The Babylonian Empire 1000 BCE

Historical background: Babylonia in the early first millennium

Southern Mesopotamia – Babylonia – suffered even more than Assyria during the “Age of Confusion”, as Babylonian scribes called the centuries around 1000 BCE. From the west, large numbers of Aramaean peoples invaded, and from the south, a nomadic people called the Kaldu moved in to the coastal area of Babylonia. These people are known to history as the Chaldeans.

In this dark period of Babylonia’s history, a social revolution seems to have taken place. For centuries, the temples had been gradually losing wealth and influence, as powerful kings kept them in their place and large royal estates had come to overshadow the temples’ land holdings. A class of private merchants and landowners had risen in numbers, wealth and influence, rivalling the temple’s economic position.

With the chaos of the centuries on either side of 1000 BCE, however, the peasants of Mesopotamia, with the royal authorities in disarray, seem to have turned to the temples for protection. By the time southern Mesopotamia re-emerges into the light of history, the temples have regained a degree of power and wealth they had not known for more than a thousand years.

The Chaldeans in particular represented a continual threat to the cities of Babylonia. They established their base in the coastal area of Mesopotamia, from where they emerged to raid neighbouring territory. The extensive marshes of the area provided an ideal shelter from reprisals.

The Assyrian domination

From the 9th century BCE the Assyrians of northern Mesopotamia posed as protectors of Babylon, for which they had an enduring and genuine reverence as the cultural and spiritual centre of Mesopotamian civilization. They mostly treated the Babylonian kings with great respect and campaigned against their enemies, principally the Chaldeans and the kingdom of Elam. Even so, on at least two occasions the Chaldeans were able to capture Babylon itself, and hold it for years at a time.

In return for their aid the Assyrian kings expected the allegiance of the king of Babylon and his subjects, which was usually forthcoming as the urban populations of Babylonia saw the Assyrians as their best protection against raiders and invaders. However, they did occasionally rebel. Once, in the early 7th century, this led to the destruction of the city of Babylon by an Assyrian army. The city was soon rebuilt, however, and the general Assyrian policy towards Babylonia was resumed. This involved the Assyrian kings confirming the temples in their predominant position, showering them with favours, not only from feelings of religious deference, but also as a way of keeping the local population happy. Nevertheless, these monarchs also kept the temples firmly in their place, and when need arose they had not hesitation in levying tribute (or forced loans) on them.

The Assyrian kings also regularly followed the practice of installing one of their sons as king of Babylon, subordinate to the king of Assyria.

The rise of the Babylonian empire

In the late 7th century, events began to unfold which would lead to the collapse of the Assyrian empire. The death of the last of the great Assyrian kings, Ashurbanipal, in 627 BCE, was shortly followed by civil war between two of his sons, the king of Assyria and the king of Babylon. The king of Babylon was victorious, but by then the Chaldeans had taken Babylon again (626 BCE). They were led by one of their chiefs called Nabopolassar, who now became one of the key players in the great events which now took place.

With the Assyrians’ civil war over and the former king of Babylon now king of Assyria, Nabopolassar now faced a strenuous Assyrian attempt to regain control of Babylonia. The war raged on for seven years, but the Assyrians had also to deal with events on their northern frontier, where Scythian and Cimmerian raiders from the steppes north of the Black Sea mounted devastating raids through Assyrian territory. By 616 BCE the Chaldeans had repelled the Assyrians and were in full control of Babylonia.

The end of Assyria

In 616 BCE the Chaldeans under Nabopolassar, who had styled himself king of Babylon for the past 10 years, invaded Assyria itself. In the following year, the Medes also invaded Assyria, and captured the Assyrian holy city of Ashur. Here, the Medes (who had be now united much of Iran under their king, Cyaxes) and the Babylonians agreed to act in unison (614 BCE), and, after a year’s slow campaigning, they besieged the Assyrian capital, Nineveh (612 BCE). After three months, the great city fell, and was utterly destroyed. All the other cities of Assyria were also taken and raised to the ground. Only Harran remained, and it fell in 610 BCE. Only villages were left in the land. Two hundred years later a Greek army would march through Assyria and have no idea that the heaps of rubble they saw had once been the greatest cities in the world.

