The Priest and the Great King: Temple-Palace Relations in the Persian Empire

Abstract

The Priest and the Great King: Temple-Palace Relations in the Persian Empire, by Lisbeth S. Fried. Biblical and Judaic Studies from the University of California, San Diego 10. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2004. Pp. xvi + 266. $39.50 (hardcover). ISBN 1575060906. Lisbeth Fried's The Priest and the Great King is an ambitious monograph in the Biblical and Judaic Studies series from the University of California, San Diego. The subject of Fried's inquiry is the nature of the relationship between the Achaemenid administration and temples throughout the empire. Fried examines this relationship in order to determine the system of imperial governance and control in Achaemenid Persian Empire, especially with a view to the situation in Yehud. Particularly, Fried is concerned to evaluate the relative merits of three major theories: (1) the bureaucratic model of imperial control proposed by S. M. Eisenstadt, which assumes that empires exercise strict control over their territories in order to ensure that resources are directed from the periphery toward the center and concomitantly do not allow local elites to cultivate power and control local resources; (2) the theory of imperial authorization for local customs and norms commonly associated with Peter Frei and Klaus Koch; and (3) the theory of self-governance that posits limited exercise of control from an imperial center except to ensure that taxation runs smoothly. In the introduction, Fried anticipates her own conclusion that Eisenstadt's theory best explains Achaemenid imperialism. Although her initial research may not have been conceived in this way, there is a sense in the monograph that this early hypothesis shapes the conclusion with the evidence filtered to achieve the desired result. Still, it is impressive the way that Fried considers and goes about her task. Rather than limiting the analysis to the situation in Yehud, Fried assumes that the relationship between the Achaemenid administration and the Jerusalem temple was likely similar to the relationships between the Achaemenid administration and temples in other parts of the empire-an eminently reasonable proposition. Thus, Fried sets out to examine the three hypotheses against archival and inscriptional data from the temples of the western satrapies of Babylon, Egypt, and Asia Minor (p. 6). In the course of this analysis, Fried sifts through an awesome catalogue of primary texts. On that basis alone, Fried ought to be commended and this monograph considered a worthwhile addition to professional or personal libraries. On the other hand, it also makes the task of evaluating Fried's evidence very difficult: requiring the expertise of an Assyriologist, an Egyptologist, a specialist in Achaemenid Asia Minor, and a biblical scholar. In analyzing temple-palace relations in Babylonia, Fried primarily surveys the archival data from the temples of Eanna at Uruk and Ebabbar at Sippar. Fried notes that the extant archives are mostly limited to the Neo-Babylonian period and the early Achaemenid period up to Darius and that they contain seemingly banal commercial and economic information. She analyzes this data for its most salient contributions to the problem at hand: the identity of the temple personnel, their relationship to the central administration, and the nature of the allocation of resources. Fried concludes that the highest positions in the temple were appointments by the central administration or were responsible to it, either directly to the Great King or his satrapal governor, and that the Achaemenids stopped payments to the temples so that the resources flowed only one way, from temple to palace. This, she argues, comports with Eisenstadt's theory of imperial control rather than the other theories of imperial authorization and self-governance. Apart from these conclusions, Fried rightly observes that the situation in Babylonia, as a satrapy near to the central administration in Persia, may not reflect the situation throughout the rest of the empire, especially in peripheral regions. …