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Babylon in a New Era: The Chaldean and Achaemenid Empires (330-612 BC)

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Journal of Earth Sciences and Geotechnical Engineering, Vol.10, No.3, 2020, 87-111
ISSN: 1792-9040 (print version), 1792-9660 (online)
Scientific Press International Limited

Babylon in a New Era: The Chaldean and

Achaemenid Empires (330-612 BC)

Nasrat Adamo1 and Nadhir Al-Ansari2

Abstract

The new rise of Babylon is reported and its domination of the old world is described;
when two dynasties ruled Neo- Babylonia from 612 BC to 330 BC. First, the
Chaldeans had taken over from the Assyrians whom they had defeated and
established their empire, which lasted for 77 years followed by the Achaemenid
dynasty, which was to rule Babylonia for the remaining period as part of their
empire. Out of the 77 years of the Chaldean period king, Nebuchadnezzar II ruled
for 43 years, which were full of military achievements and construction works and
organization. Apart from extending the borders of the empire, he had managed to
construct large-scale hydraulic works which were intended for irrigation, navigation
and even for defensive purposes. He excavated, re-excavated, and maintained four
large feeder canals taking off from the Euphrates, which served the agriculture in
the whole area between the Euphrates and the Tigris in the middle and lower
Euphrates regions. Moreover, he was concerned with flood protection and so he
constructed one large reservoir near Sippar at 60 km north of Babylon to be filled
by the Euphrates excess water during floods and to be returned back to the river
during low flow season in summer. His works involved river training projects, so
he trained the Euphrates by digging artificial meanders to reduce the velocity of the
flow and improving navigation and allow the construction of the canal intakes in a
less turbulent flows. It seems also that he had diverted the river during the building
of Babylon Bridge and trained the Euphrates River penetrating Babylon by
constructing riverside revetments. Nebuchadnezzar II had the foresight for building
extensive defensive fortifications to secure the country against possible enemy
attacks from the north and adding to the walls and fortifications deep moats filled
with water for higher security. This was the case with the wall he built north of
Sippar. It extended over the whole distance between the two rivers, and the wall

1
Consultant Engineer, Norrköping, Sweden.
2
Lulea University of Technology, Lulea, Sweden.

Article Info: Received: February 10, 2020. Revised: February 15, 2020.
Published online: March 30, 2020.
88 Nasrat Adamo and Nadhir Al-Ansari

around Sippar itself. Similarly, he had dug a great moat alongside the wall of
Babylon, which he supplied with water from the Euphrates. Moreover, he had
introduced improvements on the four large feeder canals and the extensive canal
networks that belonged to them to be used as water barriers against the advance of
any enemy troops. Building temples and grand royal palaces and the Babylon
Bridge took part of Nebuchadnezzar’s attention and his name was linked with the
“Babylon Hanging Gardens”, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, which
he had built to please his wife. Description of the gardens according to historians is
given in this book in addition to reporting the results of archeological digging of the
supposed site, which can shed light on the irrigation method used to irrigate these
elevated gardens. The flourishing agriculture and wealth and prosperity it had
brought to Babylon during Nebuchadnezzar’s reign is described in details, and the
active trading and commercial dealing it had generated is also treated. The first
banking services in history related to this period, which was linked to one Jewish
family known as “House of Êigibi” is described. This family continued to serve for
very long time by collecting the land rents and water taxes for canals use for the
government, in addition to concluding contracts and ratifying transactions for the
public. As bankers, they gave farmers loans to invest in all types of agrarian
operations and practiced money transfers between various cities which helped
trading especially with large scale export and imports of the various crops. The
Chaldeans rule of Babylon came to an end in 539 BC when Babylon fell to the
Achaemenids attacks that were already established in Persia led by Cyrus II.
Babylon, however, kept a special position between the various capitols of this
empire due to its splendor and wealth. It served therefore as the economical capitol
and the winter residence of the kings Achaemenid Empire for most of this period
while its agriculture continued to generate a great portion of the empire’s revenue.
The archive gave us information on the agrarian relations and the agricultural
outputs in Babylonia at that period. During the Achaemenid times, as it was the case
during the Chaldean times, irrigation systems in Babylonia were kept under close
observation and good maintenance which kept agriculture at its best. The inevitable
decline of this empire came in the end due to the rule of weak kings, conspiracies
and palace intrigues, and finally the bitter defeat came on the hands of Alexander
the Great who entered Babylon in 331 BC and kept it as the Jewel of his new empire.

Keywords: Babylon, New Era, Chaldean, Achaemenid Empires, Iraq

Apart from short periods of disobedience under the Assyrian Empire, the Akkadian
and Babylonian cities of Southern and Middle Mesopotamia lived peacefully, but
they were reduced to provincial cities governed by the Assyrian Kings or their
vassals for the whole period of the Assyrian Empire of almost 300 years.
The inhabitants continued to pay taxes and other dues to the central government,
which were essential to maintain the upkeep of the Assyrian armies, support the
King’s campaigns, and sustain the prosperity of Assyria. The provincial governors
or King’s vassals saw to the collection of the levied taxes and dues; and especially
Babylon in a New Era: The Chaldean and Achaemenid Empires (330-612 BC) 89

those originating from trading and agriculture. Agriculture was therefore, of great
importance and interest to those rulers, who kept an open eye on it and made sure
that the irrigation systems were maintained regularly in the usual routines that were
common for the previous hundreds of years. We do not expect, however, that the
methods and ways of irrigation had changed much from previous practices, since
these methods and ways had been brought up already too high level of efficiency
during the past times. Salinity and the salinization of land, however, remained a
constant threat to the fertility of the land.
Flood protection was the other communal activity which deserved constant attention
and actions; and the people continued to combat the dangers of the Tigris and
Euphrates high floods. Again such protection works remained the same as previous
and we may add that the same were applied in the following years up to the days of
modern Iraq. The inhabitants of Lower and Middle Mesopotamian cities continued
their normal ways of life for all the time they were under the umbrella of the
Assyrian Empire, and they were sure that no foreign invader could infringe on their
territories, as long as they were there. At the same time, they were sure that any
uprising if they had ever contemplated would be crushed in the brutal way that was
known for the Assyrians.
During all this period, except for some short spells of time, Babylon remained a
flourishing and wealthy city and competed with Nineveh in its beauty and grandeur.
Babylon was considered by the Assyrian Kings as the sister city to Nineveh and
even was ruled for some times directly by some of them until the fall of the Assyrian
Empire at the hands of the Chaldeans and their allies leading to the rise of the Neo-
Babylonian Empire. So in order to put the reader in the right perspective, it is
worthwhile here to give a short summary of the events leading to the rise again of
Babylon in this new era.
After the death of the great Babylonian King Hammurabi of the older Babylonian
dynasty, the following Kings were weak and Babylonia fell in 911BC to the
domination of Assyria. Further migration in the early 9th century BC of nomads
from the Levant had occurred with the arrival of the Chaldeans, another nomadic
tribe of the northwestern Semitic peoples who were mentioned in the Assyrian
annals as the "Kaldu". The Chaldeans settled in the far southwest of Babylonia,
joining the already long extant Aramaean and Suteans. By 850 BC the migrant
Chaldeans were well established there, and as time passed, the Chaldeans began to
cause unrest and troubles to the Assyrians. Babylonia briefly fell to the Chaldeans
in 780 BC until 748 when it was subjugated and ruled again by the Assyrian Kings’
vassals. It was not until 729 BC that the Assyrian King decided to rule Babylon
directly as its King contrary to what his predecessors had done for two hundred
years.
The Assyrian King Shalmaneser V was declared King of Babylon in 727 BC until
his death. In 722 BC revolt was then fomented against the Assyrian domination by
Marduk-apla-iddina II, a Chaldean malka (chieftain) with strong Elamites’ support
and managed to take the throne of Babylon itself between 721–710 BC. This was
brought about at a time when the Assyrian King Sargon II (722–705 BC) was busy
90 Nasrat Adamo and Nadhir Al-Ansari

