Quotes
A practice repeatedly attested in the Neo-Assyrian period was the appointment of a substitute king. When omens predicted that the king's life was in danger, a man was selected to replace him temporarily and the true king went into hiding, to reappear only once the danger had passed (and the substitute king probably was murdered).
The situation was so confused that the Sumerian King List exclaimed: “Who was king? Who was not king?”
Herodotus imagined there had been a sequence of world empires in Asia before the Persian one that the Greeks confronted. He knew about Assyria and Persia, but in between them was a void. This he filled with the Medes, and thereby he created a phantom empire whose image is still widely accepted today.
Babil'in Asma Bahçeleri
The lack of clear archaeological proof is reinforced by a silence in the most eloquent ancient written sources about Babylon. No Neo-Babylonian building inscription mentions gardens, nor does the cuneiform Description of Babylon, a set of five tablets that list Babylon's temples, gates, streets, and so on.
Archaeologically, the burning down of a city is more visible than its survival.
The fact that the monument with the laws stood in a place where people could consult it is important – even if they were unable to read, they were aware of the fact that Hammurabi guaranteed justice in his kingdom.
Yunan-Pers Savaşları
To many scholars Xerxes' losses there were inconsequential and unimportant (Briant 2002a: 542) and life went on as usual in Persepolis (Kuhrt 2007a: 239). To the Persians it was not a big deal. The Greeks, however, saw their victory as the result of their political and cultural superiority and started a long tradition of contrasting the west to the east, a process of self-definition often called Orientalism.