The huge Assyrian empire was shared out amongst its victorious enemies, the Babylonians and Medes. The Medes took Iran, from where they would later expand into Armenia and Cappadocia. Nabopolassar held all Mesopotamia – that is, Babylonia and Assyria – and claimed Syria and Palestine. These were under Egyptian control, and in 607 BCE, Nabopolassar sent his crown prince, Nebuchadnezzar, to drive them out. After two years of hard campaigning he was able to dislodge the Egyptians from the strategic city of Carchemish, in northern Syria. This opened the way for the Babylonians to swiftly take the whole of Syria and Palestine from the Egyptians. Nebuchadnezzar may well have been planning on invading Egypt itself but just at that point he heard of his father’s death. He therefore hurried back to Babylon to claim the throne (605 BCE).

King Nebuchadnezzar

This was the opportunity for the peoples of Syria and Palestine to rebel against their new masters. All the cities of the Philistines joined in this rebellion, and Nebuchadnezzar made an example of Ascelon by raising it to the ground and exiling all its people. As an exemplary punishment, this clearly did not work: Nebuchadnezzar had to send armies to put down rebellions in his western provinces virtually every year, at least until 573 BCE. The Egyptians were of course keen to stir up trouble and on two occasions the Babylonians had again to drive Egyptian armies back to their borders.

In one of these campaigns, in 597, he had to put down a rebellion in the kingdom of Judaea. he captured Jerusalem, deporting 3000 of its leading citizens to Babylon. In 589 the people of Jerusalem rebelled again, and Nebuchadnezzar visited his full fury on that city. After an 18 month siege the city was sacked, its walls pulled down and its temple burnt. The last king of Judah, Zedekiah, was blinded and taken prisoner, and many thousands more people deported. Others took refuge in Egypt.

In 586 Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Tyre, which had refused to pay tribute to him. This siege would last thirteen years. Finally, in 573, Tyre agreed to submit to Babylonian rule and pay tribute; and this seems to have brought peace to Nebuchadnezzar’s western provinces.

Nebuchadnezzar and Babylonia

At home, Nebuchadnezzar lavished attention on Babylonia. He paid close attention to the economic welfare of the people, taking seriously the traditional duty of Mesopotamian kings to repair and maintain the canals, dykes and pools on which their wellbeing depended. Indeed, he expanded the irrigation system of southern Mesopotamia as never before, bringing much new land under cultivation.

Babylon was rebuilt, enlarged and beautified, becoming the largest and most magnificent city in the world at that time. Other cities in southern Mesopotamia also received great attention, with all the ancient Sumerian cities having their temples restored and enlarged.

This period, indeed, marked the high point of the temples’ wealth and influence in Babylonian society; they were the predominant social and economic institutions of the time. The Chaldean kings, being of foreign descent and having no deep roots in the sympathies of the native population, were critically dependent upon the support of the immensely powerful Babylonian priesthood. When this support was withdrawn, as it seems to have been under the last king, Nabonidus, then the foundations of their rule were undermined.

Nebuchadnezzar died in 562 BCE.  Three obscure kings then followed one another in quick succession, each brought down by palace coups. Then, in 556 BCE, a man called Nabonidus came to the throne (reigned 556-539 BCE).

The fall of the Babylonian empire

Nabonidus was not of royal birth, and he was over sixty years old when he came to the throne. His mother (who, remarkably for that time, was still alive at the time of his accession) had been a priestess of the god Sin, in the city of Harran in northern Mesopotamia, which had been under the control of the Medes since the fall of Assyria, and Nabonidus himself was a devotee of the god Sin. From the outset of his reign he harboured an ambition to regain Harran and rebuild the sanctuary of Sin there.