fighting the Scythians and Cimmerians that had attacked Assyria's Persian and te
Median vassal colonies in ancient Persia.
Marduk-apla-iddina II was eventually defeated and ejected by Sargon II and fled to
his protectors in Elam. Sargon II was then declared King in Babylon, who then was
followed by Sennacherib (705–681 BC) his son.
After ruling Babylon directly for a while, Sennacherib placed his son Ashur-nadin-
shumi on the throne of Babylon, but the Chaldeans and their allies the Medes
continued to stir trouble; a thing which led Sennacherib to invade and subjugate
Elam and sack Babylon, laying it to waste and largely destroying the city.
Sennacherib died in Nineveh in 681 BC, and the new King, his son; Esarhaddon
placed Marduk-zakir-shumi II on the throne of Babylon. Once more, the Chaldeans
managed to take over the city forcing Esarhaddon to attack Babylon who then ruled
it personally. At this time, he completely rebuilt the city, bringing rejuvenation and
peace to the region. But, before his death, and in an effort to maintain harmony
within his vast empire, he installed his eldest son Shamash-shum-ukin as a subject
King in Babylon, and his youngest, the highly educated Ashurbanipal (669–627 BC
in the more senior position as King of Assyria and the overlord of Shamash-shum-
ukin.
Despite being an Assyrian himself, Shamash-shum-ukin, after decades of
subjugation to his brother revolted against him and led a powerful coalition of
peoples also resentful of the Assyrian tyranny, including; Elamites, Medes, the
Babylonians, Chaldeans and Suteans of southern Mesopotamia. In the aftermath of
bitter fighting, this bloody period ended, and Babylon was sacked again; Elam was
destroyed; Shamash-shum-ukim was killed, and the rebels were vanquished by the
Assyrian troops who exacted savage revenge on the rebelling people, and an
Assyrian governor named Kandalanu was appointed to rule Babylonia on behalf of
the Assyrian King.
As the story of Babylon continues to unfold, we see that upon Ashurbanipal's death
in 627 BC, his son Ashur-etil-ilani (627–623 BC) became the King. However, the
cessation of Egypt from the empire during the last days of Ashurbanipal had already
dealt a severe blow to the Assyrian Empire and led to its rapid decline and demise.
Following the death of Ashurbanipal, the new governor of Babylon was expelled
by a Babylonian Chaldean soldier named Nabopolassar, who had once fought in the
Assyrian army but now started a Kingdom for himself. He was recognized as King
on 23 November 626, which marked the beginning of the Neo-Babylonian Empire.
Nabopolassar continued fighting against Assyria, so that in 616 BC, he defeated an
Assyrian force on the banks of the Euphrates, south of Harran in the west. He was
forced; however, to retreat when an Egyptian army approached.
In the following year, the Babylonian king changed his strategy and invaded the
Assyrian heartland, where he laid siege to Ashur, the religious capital of Assyria.
The Assyrians were able to repel their enemy, but late in 615, the Medes, a tribal
federation living in modern Iran, intervened. After the winter, they captured
Nineveh, and although Nabopolassar arrived too late to help them, he signed a treaty
with their King Cyaxares. Berossus, a Hellenistic-era Babylonian writer, wrote
Babylon in a New Era: The Chaldean and Achaemenid Empires (330-612 BC) 91

later on that the alliance was cemented by a royal wedding: the Babylonian crown
prince Nebuchadnezzar married a princess named Amytis, the daughter of
Cyaxares[1].
The fall of the Assyrian Empire and the vanquishing of its territories by the
Chaldeans and their allies ushered the new Babylonian era, seeing the Chaldeans as
the new masters of Babylon under their new King Nabopolassar. The new Empire
became then the most powerful state of the time in the ancient world. But this new
empire, however, was short lived compared to the long timeline of Mesopotamian
history in general, and the history of Babylonia itself, in particular, Figure 40.

Figure 40: Babylon on the time line scale of Mesopotamia [2].

For the seventy-seven years which made the age of the Chaldean Empire (626- 539
BC), only six Kings had ruled. Nabopolassar the first King of this dynasty ruled for
twenty-one years (626–605 BC) and was busy securing the boundaries of the
Kingdom and overtaking the remains of the Assyrian Empire. His son
Nebuchadnezzar II ruled for forty-three years (605–562 BC) and was the one who
made Babylon great once again. By judging from available evidence it is very clear
to historians that Nebuchadnezzar II was the wisest of all those Kings and the most
efficient builder at home and conqueror outside, and the following growth and
prosperity of the Empire were due to him; Figure 41 indicates the extent of the
Chaldean Empire at his time.
92 Nasrat Adamo and Nadhir Al-Ansari

Figure 41: The Neo Babylonian (Chaldean) empire [3].

Upon ascension to the throne of the Kingdom Nebuchadnezzar II was very much
wary of his powerful northern neighbors, the Medes, although he had married the
sister of Ishtuvêgu, King of the Medes, the daughter of Cyaxares and his father’s
ally to consolidate and keep this alliance alive and in order to normalize the bilateral
relations between the two neighbors. He kept, however, a watchful eye on the north
where the Medes danger could come from; and while constructing the Hanging
Gardens to please his Median wife, as the story goes, he constructed great
fortifications north of the town of Sippar further up north to eliminate any threat
from them. In addition, he built the great wall, which extended all the way between
the Euphrates and the Tigris Rivers, and he coupled these constructions with
excavating vast networks of canals, which served the dual purpose of irrigation and
defense. His care for irrigation, however, cannot be denied for one of his important
tasks was ensuring good yield of the crop, which was essentially required by the
population, and he did this by maintaining the existing irrigation canals` network
and constructing new ones.
In his first construction endeavors Nebuchadnezzar II undertook the building of
fortifications to Sippar itself, which was located 60 km north of Babylon which he
had expected to be attacked first in any invasion. Moreover, he ordered and oversaw
cleaning of the canals, which were neglected by the previous Kings and were half-
chocked with sediments and had their sluices and dams repaired and put them in
good working conditions. Finally, he turned his attention to excavate new canals,
which had proven to be his greater achievements.
Nebuchadnezzar II managed during his reign to excavate four large navigable canals
Babylon in a New Era: The Chaldean and Achaemenid Empires (330-612 BC) 93

