used by Babylonians in Ecbatana (Media) in 537BCE(Stolper 1990), and by
Greeks (probably Ionians) in Persepolis in the earlyfifth centuryBCE.^132
The use of a single politically controlled calendar across such vast territories
became a sheer impossibility. Although the Persian imperial post was famed
for its speed and efficiency, it could easily have taken one whole month for a
government courier to get from Babylon to southern Egypt;^133 and we do not
know whether or how regularly Achaemenid kings were prepared to send
express messengers for the specific and only purpose of conveying calendrical
decisions. Evidence shows that at Elephantine in thefifth centuryBCEnews of
the intercalation was sometimes delayed by many months, leading to a one-
month discrepancy between the local calendar and the official calendar of
Babylon (Stern 2000a). This suggests that the dissemination of calendrical
information across the Persian Empire was never more than random and
sporadic.
I would like to propose, therefore, that the regularization and eventual
fixation of the intercalation from the beginning of the Achaemenid period
represented a politically motivated attempt to overcome these difficulties and
enable the observance of a single identical Babylonian official calendar
(^132) Hallock (1969) 2. This Greek document (Fort. 1771) uses the Babylonian month T:ebet in
Greek transliteration (TEBHT)—an interesting mixture of languages and cultures. The calendar
normally used in Persepolis in this period was Old Persian (itself probably assimilated to the
Babylonian calendar: see above, n. 129), but foreigners seem to have preferred the more
‘international’Babylonian names of months.
(^133) On the Persian imperial post, see HerodotusHistories8. 98, XenophonCyropaedia8. 6.
17 – 18. In his description of the Susa–Sardis royal road, Herodotus assumes an average travel
speed of 150 stades per day, hence a total journey of three months from Sardis to Susa (Histories
- 52–4). However, imperial couriers are likely to have travelled much faster, as in emergencies
the 2400 km journey from Susa to Sardis could have taken just one or two weeks: for various
estimates, see D. M. Lewis (1977) 56–7, J. M. Cook (1983) 108, Graf (1994) 167, and Briant
(1996) 372–3, 382–4 (who also cites Arrian,Indica43. 3–5, on an 8-day forced march across the
Arabian peninsula).We may assume similar distances from Babylon to Elephantine: unless in
cases of emergencies, the journey would normally have taken at least the best part of a month.
For comparative purposes, seeWellesley (1967) 27, on the speed of couriers in the Roman
Empire (based on Tacitus,Histories1. 18. 1). Early rabbinic sources suggest that in late antiquity,
it took more than two weeks for the dates of the new month to be transmitted from Palestine to
Babylonia (hence the necessity, in Babylonia, to observetwofestival days in the middle of the
month: see Stern 2001: 243–7). For a late medieval estimate of the time needed to convey
calendrical information from Jerusalem to (Lower) Egypt, see Maimonides,Sanctification of the
New Moon5. 10 (Gandz, Obermann, and Neugebauer 1956: 25):‘eight days or less’. On the
possibility of rapid communication throughfire signals and chains of beacons in the Achaeme-
nid Empire, see Lewis loc. cit., Graf (1994) 168, and Briant (1996) 382–4, 953; but although this
method is mentioned in the Mishnah as means of disseminating calendrical decisions, it seems
unlikely to have been used for these purposes in the Achaemenid Empire, let alone for the
purposes of the Jewish Mishnaic calendar itself (see Stern 2001: 158, 162–3). The same applies to
Achaemenid systems of rapid communication through hill-top criers described by Diodorus
(19. 17. 6–7), especially as Diodorus suggests that this system operated only in the rugged terrain
of the Persian satrapy; the story in Cleomedes (Caelestia2. 1. 156–61) that under Xerxes
messages were conveyed through criers from Athens to Susa in two days looks more like
legendary fantasy.
The Babylonian Calendar 121