Sin was not widely worshipped amongst the Babylonians, who were loyal to their national god, Marduk; however, the god’s cult was widespread amongst both the Arameans and Chaldeans. Given the wealth and influence of the Babylonian temples and their priesthoods, and given too the central role played by the kings in the religious life of the Babylonians, Nabonidus’ devotion to the god Sin was likely to give rise to religious and political tensions.

The monarch was certainly in need of resources. As his reign progressed the international situation deteriorated rapidly for the Babylonian empire. To some extent this may have been instigated by Nabonidus himself. As we have seen he had a burning wish to restore the temple to Sin in Harran, which was in the hands of the Medes. He may well have had strategic reasons as well. A struggle with the Medes, the other great power in the region, was bound to come sooner or later, and Harran was very strategically situated astride the major routes leading into Syria, Iran and Asia Minor. Its possession would have given Nabonidus a military advantage in any conflict with the Medes.

The rise of Cyrus

Whatever Nabonidus’ motives, he plotted with one of the vassals of the Mede king to rebel against him. This vassal was Cyrus, king of the Persians. By 550 BCE, Cyrus had emerged victorious against his Mede master. Over the next ten years he consolidated his hold over the Mede empire and carried out swift conquests of neighbouring regions – all of Asia Minor in the west, and the regions eastwards into India.

For most of this time, Nabonidus was absent from Babylon. This may have been due to tensions with the temple priesthoods, especially of the chief god, Marduk. This, plus the fact that he had imposed stricter controls over the temples to try and extract more wealth from them, had aroused their bitter hostility. When a famine struck the city, open insurrection flared up, and, leaving Babylon, Nabonidus went to Arabia, where he based himself for almost ten years.

Again, there may have been strategic reasons for Nabonidus’ actions. With hostilities with the Medes growing, and then with the rise of the Persian threat, Babylon’s trade with the east – a source of immense wealth, especially for the royal treasury – was under pressure. Nabonidus’ expedition to Arabia may have been an attempt to win control of new trade routes, the valuable incense routes from Arabia. This idea is supported by his campaigns there, when he penetrated south down into the region of Medina and Mecca.

The final act

In 539 Cyrus turned his attentions on Babylon. He marched into Mesopotamia and down the Euphrates. Nabonidus was now back in his capital, and he and his son, Belshazzar, drew up their army north of Babylon. Just before the impending battle a large contingent of their already outnumbered army went over to the Persians. Unsurprisingly they were decisively defeated; Belshazzar was killed and Nabonidus probably withdrew to Babylon.

Here, the final act of the long history of Babylon as an independent power was played out. The gates were opened to Cyrus, who was able to enter the great city almost unopposed. This was only able to happen because, in his career as a conqueror, Cyrus had won for himself a reputation as one who respected the national gods of his various subjects. This was in stark contrast to Nabonidus, who had won the hostility of the priests and people of his capital. He vanishes from view at this moment, probably dying as the Persians entered, and Cyrus the Persian was welcomed as a liberator.

For what happened to Mesopotamia next, see the Persian Empire

PERSIAN EMPIRE

Origins 

The Iranian people had originated as part of the Indo-European peoples of the steppes, and had spread down into central Iran around 1000 BCE. They consisted of different tribes – Medes, Parthians, Sogdians – and Persians. From the 8th and 7th centuries the Iranians began to spread towards southwestern Iran, with the Persians at the fore. Here they encountered the kingdom of Elam. This had existed in the area for two thousand years or more, but was now weak and fragmented.

The ancient accounts of the origins of the Achaemenid state are confused, but the main outlines seem clear. The Persians, under their leaders of the royal Achaemenid clan, took the city of Anshan from the Elamites in the mid-7th century BCE.

The principality thus formed seems to have played a minor part in the turbulent events leading to the fall of the Assyrian empire, in the late 7th century BCE. These events left another Iranian people, the Medes, in control of a huge territory in Iran, and they soon established themselves as one of the great powers of the Middle East. Their king took the title “king of kings”, and the Achaemenid kings of Anshan were one of their many vassals – but presumably quite prominent ones, as in the early 7th century one of them, Cambyses, was married to one of the daughters of the Mede “king of kings”.

