A Comprehensive Approach

Until few years ago, before scholars like Michael Jursa began to screen the Babylonian sources for information on taxation, it was usually Herodotus’ account of the tribute imposed by the Achaemenid king Darius I on his subject populations that was used as the prime source for information. We are now in the fortunate position to be able to study a large number of primary sources from the Achaemenid Empire itself. Cuneiform administrative and legal texts allow us to gain insights into taxation and administration from a local perspective. Most of our sources come from archives from the empire’s two core regions, Iran and Babylonia. The roughly contemporaneous archives will now be studied together in a larger undertaking for the first time. There are also sources from other regions of the empire (Egypt, Bactria, Idumea) written in Aramaic. We will organize a workshop to which we will invite the scholars working in this field in order to exchange ideas on the interpretation of these documents.