across the land, to unite the Tigris and Euphrates. The width and depth of each canal
were enough to carry merchant ships. They were branching into networks of smaller
canals and ditches for irrigating the fields, and in order to control fully the increased
mass of the flow, which the canals had carried; Nebuchadnezzar created a huge
basin or reservoir near Sippar on the left bank of the Euphrates by flooding a
depression near the present-day town called Yusifiyah. The reservoir according to
the description of Herodotus was some thirty-five miles in circumference and so
many feet in depth, but other writers gave higher figures. Water was supplied to the
reservoir by a very large canal which had existed already and re-excavated by
Nebuchadnezzar and was known as “Nahr Malka” or the “Kings River”. Stored
water in the Sippar reservoir was then released back to the Euphrates to replenish
its flow during low water seasons, and therefore, acting as the first re- regulating
schemes in history. Moreover, Nahr Malka canal drew great deal of the Euphrates
water to the Tigris River and was used as a very important navigable link between
the two rivers.
The four canal networks so excavated and arranged continued to serve irrigation of
the lands of the middle and lower Mesopotamia to a later time as to the end of the
Abbasid period in the twelfth century AD. These canals and their networks are fully
described in paper 8 of this book.
Nebuchadnezzar hydraulic works were extensive and were not limited to irrigation
networks only, for he provided in addition to canals excavation an elaborate and
complete set of hydraulic structures to control the canals and to allow filling and
emptying of Sippar reservoir as deemed necessary.
To complete harnessing the mighty Euphrates River, its course was slightly altered
in some stretches to turn it in a sinuous line by excavating man-made meanders at
some distance from one another and therefore, reduce its grade. This was meant to
reduce the force of the current, which was very beneficial in high water seasons and
did not only make navigation up the stream easier, but gave fuller control of the
river as great part of its discharge was diverted to Sippar reservoir in times of floods.
The importance of this reservoir was in eliminating the dangers of spring floods and
in the provision of water for use in times of drought. Similar action was taken when
Nebuchadnezzar built his celebrated bridge across the Euphrates in Babylon in the
dry, whereby he diverted the river and allowed his workmen to construct the mighty
buttressed piers of the bridge from quarry stones clamped with iron and soldered
with molten lead, and line the banks with masonry of the best kiln- burned brick
[4].

It is very clear that these four Irrigation and navigation canals and even the reservoir
at Sippar were parts of a very efficient system of defense against any possible
invasion from the north. Not only they presented obstacles, which would take time
to overcome, but in case of a desperate emergency whole regions could be flooded
and thus made inaccessible or untenable.
All this did not seem sufficient safeguards to satisfy the King’s anxious foresight as
he knew well that these alluvial lands had never offered much of an obstacle to
invaders in the past, so in his determination to strengthen his defenses, he undertook
94 Nasrat Adamo and Nadhir Al-Ansari

the addition of a mighty wall. This wall he built across the valley, from the
Euphrates to the Tigris above the location of the four canals and included within its
bounds the well-fortified city of Sippar itself. In the words of the 19th century British
Engineer Sir William Willcocks, he wrote on this saying:
“As in the ancient days the fortified right bank of the Nahrawn Canal, the wall of
Semeramis and the Median wall protected Babylonia from surprise attacks from the
Assyrians and Medians”[5].
The wall was constructed entirely of burned bricks held together by asphalt cement;
and Xenophone, the ancient Greek writer (430–354 BC) who saw later some
portions of it standing and called it the ”Median Wall” wrote in its description:
“It was built of baked bricks laid upon bitumen. It was twenty feet broad and a
hundred feet high, and the length was said to be a twenty parasange (70 English
miles). It lies at no great distance from Babylon” [6].
In most of Nebuchadnezzar public works and construction undertakings, it is
obvious that his dominant objective was to couple all these with defense
requirement. Even in building his heavily fortified palaces, the great city walls, and
the flood embankments of the Euphrates, these objectives were constantly pursued.
Recalling that the last time when Babylon fell at the hands of Sinnecharib, and
also knowing that the submission of the city was brought about because of the
famine it went through when the city was put under siege, so Nebuchadnezzar was
not contended with building great and heavily fortified wall around the city itself
but went about and constructed an outer wall which was moved to such a distance
as to enclose a large portion of the agricultural land to be cultivated so that the
capital could raise enough grain and fodder for its own consumption. This vast space
also would serve to shelter the population of the surrounding villages in case of an
invasion.
The wall which was called “Nimit-Ti- Beil” could not be traced exactly by
archaeologists later on to determine how many square miles of agricultural lands it
did protect but the reports of ancient writers on it are somewhat conflicting.
Herodotus in his account gave the circumference of the wall as somewhat over fifty
English miles, and he explained that besides the arable and pasturelands, it must
have embraced suburbs, not impossibly the city of Borsib itself, which was also well
fortified at the same time. A more modest estimate gave forty miles.
The Nimit-Ti- Beil according to Herodotus was protected on the outside by a wide
and deep trench which at the same time had supplied the material for the wall. The
words of Herodotus’ in fact, had betrayed his astonishment when he wrote:
“And how I may not omit to tell the use to which the moat dug out and the great
moat was turned, nor the manner wherein the wall was wrought. As fast as they dug
the moat, the soil which they got from the cutting was made into bricks in kilns.
Then they set to building and began with bricking in the borders of the moat, after
which they proceeded to construct the wall itself, using throughout for their cement
hot bitumen, and interposing a layer of wetted reeds at every thirteenth
course of bricks”[7].
On Nimit-Ti- Beil wall Herodotus wrote a very detailed description in which he
Babylon in a New Era: The Chaldean and Achaemenid Empires (330-612 BC) 95

