III‐B (Archeological Sources: Chapters 15–24) presents an overview of sites, excavations, and finds, structured by major geographical regions.
Section IV (History: Chapters 25–52) is divided into three subsections: A Predecessors of the Persian Empire and Its Rise, B From Gaumāta to Alexander, and C Under Persian Rule. As is immediately obvious, it has a much wider focus than the history of the empire itself. This reflects our intention to situate and understand the empire within the broader historical developments of the first millennium BCE and their specific contexts. The empire, on the one hand, transcended the boundaries of its ancient Near Eastern predecessor states, but on the other hand it followed their general trajectories. Some of its core areas were indeed “Iranian”; nevertheless the Achaemenid Persian Empire was not an Iranian state but a multiethnic and multiregional giant that drew from age‐old Near Eastern traditions while at the same time introducing novel agendas and traits. This also, incidentally, applies mutatis mutandis to what followed with and after the conquest of the empire by Alexander III. Chapters 25–28 are, therefore, devoted to Media, Urartu, Assyria, Babylonia, and Elam. The great conquests of Cyrus and Cambyses are also part of subsection A, since the usurpation of the Persian throne by Darius I marks a major change in the history of the empire. Chapters 30–33 deal with the history of the Achaemenid Empire in its narrower sense, from the crisis after the death of Cambyses and Darius I's seizure of power through the fifth and fourth centuries BCE to Darius III and the conquest by Alexander.
Subsection C (Under Persian Rule: Chapters 34–52) already mediates between Sections IV and V, since it illustrates the empire's astonishing capacity to create unity from diversity. This subsection offers a survey of all the major regions of the empire and the local dimensions of its history through the 200 years of its existence. The success of the empire was due to the fact that its developed structures and bureaucracies had local as well as transregional trajectories. It is this overarching and general layout that is the main focus of Section V (Structures and Communication: Chapters 53–58). As has only become properly evident in recent years, the empire maintained already established local structures, at least to a certain extent, and developed an imperial and transregional superstructure that guaranteed its efficiency in collecting taxes and manpower and in maintaining communications between Central Asia, India, Iran, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Syria, and Anatolia.
The administrative and economic dimension of the empire's structure is the general focus of Section VI (Administration and Economy: Chapters 59–69), which is organized into three subsections: A Imperial Administration, B Local Administration, and C Economy. It has already been stressed that a major characteristic of the empire's highly developed bureaucratic apparatus was the interplay between local and transregional structures. This interplay is highlighted by a variety of sources and archives that run from Egypt across Syria, Asia Minor, and Babylonia to Fars and Central Asia. The focus is not only on structures but also on persons, and on rulers as well as the ruled, i.e. on the development of imperial elites with estates all over the empire and their transregional radius of engagement as well as on locals who kept the empire's structures going by paying taxes and delivering soldiers and manpower. The chapter also deals with transregional migration and deportations. The background to the latter is often difficult to grasp in detail; an element of punishment may sometimes be combined with a plan to develop underpopulated and economically weak regions of the empire. The economic aspect of imperial administration is more comprehensively dealt with in the last subsection, which discusses taxes and tribute, temple economy, and entrepreneurship and “banks.”
Section VII (Society and Politics: Chapters 70–78) is concerned with another structural aspect, namely the sociohistorical dimension. It unfolds the social makeup of the empire, with its wide reach from slave to Great King. Because of the source situation, the imperial centers with their residences, courts, and court life feature heavily in this context. Since the satraps in the empire's provinces tended to mirror and imitate the Great Kings' attitudes and actions, this chapter reveals an imperial dimension as well. It describes places and techniques of imperial politics, such as banqueting and gift exchange, and highlights how the king and his court dealt with diplomacy and jurisdiction. Royal enactments were staged and performed in a ceremonial setting in which clothes and insignia played an important role. But it is not only the official aspects of monarchic rule that are taken into account; attention is also paid to the Great Kings' leisure activities, among which hunting wild game loomed especially large. Finally, as in all societies throughout world history, sex and gender are an integral part of social life that have to be given appropriate consideration.
Section VIII. (The Persian Empire at War: Chapters 79–82) investigates the military dimension. It goes without saying that the empire was the major military superpower of its time. Its ability to mobilize armies with manpower from all over its territory was more than impressive. Moreover, it was the first Near Eastern empire to build up a navy as an independent force that matched the quality and strength of its vast ground forces. All of this comes through in Greek reports of the so‐called Persian Wars, although, ironically, these accounts do not explicitly highlight the empire's organizational and infrastructural strength in mounting a campaign by a combined land and naval force at its outmost western fringes, but instead accentuate the Great Kings' hubris and arrogance. However, Chapters 79–82 do not focus only on the organizational skills of the empire in raising and recruiting vast armies; they also investigate ideology and the specific ways in which the empire and its kings legitimated the imperial war machine.
Section IX (Religion and Worship: Chapters 83–88) deals with cult and belief in the empire. This is a subject with many facets and the six contributions cover a wide range of topics. The section is one in which dissent within modern scholarship looms particularly large. We have made a conscious choice not to harmonize these different voices and opinions but to make plain the diversity of conceptions and reconstructions found in modern research. In this way the reader can get a proper flavor of the controversies surrounding the religion of Achaemenid rulers and their elites, and of the question as to whether their belief system may be described as Zoroastrianism, Mazdaism, or neither. The section also develops a broader perspective, however,
