BMCR 2008.12.03, Pierre Briant, La transition entre l'empire

Pierre Briant, Francis Joanne\s (ed.), La transition entre l'empire
ache/me/nide et les royaumes helle/nistiques. Persika, 9.  Paris:  De
Boccard, 2006.  Pp. 476.  ISBN 978-2-7018-0213-8.  EUR 75.00 (pb).


Reviewed by Paola Ceccarelli, Durham University
([email protected])
Word count:  2778 words
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[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review.]

This volume, the ninth in the collection Persika, contains the
proceedings of a conference held in 2004. As the editors Pierre Briant
and Francis Joanne\s explain in their introduction, the issue of
'continuity and change' is not a new one for historians. What is new,
however, is the decision to focus on a short period of 'transition',
the twenty years preceding and following Alexander's conquest, i.e.,
350-300 BC. Such a choice corresponds to the chronological duration of
some documentary corpora;[[1]] more importantly, it allows one to look
at structural changes and continuities, beyond Alexander's conquest, in
a precise way, without getting lost in the longue dure/e. (The problem
is of course to distinguish between changes resulting from long- or
short-term local developments, and changes that were direct
consequences of the Macedonian conquest--see Kuhrt's conclusion.) The
desire for precision and attention to detail is also recognizable in
the choice of a regional approach: after two papers on general themes
(culture and chronology), four papers focus on Mesopotamia; two further
papers discuss the administrative and economic aspects of the
transition in Asia Minor; the remaining three papers look at specific
regions (Egypt, Transeuphratene, Persis). Missing: central Asia, as is
somewhat ruefully acknowledged by the editors in their introduction.
All papers are of very high quality; this is an important volume, not
least in that it provides advanced surveys of research on the period
around Alexander's conquest in the various areas affected by it.

P.-A. Beaulieu opens the volume with a paper on 'L'organisation de la
recherche scientifique au IV sie\cle av. J.-C.'. Taking as its
background the famous opposition in Diodorus between the Chaldaeans,
who can dedicate their lives to philosophy, being free from public
duties, and who pass this on to their children, and the Greeks who,
having to earn a living, move (in an amateurish way) from one subject
to another, Beaulieu first locates the place of the
astronomer/astrologer (tupsar Enuma Anu Enlil) in fourth-century
Mesopotamia. A tablet from Yale shows that the Esagil employed fourteen
astronomers already in the IV century BC;[[2]] in the same period, more
than fifty lamentation priests, and at least sixty-six exorcists,
worked under the protection of the temple. Such was the situation when
Alexander arrived in Babylon; and in Babylon this tradition continued.
>From here, Beaulieu moves to Alexandria and the Mouseion: as he shows,
if peripatetic influence played a key role in the founding of the
library, its organization is in many ways closer to Mesopotamian and
Near Eastern practices than to that of the libraries of Greek
city-states. The synthesis of Greek and 'Babylonian' tradition in
Alexandria represents thus innovation within continuity.

Boiy follows with an analytical study of the chronology of the fifty
years at the centre of the volume. The first part provides the reader
with an overview of the dating formulas of cuneiform texts; next, the
dating formulas of Aramaic inscriptions, papyri and ostraca are
analyzed. Finally, the dating formulas of these sources (and of the
coins from Sidon) are put together and analyzed against the background
of the Greek narrative provided by Diodorus (the numerous tables are
extremely helpful). The immediate purpose is to provide a precise
chronology of the period[[3]]--but there is an (underlying)
historiographical aspect in all of this, since the choice of dating
formulas in the various documents is also a way of shaping history,
from above if the change was imposed by a central authority, or 'from
the ground', when the decision was taken by local authorities or the
scribes themselves.[[4]] A first appendix offers a quick discussion of
the changes in royal titulature in the 50 years in question; a second
appendix gives an updated conversion table, for the same period, of
Babylonian dates into the Julian Calendar.

