Padua in April of 2001 was a conference with a real purpose, a focus, a meeting called because there were vital questions that needed to be answered and it seemed to be the time to see what answers could be formulated. I can say at the outset that this is one of the best, most interesting and challenging conference volumes I have ever read. Now, only two years later, we have the published Proceedings of this international meeting, edited by an Italian, an Englishman teaching in Germany, and an Austrian.
It was to answer these questions that a group of concerned scholars decided to organize the conference held in Padua, Italy, in April 2001. But what do we really know about this Median Empire, apart from the captivating account given by Herodotus in the first book of his Histories? And what sources did Herodotus have for his medikos logos? Can we really speak of Continuity of Empire in the mid-first millennium BC? To explain this phenomenon modern historians have followed Herodotus in attributing great importance to a Median Empire, one that followed Assyria and provided the cultural link between Assyria and Persia. But how were such parallels to be explained, since the Assyrians were virtually wiped off the face of the earth in the late seventh century and the Persians were newcomers who established themselves in the traditional lands of the ancient Near East only in the third quarter of the sixth century, some three generations after the fall of Assyria? There were, in fact, many close parallels between Persian and Assyrian administration, political ideology and artistic iconography. But, for administration the Persians made use of Aramaic, as had the Assyrians before them, written on leather or papyrus and using an alphabetic script. Assyria had already been destroyed in the late seventh century BC, by a coalition of Medes and Babylonians.Ĭyrus created the greatest empire the world had ever seen, but he was also the leader of a new linguistic group speaking an Indo-European language known as Old Persian, a language with close affinity to Ancient Greek and known, to some degree, by many fifth century Athenians (as we can tell from the comedies of Aristophanes). 550), the Lydians (547-546) and the Babylonians (539 BC) and established an Achaemenid Empire that lasted to the conquests of Alexander the Great. Under the leadership of Cyrus II (the Great), who claimed descent from a shadowy ancestor named Achaemenes, Cyrus conquered the Medes (ca. All this came to an end with the spectacular rise of Persia in the mid-sixth century BC. A similar pattern exists for Babylonia: Old Babylonian (ca. Historians recognize three major periods of Assyrian political unity: Old Assyrian (ca. The two most important groups were the Assyrians in the north, centered around the city of Assur, their political and cult center, and the Babylonians in the south, with their major urban center at Babylon.
Around 2000 BC both of these languages ceased to be living, spoken languages and Mesopotamia was taken over by various groups speaking dialects of West Semitic. In the third millennium BC the major historical and linguistic division was between the Sumerians, who spoke a language of still unknown linguistic affinities, and the Akkadians, who spoke an East Semitic language. Various ethnic groups and political configurations came and went, often never to be heard of again. The general pattern was for great cultural continuity, as witnessed by the practice of writing in cuneiform on clay tablets, a tradition that survived for over 3,000 years, amidst great political discontinuity. Ancient Mesopotamia had a long, distinguished and very checkered history.
0 kommentar(er)
