VU Amsterdam.
24 Pirngruber, R. (2020). Minor Archives from First‐Millennium BCE Babylonia: The Archive of Iššar‐Tar.bi from Sippar. Journal of Cuneiform Studies, 72, 165‐198.
25 Popova, O. (2018.).ètude d’une archive d’une famille de notables de la ville d’Ur du VIe au IVe siècle av. J.‐C. : l’archive des Gallābu. PhD thesis, Sorbonne, Paris.
26 Schaudig, H.P. (2009). The Colophon of the Sippar text of the “Weidner Chronicle”. Nouvelles Assyriologiques Brèves et Utilitaires, 15.
27 Stolper, M.W. (1985). Entrepreneurs and Empire: The Murašû Archive, the Murašû Firm, and Persian Rule in Babylonia, Uitgaven van het Nederlands historisch‐archaeologisch instituut te Istanbul 54. Istanbul: Nederlands historisch‐archaeologisch instituut te Istanbul.
28 Stolper, M.W. (1990). Late Achaemenid legal texts from Uruk and Larsa. Baghdader Mitteilungen, 21, pp. 559–622.
29 Stolper, M.W. (1992). Late Achaemenid texts from Dilbat. Iraq, 54, pp. 119–139.
30 Tavernier, J. (2007). Iranica in the Achaemenid Period (ca. 550–330 B.C.): Lexicon of Old Iranian Proper Names and Loanwords, Attested in Non‐Iranian Texts, Orientalia Lovanensia Analecta 158. Leuven: Peeters.
31 Tolini, G. (2011). La Babylonie et l’Iran: Les relations d’une province avec le coeur de l’empire achéménide (539–331 avant notre ère). Doctoral thesis. Université Paris I.
32 Van Driel, G. (1998). The Eanna archive. Bibliotheca Orientalis, 55, 59–79.
33 Waerzeggers, C. (2003/2004). The Babylonian revolts against Xerxes and the ‘end of archives’. Archiv für Orientforschung, 50, pp. 150–173.
34 Waerzeggers, C. (2010). The Ezida Temple of Borsippa, Priesthood, Cult, Archives, Achaemenid History 15. Leiden: Nederlands instituut voor het nabije oosten.
35 Waerzeggers, C (forthcoming). Return to Babylon: Migration and Social Mobility in Babylonia from Nebuchadnezzar II to Xerxes, Orientalia Lovanensia Analecta. Leuven: Peeters.
36 Waerzeggers, C., Seire, M. (eds) (2018). Xerxes and Babylonia: The Cuneiform Evidence (Orientalia Lovanensia Analecta 277). Leuven: Peeters.
FURTHER READING
1 Tolini, G. (2011). La Babylonie et l’Iran: Les relations d’une province avec le coeur de l’empire achéménide (539–331 avant notre ère). Doctoral thesis. Université Paris I.
2 Jursa, M. (2005b). Neo‐Babylonian Legal and Administrative Documents: Typology, Contents and Archives, Guides to the Mesopotamian Textual Record 1. Münster: Ugarit‐Verlag. Provides a comprehensive listing of archives and an introduction to the typology of the sources, including document formats, etc.
3 Clancier, P. (2009). Les bibliothèques en Babylonie dans la deuxième moitié du 1er millénaire av. J.‐C., Alter Orient und Altes Testament 363. Münster: Ugarit‐Verlag. A study of Late Babylonian libraries.
4 Jursa, M., with contributions by J. Hackl, B. Jankovic, K. Kleber, E.E. Payne, C. Waerzeggers and M. Weszeli (2010). Aspects of the Economic History of Babylonia in the First Millennium B.C.: Economic Geography, Economic Mentalities, Agriculture, the Use of Money and the Problem of Economic Growth, Alter Orient und Altes Testament 377. Münster: Ugarit‐Verlag. A synthesis of the economic history of the Neo‐Babylonian and Early Achaemenid period, with a comprehensive discussion of socioeconomic strata and roles.