An explicit combination of historiographical and historical attention
marks Joanne\s' contribution, "La Babylonie me/ridionale: continuite/,
de/clin, ou rupture?" Taking as starting point the fact that in his
conquest Alexander went as far as Babylon, but not further south,
Joanne\s chooses to focus on southern Mesopotamia. A comparison of two
king lists, one from Babylon, one from Uruk, both of them written much
later than the events, shows that if the overall duration of fifty
years from the first year of Alexander to the last of Seleucus is the
same, the two lists diverge in how they 'apportion' the period: the
list from Uruk puts Seleucus' control in 311, ignoring altogether
Alexander IV, and giving six years to Antigonus, while the list from
Babylon gives six years to Alexander IV and four to Antigonus. However,
in other cuneiform documents from the south, the dating formula with
Antigonus is used for ten years (at least until 308: either because the
scribes recognized his authority, or because they did not have exact
information on the legitimate authority at any given moment). The royal
list is thus clearly a rewriting of history, reasserting Seleucid
legitimacy. Ruptures and changes did exist (e.g. the increased
circulation of coins; possibly a higher redistribution of land; a
change in the balance of power between temples and civic/royal
administration), but, besides the smoothing over caused by rewritings
of history, there are also structural continuities (e.g. in the role of
leading families; in the taxation system; in the use of juridical
documents that were introduced first in the late Achaemenid period).
Joanne\s concludes that the main socio-economical and administrative
structures in southern Mesopotamia function under the sign of a
continuity that goes back, beyond the Achamenid kings, to the
Mesopotamian tradition.

In his "Agricultural Management, Tax Farming and Banking: Aspects of
Entrepreuneurial Activity in Babylonia in the Late Achaemenid and
Hellenistic Periods", M. Jursa offers a full treatment of the archive
of Mu^ranu^ and his son Ea-tabtana^-bullit, active in Babylon in the
first half of the third century. Jursa publishes for the first time
five of the thirty-eight tablets of the archive; an appendix gives a
collated text of the other tablets, as well as four additional new
texts from other archives; two additional tablets from the archive of
Mu^ranu^ are mentioned in an addendum, one of which joins an already
known document, thus bringing the total number of documents to 39. The
close analysis of the documents allows Jursa to recognize in Mu^ranu^
and his son contractors of Esagila, involved in different
entrepreneurial activities on behalf of the temple: rent farming,
tax-farming for tithes and other taxes (note the discussion of the
tagma^nu and bi^t abista^ti institutions). Documents from the archive
show also that Mu^ranu^ and Ea-tabtana^-bullit deposited funds with
other private businessmen. The ensuing discussion of deposits and
banking activities is then contextualized: while Mu^ranu^'s
agricultural activities are comparable to those attested for the sixth
century by the temple archives, there is no early parallel for his
large portfolio of income-farming activities. On the other hand,
archives from first-century Mesopotamia show private businessmen taking
over the management of core areas of a temple's economy and
administration. The archive of Mu^ranu^ is seen to occupy a central
position in this evolution.

The question of continuity is viewed in the following paper through the
lens of etymology: in "Iranica in post-Achaemenid Babylonian Texts", M.
Stolper looks at Iranian words and names in texts from ancient
Mesopotamia (all Iranica in post-Achaemenid texts are collected in an
appendix). While in the main lines the pattern seems to fit the usually
accepted notion of continuity between Achaemenid and Hellenistic
Mesopotamia, the detailed analysis which follows shows that there are
important nuances. In particular, the archives from Uruk offer a
markedly different pattern from those from Babylon: in Uruk, we find no
Iranian personal names, but there is, ca. a hundred years after the
Macedonian conquest, a marked presence of Greek names; in Babylon,
where in the Achaemenid period Iranian names had been well attested,
Iranian names resurface in the record after the conquest, while Greek
names are comparatively rare. What is interesting in all this is the
suggestion that some Iranian titles, as e.g. ganzabarru, attested in
Hellenistic Uruk, do not represent the persistence of an Achaemenid
office but rather the extension by a Hellenistic administration of an
Achaemenid title. In his conclusion, Stolper points to the limits of
the evidence, and the different ways in which it can be looked at --
not simply through the dichotomy of continuity, survival, or rupture,
but in terms of reintroduction, preservation, coexistence.

The point about the difference between Uruk and Babylon is picked up
again (along similar lines) in R. van der Spek's contribution, "The
Size and Significance of the Babylonian Temples under the Successors".
Van der Spek suggests that memories of the destruction of Babylon by
Xerxes are shaped by the desire to construct a parallelism with Xerxes'
destruction of Athens, and that the Esagila still functioned at the
time of Alexander, although its tower may have been in disrepair (he
accepts however that there were revolts in the second year of Xerxes'
reign, and that their punishment finds a reflection in the end of many
temple archives, with archives of a new social group beginning at the
same time). Moreover, the cuneiform documents attest the existence, in
Hellenistic Babylon, of a remarkable number of temples, active
organizations involving thousands of people, from lamentation priests
and astronomers to bakers and millers and to scribes. Although the
foundation of Seleucia, at some point between 305 and 300 BC, must have
turned Babylon into a provincial city, the kings continued to visit
Babylonia (Antiochus I in particular resides in Babylon from 293 BC, or
possibly earlier, until the death of his father in 281 BC). The city
certainly suffered in the period of the early Successors (as is shown
by the rise in prices in the astronomical diaries), but recovered, and
remained culturally important. Two appendices collect the Greek sources
on Babylon, and the cuneiform ones; the latter include hitherto
unpublished material, to appear in BCHP (among them, the 'Bagayasha
chronicle', with its mention of politai  and peliganes; the 'Ruin of
Esagila', with the mention of an offering in Greek fashion by Antiochus
I on the Esagila, and of the clearing of the debris by elephants,
troops and wagons).[[5]]

