particular documents were not adapted to the Babylonian calendar. These
documents are all accounts of the distribution of rations by an imperial agent
called Irtupiyya;^21 not insignificantly, no intercalation conforming to the
Babylonian calendar is attested in any of Irtupiyya’s accounts.^22 Unlike
other government officials, Irtupiyya appears to have had a personal prefer-
ence for traditional Old Persian intercalations, and refrained from adapting
them to the Babylonian calendar.Why he did so is a matter of speculation; his
motivation was probably not nationalism (arguably an anachronistic concept)
but rather just conservatism.^23
Old Persian and Elamite calendars appear to have been abandoned at some
stage after 458BCE, when they are last attested.^24 Their disappearance may be
attributed to their complete assimilation to the Babylonian calendar. Alterna-
tively, the Old Persian calendar may have been superseded by the new Persian
Zoroastrian calendar, to which we shall presently turn. The assimilation of the
Old Persian to the Babylonian calendar at the beginning of the Achaemenid
period provides a context for the subsequent adoption of the Egyptian calen-
dar (in its Persian Zoroastrian form): the Achaemenid rulers clearly had an
interest in the calendars of the people whom they had conquered.
The Persian Zoroastrian calendarOur knowledge of the Persian Zoroastrian calendar depends almost entirely
on early medieval sources, from which period the calendar has remained
unchanged, with only minor modifications, until today.^25 Nevertheless, as
we shall see below, there isfirm evidence that it was instituted already in the
early Achaemenid period.
The same is found in nos. 1056 and 108, with a three-month period from XI to I, same year.
Similarly, no. 1928 refers to a 5-month period from IX to I in the 19th year, which should also
have been intercalated (see Table 2.4). In all these cases, however, we must assume that the year
number relates to thelastmonth of the sequence (i.e. month I), because it is in this month (or
after it) that the document would have been written and dated; this resolves the inconsistency
with the Babylonian calendar. no. 794 refers to a twelve-month period from (Elamite) I to XII in
the 27th year, which in the Babylonian calendar was intercalated with XII 2 ; but it is possible that
this account happened not include thefinal month of the year.
(^21) On Irtupiyya, see Hallock (1969) 34.
(^22) Hallock (1969) no. 1790, with the intercalation of VI 2 in 503/2, is addressed to Irtupiyya,
but it is not one of his own accounts. no. 1943, discussed above (n. 19), is a journal of Iršena,
an apportioning of 23 ficial at Hadaran.
The use of the termbeptikain these documents (otherwise unusual for Old Persian
months) may also have something to do with Irtupiyya’s conservatism.
(^24) When they were actually abandoned cannot be known, because of the general paucity of
epigraphic and documentary evidence for the later Achaemenid period (on which see Lecoq
1997). 25
De Blois (1996), largely superseding Boyce (1970), Bickerman (1983), and Panaino (1990).
174 Calendars in Antiquity