The identification of Assyrian personal names in Babylonian sources poses a challenge because there is a considerable degree of overlap between the name repertoires of Babylonia and Assyria in the first millennium BCE. As a first step, this chapter identifies three relevant categories of names attested in Babylonian sources: distinctively Assyrian names, distinctively Babylonian names, and names common to both Assyria and Babylonia. The next step is to isolate names belonging to the first category: those that are distinctively Assyrian. To this end, the chapter identifies four diagnostic features which may occur separately or in combination: (i) Assyrian divine elements; (ii) Assyrian toponyms; (iii) Assyrian dialectal forms, and (iv) vocabulary particular to the Neo-Assyrian onomasticon. Orthography and phonology, including the treatment of sibilants, are further considerations. The chapter also addresses the historical background since this provides important context for investigating the presence of Assyrian name-bearers in Babylonia, both before and after the fall of Assyria in 612 BCE.

The chapter deals with the administration of Alexander’s empire. The main focus is on the satrapal administration. Although Alexander borrowed the system of regional governance from the Achaemenids, he introduced changes to it, adapting it to the new circumstances. Alexander’s actions in the administrative sphere were not aimed at a realization of any abstract ideal. They were taken to satisfy specific needs arising at given points. Nonetheless, it is obvious that all the actions of the king were in pursuit of one main goal: the creation of an effective administrative system for the Imperial lands that would allow him to control and exploit the subjugated peoples better.

The chapter discusses ancient and modern treatments of Alexander’s death. It describes the omens said to foretell his death and their cultural and historical background, treating ancient versions of what led to Alexander’s death and attempts by historians and scientists to detect the working of poison, conspiracy, or less-violent and sinister causes. The rest of the chapter focuses on Alexander’s so-called last plans, their authenticity, the reasons for their rejection, and the contentious history of his body and burial.

The proper transcription of logograms used for verbs in Neo-Babylonian names is not always clear for modern readers: as logograms are polyvalent, it is often possible to interpret written Neo-Babylonian names in multiple ways. This chapter shows that Babylonian scribes followed a consistent orthographic system. They used logograms very carefully and avoided confusion by resorting to syllabic spellings, phonetic complements, or unique name elements. The chapter explains, step by step, how this system worked, and it offers practical tools for determining the correct reading of logographically spelled Babylonian names.

Alexander III inherited the Persian campaign from his father Philip II, who had aimed to conquer Asia Minor, probably in order to secure a permanent source of income from the revenues of its rich cities. Going further, Alexander ended the reign of the Achaemenid dynasty established by Darius I in 522/21 BC and campaigned to the borders of Achaemenid influence in the Indus region. Contrary to the panhellenic propaganda preserved by the Alexander historiographers, the war was about the acquisition of territory, influence and wealth – not a war of ‘liberation’ or ‘reprisal’. Since there exists no Persian historiography and the extant numismatic, administrative and archaeological sources reveal little of political history, it is difficult to view the events from a Persian perspective. However, scholarship’s traditional biased images of the Persian empire as weak, chaotic, compromised by decadence and inner strife, and hence doomed to fall, have come to be rejected as reflecting Greek and Roman stereotypes. In current scholarship, it is stressed that Alexander appropriated and adapted most of the political and administrative structures of the Achaemenid empire: it was the existing system that supported his conquest.

A. is born (6 Hecatombaeon = July 20) to Philip II and the Epirote princess Olympias.

Although Alexander’s campaign has received less attention than it might from the perspective of geographical studies, the image of Alexander himself as an explorer has, paradoxically, enjoyed great success in the modern historiography. This is partly to be explained by the widespread belief that Aristotle had a great influence on his student. From this perspective, the image of Alexander as an intellectual and a friend of knowledge fits perfectly with that of an explorer eager to know the world. In the eyes of many scholars, an assumption of this sort has allowed Alexander to become more than a mere conqueror. A new way of understanding this problem is proposed here, since we consider that both Alexander the conqueror and Alexander the explorer were essential and indissociable elements of Alexander the king, that is to say, they were indispensable characteristics of any Argead monarch, and these two facets of rulership must be studied together. In other words, knowing the world was one more way to conquer it and rule it.

