Just send me words. The Imperial Political Economies in Ancient Bactria

The present contribution aims to sketch a sociology of power of the relations between the Achaemenid administration in Bactria and the representatives of the territorial communities (at different levels of the social ladder). To this end, a crucial document from the recently edited corpus of Aramaic Documents from Ancient Bactria – ADAB A1 – will be investigated. This shall be done in the light of both comparative evidence from another corpus of Central Asian origin (the Bactrian Documents from Northern Afghanistan) and more recent theoretical reflection on the structural limits of imperial power in the ancient world in the face of both environmental and socio-political factors. It shall be shown how the presence of the Achaemenid imperial structure in Central Asia encouraged – to the point of endangering its very own stability – the exacerbation of social tensions inherent in local power dynamics, which at the same time proved instrumental in imposing the imperial governing apparatus successfully. The consequences of this phenomenon, crucial as it was to the perpetuation and expansion of the Empire in a territory such as ancient Afġānistān, would become evident at the time of Alexander’s invasion.