Darius and Xerxes in Babylonia

Abstract

The available evidence from Babylonia, supplemented by that from Egypt (see R. A. Parker's article in this issue), definitely confirm the traditional date of 522/21 for the accession year of Darius. Once this is recognized, it is obvious that all the material from Babylonia must fit in one way or another into the general picture. That it does so is clear from the following summary. Herodotus, in Book iii, chapters 66-67, informs us that Cambyses reigned for seven years and five months. As others have shown, this figure is absolutely correct. The earliest document recording the sole rule of Cambyses1 is dated on the twelfth day of the sixth month, 530 B.C.; from the Behistun inscription, ? 11, we know that Bardiya revolted on the fourteenth day of the twelfth month (523/22); Cambyses reigned, therefore, six full months of 530/29 plus six full years plus eleven months of 523/22-a total of seven years and five months. A few scribes in Babylonia, as is to be expected, were unaware of Bardiya's revolt; others, of Cambyses' death. The last tablet dated to Cambyses, signed on the twenty-third day of the first month of the eighth year,2 was written by such a scribe. But the scribe who wrote the first extant published tablet of Bardiya knew that the last month of the Babylonian year 523/22 was in itself Bardiya's "accession year"; therefore, he correctly dated a document written in the