Thanks to the career of Alexander the Great, Macedonia has become synonymous with military innovation and territorial conquest. The question of how he was able to accomplish this has been explored in detail by generations of scholars, and an exhaustive list of works explore this topic, by scholars including Heckel, Hatzopoulo, Karunanithy, Sekunda, Heckel, Bosworth, Engels and Fuller. This chapter outlines key elements of Alexander’s army and tactics to develop a discussion about some of the fundamental shifts he brought onto the battlefield and how they reflect aspects of Macedonian identity.

Alexander continues to be a subject of military as well as historical or cultural interest. In modern times, he began as the greatest of Great Captains, then became the inventor of modern mobile warfare, the model for romantic military genius, and, in recent decades, the unlikely precedent for leaders as different as Hitler and Mao Tse Tung. The writers promoting him include both Clausewitz and the contemporary Israeli writer, Martin Van Creveld; his detractors include Frederick the Great of Prussia and the most influential modern British military writer, B. H. Liddell-Hart. Machiavelli, Montaigne, and Montesquieu are among the civilians who join military men in giving opinions of Alexander as both a strategist and a fighter of battles. This chapter begins, however, with Julian, whose dialogue, Caesares, is the first extended comparison of great generals in the Western literary tradition. From there it moves to Machiavelli and thence to Italian as well as French writers, before going on to recent literature dominated by writers in German and English. The chapter ends with speculation as to why Alexander remains an authoritative yet iconoclastic figure in military history.

The Macedonia Alexander left in spring 334 BCE was principally the making of his father Philip II, though Philip’s ‘Macedonia proper’ had been largely a recovery of the Argead realm of Alexander I more than a century earlier. Early expansion from Pieria into the central plain of Bottiaea established a core of Argead control in Lower Macedonia. Following the retreat of Xerxes’ army after 479, Alexander I took full advantage of a power void to expand into the eastern region, conquering eastern Mygdonia, annexing Crestonia and Bisaltia eastwards to the Strymon valley and gaining control of rich supplies of mineral deposits and timber. Most of the eastern territory was lost after 450 BCE, but Philip II, in addition to recovering the old kingdom and consolidating Upper with Lower Macedonia, through conquest and diplomacy more than doubled the politically controlled territory of Macedonia. His transformation of Macedonia included the subjugation of Paeonians, Illyrians, Thracians and Triballians, the opening up of trade and securing of mining, control of Epirus, domination of Thessaly and the uniting of the southern Greek poleis under his hegemony. Alexander inherited a stable kingdom, a tested army of Macedonians, subordinate allies and a secure supply line to Asia.

Throughout the long sixth century BCE, family names and conventions for recording them were well established among a restricted segment of the Babylonian urban population. The practice emerged in the eighth and seventh centuries BCE and had antecedents stretching back to the late second millennium. Family names were derived from either ancestral names – typically masculine but occasionally feminine – or occupational titles derived from temple functions. In texts, individuals were designated as descendants of the family name in genealogies that covered two, three, or even four generations. It can be unclear to a modern reader if the final patrilineal ancestor in a genealogy designated a family name or an actual person. This is especially true of two-tier genealogies in which the second tier could be a family name or the father’s name, and the chapter outlines strategies for distinguishing family names in such cases. Family names became common at different times in different parts of Babylonia and some family names were localized to specific locales. The practice can first be observed at Babylon and nearby cities and the spread of some family names was due to the movement of people. The practice never took hold at Nippur.

This chapter introduces the reader to the repertoire of personal names recorded in cuneiform texts from Babylonia in the first millennium BCE. It offers a historical introduction to the text corpus and outlines the aims and limitations of the present volume within the current state of research.

Macedonian conqueror, in both Jewish and Christian sources, was a composite and of complicated design. It was constantly created and recreated, using varied techniques and inspirations, which resulted in a number of disparate, fragmentary projections. The dominant features of these projections were selected according to the immediate need and agenda of the text in which the figure of Alexander appeared. There is a certain continuity between the development of Alexander stories and legends in the Jewish milieu and those of the Greek and Roman pagan traditions, but there are significant innovations as well. As for the Christian authors, as much as they were familiar with Classical writings on Alexander, they would also exploit the Jewish corpus of Alexander legends, some of which have no direct parallel in Greco-Roman pagan writings.