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The Carians of Borsippa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

Caroline Waerzeggers
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Extract

The state channelled the influx of foreign groups into Babylonian society in various ways during the Chaldean and Persian periods (mid-first millennium BC). The military land-grant system placed incoming groups in the Babylonian countryside and tied them to the king through the principle of “land-for-service”. This scheme is known mainly by its results, for instance in the numerous fiefs occupied by ethnic groups in the area of Nippur in the late fifth century BC (Stolper, Entrepreneurs and Empire). Other foreigners were brought to Babylonia as war captives and were sold into slavery or donated to the country 's many temples (e.g. Bongenaar/Haring, JCS 46).

Unpublished records from Borsippa point towards the existence of another system through which the state regulated the income of foreign ethnic groups. This system relied on the resources of private Babylonian citizens to provide rations and perhaps also shelter to individually assigned foreigners. The dossier that sheds light on this scheme does not answer all the questions that it raises, but it does show the basic workings of the system and herein it is unique, even though the system itself is perhaps not without historical precedent. The importance of this dossier is enhanced by the fact that it deals with an ethnic group that is otherwise badly attested in Babylonia: the Carians.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 68 , 2006 , pp. 1 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 2006

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