Bibliographia Iranica

A predominantly bibliographic blog for Iranian Studies

Tag: Achaemenid Empire

  • Judeans in the Land of the Nile

    Judeans in the Land of the Nile

    Ziemba, Kacper & Frederik Poulsen (eds.). 2026. Judeans in the Land of the Nile: Papers on Achaemenid Egypt, Elephantine, and the Hebrew Bible Presented in Copenhagen, August 19–20, 2024 (Ägypten und Altes Testament 136). Münster: Zaphon.

    The significance of Egypt for the history of the Judeans in the 1st millennium BCE is difficult to overestimate. The geographical proximity of the land of the Nile and Judah meant that their political and cultural fates were intertwined. This is evidenced by the attempts of Egyptian rulers to extend their dominance over Judah or, more broadly, Palestine. Egypt was also home to Judeans and communities originating from Judah. Before it became one of the largest centers of the diaspora in the Hellenistic period, there was a Judean community living in Elephantine-Syene on the Nile. This was at a time when Egypt and Judah were under the rule of the Persian Empire. We know of it thanks to an Aramaic archive of papyri and ostraca from the Persian era that originate from this area. These texts – mainly private, legal, and administrative documents – allow us to reconstruct various aspects of the lives of members of this Judean community. Egypt is also the source of Papyrus Amherst 63, a text written in Demotic script in Aramaic and containing certain themes that invite us to link it with the presence of Judeans in Egypt. Moreover, Egypt and its relations with Israelites/Judeans are important topics in the Hebrew Bible. Egypt is not only the land of first exile (the Exodus story) and the topic of prophetic invectives (e.g., Isa 19; Jer 46; Ezek 29–32) but also the country where Judeans could find shelter and prosper (Patriarchal narratives; Joseph Story). It is equally remarkable that biblical authors, unlike Judeans in Babylonia, often do not mention their co-religionists living in Egypt during the Persian period; the negative assessment of Judeans living there (Jer 42–44) underlines this fact. In light of the Elephantine papyri, this silence is even more puzzling.

    These issues were the focus of papers presented at the workshop ‘Judean Diaspora and Biblical Texts in Achaemenid Egypt,’ organized at the University of Copenhagen on August 19 and 20, 2024, as part of the research project Divergent Views of Diaspora in Ancient Judaism. The contributions are organized into three thematic sections: Egypt under Persian rule; Elephantine and Papyrus Amherst 63; and representations of Egypt in the Hebrew Bible.

    Table of contents:

    Ziemba / Poulsen: Introduction: Judeans in the Land of the Nile

    Part I: Egypt under Persian Rule

    Colburn: What Have the Persians Ever Done for Us? The Study of Achaemenid Imperialism in Egypt

    Wasmuth: Persian Period Elephantine/Syene in Context: The Natural, Pharaonic Socio-Cultural, and Persian Period Urban Environment       

    Part II: Elephantine and Papyrus Amherst

    Moore: A Supposed Diaspora Community at Elephantine or How the Persians Reinvented Judean-ness  

    Ziemba: Elusive Soldiers: The Military Nature of the ‘Judean Troop’ at Persian-period Elephantine

    Holm: “I Come from Judah, My Brother Has Been Brought from Samaria” (Aramaic P. Amherst 63): The Judean and Samarian Arrival in Egypt

    Hjelm: What Can Elephantine Teach Us about Ancient Samari(t)ans

    Granerød: “What Indeed Has Papyrus Amherst 63 To Do with Elephantine?” The Amherst Papyrus’s Relevance to the Question of the Elephantine Judean Community’s Historical Background and Identity    

    Part III: Representations of Egypt in the Hebrew Bible

    Poulsen: Defining Diaspora in the Joseph Story

    Youssef: Isaiah 19 and the Persian Period

    Liebermann: Jeremiah and YHWH in Egypt: Divine Presence, Prophetic Pain, and the Presentation of History

    Fry: A Quest for This Historical “Queen of Heaven”: Connecting the Biblical and Non-Biblical in and through Diaspora

  • The Temple of Ištar-of-Akkad in Babylon from the Neo-Assyrian until the Persian Period

    The Temple of Ištar-of-Akkad in Babylon from the Neo-Assyrian until the Persian Period

    Boivin, Odette. 2026. The Temple of Ištar-of-Akkad in Babylon from the Neo-Assyrian until the Persian Period. The Archival Texts (Abhandlungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft 33). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

    The Temple of Ištar-of-Akkad in Babylon from the Neo-Assyrian until the Persian Period is the third volume of the ADOG sub-series named Babil and dedicated to the study of Babylon. It contains the edition of 86 texts uncovered during the excavations directed by Robert Koldewey and carried out between 1899 and 1917 by the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft in Babylon.

    The cuneiform tablets presented in this volume are primarily everyday archival documents and were uncovered in the temple of Ištar-of-Akkad and east of it (in the northern Merkes area); they belong to the text groups N8 and N9 in O. Pedersén, Archive und Bibliotheken in Babylon, ADOG 25 published in 2005. The texts are dated to the period between the mid-7th and the 5th centuries BCE. They provide information about the individuals and families who had connections to the temple of Ištar-of-Akkad in Babylon or were within its sphere of influence. Through an in-depth analysis of the archaeological context of the tablets, the brief history of the temple in this neighbourhood is reconstructed, which provides new insights in the history of Babylon during the Neo-Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian, and Persian periods.

