This volume is based on the 2013 Schweich Lectures of the British Academy by a highly esteemed heavyweight of Semitic epigraphy, French scholar André Lemaire, Emeritus Professor of Hebrew and Aramaic philology and epigraphy at the École Practique des Hautes Études, Sorbonne, Paris. Thirty years ago, Israel Ephʾal lamented in “Syria-Palestine under Achaemenid Rule,” in the venerable Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 4: Persia, Greece, and the Western Mediterranean c. 525 to 479 B.C. ([Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988], 139–64) the paucity of relevant primary material (including inscriptions) needed to write a reliable history of Syria-Palestine during the Achaemenid Period (p. 141). Thirty years later, we face a significantly changed situation. Numerous academic volumes have been written focusing on the archaeology, history, and religion of this period. The current volume adds to this growing body of knowledge by focusing on the significant contribution of epigraphy to this historical project....
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