Sources (11)
A catalogue view: every article filed as source. For the encyclopaedia arranged by subject, see the themes.
- SourceAeschylus, Persae (The Persians)
The Persae of Aeschylus, "The Persians", produced at Athens in 472 BCE, is the earliest surviving account of any Achaemenid event by a contemporary, and the only Greek tragedy on a historical rather than mythological subject to survive complete. It was staged eight years after the sea-battle at…
- SourceCtesias, The Persica
Ctesias of Cnidus (fl. c. 400 BCE) was a Greek physician who served for years at the court of Artaxerxes II and there gathered the matter of the Persica, a history of the Near East in twenty-three books. He is the one classical writer on Persia who worked from inside the palace, and, by the…
- SourceHerodotus, The Histories
Herodotus of Halicarnassus (c. 484 to after 430 BCE) wrote the Histories, the earliest surviving work of history in the Western tradition and the fullest classical account of the Persian empire. Its announced subject is the great collision of Greeks and barbarians that culminated in Xerxes'…
- SourceThe Behistun Inscription (DB)
The Behistun inscription (DB) is the monumental cliff-relief and trilingual text that Darius I had carved at Bagastāna in Media between about 520 and 518 BCE, recounting in the king's own voice his seizure and defence of the throne against Gaumāta and a wave of rebels. It is the longest Achaemenid…
- SourceThe Cyrus Cylinder
A barrel-shaped clay cylinder inscribed in Babylonian cuneiform, buried in the foundations of Babylon's city wall after Cyrus II took the city in 539 BCE. In the traditional idiom of a Mesopotamian building inscription it makes the god Marduk choose Cyrus, condemns the deposed Nabonidus, and…
- SourceThe Daiva Inscription (XPh)
The daiva inscription (XPh) is a trilingual proclamation of Xerxes I (r. 486–465 BCE), known from three Old Persian copies, with a Babylonian and an Elamite version. The surviving limestone tablets were recovered in secondary, reused contexts at Persepolis and Pasargadae, so their original…
- SourceThe Elephantine Papyri
The Elephantine Papyri are the Aramaic archives of a garrison town at the First Cataract of the Nile, where a community of Judaean soldiers and their Aramaean, Egyptian and Iranian neighbours served the Persian kings from before the conquest of Egypt until the empire lost the province at the end…
- SourceThe Hebrew Bible as an Achaemenid Source
The Hebrew Bible is the most widely read body of ancient writing that touches the Achaemenid empire, and the least externally controlled. A small set of books concerns Persia directly: the exilic oracles of Isaiah 40–55, which hail Cyrus as Yahweh's shepherd and anointed; Ezra–Nehemiah, which…
- SourceThe Murašû Archive
The Murašû Archive is the business file of a firm of entrepreneurs at Nippur in central Babylonia, active under the Persian kings Artaxerxes I, Darius II and Artaxerxes II. It is the single richest documentary source for the countryside of the empire's wealthiest province in the later fifth…
- SourceThe Persepolis Fortification Archive
The working paperwork of Darius I's own heartland: tens of thousands of clay tablets from a bastion in the Persepolis fortification wall, recording the intake and disbursement of food, livestock, and travel rations across Fars and Elam in the middle of the reign. Dry, sealed, never meant for…
- SourceXenophon
Xenophon of Athens (c. 430–353 BCE) is the one classical writer on the Achaemenid empire who had actually been inside it, marching to Babylonia in 401 BCE with the rebel prince Cyrus the Younger and leading the stranded Greek survivors home. His Anabasis is the best first-hand look at the empire's…