  • Ancient West & East 24

    The new volume of Ancient West & East (2025) is out and contains several relevant studies pertaining to ancient Iran:

    • Julian DEGEN: Argead Macedonia in the Western Borderland of the Achaemenid Empire
    • Roberto DAN: The Hişet Fortress in (V)ostan/Gevaş An Urartian, Orontid, Arsacid and Mediaeval Site on the Southern Shore of Lake Van
    • Arvin MAGHSOUDLOU: A Palace Built into a Mountain Exploring the Modes of Audience Interaction and Reception at the Great Ayvan of Taq-e Bustan in Late Antiquity

  • Greek Persians, Persian Greeks, or: When a king dreams

    Ruffing, Kai. 2026. Griechische Perser, Persische Griechen, oder: Wenn ein König träumt. In: R. Breitwieser, A. Hofeneder, R. Matuszewski (eds.), Im Garten der Klio. Festschrift für Monika Frass (Philippika 193), 240-255. Wiesbaden :Harrassowitz.

  • Psalm 45 and the Achaemenid View of the Ideal King

    Amar, Itzhak. 2026. Psalm 45 and the Achaemenid view of the ideal king. Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society 38: 1-18.

  • Sovereignty in Iran

    Sovereignty in Iran

    Holliday, Shabnam J. (ed.). 2026. Sovereignty in Iran: Challenges to Eurocentrism from Ancient Iran to the Islamic Republic. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

    This book is a multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary collaborative project examining sovereignties as a plural concept through the case of Iran. In so doing it challenges Eurocentric assumptions in the Humanities and Social Sciences and covers sovereignty from ancient Iran to the Islamic Republic including the Woman, Life, Freedom protests.

    Part One explores sovereignty in ancient Iran by looking at the Elamites through a theoretical lens, the Achaemenids, and the Parthians and Sasanians. Part Two explores how territory relates to sovereignty alongside other dynamics in the Safavid, Second World War, Pahlavi and Islamic Republic periods. Part Three then focuses on competing and co-existing sovereignties in the southern Persian Gulf at the beginning of the twentieth century in Kurdistan and its relationships with Iranian governments during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, as well as in the Woman, Life, Freedom protests. A non-Eurocentric framework requires the reader to think about co-existing and competing sovereignties with an ‘Area Studies’ lens. This approach moves beyond periodised understandings of history and not only contributes to better understanding Eurocentrism but also enables a greater appreciation of contexts, complexities and agencies.

    (more…)

  • The Chronological Boundaries of the Persepolis Fortification Archive

    Stolper, Matthew W. 2025. The Chronological Boundaries of the Persepolis Fortification Archive. In Petra Goedegebuure & Joost Hazenbos (eds.), Ḫattannaš: A Festschrift in Honor of Theo van den Hout, 387-415. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

    The Festschrift offered to Theo van den Hout contains several important and stimulating studies. The entire volume is available in open access via the hyperlink above. Among its contributions, an article by Matthew Stolper is particularly noteworthy, as it addresses a subject at the very core of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. The study presents an edition of several texts from the Persepolis Fortification Archive which, despite their fragmentary condition, shed new light on the chronological boundaries of the Archive.

  • The Idea of “India” and “Gandāra” in the Earliest Iranian and Greek Sources

    King, Rhyne & Alice Collett. 2026. The Idea of “India” and “Gandāra” in the Earliest Iranian and Greek Sources. Journal of the American Society for Premodern Asia 146 (2): 241-262.

    Hinduš, the Old Persian name for a region of the Achaemenid Persian Empire (550–330 BCE), ultimately underlies the English word India. The history of the word Hinduš and its cognates has attracted considerable research, yet the precise referent of Hinduš in its Achaemenid context remains imperfectly understood. Achaemenid sources often group Hinduš together with the neighboring region of Gandāra, and analyzing the two regions together is key to understanding them. In this article we reassess the earliest appearances of Hinduš, Gandāra, and their cognates in the Iranian and Greek sources. We first demonstrate that Achaemenid knowledge of South Asia was vague, and although imperial administrators broadly located Hinduš in the lower Indus and Gandāra in the upper Indus, they did not use these toponyms entirely consistently. Next, we turn to the Classical Greek sources. The Greeks recognized Gandāra as a far eastern region of the Achaemenid Empire, but they expanded the idea of Hinduš, as Indikḗ, into a fantastical land on the edge of the world.

  • On Achaemenid-era metalworkers based on the Persepolis tablets

    Zehbari, Zohreh. 2025. The men who wrought the metals: On Achaemenid-era metalworkers based on the Persepolis tablets. Iran, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/05786967.2025.2551493

    While varied attempts have been made to study Achaemenid metal artefacts, we still know little about the craftsmen who wrought the metals. Metalworkers manufactured various products for different social classes and for different contexts, and must have played a notable role in the society of the Achaemenid period. The present paper aims to address the various textual and archaeological evidence attesting metallurgical specialisations, and to collect information regarding goldsmiths, silversmiths, blacksmiths, and bronze/coppersmiths who worked and travelled within the Persian empire, tracing different aspects of their activities and lives such as their status, wage, gender, and ethnicity. In addition, some previously unknown facts about the smiths’ condition will be presented according to the available documents and relevant comparisons with the neighbouring regions.

  • Another clay tag with Achaemenid Seal Impressions

    Treuk, Matheus. Another clay tag with Achaemenid seal impressions in the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology of the University of São Paulo, Brazil (MAE/USP). Arta 2026.001.

    Presented here is a clay tag bearing Achaemenid seal impressions, preserved at the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology of the University of São Paulo, Brazil, and identified by registration number 0816 4-00235. The tag originally formed part of the so-called ‘Banco Santos’ or ‘CidCollection’. It clearly belongs to the dossier of 42 items previously published by Henkelman, Jones, and Stolper (ARTA 2004.001), as well as two additional items more recently published by Ignacio Márquez Rowe (ARTA 2025.001). The MAE clay tag was first published by the Brazilian Assyriologist Katia Maria Paim Pozzer in a 2004 catalogue accompanying a Brazilian exhibition of the CidCollection.