid period. Some Babylonian month-names were adopted, in the late Achaemenid period, in the
Sogdian and Bactrian calendars (see Sims-Williams and de Blois 2005, and discussion in Ch. 4,
near n. 47). 131
See above, n. 4. For Asia Minor, the evidence is also late Achaemenid.
120 Calendars in Antiquity