ABSTRACT

The material for studying the Achaemenid empire presents particular difficulties, not so much because it is sparse but because it is very disparate. The many different peoples embraced by the empire had their own, often very long-established, distinctive traditions for commemorating the past and of writing, artistic forms, religion, social and political institutions, eating habits and, of course, languages. These were modified in different ways and over time as they interacted with the Persian régime. But the many local traditions and forms did not die out, and this helps to explain some of the great diversity in the evidence available to the historian. A further problem with the material we have is its very uneven temporal and spatial distribution: the bulk of the documentation clusters around the late sixth and early fifth centuries and is throughout, almost exclusively, concentrated on the western, above all the north-western, section of the empire. In this chapter, I delineate the main sources only. Many more will be found in the succeeding chapters, where they are discussed as the need arises. The introduction to each chapter serves to provide a critical assessment of the relevant evidence.