Communication, language and power in the Achaemenid Empire: the correspondence of the satrap Arshama

The Achaemenid Persian Empire (550-330 BC) was the largest state-formation in Europe or Western Asia before the Roman Empire and at greatest extent stretched from Greece to western India and from Central Asia to the northern Sudan. Multi- and cross-disciplinary study of its history through written and material evidence from a great variety of cultural settings has developed remarkably since the late 1970s (characteristically through collaborative enterprises) and it is this that provides the network's over-arching academic context: its root purpose is to advance understanding of Persian imperial culture.

The network plan starts from 34 documents (33 in Aramaic, one in Egyptian demotic) either written by Arshama or his officials or addressed to him or alluding to his official activities. 26 form a single archive from an unknown Egyptian site, 7 come from a Jewish archive at Elephantine and one from Saqqara. The specific aim is to use the documents as the focus for (a) investigating how the Persian imperial state ruled and exploited its subjects and (b) drawing scholars from several UK HEIs into a conscious Achaemenid Studies network. The documents fit the purpose perfectly since
- they provide primary evidence from the heart of the imperial bureaucracy and the entourage of one its most powerful figures
- they have never received in their own right the systematic historical and linguistic study they deserve
- as (predominantly) Semitic documents from the circle of an Iranian governor in Egypt (the empire's second-wealthiest province and a region with an exceptional cultural and historical identity) their study is of interest to and requires the expertise of a wide range of philological and historical specialisms

We shall pursue this aim by four means

Close reading of texts. 24 sessions in Oxford will provide a basic introduction to Achaemenid Aramaic and the opportunity to read through the documents in detail. The actual parchments will be available for examination.
Objectives
- acquisition of language skills and an ability to engage with the linguistic aspect of problems in historical interpretation
- new readings of parts of documents that survive in damaged or fragmentary form
- informed contribution to workshops and conference

Workshops and conference. 5 workshops will address major issues in Achaemenid history for which the Arshama documents provide one (but characteristically only one) of the important bodies of evidence. A conference will draw together conclusions reached, and new problems identified, in the workshops and be an opportunity to present projects results to an academic audience beyond the network's core participants. Both workshops and conference will benefit from the participation of major non-UK scholars in the field.
Objectives
- fuller understanding of the correspondence as an archive associated with a particular office-holder
- better location of the correspondence in the context of other types of bureaucratic document from other imperial regions
- sharper sense of the relationship between imperial masters and their subjects
- new perspectives on many issues of governmental procedure and ideology

Exhibition. An exhibition of original documents and associated material from the Bodleian dovetailing with an 'Arshama trail' in the Ashmolean. There will be an annotated catalogue and an accompanying public lecture.
Objectives
- to publicize the Arshama material and its implications
- to provide (in the catalogue) a resource for outreach activities

Publication. Research results will be disseminated in two forms: a large multi-author volume (containing texts, commentary and thematic papers) and an Oxford-hosted web-site (texts, photographs, basic annotation).
Objectives
- dissemination of new data and ideas to the relevant academic community
- provision of a reference point for further research on Achaemenid Egypt and on other regions or aspects of the empire.

Though the network's activities do not in the first instance address constituencies beyond the academic world, its findings have the potential to interest a wider public. These will be presented - in print, in library and museum exhibitions, through a public lecture, and online on a website - in forms that can benefit not only the professional academic but also the general, historically-minded public.

In view of the attention that is currently paid to Iran in the media and in certain areas of policy-making, these latter groups may turn out to be quite sizeable. More generally the network's activities belong within the wider project of breaking down the barriers, not only institutionally disciplinary but also intellectually and morally substantive, between 'west' and 'east'. The point is to confront the paradigm of 'Oriental despotism' (much abused by certain thinkers close to recent policy-makers) with an informed sense of the complexity and depth of a Middle Eastern past in which an Iranian elite could use a Semitic lingua franca in its administration of an Egyptian, Jewish, Phrygian or Bactrian population and evoke in Greek subjects and opponents not only hostility but also an uneasy sense of admiration. The activities and outputs of the research network thus have the potential of increasing awareness and understanding of this past among the general public. Public (notably media) attention will be drawn to the acitivities of the network through the Press Office at Oxford University.