In c. 559 one of the great figures of world history, Cyrus the Great, succeeded as vassal king of Anshan.

Cyrus the Great

According to the Greek historian Herodotus, in 553 BCE Cyrus rebelled against the Mede king (and his grandfather-in-law) Astyages, and defeated him in two battles, aided, it seems, by other rebels. These actions brought the huge empire of the Medes under his control, and he adopted the Mede title of “King of Kings” to enshrine his claim to be their successor.

In 549-8 BCE the Persians occupied the rest of Iran, and Armenia; then Lydia, in Asia Minor (547 BCE). Cyrus entrusted the conquest of the rest of Asia Minor, including the Greek cities on the west coast, to his gener­als, while he conquered eastern territories including Bactria, Sogdiana, parts of central Asia and northwest India.

In 539, Cyrus entered the city of Babylon, the capital of the Babylonian empire. Mesopotamia, Elam, Syria, and Judaea seem to all have submitted to Cyrus as well. By 535 at the latest he controlled all the lands up to the borders of Egypt.

Cyrus’ rule

After the conquest of Babylon Cyrus styled himself “king of Babylon, king of the lands.” He ruled his multinational conquests through the governing structures already in place in the different nations. In Babylonia he maintained the traditional bureaucratic apparatus which had grown up there over the centuries; in the Phoenician cities of Syria and the Greek cities of Asia Minor he installed native “tyrants” ( a word which did not then carry the pejorative implications it has today) as rulers; elsewhere he often kept the previous rulers in place, on condition that they remained obedient to him. Over them he apparently placed Persian and Mede governors (satraps) who had almost compete power over large portions of the empire.

Cyrus followed a policy of religious toleration throughout his empire, although he himself was almost certainly a devotee of the chief god of the Iranians, Ahura Mazda, and indeed may have been a follower of Zoroastrianism (which had probably been spreading amongst the Iranians since the 7th century) and therefore a monotheist. Nevertheless, he presented himself to the Babylonians as the one appointed by their god, Marduk, to restore his religion (after neglect by the last Babylonian king, Nabonidus).  He reinstalled the statues of the gods which Nabonidus had brought to Babylon from various Mesopotamian cities to their former sanctuaries. He ordered the reconstruction of temples in Mesopotamia and Elam which had fallen into ruin. Most famously, he allowed the Jews to return to their homeland and restore the temple to Yahweh in Jerusalem. The book of Isaiah, in the Jewish and Christian Bible, refers to Cyrus as the “anointed one (messiah) of Yahweh”.

Cyrus, therefore, seems to have gone out of his way to respect the customs and religions of conquered peoples. This is perhaps reflected in the judgement of the Greeks, the long-standing enemies of the Persians, who considered him both a great conqueror and a wise statesman.

In 530 BCE Cyrus went on a campaign against the Massagetae tribe, in central Asia, who were raiding the northwest frontier of his empire, and was killed in battle. His body was brought back to the new capital he had founded, Pasargadae, for burial.

Cambyses II

Cyrus was succeeded by his son, Cambyses II, who invaded Egypt in 525 BCE, and defeated the pharaoh, Psamtik III, at the battle of Pelusium. He then had himself crowned as Pharaoh, and adopted the titles and practices of a native ruler of Egypt. Despite the claims of Greek and Roman writers, there is no evidence that he despoiled Egyptian temples, though he did apparently limit the amount of tribute they could demand from their countrymen. Perhaps it was this – and of course a desire to break free of alien rule – that led to an Egyptian revolt against him, which he put down with great severity.

He spent the rest of his reign there. In 522 he heard news of a rebellion back in his homeland of Iran, but died (probably of accidental causes) on his way back to deal with it.

