From Memphis to Babylon
African Individuals and Groups in Texts from Chaldean and Achaemenid Babylonia
by Mattias Karlsson
The overarching aim of this work is to discuss relations between Africa and Mesopotamia. The more precise aims of this study are to identify Africans (Egyptians, Kushites, Libyans) in Babylonian texts from the Chaldean (626-539 BCE) and Achaemenid (539-331 BCE) periods, and to discuss the presence of Africans in Chaldean and Achaemenid Babylonia from the viewpoints of individual-biographic and collective-demographic levels and perspectives.
The first civilizations in world history, Egypt and Mesopotamia, are often studied separately. This study takes another approach and focuses on relations between these two river-based cultures. This study deals with African-Babylonian interaction in 626-331 BCE, during which Babylonia (today’s southern Iraq) first was the centre of a state that dominated the ancient Near East and then an important province in the Achaemenid empire. During these 300 years, clashes between Saite Egypt (664-525) and Chaldean Babylonia (626-539) as well as the Persian conquest of Egypt led to a transfer of power and people “from Memphis to Babylon”. The overarching aim of this work is to discuss relations between Africa and Mesopotamia. The more precise aims of this study are to identify Africans (Egyptians, Kushites, Libyans) in Babylonian texts from the Chaldean (626-539) and Achaemenid (539-331) periods, and to discuss the presence of Africans in Chaldean and Achaemenid Babylonia from the viewpoints of individual-biographic and collective-demographic levels and perspectives. The following research questions (centred on five interrogative words) are posed. Who were these Africans (in terms of ethnicity, gender/sex, age, and class)? What did these people do (in terms of profession)? When did they live (in terms of reign or time period)? Where did they live (in terms of village, city, and region)? How were they incorporated into the Babylonian realm (in terms of forced/voluntary, first/second generation, etc.)? – The presence of the African officials in the service of Chaldean and Achaemenid Babylonia points to a complex process in which both adaptation and co-optating played part. The individual’s wish or need to adapt in order to survive co-existed with an external pressure from the state level that aimed to make the African deportees into loyal and profitable subjects. The transfer from Memphis to Babylon must have entailed a continuous re-evaluation of what it meant to be a part of the Egyptian civilization by the rivers of Babylon.
- By (author) Mattias Karlsson
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