With Briant's wide-ranging paper, we turn to Asia minor. Here, a number
of important issues are raised: first of all, Alexander's position in
respect to the organization of the conquered territories (and his
choices concerning coinage): Briant contests the widely-held view
according to which Alexander would have been interested in conquest
only, and not in administration. Another open issue concerns the role
that epichoric languages (and epichoric populations: Lycians, Carians)
will have played under the Achaemenid and Macedonian domination (in
this context, Briant also suggests that the presence and role of
Iranians in Asia minor in the Hellenistic period may have been
overestimated). Finally, he critically discusses the respective
importance of Achaemenid inheritance, of Macedonian tradition, and of
innovation in the organization of Hellenistic kingdoms. Briant is
especially good in raising methodological issues and showing how very
open so many questions still are.

Descat follows in the same vein, opening with some well-taken
methodological reflections on how to tackle economic history and
economic change in a wide geographical area, over a relatively short
period of time. His main point would seem to be that there is a change
in the course of the fourth century (and more specifically in the
second half of the fourth century, a period which he thinks can be
taken as a distinct 'historical unit' in terms of economic history) on
both sides of the Aegean (i.e. in the economy of the Greek cities and
in the way the Achaemenid kings deal with their grain surplus), and
that the conquest of Alexander inserts itself more or less seamlessly
into this.

A seamless--or even more, an unnoticed transition seems to have been
also the fate of Egypt: M. Chauveau and C. Thiers open their
contribution "L'E/gypte en transition: des Perses aux Macedoniens" by
recognizing that in Egypt, the Macedonian conquest is part of a rapid,
even chaotic succession of regimes; moreover, both Persian and
Macedonian kings are subsumed by the clergy into the Egyptian model:
only retrospectively, as historiographical constructs, are some kings
seen as aliens. Alexander's conquest, they seem to say, simply
accelerated the integration--"probablement ine/vitable" of Egypt in the
Greek Mediterranean. This is an interesting way of looking at the
historical situation--I suppose that one could ask what is required for
a change to be a change: one thinks of the foundation of Alexandria
(almost not discussed), which had an enormous impact on the rest of the
ancient world--but not on Egypt itself? Here too, two appendices list
pertinent biographical Egyptian texts, and temple restorations.
Discussing the temple restorations, Chauveau and Thiers affirm that the
priests and their desire to connect the new kings to a glorious past
are behind these works, and not the Argead kings ("l'analyse des parois
des temples ne peut donc e^tre verse/e au dossier d'un
interventionnisme ou d'une prise de conscience du syste\me
politico-religieux de l'E/gypte par les Arge/ades", p. 397), all the
more since only the priests would have been able to see and understand
these texts. The argument is convincing; yet one wonders why this
outburst of activity around the temples, exactly at the moment of the
arrival of the Macedonians: can it really be simply because of better
economic conditions?

The next area to be examined is the Transeuphratene: after a general
introduction, A. Lemaire offers a minute description of what is know
for the period 350-300 BC for each one of the main regions and cities.
He concludes that Hellenism and monetary economy transformed the
region, but that each area may have had a different specific history.
He moreover shows that the main changes should be connected not so much
to the conquest of Alexander, who appears as 'le dernier des
Ache/me/nides', as to the campaigns of Ptolemy in 312.

Finally, R. Boucharlat tackles the fate of Persis, through an analysis
of the fate of its royal residences, Susa, Persepolis and Pasargadae.
The archaeological data are scarce, and the sources not always
reliable; on the whole, it seems clear that there was no interruption
in the life of these centres, notwithstanding traces of destruction,
especially at Persepolis; but there was a change, and these residences
lost much of their importance. The real difficulty is the absence of
archaeological data on the life of these centres as cities: it is known
that Susa continued to have a certain importance; Persepolis and
Pasargadae may have been only seats of royal power, in which case, once
their ideological function was lost, they were bound to decline (see on
this A. Kuhrt's final remarks).

