Achaemenid” for Persian period texts up to the second year of Xerxes [even though “Teispid and early Achaemenid” would be more precise], and “Late Achaemenid” for all later tablets of the Persian period.)
Survey of Archival Texts
Sippar
Excavations in this northern Babylonian city yielded several private archives that are relevant in the present context, but most important of all, they brought to light the largest Neo‐Babylonian archive of all, the archive of Ebabbar, the Sipparean temple of the Sun god (Jursa 2005b: pp. 116–133). The main temple archive extends from the mid‐reign of Nebuchadnezzar to the second year of Xerxes: it comes to an end after the defeat of the Babylonian rebellions against Persian rule. The known part of the archive contains some 2500 tablets from the Persian period; many more are hitherto unpublished. During the first decades of Persian rule, all aspects of Ebabbar's administration are reflected in the archive, but from the third decade of Darius' reign onward the distribution of the text types shifts toward more ephemeral groups: this is an inactive archive that was deposited in a storeroom after the removal of current files, title deeds, and other texts of immediate or lasting concern. Several private archives, mostly of priestly families, follow the Ebabbar archive's chronology and come to an end in 484 BCE. Foremost, one should mention the Ṣā
Babylon
For Babylon, we have to distinguish between tablets coming from illicit excavations, now housed overwhelmingly in the British Museum (and discussed first), and the finds of the German excavations, which are now in Berlin and Istanbul, at least to the extent that they have survived the vicissitudes of World War I and its aftermath (Jursa 2005b: pp. 60–76; Pedersén 2005).
In the unexcavated material, the Early Achaemenid period is represented by a number of private archives that all break off in the second year of Xerxes. The most important is the Egibi archive, which belonged to a family of businessmen who had aligned themselves during the early Persian period with the city governor of Babylon and his establishment (Abraham 2004; Waerzeggers 2003/2004: p. 159). Some 700 tablets of the archive date to the Persian period. The archive was deposited in several clay jars after the removal of title deeds and other texts of relevance for the last archive holders. Other family archives falling in this “end‐of‐archives” pattern include the Ea‐eppēš‐ilī A (60 tablets; priests, Baker 2008: p. 107; see also below), Nappā
After 484 BCE, the number of texts from Babylon plummets. There is one lot of tablets mostly from the fourth century that can be associated with the Esangila and that extends chronologically into the early third century (Clancier 2009: p. 198): about 200 texts, mostly ration lists, document the administration of the temple of Marduk in this period (Jursa 2005b: pp. 73–75; Hackl 2021 presents numerous unpublished texts). Otherwise, recognizable Late Achaemenid archives from Babylon in the British Museum collections are rare: 10 tablets belong to the well‐to‐do landowner and “architect” Bēl‐ittannu (second half of the fifth century BCE), eight tablets are associated with the landowner Da
The German excavations at Babylon brought to light a considerable number of Neo‐ and Late Babylonian tablet groups (Pedersén 2005: pp. 110–296; Clancier 2009: pp. 147–49). A majority of the tablets date to the period of the Neo‐Babylonian Empire. The most remarkable group among the archives of relevance for Persian period texts is the archive of the governor Bēlšunu, whose originally nearly 1000 tablets (not all are preserved) mostly date to the reigns of Artaxerxes I, Darius II, and Artaxerxes II but also contain a small number of texts from the reign of Nebuchadnezzar and Darius I (Pedersén 2005: p. 146; Jursa 2005b: p. 61). With this exception, no clearly‐definable archive straddles both sides of the caesura of 484 BCE, and the Late Achaemenid (i.e. post 484) excavated material is objectively “rather scarce” (Baker 2008: p. 107), while the texts dated to the reign of Darius I dominate the documentation from the Persian period, as in the case of the material in London. Apart from the Bēlšunu archive, there are no Achaemenid period texts from the Kasr area of Babylon. The two private business archives from the Merkes area that date to the Achaemenid period come to an end, on the basis of the available information, in the first or second year of Xerxes' reign, thereby repeating the pattern well known from the material from illicit excavations (Baker 2008: pp. 105–107; Oelsner 2007: p. 2921 and 303): viz., the archive of Nabû‐ittannu (20 tablets) and the largest and actually only well‐defined Early Achaemenid archive from the German excavations,2 the archive of Iddin‐Nabû of the Egibi family (163 tablets). As is typical for the “end‐of‐archives” groups, this is an inactive business archive lacking in title deeds (Pedersén 2005: pp. 208–217). From the Homera area comes a group that belongs to the Ea‐eppēš‐ilī A archive, which is otherwise known from unprovenanced tablets mostly in the British Museum. This archive ends in 484 BCE (Baker 2008: p. 107). From the Ninurta temple in the Išin Aswad part of the mound there comes the Sîn‐ilī archive (Pedersén 2005: pp. 228–247; Jursa 2005b: pp. 69–71), a business and family archive of more than 500 tablets (of which some 160 were found by illicit excavators and sold on the antiquities market) that was deposited in the temple after the removal of current files for an unknown reason. The archive spans the time between 599 and the eighteenth year of Darius I (504 BCE – but the bulk of the material is Neo‐Babylonian); a small group (12 tablets) of Late Achaemenid texts from the Ninurta temple has no apparent connection with the larger archive (Pedersén 2005: p. 231). Tablet finds in the private houses northeast of the Ninurta temple (the archeological context is unclear) include several badly‐defined groups of archival tablets and library texts which, as far as they are dated, mostly come from the Neo‐Babylonian period, with smaller numbers of early Achaemenid texts (down to the reign of Darius I); late Achaemenid material is present, but rare, and unconnected with the earlier finds. The only recognizable archive is that of members of the Rab‐banê family of close to 100 business documents, most of which are Neo‐Babylonian (the latest known text dates to the third year of Darius I; Pedersén 2005: p. 252); there is also an uncertain number of library texts. From the Amran section of Babylon come several badly‐defined groups of archival texts, including Late Achaemenid and Hellenistic texts, as well as some literary tablets. The Esangila temple, which is situated in this area but was barely excavated, yielded only eight tablets, of which only one is dated (to the reign of Cambyses). From the Sahn area (where the temple tower, Etemenanki, was situated), assorted Neo‐Babylonian and early Achaemenid material was recovered, but no later texts.
Borsippa
This