TOWARDS A FRAMEWORK FOR INTERPRETING SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CHANGE IN BABYLONIA DURING THE LONG 6th CENTURY BCE

In a recent contribution, the present author discussed the significant developments in the social fabric of Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid Babylonia, contrasting the ‘long 6th century’ — the period between Nabopolassar’s establishment of the Chaldean dynasty in 626 and the putting down of the revolts against Xerxes in 484 — with the Late Achaemenid period, that is, the decades between 484 and the Macedonian conquest of Babylonia in 331.³ In order to integrate the results in the wider discourse on the exercise of state power in the pre-industrial world, a framework suggested by economist Douglass North (North et al. 2009) was employed that