It is tempting to see in this revolt as a nationalist Iranian (or particularly Medean) reaction against being sidelined by the centralising policies of Cyrus and Cambyses (especially the latter). It seems that the Iranian priesthood, the magi, were involved, and large sections of the Iranian nobility lent their support. However, the details are obscure and it is dangerous to overstep the evidence. What does seem clear, however, was that there was widespread resentment at the high taxation which Cambyses was levying on the Iranians.

The rebels put a man called Gaumata on the throne, who shored up support for the rebellion by granting the Iranians three years remission of taxes. Gaumata ruled for seven months before being overthrown in 522 BCE by a counter-coup organized by a group of leading Persian nobles. According to the Greek historian Herodotus, the leaders of this coup, having achieved their aim of getting rid of Gaumata, then debated the best form of government to adopt for the empire. Rejecting the rule of the nobles as it would lead to factionalism, and the rule of the people, as it would lead to anarchy, they chose monarchy, and elected one of their number, Darius, as king.

Darius the Great

Darius was a member of the Achaemenid royal clan, though only distantly related to Cambyses and his father, Cyrus. Unsurprisingly, his claim was challenged by numerous rebels, and his first years as king were spent fighting for his throne. Rebellions in Elam (southwest Iran), Sardis, Phyrgia (both in western Asia Minor), Afghanistan, and central Asia all had to be put down. In 517 he went to Egypt to deal with trouble there.

Once his hold on power was secure, he expanded Persian power in western India, and into Europe. He led an expedition to the mouth of the river Danube, intent on reaching the steppes to fight against the Scythians (a constant threat to the empire). Venturing only a little further, he then returned, accepting Thrace and Macedonia into his empire. He also consolidated Persian control over the Greek cities of western Asia Minor (Ionia), through tyrants appointed (or at least, approved) by himself.

These actions set the stage for the Greek-Persian Wars, the first round of which was fought under Darius’ rule. When the Ionian Greek cities revolted against their Persian-appointed tyrants in 499 BCE, Darius’ generals spent six years bringing them back under Persian rule.

The Greek cities in Greece itself, particularly Athens, had lent much support to their cousins in Asia Minor. This made Darius realize that they posed an ongoing threat to the stability of empire. He therefore decided on the conquest of all Greece. He first sent an expeditions to reimpose firm Persian control over Thrace and Macedonia, which had been weakened by the Ionian revolt. He then sent a joint naval-military expedition to take Athens; this was defeated at the famous battle of Marathon (490 BCE).

Darius died before he could renew war against the Greeks, in 486 BCE, though not before presiding at the opening of a new canal in Egypt which linked the Red Sea with the river Nile.

Darius’ reforms

Darius is noted above all for having regularized the Persian administration of their empire, and thus putting it on a firmer footing. Cyrus and Cambyses had left the empire as a somewhat loose federation of self-governing satrapies, subject to irregular tribute and relying largely on pre-existing institutions and personnel. Unsurprisingly, the empire had almost fallen apart after Cambyses’ death. Darius had virtually to reconquer the satrapies; he then decided to weld them together into a strong, integrated empire.

His first task was to create an centralised standing army which was answerable to the king alone. He raised this in Iran, and at its core was a powerful elite corps of 10,000 Persian (and probably Mede) troops, the famous “Immortals”. These came under the king’s direct orders, and functioned as a royal guard.

In terms of provincial administration, Darius divided the empire into twenty satrapies. The governors (satraps) were appointed directly by the king, and were mostly Persian nobles or members of the royal house. The satrapies were subdivided into smaller administrative units, with their own governors either nominated by the central government or by the satraps.

Each satrapy had to pay a fixed annual tribute to the central treasury. The amount of tribute was set by a commission appointed by Darius, who visited the satrapies to determine the revenues of each district.

The system which Darius created was full of checks and balances, to prevent too much power concentrating in the hands of the satraps. Roving inspectors. the “eyes and ears of the king”, who reported directly to the king, visited each satrapy on a regular basis, to see that all was in order.

