The Royal Palace Institution in the First Millennium BC

Book excerpt: The first millennium saw two great powers embracing the East-West divide: the Achaemenid and Hellenistic empires. The papers in this volume examine how their powerful new kings created palatial institutions suitable to reign subjugated lands with monarchic traditions. The royal palace, both the building and the institution, is regarded here as a microcosmos, a sort of lens through which to view historical topics such as the relationship between conquered and conqueror, notions of kingship, the development of monarchic rules and the mutual acculturation of East and West. Four major periods provide the volume with a loose chronological structure. The pre-Achaemenid section includes papers on Cyprus, Assyria and Babylon, while the Achaemenid section contains a survey of central palaces plus considerations of lesser-known peripheral establishments in Armenia and Georgia. The Hellenistic papers also address palaces in Macedonia, Caucasian Iberia and Albania, and Syria.