In October 539 BCE, the Persian king Cyrus took Babylon, the ancient capital of an oriental empire covering modern Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Israel. In a broader sense, Babylon was the ancient world's capital of scholarship and science. The subject…
Tyre (Phoenician רצ, ṣūr, "rock"; Greek Τύρος; Latin Tyrus): port in Phoenicia and one of the main cities in the eastern Mediterranean.
Esarhaddon (Nahr al-Kalb)
The Assyrian…
Assyrian King List: list of rulers of ancient Assyria, used as a framework for the study of Mesopotamian chronology.Incomplete lists of Assyrian kings have been discovered in each of Assyria's three capitals: Aššur, Dur-Šarukkin, and Nineveh. There are also two…
On the last day of the month Aiiâru in the fourteenth year of his reign, Alexander died in Babylon. The only contemporary source describing the event is the Astronomical Diary, a day-by-day account of celestial phenomena, written by the officials…
Achaemenid Royal Inscriptions: collection of Old Persian cuneiform texts from the sixth, fifth, and fourth centuries BCE, left by the Achaemenid kings on their official monuments.A1Pa, inscription from Persepolis
[Old Persian inscription, written on a block of stone. The fragments were excavated on the…
Achaemenid Royal Inscriptions: collection of Old Persian cuneiform texts from the sixth, fifth, and fourth centuries BCE, left by the Achaemenid kings on their official monuments.A1Pb, Babylonian inscription from the Hall of Hundred Columns, Persepolis
[Babylonian inscription on a slab of stone.]
King Artaxerxes says:…
Achaemenid Royal Inscriptions: collection of Old Persian cuneiform texts from the sixth, fifth, and fourth centuries BCE, left by the Achaemenid kings on their official monuments.A1Vase A
Old Persian inscription on four silver dishes.
Artaxšaçâ \ XŠ \ vazraka \ XŠ \ XŠyânâm \ XŠ…
Achaemenid Royal Inscriptions: collection of Old Persian cuneiform texts from the sixth, fifth, and fourth centuries BCE, left by the Achaemenid kings on their official monuments.A1Vase B
[Inscription on a vase.]
Ardaxcašca \ XŠ \ vazraka
The great king Artaxerxes.
Literature
Pierre Lecoq, Les inscriptions de la Perse…
Achaemenid Royal Inscriptions: collection of Old Persian cuneiform texts from the sixth, fifth, and fourth centuries BCE, left by the Achaemenid kings on their official monuments.A1 Vase C = A1 Vase D
[Two identical inscriptions on vases.]
Artaxšaçâ \ šhâyathiya
King Artaxerxes.
Literature
Pierre Lecoq, Les inscriptions de…
Achaemenid Royal Inscriptions: collection of Old Persian cuneiform texts from the sixth, fifth, and fourth centuries BCE, left by the Achaemenid kings on their official monuments.A2Ha, inscription on a column base from Ecbatana
…