Darius improved the network of roads and way-stations throughout the empire, the better to extent his control over his far-flung territories. A system of government couriers carried messages speedily from his capital (or wherever he happened to be) to provincial officials. These measures of course stimulated long-distance trade, and to facilitate this Darius introduced a new silver coinage. He built and upgraded canals and underground waterways, and introduced some standardization to weights and measures.

He also built a new capital at Persepolis, with Ecbatana, in central Iran, serving as the summer capital. He chose Susa, however, to be the administrative seat of power, because of its accessibility and strategic location in relation to the rest of the empire.

Like Cyrus and Cambyses before him, Darius exercise toleration of the varied beliefs of his subjects. Indeed he patronized cults and temples other than his own; most famously he funded the rebuilding of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem.

By these measures, Darius placed the empire on foundations that would last for nearly two centuries.

Darius’ successors

Xerxes

Xerxes I (reigned 485-65 BCE), the son of Darius, inherited a revolt in Egypt, which had flared up right at the end of Darius’ reign. He put down the revolt with great severity and, abandoning any pretence of ruling the country as a pharaoh, absorbed it into the empire as just another satrapy. A little later a revolt in Babylonia led to the same outcome there.

Xerxes also inherited the task of bringing Greece under Persian control. He led a massive expedition into Greece in 480 BCE, but both his army and navy were defeated in a series of battles with the Greeks (480-79). As a result, the Persians lost all of their territories in Europe, and the Greek cities in Asia Minor again revolted. This time they were assisted by a powerful alliance of Greek cities under the leadership of Athens, called the Delian League. Greek successes against the Persians continued, until, after the battle of Eurymedon (466 BCE), active hostilities ceased.

Xerxes was murdered in a place coup in 465, and his son Artaxerxes I came to the throne (reigned 465-425 BCE).

Artaxerxes I

The troubled succession had a ripple effect throughout the empire, and rebellions broke out in Bactria and Egypt. The rebellion in Egypt took ten years to put down. Artaxexes’ reign was later troubled by another revolt, in Syria (c. 455).

Despite coming to the throne very young, Artaxerxes was a capable and humane man, though he gained a reputation (perhaps fabricated after his death) for being under the thumb of his wives and concubines. In his dealings with the Greek cities, he pursued a policy of weakening the Persian’s arch-enemy, Athens, by funding that city’s enemies in Greece. The Athenians responded by attacking the Persians in Egypt in Cyprus, but failed to achieve much. Artaxerxes negotiated a peace with the Greeks (the Peace of Callias) in 449-8 BCE, which effectively restored the situation which had prevailed before the Greek-Persian wars, with the Persians giving up their ambitions in Greece but retaining their control of the Ionian cities.

Darius II

Artaxerxes’ death in 424 BCE was followed by a period of instability, featuring coups and counter-coups, until one of Artaxerxes’ illegitimate sons, Ochus, took the throne. He assumed the royal name Darius II, and restored stability after this turbulent time. He pursued a policy of supporting Sparta against Athens, and the latter was decisively defeated in 404 BCE. In that year, however, Darius died; and at his death a major rebellion in Egypt led to that country breaking free of Persian control for several decades.

Artaxerxes II

Darius II was succeeded by his son, Artaxerxes II. His brother, Cyrus, satrap of Lydia, in Asia Minor, hired ten thousand Greek mercenaries and rebelled. He marched on Babylon (at that time serving as the imperial capital), but was stopped by the royal Persian army at the battle of Cunaxa (401). Cyrus was killed, and the ten thousand Greeks, now far from home, fought their way back to Greek territory over hundreds of miles of hostile territory. An account of their adventures was produced by one of their commanders, Xenephon; this would have an important influence on later generations of Greeks, including a young Macedonian prince called Alexander, who would wonder whether the mighty Persian empire was as powerful as it seemed.

