CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
THE PERSIAN EMPIRE
Amélie Kuhrt
F
rom 539 to 331 , Babylonia was a province of the Achaemenid Persian empire,
the first of the great Iranian empires (c. 550 – 300 BC). The name derives from the
supposed founder of its ruling dynasty, ‘Achaemenes’, which was also the name of
the royal clan (Herodotus 1. 125 ), members of which ruled the empire for over 200
years. At the time, it was the largest empire the world had seen, spanning the territory
from the Hellespont to north India, including Egypt (most of the time) and extending
to Central Asia up to the frontiers of modern Kazakhstan. Unlike succeeding periods,
no contemporary political entity of even remotely comparable size existed along its
frontiers. Babylonia lay at the empire’s heart, crucial to successful control, given its
strategic position between the empire’s eastern and western sectors. It was also
agriculturally one of the richest provinces, reportedly paying the largest annual silver
tax into the royal coffers (Herodotus 3. 92 ). It is impossible to understand Babylonia’s
history at this time separately from the empire as a whole. Although Babylonian
culture and learning continued, indeed thrived, in this period, there were also important
shifts and changes in Babylonian society, which are linked to the empire’s history
and institutions.INTRODUCTION
The Persians are scarcely attested as an ethnic element in the world of the Middle
East before the sixth century. Archaeological evidence suggests that until c. 600 BC
they consisted of pastoral groups located in the region of modern Fars (= Persia),
which had earlier formed part of the important, though poorly known and still
surviving, kingdom of Elam. A linguistically related group, the Medes, located further
north around the area of modern Hamadan (ancient Ecbatana), appear more prominently
in the eighth to sixth centuries BC, since they had (as a result of their relationship
to the Assyrian empire to the west) begun to coalesce into a state and made moves
towards territorial expansion. Pressure of such a kind may have provoked the relatively
rapid emergence of a Persian state in Fars. This embryonic political entity subsequently
incorporated, through conquest, the large, highly developed empires and states of
western Asia: the great Neo-Babylonian empire (heir to Assyria), Egypt, Lydia, Elam