stated that it was 350 feet high apparently including the height of the towers, which
were built at regular intervals on top of the wall, and it had a thickness of about 75
feet, which is probably overestimated. But the undisputed fact remains that the
Nimit-Ti-Beil rampart wall was stupendous both in height and in thickness; that
towers were built on the top of it, on the edges, two facing each other, and that the
remaining space between was enough for a four- horsed chariot to turn. In addition,
for all this, we need not to have much imagination to realize that a wall of such
height and extending for about fifty miles is an extremely tremendous job built by
the sheer strength and toils of men using such tools as of that ancient times.
This outer wall, reckoned by Herodotus as the main defense of the city, was not the
only one. A second inner wall, named “Imgur- Beil”, was also built by
Nebuchadnezzar, which did not lack strength and volume. Then there were the walls
enclosing the two royal palaces, the one on the right bank of the Euphrates that was
built by his father Nabopolassar and the new one opposite to it on the left bank,
which made them two fortresses.
For more convenience Nebuchadnezzar built in Babylon a great bridge on the river,
but his obsession with security drove him to order the construction of the bridge
deck to be of movable beams and planks so it would be possible to remove them
during night and stop any crossing. In any case, this bridge was not enough for the
population of the city so Nebuchadnezzar arranged for the constructions of riverside
platforms whereby people could cross from one side to the other using boats.
Another river training works included straightening the river course within the city
and lining the sides with revetments of burnt clay bricks and building two high walls
alongside these banks. The communication of people could be maintained between
the two banks by leaving gates through the two walls, which open to the riverside
platforms. These gates would also be closed at night.
Apart from the river training works he had carried out near Sippar, that were
described already, it was claimed that he had diverted the river around Babylon to
make possible of the construction of his great bridge piers in the dry. We take;
however, the liberties to dispute this matter as any remnants of such a diversion are
absent, and we may therefore advance instead of that the idea that he might have
enclosed parts of the channel by cofferdams at various stages of construction to
facilitate this work as we do these days in constructing any dam or a bridge in the
river section.
The total length of the bridge as shown from excavations was one hundred and
twenty-three meters, and it had seven piers, each one having a length of twenty-one
meters. To fill more details on the fortifications of Babylon, which this King had
completed, the excavation carried out in its ruin shed light on this. For during this
excavation, many citadels were uncovered in the city wall showing a wide moat
running around its outer perimeter. This was connected to the Euphrates to form the
water barrier, and from it, many canals pierced the citadels’ walls presumably to
supply water to the population and inner-city parks. Much of this information is
owed to the work of the German Archaeological Expeditions which started work
there in March 1899 and continued regularly until May 1912[8].
96 Nasrat Adamo and Nadhir Al-Ansari

In other achievements, besides irrigation and fortification, another striking work had
tickled the imagination of historians, due to its supposed romantic background, and
might even have led them to add more fantasy to it than truth. In many of the
writings of those past historians on Nebuchadnezzar works, it was clear that the
description of the “Babylon Hanging Gardens” had aroused their imaginations.
Many of the Greek and Roman writers such as Herodotus placed these gardens
among the “Seven Wonders of the ancient world”. Although Flavius Josephus, the
Romano- Jewish Greek historian, who had lived in the first century AD, clearly
linked the “Hanging Gardens” to the works of Nebuchadnezzar, we find a lot of
confusion on this subject in the writing of many other authors. Some of them did
not credit its construction to Nebuchadnezzar but considered that it belonged to a
legendary Assyrian queen called Shameram (Semeramis). Herodotus, with no other
historical support, had claimed that most of the other works of Nebuchadnezzar
including this one were actually the work of Nitocris (7). Moreover, an opinion is
held by one contemporary author today in which she rules out that these gardens
were ever built in Babylon but in Nineva and credits it to Sinnecharib[9].
The romantic story, which has been very commonly told about the reason of the
construction of the “Hanging Garden”, informs us that the great King
Nebuchadnezzar was intent on pleasing his Median wife Amytis, daughter of
Cyaxares, the previous King of Media, as she longed to the breeze and sceneries of
the Zagros Mountains where she was born. So, on an artificial hill, he planted in its
terraces the most beautiful trees, and on the topmost terrace, he erected a shelter for
the queen where she could enjoy the purest air and the pleasant shades. The woman
so loved might have felt well compensated even for the loss of the native scenery in
Zagros wilds, for which her terraced Grove, some 500 feet square, could not be put
an equal substitute. The grandeur of the place drove the Greeks and the Romans, as
said already, to think it worthy of a place among their “Seven Wonders”, along with
that of the wall of Babylon, the temple of Beil, that of Artemis at Ephesus, and a few
other monuments[4].
We, however, shall put all the arguments on the reality of the story aside, for the
moment, and allow us the pleasure of describing this wonder while take the
opportunity to contemplate on how these elevated gardens, who ever had built them,
were irrigated being that high. The four terraces forming the gardens were born on
arched vaults supported by pillars, all built of well cemented bricks. The pillars were
sixty feet apart, and twenty-two feet in circumference. On the topmost, terrace was
the pump- house, with the hydraulic machinery for raising the water through pipes
from the Euphrates, or rather, from a canal, which brought water within easy reach,
and so that the scheme should not be noticed from the outside. Hurmuzd Rassam,
in the 1850s during his excavation in the ruins of Babylon which was called by
locals, Mound Babel, had come across what was believed to be the source of water
to these gardens. Rassam was a native Christian from Mosul who had spent a good
part of his life digging in the ruins of Nineveh, and Nimrud in participation with
British archeologists who worked in these places at the end of the nineteenth century.
It is from the book on his works, we may draw this paragraph on his discovery of
Babylon in a New Era: The Chaldean and Achaemenid Empires (330-612 BC) 97

the “Hanging Gardens” and we quote his own words:

“In the Mound of Babel, which is no doubt the site of the hanging gardens, as
I shall prove presently, I followed the excavations of the Arabs, who were digging
for bricks, and uncovered four exquisitely-built wells of red granite in the southern
center of the mound;, three were situated in a parallel line within few feet of each
other, and one was some distance from them in a southeasterly direction. Their
engineering and scientific erection reflected great credit upon the designer. Each
well is built of circular pieces of granite, which must have been brought from great
distance in Northern Mesopotamia, as there is no quarry of that nature to be seen
anywhere within five hundred miles up the river. Each stone, which is about three
feet in height had been bored and made to fit the one below it exactly that one would
imagine that the whole well was hewn in one solid rock. On digging to the bottom
of these wells, it was found to communicate with an aqueduct supplied with water
from the Euphrates, or a canal which must have skirted the North Eastern corner
of the mound. Even when I dug into the watercourse when the river was high, the
water oozed out through the debris, though the Euphrates ran then about a mile
from it. These wells, which were about one hundred and forty feet higher when I
uncovered them, and could not have been less than fifty or sixty feet higher
originally must have been erected exclusively for irrigating the hanging gardens,
since they doubtless stood higher than any other building in the city on account of
the commanding position the Mound of Babel occupied. These stones-built wells
are quite peculiar to that spot, because all the wells that have hitherto been
discovered in Assyria and Babylon were of same style of Architecture, consisting of
hard backed bricks, molded in such a shape as to fit regularly to each other”.
So, if Rassam’s theory is held to be correct then water must have been lifted by
certain lifting devices, which were driven continuously by slaves to secure enough
irrigation water. Rassam in support of his theory cites from the writings of Strabo,
who was a Greek geographer, philosopher, and historian who lived in (63 BC –
AD 24), and from Quintus Curtius Rufus, who was a Roman historian, probably of
the 1st, century, that the Hanging Gardens were very close to the river. Moreover,
Diodorus, a Greek historian of the first century BC, in particular, mentioned that
the water was drawn by engines through conduits for irrigating the surface[10].
In any case, the wealth and prosperity of Babylon would not have been possible
without irrigation; a thing which was very clear to the Babylonians and this was
even more so to all the Kings who ruled during the long history of Babylon. So,
Nebuchadnezzar always saw the maintenance of the vast irrigation networks and
adding new canals as first duty.
The affluence that agriculture had brought to Babylon fueled the progress of all sorts
of crafts and the development of trade all over the region. Babylon became the
center of exports and imports to and from all the other cities within the empire’s
boundaries. Again, Herodotus gives a vivid description of this and states:
“Of all countries that we know, there is none, which is so fruitful in grain. It
makes no pretension indeed of growing the fig, the olive, the vine, or any other tree
of the kind; but in grain, it is so fruitful as to yield commonly two-hundred-fold, and
98 Nasrat Adamo and Nadhir Al-Ansari

