Its hard to understand the Babylonian empire of Nebuchadnezzar and Nabonidus. Pagan texts in Aramaic were not selected to be copied and recopied by Christian scribes like Christian scribes copied some pagan Greek and Latin texts, and the heart of the empire fell to Cyrus without a fight. Burning cities can preserve texts painted on or pressed into clay, but archivists under Cyrus and Darius just continued to throw out old documents like they had under Nabopolassar, and so those documents were lost to us. Most surviving documents from the Neo-Babylonian empire are from temple or family archives which stuck to the old script and language, not the archives of the kings or governors which may not have been written on clay anyways. The famous Babylonian chronicles tell us about some events but not the structure of the kingdom or life in the provinces. By the time Greeks like Herodotus and Ctesias were writing, they were as vague on the difference between Assyrians and Babylonians as we are on the difference between upper and lower Egyptians. We know far more about Babylonia in the sixth century BCE than Greece in the sixth century BCE, but not everything (and not much about the rest of the empire). Some teaching in spring made me think of one of the oddest things about this empire.
From the pleiades-community mailing list: Free summer training sessions on using the #PleiadesGazetteer of ancient places are now open for registration at https://pleiades.stoa.org/events There are two classes, each offered three times over the course of the summer: Finding and Using: Learn how the gazetteer is organized, what it contains, and how to search and use... Continue reading: Cross-Post: Pleiades Project Training
On the late Roman map called the Peutinger Tables, three cities are represented by a man with a crown on a throne: Rome, Constantinople, and Antioch. To a cartographer in the fourth or fifth century CE, these were the three seats of imperial power.
Russell Books in Victoria, BC has been colonized by dragons! Rawr.
The late George Cawkwell said that Xenophon’s Hellenica is for conoisseurs who can spot what he refuses to talk about or misrepresents. The whole year that he left out of his history may have been an accident, but he had strong ideas of what should and should not be talked about. Arrian’s Anabasis has some of the same quirks. Lets have a look at how he describes Alexander the Great’s march across Anatolia.
(Alexander cut the Gordian Knot). Next day he started for Ancyra in Galatia, where he was met by a delegation of Paphlagonians, who expressed their wish to be on terms of friendship with him, offering the submission of their people, and begging him not to march their troops into his territory. Alexander in reply ordered them to take their orders from Calas the governor (satrapes) of Phrygia, and then proceeded to Cappadocia, where he received the submission of all territory bounded by the River Halys and also of a large tract to the west and north beyond it. Then, leaving Sabictas as governor (satrapes) of Cappadocia, he advanced to the Cilician Gates. When he reached the position where Cyrus had once encamped in his campaign with Xenophon, he found the Gates strongly held.
Arrian, Anabasis, 2.4 tr. Aubrey de Selincourt (Greek text here)
The roads of Palestine in the Achaemenid period, after Graf 1994: figure 1
On another site, someone asked why armies have been marching through Gaza for thousands of years. I don’t have anything useful to say about Hamas’ torture, murder, and kidnapping of about a thousand unsuspecting elders, civilians, children, and tourists, or the Israeli government’s blockade of water, food, and medicine to the several million civilians in Gaza in response to the murders and kidnappings, but I can talk about geography and ancient warfare.
My regularly scheduled post (about Vitruvius and the design of forts during the Roman Principate) will come out next week instead! When commenting, keep in mind that my site is not the place for people to share angry opinions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and I will moderate accordingly. Because I will not have time to moderate or respond to comments until Tuesday 31 October, comments on this post will not be enabled until then.