How successful is the volume in achieving its goal of describing the
transition from the Achaemenid empire to the Hellenistic kingdoms? The
individual papers are worth reading in themselves: they give an updated
status quaestionis, often including discussion of hitherto unpublished
material, and ample bibliographies. The angle through which the
question is approached may differ, as also in some cases the
chronological range, mainly because of the type of evidence, but common
threads are noticeable: thus, a theme that comes up more than once in
the 'Mesopotamian' papers is that of the distinction between northern
and southern Mesopotamia, between Uruk and Babylon. When one looks at
the entire area covered by the Achaemenids (the absence of central Asia
is here sorely missed), the picture is less evident: changes worked in
different ways, at slightly different moments, and at different levels.
But if the answer has to be 'transitions', that is already an important
achievement.

List of Authors and Contributions

P. Briant and F. Joanne\s, Introduction.
P.-A. Beaulieu, De l'Esagil au Mouseion: l'organisation de la recherche
scientifique au IVe sie\cle avant J.-C. (pp. 17-36)
T. Boiy, Aspects chronologiques de la pe/riode de transition (350-300)
(pp. 37-100)
Francis Joanne\s, La Babylonie me/ridionale: continuite/, de/clin ou
rupture? (pp. 101-135)
M. Jursa, Agricultural management, Tax Farming and Banking: Aspects of
Entrepreuneurial Activity in Babylonia in the Late Achaemenid and
Hellenistic Period (pp. 137-222)
M.W. Stolper, Iranica in Post-Achaemenid Babylonian Texts (pp. 223-260)
R.J. van der Spek, The Size and Significance of the Babylonian Temples
under the Successors (pp. 261-307)
P. Briant, L'Asie mineure en transition (pp. 309-351)
R. Descat, Aspects d'une transition: l'e/conomie du monde e/ge/en
(350-300) (pp. 353-373)
M. Chauveau, Ch. Thiers, L'E/gypte en transition: des Perses aux
Mace/doniens (pp. 375-404)
A. Lemaire, La Transeuphrate\ne en transition (c. 350-300) (pp.
405-441)
R. Boucharlat, Le destin des re/sidences et sites perses d'Iran dans la
seconde moitie/ du IVe sie/cle avant J.-C. (pp. 443-470)
A. Kuhrt, Concluding remarks (pp. 471-476).
------------------
Notes:


1.   Besides the Babylonian materials, the editors point to recently
found Aramaic documents from Bactria  and Idumaea: thirty documents on
leather in Imperial Aramaic, dating to the fourth century BC and
reflecting the practice of the Achaemenian administration in Bactria
and Sogdiana, and eighteen inscribed wooden sticks, for use as tallies,
dated to the third year of King Darius III (preliminary presentation by
S. Shaked, Le satrape de Bactriane et son gouverneur. Documents
arame/ens du IV s. avant notre e\re provenant de Bactriane,  Persika 4,
Paris 2004 -- neither these documents nor more generally Central Asia
are discussed in the volume); and ca. 1900 Aramaic ostraca from
Idumaea, covering the period 362-312, and discussed in this volume at
58-59, 416-419.

2.   The document has meanwhile been edited by Beaulieu himself in A.K.
Guinan et al. (ed.), If a Man Builds a Joyful House: Assyriological
Studies in Honor of Erle Verdun Leichty, Leiden Boston Koeln 2006.

3.   There is a more detailed treatment of the period 332-305 BC in
Boiy's Between High and Low. A Chronology of the Early Hellenistic
Period, Frankfurt am Main 2007, reviewed in BMCR 2008.09.27. The
discussion on the dating of the Idumean ostraca with Alexander years
(III or IV) is still open. At p. 59 Boiy addresses only tangentially
the objections raised by Lemaire (p. 418, this volume): it seems odd,
in a group of ostraca supposedly coming from the same place (Makeddah),
to have a succession Alexander IV on 7/7/315, Antigonus on 20/7/315,
then again Alexander IV on 21/7/315, then again Antigonus on 7/8/315
and afterwards. Two more problematic documents are mentioned by Boiy in
Between High and Low, 91; the discussion continues (see now B. Porten
and A. Yardeni, "The Chronology of the Idumean Ostraca", in M. Cogan
and Dan'el Kajn (edd.), Treasures on Camels' Humps, Jerusalem 2008,
237-249.)

4.   I owe much to recent postings on the Seleucids list by O. Hoover,
T. Boiy and C.Bennett.

5.   A number of the documents to be published in BCHP are available as
online pre-publications at Mesopotamian chronicles
(http://www.livius.org/cg-cm/chronicles/chron00.html) .