when the production is the greatest, even three-hundred-fold. The blade of the
wheat-plant and barley-plant is often four fingers in breadth. As for the millet and
the sesame, I shall not say to what height they grow, though within my own
knowledge; for I am not ignorant that what I have already written concerning the
fruitfulness of Babylonia must seem incredible to those who have never visited the
country. The only oil they use is made from the sesame-plant, [7].
During his work digging in Babylon ruins in 1899 for the German Oriental Institute,
Koldeway, gave colorful description of the lush date palm orchards and the
luxurious fields that must have stretched along the Euphrates banks during the
Babylonian times taking parallel from those that existed during his stay. He went to
say on this that after planting, palm trees would need regular irrigation only during
the first year but soon after they grow of themselves, and the roots of a fully-grown
tree are supposed to reach ground water. The photograph in Figure 42 was taken in
1914 by Koldewey himself of an existing orchard on the Euphrates very close to the
ruins of Babylon[8], while Figure 43 shows an artist’s impression of these orchards
as visualized during the Chaldean’s era[11]. The agriculture of Babylon and the
flourishing trading activates that were principally based on it were supported by a
very efficient economic and commercial system, which included collection of
taxes levied on the crops, duties for using the irrigation canals, in addition to the
legalization of commercial transactions covering sells and purchases.
In the Neo-Babylonian era these activates were developed further to arranging and
collecting loans and concluding contracts for agricultural purposes and other
financial business and operations in addition to money transfers to beneficiaries
in other towns and cities. In this matter the “House of Êigibi” a famous banking
family of that time is worth recording.
The story of this family was revealed to the world by sheer luck when the British
Archeologist George Smith came across some terra cotta jars, while suspecting their
worth, he managed to buy them from a dealer in Baghdad for 70 pounds. These jars
happened to contain 3000 pieces of miniature tablets, ranging in size from one
square inch to twelve.
Babylon in a New Era: The Chaldean and Achaemenid Empires (330-612 BC) 99

Figure 42: Palm trees grove close to Babylon’s ruins [8].

100 Nasrat Adamo and Nadhir Al-Ansari

Figure 43: Chaldean Palm Grove [11].

Upon examination, these tablets were found to be documents recording all sorts of
transitions and bearing the names of the parties involved. These were nothing less
than the archives of the “House of Êigibi”. From the information inscribed on these
tablets it appeared that this family was entrusted with the collection of taxes levied
on land, and the crops of corn, dates, etc.., in addition to the dues for the use of the
public roads and the irrigation canals, etc., Their activities extended beyond the city
of Babylon to some neighboring cities and provinces. The functions of notary public
were added to their other duties and included; concluding, certifying and ratifying
business deals in all branches of social life and mutual relations. Their other
commercial dealings covered money lending and executing loans.
The history of the family seems to have started with the founder; a certain Êigibi
who had possessed immense wealth and influence and was probably the head of the
house in the reign of Sinnecharib about 685BC. Professor Friedrich Delitzsch
reached the conclusion that the name Êigibi is the equivalent to the Hebrew
YAKÛB (Jacob), from which fact he inferred that the great banker must have been
a Jew. Most probably this man was one of those Jews taken into captivity by Sargon
II out from Samaria. It was evident that the family had reached the climax of its
wealth and power under Nebuchadnezzar. The signatures on the tablets bore the
names of his sons and grandsons showing that the activities of this house extended
over many generations. Rassam in 1882 managed to dig out and add several hundred
Babylon in a New Era: The Chaldean and Achaemenid Empires (330-612 BC) 101

more tablets to the three thousands bought by George Smith, which are kept now in
the British Museum. Among Rassam finds there were some pieces, which dated to
the reign of Alexander the Great in Babylon. This indicates that the work of the
“House of Êigibi” had continued for nearly four hundred years which may deserve
them the name of the “Babylonian Rothschild’s’”. The family as it seems had
survived the storms of the two sieges under Sinnecharib and Assurbanipal, as they
were to pass safely through several more similar political crises protected by their
exceptional position, which made them very useful and necessary and not to be
harmed, while at the same time Professor Friedrich Delitzsch tells us also that they
were entrusted by all the financial businesses of the court [4].
The golden days of the Babylonian ended, when Cyrus II, the rising King of the
Achaemenids, attacked and conquered Babylon in 539 BC. After a half century of
military expansion, political accomplishments and building achievements, the
successors of Nebuchadnezzar II were short-lived monarchs, weakened by all sorts
of palace intrigues. Amel-Marduk (561-560 BC) reigned for only two years, before
being assassinated by his brother-in-law, Neriglissar (559-556 BC). After
Neriglissar's death, his young son, Labashi-Marduk (556 BC) reigned for barely a
month before Nabonidus (555-539 BC) seized the throne. Although very little is
known about this King, which was not from royal roots himself, some stories said
he had taken up the worship of the Moon God as his religion, and possibly because
of the Babylonian population resentment of this the Persian conquest of the region
seemed straightforward.
In 539 BC, Cyrus II entered the country and after one major battle, which was won
by the Persians near the confluence of the Diyala and Tigris Rivers Cyrus II took
over other cities without resistance. On October 12, 539 BC, Babylon fell and the
native rule over the whole area was ended for many centuries. With Babylon which
was the capital of the Neo- Babylonian empire, Persia gained the entire territory of
the Babylonian empire and profited from Babylonia’s earlier achievements in its
unprecedented expansion[12]. This was one hard lesson of history, which tells, that
all fortifications and wealth are of no use if corruption prevails.
The fall of Babylon paved the way to a new era in the history of Mesopotamia, for
this was the beginning of the first Persian Empire’s rule of this land, which was the
Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BC). This empire was based in South Western Iran,
founded by Cyrus the Great, and in its greatest extension covered 5.5 million square
kilometers, from the Balkans to the Indus Valley, and it was reckoned kilometers,
from the Balkans to the Indus Valley, and it was reckoned at that time as the largest
empire which was ever known, Figure 44.
The Achaemenids were nomadic Persians, who had lived in the southwestern part
of the present day Iran at about 1000 BC and managed to establish their first small
Kingdom there. This Kingdom was subjugated to the Median Empire for a long
time. Their remote place and the preoccupation of the Medes in the defense of their
empire against the frequent attacks of the Assyrians gave the Achaemenids the
opportunity to grow gradually in strength and influence until the rise of Cyrus II,
(600- 530 BC) whose mother was
102 Nasrat Adamo and Nadhir Al-Ansari

Mindana the daughter of the Median King Astyages, and his father was
Kambyses I, King of the Achaemenid.
Cyrus II managed at the start to ally with the last King of Babylonia Nabonidus and
turned against his grandfather Astyages, the King of the Medes and defeated him in
battle and then set out to incorporate the existing empires of the ancient east. Cyrus
ordered the building of a new capital to his empire whose remains stand now near
the City of Shiraz and called it Pasargadae (559–550 BC). We know that other
capitals were also built by the Achaeminds Kings and took them as their capital
cities in addition to Pasargadae during the history of this empire. Special interest
was paid to Babylon by the Persian Kings, and it became the residence of th Royal
Court in winter as one of the capitals of the empire along with Susa, Persepolis and
Ecabatana, and its population became a mix of native Babylonians,
Achaemenidens, Egyptians, Western Semites, Medies and imigrants from Asia
Minor and other parts of the empire.

