
We continue the Biblical stories of Artaxerxes’ reign with the arrival of Nehemiah, the new governor of Judea who’s here to put Jerusalem back together again.
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Now we go back in time to the seventh year of Artaxerxes, and we’ll explore the history of Ezra the Scribe as he compiled an official Jewish Torah on the Great King’s orders.
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So You Think You Can Rule Persia
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With Greece and Cyprus again at peace, it was time for the Persian Empire to pursue its war against Egypt once more. A new pharaoh takes the throne. Iphikrates attempts to reinvent the Greek soldier. Datames is on the rise. Artaxerxes is ascendant, and the King’s Peace is left in the hands of his new Greek vassals.
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No, the other one. In Egypt. The best source of information on events Egypt under Darius II comes from the letters of the Jewish diaspora community in southern Egypt and their temple on the island of Elephantine. They also tell the story of a dramatic confrontation between the Jews and their Egyptian neighbors that ended in forced reconciliation.
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At just over 40 years on the throne, Artaxerxes I was the second-longest reigning Achaemenid king. This is an episode for all of the little things and less detailed stories that played out in that time. From a new status quo in the west to dramatic building projects in the east, Artaxerxes was a busy guy.
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I sat down with Dr. Sean Manning, author of the new book: Armed Force in the Teispid-Achaemenid Empire: Past Approaches, Future Prospects to discuss the military might of the Persian Empire (and why it’s so hard to find anything written about it). That includes both the academic nuances of which sources deserve primacy, and ever exciting topics of arms, armor, and tactics.
Dr. Manning’s research represents an invaluable resource for anyone trying to engage with the military history of Achaemenid Persia – especially when we try to disentangle it from the Greek Wars.
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Armed Force in the Teispid-Achaemenid Empire: Past Approaches, Future Prospects
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It’s that somewhat random time of year again, where I set aside a bit of time to celebrate a holiday that intersects with our narrative. This year that means Purim, the Jewish celebration of the Book of Esther. Esther tells the story of a Jewish woman turned Achaemenid queen in the court of Ahasuerus (maybe Xerxes, maybe an Artaxerxes, probably a bit of both). Esther and her cousin Mordecai have to foil the genocidal plans of the King’s vizier Haman to save their people, and the result is today’s festivities.
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In 486 BCE, Darius the Great died while Egypt was in revolt. Over the following years, Xerxes put his empire back in order. First in Egypt, then twice in Babylon, the new king defeated rebel kings. The traditional nobility of the two most ancient and prestigious satrapies in the empire were punished, and Xerxes asserted himself as the King of Kings.
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The tour of the Persian Empire continues. This time I’m going through the empire within the empire to dissect Assyria and Babylonia. Within these two satrapies, there were many important administrative districts and geographic divisions including Judea, Palestine, Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Akkad in addition to Assyria and Babylon themselves. With hindsight’s 20/20 this was obviously one the most important parts of the empire, and we’ll go through it in detail.
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Picking right back up in the late summer of 521 BCE, I’m talking about the rest of the rebellions against Darius. That’s the last three campaigns against the Liar Kings from the Behistun Inscription, the strangely absent rebellion in Egypt, and the other rebels that were excluded from the famous monument before concluding with personal betrayal for the new King of Kings.
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