5 Waerzeggers, C. (2010). The Ezida Temple of Borsippa, Priesthood, Cult, Archives, Achaemenid History 15. Leiden: Nederlands instituut voor het nabije oosten. A synthetic study of the priesthood of the city of Borsippa based on the rich and interlocking private archives from this city, also a magisterial demonstration of the methodology to be employed for the investigation of Babylonian archival material in its historical context.
6 Waerzeggers, C., Seire, M. (eds) (2018). Xerxes and Babylonia: The Cuneiform Evidence (Orientalia Lovanensia Analecta 277). Leuven: Peeters. A collective volunme discussing the profound impact of the Persian reprisals against Babylonian cities after their rebellion against Persian rule early in the reign of Xerxes.
NOTES
1 1 The interpretation of the events of 484 BCE and the “end‐of‐archives” phenomenon have been widely discussed (bibliographical references in Henkelman et al. 2011: pp. 452–453), but the material basis of the evidence as presented by the key studies of Waerzeggers 2003/2004 (with Oelsner 2007) and Kessler 2004 remains firm. Some of the recent statements on the subject underrate the incisiveness of the institutional changes that occurred in or after 484 BCE. See now Waerzeggers and Seire 2018.
2 2 In the sense that the bulk of the tablets dates to the Early Achaemenid period. There are a few other groups that include Early Achaemenid tablets, but the majority of the texts of these archives are Neo‐Babylonian.
3 3 Also the tablets found by the Austrian expedition to Borsippa remain unpublished.
4 4 A temple northeast of Eanna was destroyed by fire and not restored at this time (a text dated to the reign of Darius gives a terminus post quem for the destruction): Kose (1998: p. 10) and Lenzen (1958: p. 15 note 24).
5 5 On the assumption that the library texts are contemporaneous with the Sîn‐ilī archive that was found with it. They might conceivably also belong with the small group of Late Achaemenid tablets excavated in the temple (Pedersén 2005: p. 231): only publication and epigraphic study can tell.
CHAPTER 9 Aramaic Sources
Holger Gzella
Achaemenid Official Aramaic
When the Achaemenid authorities promoted an Aramaic dialect to the official administrative idiom of their vast and highly heterogeneous empire, this was a sensible if not an obvious choice. Aramaic had spread continuously throughout the Fertile Crescent soon after its appearance in writing in tenth‐ to ninth‐century BCE Syria (though it presumably acted as a vernacular even before that time) and subsequently gained much ground in the administration of the Neo‐Assyrian and the Neo‐Babylonian empires. As a consequence, it was widely understood, especially among scribes and officials, formed part of an entrenched institutional framework that provided a considerable degree of professional training, and had already developed a suitably broad technical terminology as well as a sufficient number of established literary forms for letters, contracts, and economic documents current in east and west. An eighth‐century inscription from Bukān (KAI 320; Sokoloff 1999) points to an early presence of Aramaic in Iran, and the Adon letter (TAD A1.1) demonstrates that this language was known at least in some places in Egypt toward the end of the seventh century BCE at the latest. So when the Achaemenid dynasty rose to power and felt the necessity for an efficient medium of international communication by which the king's wish could manifest itself between Egypt and present‐day Afghanistan, it did not have to reinvent the wheel.
The driving forces underlying the increasing popularity of Aramaic in the Near East early in the first millennium BCE, at the expense of Akkadian, still defy explanation. Nonetheless, the amount of linguistic diversity in the Aramaic witnesses of the seventh and sixth centuries BCE (Hug 1993; additions in Gzella 2015: pp. 112–119), after a period of coexistence of several reasonably standardized written forms of Aramaic in Syria (Gzella 2014, 2015: pp. 53–103), suggests a fairly low degree of conscious language policy and rather points to the role of highly mobile speakers, such as merchants and craftsmen, as a crucial factor for its success. Other reasons that