Figure 44: Map of the Persian Achaemenid Empire under the reigns of
Darius the great and Xerxes, (https://www.ancient.eu/image/148/).

These were soldiers, officials, functionaries, and traders [8]. Cyrus utilized his
tactical genius, as well as his understanding of the socio-political conditions within
his territories to eventually incorporate into the empire neighboring Lydia and the
whole Neo-Babylonian Empire. He was the first King in history who had attempted
to govern different ethnic groups on the principle of equal rights and responsibilities,
so long as the subjects paid their taxes and kept the peace. The King also did not
interfere with the local customs, religions, and trades of his subject states, and so he
won the support of the Babylonians.
The management of such a large empire brought with it the need for keeping order
and control and led to large expenditure of resources and mobilization of troops to
quell local rebellions[13]. After the death of Cyrus II twelve Kings ruled the empire
Babylon in a New Era: The Chaldean and Achaemenid Empires (330-612 BC) 103

until it crumbled at the hands of Alexander (The Great) in 336 BC during the reign
of Darius III (338- 336 BC).
During the two centuries of the Achaeminds domination the Babylonian culture
continued to develop. Mathematical astronomy reached a considerable new height;
its successes were among the most impressive achievements of ancient civilizations,
and within the same period Babylonian law reached its heyday. Agriculture, in
particular flourished as one of the main sources of income to the empire, and it
would seem that the giant irrigation systems inherited from the previous generations
were well kept and taken care of. Some changes might have happened gradually in
the socio-economic relations, but the Persian administration in Babylonia, as well
as the royal court, spent autumn and winter in Babylon and made extensive use of
the local scribes’ services writing in Aramaic and Akkadian.
Although the state chancelleries in Achaemenid Babylonia used Aramaic, Akkadian
remained the language of religious cult and medical and mathematical literature as
well as to a certain degree legal document. The Achaemenid Babylon became the
cosmopolitan city of that time with such mixed population of different ethnic origins.
In addition, to native Babylonian`s considerable number of Iranians (Persians,
Medes, Arians, Sakai, etc.) who were royal officials and soldiers or who came to
live in the country for various reasons. These Iranians are frequently referred to
in Babylonian documents as contracting parties, witnesses and officials of the royal
administration[14].
Mesopotamia carried special weight and importance to the Achaemenid Empire and
to fully understand this; it is important to look in the administrative framework of
the empire on which governance was based. For the Achaemenid Empire was
divided into twenty regions (Satrapies) with one governor (Satrap) taking care of
one of each of these regions; of which we mention, for example, India, Ionia, Egypt
and Mesopotamia (Ashur and Babylonia). All these Satrapies were of such
importance that the Achaemenid King called himself among other titles King of
Kings.
The geopolitical situation of Babylonia, however, went through some changes
during the history of the Achaemenid Empire. For Nabonidus, the last Babylonian
King, who had actually handed over Babylon to Cyrus II [15] continued in his post
as the vassal King for the first four years after the Persian conquest. In 535 BC,
however, King Cyrus merged Mesopotamia and "Across-the-River" (Syria) in a
single province and appointed for the new Satrapy the Persian (Gubaru), who
remained in this post until as late as 525 BC. But at the beginning of the rule of
Darius I, grandson of Cyrus II, this King undertook significant reorganization of
the Satrapies. In particular, around March 520 BC, a Persian, (Ustanu) was
appointed governor of Babylonia and “beyond-the-River”, and the retrieved
historical documents which referred to him as Satrap of this province belonged to
the period between 520 and 516BC.
Within this set up, the study of social life and economic conditions in Mesopotamia
is necessary in order to fully understand the agricultural environment and irrigation
during the Achaemenid period. Many scholars have concentrated their work on
104 Nasrat Adamo and Nadhir Al-Ansari

studying the Babylonian documents from that period which have shed light on these
aspects indicating that some important changes in the main social institutions,
political and economic life, and even in the Babylonia ideology had occurred during
the Achaemenid rule as contrasted with previous times[16].
As already mentioned previously, King Cyrus II, after his conquest of Babylon, had
permitted the Babylonian Kingdom to continue as a special entity keeping to itself
its traditional methods of administration and social institutions[17]and there was no
immediate interruption in the normal functioning of the law and the economy, even
land ownership rules and taxes remained as before. Babylon became the winter
residence of the Achaemenid Kings, as one of the royal capitals like Susa,
Persepolis, and Ecbatana and the most highly placed Babylonian officials retained
their positions in the administrative apparatus. Cyrus even tried to reestablish
normal conditions for the economic development of the country and for its
traditional culture, and the priests were encouraged to revive their ancient cults,
which had been somewhat neglected during the rule of the last Chaldean King
Nabonidus. Cyrus, moreover, assumed the official title "King of Babylon, King of
the Lands," a practice emulated by his successors until the early years of Xerxes 1
reign.
Nevertheless, the enormous satrapy comprising almost all the territory of the
former Neo-Babylonian was divided after 486 BC into two parts. The list of the
satrapies of the Achaemenid Empire provided by Herodotus indicated that
Babylonia and the rest of Assyria constituted the ninth Satrapy, whereas the lands
“beyond the River”, i.e. Syria constituted the fifth.
Important further changes in the status of Babylonia occurred during the reign of
Xerxes I, who reigned from (486- 465BC). After the Babylonians revolted twice, in
484 and 482 BC, Xerxes punished the rebels severely and ordered a considerable
part of Babylon destroyed. The Babylonian Kingdom, which until that time had
been considered eminent and different from other Satrapies, at least in theory, was
downgraded to an ordinary Satrapy. Subsequently, however, these reprisals did not
diminish Babylonia's importance in the Achaemenid Empire. The province was
geographically central; its population was large and concentrated, and it was still
growing. Its economic structure was highly developed, and it was a source of
immense wealth in crops, manufactured goods and cash. Even after Xerxes' punitive
measures, Babylon and it’s environ supported the residences of the Persian Kings,
princes, and courtiers. The city held a royal treasury and archive; in classical
accounts, it ranked with Susa as an imperial capital [18].
The most important practical result of the Persian conquest of Mesopotamia was
that the supreme power in the country belonged to the Persian King and his Satrap.
The administrative structure of the Achaemenid Empire most closely resembled that
of the Neo-Assyrians. The Persians almost certainly borrowed some elements of
that structure through the Medes. In the economic aspects, Darius I (550–486 BC)
father of Xerxes I had already established a new system of state taxes. This system
put special emphasis on agricultural yield and land ownership. Amounts of these
taxes and exemption reflect the state of agrarian relations and land ownership in
Babylon in a New Era: The Chaldean and Achaemenid Empires (330-612 BC) 105

Mesopotamia as well as other parts of the empire.