Artaxerxes reigned for 45 years (404-358 BCE), the longest of any Achaemenid monarch. He failed in an attempt to reconquer Egypt (373 BCE), but was more successful in his dealings with the Greeks. When Sparta invaded Asia Minor, he funded Sparta’s enemies, and this had the desired effect of provoking war between the Greek cities. Artaxerxes was able to conclude a peace with them (in Greek history called the “King’s Peace“, 387 BCE) which recognised Spartan dominance on the Greek mainland while restoring full Persian control over the Greek cities of Asia Minor. Artaxerxes also had to campaign against steppe nomads on his central Asian frontier, whom he soundly defeated.

In 372 BCE a number of satraps in Asia Minor rebelled, and it took ten years to overcome them, by a mix of military action, diplomacy and compromise (362 BCE).

Artaxerxes III

In 358 BCE Artaxerxes II died and was succeeded by his son Artaxerxes III (reigned 358-337 BCE). His reign was one of constant struggle to keep the empire together, as centrifugal forces tried to tear it apart. Like most of his predecessors, he had troubles with the Greeks, this time Athens again, but forced this city to a peace which reduced her power considerably (355). Like his father, he had to campaign on his central Asian frontier. But it was the satraps, particularly of Asia Minor and other western provinces, who caused him most problems. He faced repeated rebellions from this source, and he even ordered the demilitarisation of the satrapies of Asia Minor. This order was ignored, of course, but in 353 BCE the royal forces defeated the satraps’ armies and they were disbanded.

In 351 BCE, Artaxerxes attempted to recover Egypt, but this ended in a heavy defeat for his army there. This encouraged the satraps of Phoenicia, Asia Minor and Cyprus to rebel. It took Artaxerxes and his generals until 343 BCE to suppress it (which they were only able to do with the help of large numbers of Greek troops). In the course of this war, the historic Phoenician city of Sidon, the centre of the revolt, was utterly destroyed.

Artaxerxes followed the ending of this revolt by another attempt to reconquer Egypt. He collected a huge army, whose troops had been hardened in the fierce war against the western satraps, and containing large contingents of Greeks, and marched into Egypt. He defeated the Egyptian pharaoh, Nectanebo II, at the second battle of Pelusium (343). The Persian forces were then quickly able to occupy the rest of the country.

Artaxerxes, who seems to have become somewhat unhinged by the opposition he had encountered throughout his reign (he had inflicted frightful revenge on the people of Sidon after its fall), set about looting temples, raising city walls and terrorising the people of Egypt. He seems to have been aiming at systematically weakening the country through very heavy taxation, persecution of the priests and other methods so that it would never again revolt against Persia.

The whole empire was now at last firmly under Artaxerxes’ control, and the remaining years of his reign were stable and peaceful.

The fall of the Persian empire

One development worried the Persian king, however. This was the growing power of Macedoniaunder its able and ambitious king, Philip II. Artexerxes employed diplomacy to try and limit Philip’s influence, and sent troops to aid his enemies to resist Macedonia’s advance.

In 337 BCE Artaxerxes was murdered along with most of his family by his vizier, Bagoas. After the brief reign of Artexerxes IV (also murdered) Bagoas engineered the rise of Darius III, a nephew of Artaxerxes IV, to the throne. Darius III forced Bagoas to swallow poison.

In 334 BCE, king Alexander III, the youthful king of Macedonia (who would become known to history as Alexander the Great), invaded Asia Minor. He defeated Persian armies at Granicus (334 BCE), Issus (333 BCE) and Gaugamela (331 BCE). Susa and Persepolis surrendered in 330 BCE. He then headed to Ecbatana where Darius III had fled. Darius was taken prisoner by his relative, Bessus, satrap of Bactria. As Alexander approached, Bessus had Darius murdered. He then declared himself Darius’ successor, as Artaxerxes V, before retreating into Central Asia. However, he was intercepted, and brought to Alexander. He was put on trial and executed. Meanwhile Alexander had had Darius’ body given an honourable burial in Persepolis.

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