Political memory in and after the Persian Empire

Description

This volume results from an international symposium of the same name held in Leiden, the Netherlands, on 18–20 June 2014. The symposium grew out of a recognition that the various disciplines which deal with Achaemenid hegemony offer starkly different assessments of Persian kingship. While Assyriologists treat Cyrus’s heirs as legitimate successors of the Babylonian kings, biblical scholars often speak of a “kingless era” in which the priesthood took over the function of the Davidic monarch. Egyptologists see their land as uniquely independently minded despite conquests, while Hellenistic scholarship tends to evaluate the interface between Hellenism and native traditions without reference to the previous two centuries of Persian rule. This discrepancy prompted us to seek a broader context for assessing interactions with the experience of Persian kingship, and to discover how much these differing assessments were due to diversity within the empire and how much they were due to disciplinary assumptions. This volume comprises revised presentations from the 2014 symposium plus an additional contribution by Melanie Wasmuth, this introduction, and an overall critical assessment by R. J. van der Spek, who was also present at the symposium. We regret that not all of the participants of the symposium were able to contribute to this publication, especially with the resulting loss of discussion of certain areas of the empire (sadly even the heartland itself), but we trust the ones collected here profitably explore the issues from a variety of perspectives. Abbreviations...................................................................................................vii Assessing Persian Kingship in the Near East: An Introduction Jason M. Silverman and Caroline Waerzeggers .....................................1 The End of the Lydian Kingdom and the Lydians after Croesus Eduard Rung ...............................................................................................7 Persian Memories and the Programmatic Nature of Nabataean Funerary Architecture Björn Anderson........................................................................................27 “I Overwhelmed the King of Elam”: Remembering Nebuchadnezzar I in Persian Babylonia John P. Nielsen..........................................................................................53 Heroes and Sinners: Babylonian Kings in Cuneiform Historiography of the Persian and Hellenistic Periods Geert De Breucker....................................................................................75 Facts, Propaganda, or History? Shaping Political Memory in the Nabonidus Chronicle Caroline Waerzeggers..............................................................................95 Petubastis IV in the Dakhla Oasis: New Evidence about an Early Rebellion against Persian Rule and Its Suppression in Political Memory Olaf E. Kaper...........................................................................................125 Udjahorresnet: The Founder of the Saite-Persian Cemetery at Abusir and His Engagement as Leading Political Person during the Troubled Years at the Beginning of the Twenty-Seventh Dynasty Květa Smoláriková..................................................................................151 Memories of the Second Persian Period in Egypt Henry P. Colburn ...................................................................................165 Political Memory in the Achaemenid Empire: The Integration of Egyptian Kingship into Persian Royal Display Melanie Wasmuth ..................................................................................203 Conflicting Loyalties: King and Context in the Aramaic Book of Ahiqar Seth A. Bledsoe.......................................................................................239 Achaemenid Religious Policy after the Seleucid Decline: Case Studies in Political Memory and Near Eastern Dynastic Representation Benedikt Eckhardt..................................................................................269 Memory and Images of Achaemenid Persia in the Roman Empire Aleksandr V. Makhlaiuk........................................................................299 Yahweh’s Anointed: Cyrus, Deuteronomy’s Law of the King, and Yehudite Identity Ian Douglas Wilson................................................................................325 The Testament of Darius (DNa/DNb) and Constructions of Kings and Kingship in 1–2 Chronicles Christine Mitchell ..................................................................................363 No King in Judah? Mass Divorce in Judah and in Athens Lisbeth S. Fried.......................................................................................381 References to Zoroastrian Beliefs and Principles or an Image of the Achaemenid Court in Nehemiah 2:1–10? Kiyan Foroutan.......................................................................................403 From Remembering to Expecting the “Messiah”: Achaemenid Kingship as (Re)formulating Apocalyptic Expectations of David Jason M. Silverman ................................................................................419 Coming to Terms with the Persian Empire: Some Concluding Remarks and Responses R. J. van der Spek....................................................................................447 Index of Ancient Sources..............................................................................479 Index of Modern Authors.............................................................................490