Before Darius I, under Cyrus and Cambyses, there was still no firmly regulated
system of taxes based on an accounting of the economic potentials of the various
regions of the Persian Empire. According to Darius reforms, all Satrapies were
obliged to pay monetary state taxes in silver, the amount being determined on the
basis of the area of cultivated land and its fertility as calculated in accordance with
the mean perennial yield; for this purpose, the land was precisely measured and
classified by crop. At the time when Darius introduced his reforms, the Satrapy of
India came first in the amount of annual taxes paid to the treasury of the King. It
consisted of 4680 talent of silver every year, when one talent was equivalent to 300
kilograms making more than 1460 tons, then came Mesopotamia (Assyria and
Babylonia) with 300 tones, followed by Egypt 210 tones, Kaleici 110 tones, Syria
and Palestine (beyond the River) 105 tons and the four small Asian satrapies 530
tons. The Satrapy of Persia was exempted from all taxes as a privilege of being the
seat of the empire [13], [16].
All Satrapies were also required to pay a tribute in the kind of grain, cattle, sheep,
beer, etc., which is difficult to establish in actual quantities from available
documents. This was meant to support garrisons, royal and satrapy courts, and the
state administration. Some documents mentioned that the Satrapy of Egypt had
supplied grain enough for 120,000 persons, while, Media gave 100,000 sheep and
Armenia gave 30,000 birds.
Documents preserved from Babylon showed cadastral field plans, which were
usually depicted as rectangles or triangles and contained information on seed
capacity, number of fruit trees, the kind of crop, the state of tillage of the land, legal
status of the land and the buildings erected on the fields. However, the purpose of
these plans has never been satisfactorily explained, but they may have been the basis
for estimating the amounts of taxes and tributes, which were due or, could be also
used for agricultural land transactions.
These documents belonged to the third year of Darius I's rule, which can be dated
to the year 519 BC. Having in mind that the Empire’s revenue was based in a great
part on the agriculture of the Crown lands, and rents of irrigation canals, in addition
to tribute from the people, it is important to have some insight of the irrigation
systems and agriculture lands of Babylonia and their contributions to this revenue.
Very important information on the irrigation network and agriculture was obtained
from the ancient documents of Muraŝŭ Archive. This is a collection
of cuneiform tablets that were excavated between 1888 and 1900 from the ruins
of Nippur in central Babylonia.
Named after the chief member of a single family, the Muraŝŭ Archive was a
collection of business records that had covered four generations. They are
assembled during the reigns of the Persian Kings Artaxerxes I, Darius II,
and Artaxerxes II and provided the most illuminating information on business
activities and conditions of the Persian-rule of Babylonia during the last hundred
and fifty years of the Achaemenid Kingship.
The Muraŝŭ family to whom the archive belonged had worked as one of the agents
106 Nasrat Adamo and Nadhir Al-Ansari

to the crown during that period, which reminds us of the Êigibi family in the
Chaldeans times. The archive gave us information on the agrarian relations and the
agricultural outputs in Babylonia at that period.
It is a well-known fact that the wealth of Babylonia was based primarily on
agriculture and that the limiting factor of Babylonian farming was water in which
case the major elements of irrigation networks had become the property of the
Persian Crown. It is also good to remember that during the Neo-Babylonian and
Achaemenid times, irrigation systems in large parts of Babylonia, including the
Nippur region, underwent changes in structure as interlocking grids as was seen
done by Nebuchadnezzar, composed of parallel main canals joined to each other at
frequent intervals by transverse secondary canals. This reticular arrangement
improved access of agricultural land to fresh water and also enhanced drainage.
They supported cultivation over increasing areas, and consequently, fostered
expanding revenues for the state. The scale and regularity of the canal networks
indicated government sponsored development [19]. At the same time, the canals
themselves as a prime economic factor became the object of commercial
manipulations in which the agents, such as Muraŝŭ family played prime role as
revealed from their archive. Great part of the canals and reservoirs belonged to the
King, and were leased to agents like the Muraŝŭ house, who in their turn subleased
whole canals, some stretches of canals or even leased water rights to different users.
In their turn, these agents paid royalties to canal managers appointed by the crown.
The canal managers, however, had to answer to senior royal officials. Moreover,
those agents had a significant role in leasing agricultural lands and even agricultural
equipment to their tenants. Under the Neo- Babylonian dynasty, final control over
the management of crown interests rested with the King himself.
When Babylonia became a province of the Persian Empire, the new rulers delegated
command over royal interests in the province to surrogates, presumably men with
wide competence. Canal managers remained as the direct contacts with the agents
and gave them receipts for the royalties received from them. The fact that many
documents covering these dealings were found in the Muraŝŭ archive does not rule
out the existence of other agents similar to the Muraŝŭ House. In many cases, the
agents sold water to independent farmers directly either from canals or from
reservoirs. Some documents described particular cases whereby users irrigated their
land and paid back with a percentage of the crop watered, and this percentage varied
depending on whether it was done by direct flow or by lift irrigation.
To summarize, canal managers were officials of the crown; they controlled the use
of waterways and crown properties, agricultural equipment and even field workers;
they leased the holdings, they were responsible to agents who had direct contacts
with the cultivators. But, without the managers’ own records, the range of their
agents cannot be determined [18]. Apart from conducting business as mediatory
agents for the supply of irrigation water, Muraŝŭ House dealt also with leasing
agricultural lands and organized property transactions and ownership as other
agents might have done.
Stolper in his book “Entrepreneurs and Empire” [18] observed from archaeological
Babylon in a New Era: The Chaldean and Achaemenid Empires (330-612 BC) 107

evidence that in most areas of Mesopotamia the Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid

periods mark the beginning of "a long phase of general growth, the resettlement
and cultivation of long-abandoned territory". He also remarked that in the fifth
century BC, there was much cheap land, but water was costly, and that in
Achaemenid Babylonia there appeared "new installations, new techniques, and
better utilization of the available water". He concluded that the economic history of
Babylonia in the second part of the fifth century BC is relatively well-known owing
to the Muraŝŭ House archive, and the activities of the Muraŝŭ House and other
similar agents were conditioned by the changes introduced by the Persians into
property policies in Babylonia.
The categories of property included the Crown holdings, allotments to Persian
noblemen, collective of soldiers, and to officials who were not farmers themselves
and turned their land over to other persons to cultivate. Agents like Muraŝŭ House
rented these allotments and paid rent to their owners as well as the appropriate state
taxes to the treasury. However, this land was usually let to sub-lessees who supplied
the seeds and animals. To judge from the Muraŝŭ House documents, the rents that
Muraŝŭ House paid for land were very low of about one kur (ISO liters) of barley
per kur (13,500 square meters) of land or less.
Land constituted the main source of royal taxes. The Achaemenids took part of land
from the Babylonian population, kept some to the crown, and distributed the rest as
large estates to members of the royal family, representatives of the Persian nobility
and high officials. The total area of royal lands under the Achaemenids increased
very much as compared with the preceding period. These lands were situated in the
Nippur region (See figure 19, paper 3), as well as in the neighborhood of Babylon,
Sippar, Ur, Dilbat, and other Mesopotamian cities. These and other lands belonging
to members of the royal family usually were put out for leasing.
In a specific case a representative of the Muraŝŭ firm rented royal fields along the
banks of several canals near Nippur for a term of three years. The Muraŝŭ house
undertook to pay an annual rent of 220 kur (39,600 liters) of barley, 20 kur (3,600
liters) of wheat, 10 kur (1,800 liters) of spelt which was one of the earliest forms of
wheat used for livestock feed and as a grain for human consumption. One document
showed that in 507 BC two tenants had paid nine kur (1,600 liters) of dates as annual
rent for some land that was royal property.
This payment was made through the superintendent of the royal dates. The next year
payment was made to the same superintended and consisted of thirty-six kur (6,480
liters) of dates. This land was located, in all probability, in a suburb of the city of
Isin; the King also owned here many large canals, which his managers leased out
for high prices. In the neighborhood of Nippur, the royal canals were rented by the
Muraŝŭ house who, in their turn, leased them to groups of small landowners. Thus,
in 439 B.C. seven landowners in the Nippur area signed a contract with three lessees
of various parts of the King's canal, among whom was the Muraŝŭ House.
According to these contracts, the landowners could irrigate their fields during three
days of each month from "the water of the canal, the royal property”. They were to
pay one-third of the harvest and dates in addition a certain sum of silver for each
108 Nasrat Adamo and Nadhir Al-Ansari

unit area of land. Other types of land possessed by the King were those called the
“uzbarw of the King”.
The exact meaning of this very old Persian word is not known, but it could designate
vineyards. It is understood that all categories of royal lands were exempt from taxes.
The redistribution of land affected by the Achaemenids resulted also in the
appearance of different types of land ownerships belonging to royal soldiers,
artisans, etc. These ownerships were also allotted from state land. It seems that there
was some difference between the royal land in the narrowest sense and state land.
However, state land, at least nominally, was at the disposal of the King. In the period
preceding the Persian conquest of Babylonia, the royal economy did not occupy a
large share of the economy of the country. Though the Achaemenid Kings possessed
a large amount of land in Babylonia, the royal economy did not play the leading
role in the country. This role belonged to the private and temple households [16].
Finally, it may be said that the Persian administration in the Achaeminds period was
not interested in the internal intellectual life of Babylonia. The achievements of
Babylonian mathematical astronomy, whose most creative period began in the last
quarter of the fifth century B.C, and the changes in Babylonian religious thought
were due to the development of the native tradition. The Persians were only
concerned with creating a stable state administration, establishing a new system for
collecting royal taxes, and increasing the recruitment of troops. Significant changes
did occur in the administrative system of the country, and many public institutions
gradually fell under Iranian influence. Although Babylonian private law changed
little, many Iranians became involved in local business life. Moreover, documents
from Babylon, Nippur and some other Mesopotamian cities refer to judges of
Persian origin.
Radical changes occurred also in the system of agrarian relations. Land taken from
the indigenous population was distributed in large tracts as hereditary property to
members of the royal family and to Persian nobility. Some land was in the direct
possession of the King, and all these estates were exempt from taxes.
The system of military service also changed whereby the redistribution of land had
created different types of ownerships belonging to royal soldiers and state’s
workmen. These ownerships were granted from the state land by the royal
administration and carried an obligation of military service or state courtier’s and
administrative service. But in all this, irrigation canal networks, reservoirs and water
rights remained the sole property of the King. No mention of maintenance works to
these systems is available to us. Judging from the extent of wealth of Babylonia,
which stemmed in great portion of it, from irrigated agriculture, it may be concluded
that the canal managers most probably kept these systems in good order. They may
have contracted the works to general contractors like the Muraŝŭ House in addition
to the use of state resources of slaves and equipment. All this led us to think of the
canal manager as similar to irrigation departments of the modern times.
As in the case of the Chaldean Empire, the Achaemenid Empire was distained to
fall as the result from weakness of the last Kings and palace intrigues. King
Artaxerxes III came to the throne by bloody means, ensuring his place upon the
Babylon in a New Era: The Chaldean and Achaemenid Empires (330-612 BC) 109

throne by the assassination of eight of his half-brothers.

In 338 BC Artaxerxes III died in unclear circumstances, while at the same time
Philip of Macedon united the Greeks and began to plan an invasion into the Persian
Empire. Artaxerxes III was succeeded by Artaxerxes IV Arses. Before he could
establish his power, Bagoas, a prominent official serving as the vizier (Chief
Minister) of the Achaemenid Empire, poisoned him. Until his death in 336 BC.,
Bagoas is further said to have killed not only all Arses’ children, but many of the
other princes of the royal family. He then placed on the throne Darius III (336-330
BC), a nephew of Artaxerxes IV and previously the Satrap of Armenia, but later on
Darius personally forced Bagoas to swallow poison. In 334 BC, when Darius was
just succeeding in subduing Egypt Alexander, son of Philip, (Alexander III of
Macedon) and his battle-hardened troops began their advance towards the east in
Asia Minor.
In Asia Minor, Alexander defeated the Persian armies at Granicus (334 BC), then
at Issus (333 BC) and lastly at Gaugamela (331 BC) and then he marched to Susa
and Persepolis, in the heartland of the Achaemenids Empire, which surrendered to
him in early 330 BC. From Persepolis, Alexander headed north to Pasargadae,
which marked the final fall of the Achaemenid Empire.
As far as Babylonia was concerned, Alexander was welcomed into Babylon, the old
capital of the ancient near east, on 22 October 331 BC when he was on his way to
Susa. The longest description of this historic march is that of the Roman author
Quintus Curtius Rufus[20], who based his account on earlier Greek sources. Despite
having succeeded to subjugate the whole of the Persian Empire under his rule,
Alexander, was nonetheless, unable to offer a stable alternative. After his early death,
Alexander's the once massive Persian Empire was broken into few smaller empires
ruled by his generals and their descendants. The most significant of which was the
Seleucid Empire. Mesopotamia was distained to enter into a new phase of its history,
but this is another story to be told.
110 Nasrat Adamo and Nadhir Al-Ansari

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