Achaemenid Studies fall between the academic divisions of Ancient Near Eastern Studies and
Archeology Ancient History Classical Philology Egyptology and Semitic Languages. No single
scholar can cover the many cultures that were united under the umbrella of this huge empire
alone and in-depth. Interdisciplinary approaches are a necessity in order to tackle the
challenges that the diverse textual records in Akkadian Demotic Egyptian Elamite Aramaic and
Greek present us with. This volume the proceedings of a conference on taxation and fiscal
administration in the Achaemenid Empire held in Amsterdam in 2018 contains contributions on
Babylonia Egypt the Levant Asia Minor and Arachosia written by specialists in the
respective languages and cultures. The question that lies at the basis of this volume is how
the empire collected revenue from the satrapies whether and how local institutions were
harnessed to make imperial rule successful. The contributions investigate what kind of taxes
were imposed in what area and how tax collection was organized and administered. Since we lack
imperial state archives local records are the more important as they are our only reliable
source that allows us to move beyond the famous but unverifiable statement on Achaemenid state
finances in Herodotus Histories 3 89-97.
