This remarkable volume sets out to present the evidence and characteristics of some of the most important corpuses of material to be preserved in manuscript tradition or to have been recovered by archaeology, the royal and imperial correspondences of the great empires of antiquity. The focus is on empires rather than smaller states, a coherent approach which serves well to highlight both similarities and differences among the different administrative systems as well as to put systematic developments in historical perspective. The parameters are set out by Karen Radner in her introductory chapter “Long Distance Communication and the Cohesion of Early Empires”. The empires included are the Egyptian New Kingdom and the Hittite, Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian, Achaemenid, Hellenistic and Roman empires. The range of languages covered by this spread - Egyptian, Hittite, Luwian, Akkadian (Assyrian and Babylonian), Aramaic, Elamite, Latin and Greek - is impressive enough and hand in hand with this the range of materials on which these texts were recorded is also varied, comprising clay tablets, wooden writing boards, papyrus, leather and stone. The span has its origins in research on royal correspondence of the Assyrian empire from the earlier part of the first millennium bce, so that the cases studied frame this neatly from a chronological perspective. Explicitly not dealt with are, for example, the correspondence of the Ur III empire and the myriad letters from the palace bureaucracies of the Old Babylonian period. Although to some degree understandable - the Old Babylonian material in particular is perhaps just too vast - the omission does mean the work does not give quite the complete story. That is however a small point. The work succeeds in achieving its ambition brilliantly.

Turning to the specific studies, Jana Mynářová starts with a contribution on “Egyptian State Correspondence in the New Kingdom: The Letters of the Levantine Client Kings in the Amarna Correspondence and Contemporary Evidence”. The Amarna correspondence is the record of communications of the Pharaoh both with independent states (the great powers Hattusa, Mittanni, Assyria and Babylonia; also Alashiya and Arzawa) and with the Egyptian client states along the Levant. Only one other New Kingdom royal letter is known, a missive written in hieratic and preserved in two copies on papyrus from the site of Merwer in the southern Fayyum. Mynářová reviews the participants in these exchanges along with associated chancellery practices; the results of the analysis of the clay of the actual tablets are also introduced.

In the next chapter “State Correspondence in the Hittite World” Mark Weeden addresses the internal correspondence from the imperial period of the Hittite state (ca. 1450–1200 bce). In contrast to the other cases in this book, the archaeological context of the majority of the Hittite texts is known; there are furthermore hundreds of letters still unpublished. After summarising the geographical and historical background Weeden details the formats attested for Hittite letters and the languages used. Military topics are common, including reports on augury. The tablets themselves may have been carried in sealed bags of leather or textile - this probably explains the many bullae found in association with tablets at Büyükkale which could have been used to seal such bags. Weeden reviews the available evidence on the messengers, the animals used (horses, donkeys, mules), roads and passports.

Radner's second contribution is on “An Imperial Communication Network: The State Correspondence of the Neo-Assyrian Empire”. The Assyrians can be credited with transforming the face of long distance communications, establishing a system of road stations (mardītu) and fast messengers (kalliu) which was to serve as the template for imperial communications until the industrial age. Maintenance of the system was the responsibility of the local governors, something which occasionally crops up in the letters themselves. The favoured mount was the mule (kūdunu), fielded in pairs so that there was a back up. The actual tablets were put in clay envelopes which were then sealed. Radner discusses the chronological and geographic distribution of the surviving material, the issue of to what extent Aramaic was used and illustrates the system at work with some cases studies which reveal the underlying mechanisms of communication.

In the next chapter “The Lost State Correspondence of the Neo-Babylonian Empire as Reflected in Contemporary Administrative Letters” Michael Jursa takes an intelligent and resourceful approach to the question of the administration of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. The central problem is that we do not possess archives on anything like the scale of those of the Assyrian or Hittite empires (or even, for that matter, of the Amarna period). To what extent this is due to the chances of excavation and to what extent to other factors is not entirely clear. On the one hand it is certainly true that Aramaic, written on perishable materials, was used widely - the many attestations to the sepīru “Aramaic scribe” make this clear - with the implication that we have to accept that there will be a very large amount of material lost to us forever. On the other hand, it is not true that cuneiform was not used within the royal administration at all: the famous ration lists from the South Palace in Babylon are convincing demonstration of this. So cuneiform record-keeping had its place in Neo-Babylonian state administration and it is reasonable to assume that in the fullness of time further clay tablets will be excavated. This said, there are, for the moment only a handful of Neo-Babylonian royal letters available. These are all missives to the senior administrators of Babylonian temples, covering such topics as cultic duties, construction projects, temple personnel, irrigation and the general management of temple property. Even more so than for the Assyrian empire, then, our knowledge of long distance communication in the Neo-Babylonian empire is partial, but Jursa extracts the maximum information and inferences from the available material to paint as good a picture as can for the moment be done.

In her contribution “State Communications in the Persian Empire” Amélie Kuhrt lays out the multifarious sources available for the Achaemenid empire. These are both geographically widely dispersed and hugely diverse in form and content. A part of the reason for this diversity comes from the multi-cultural approach which the Achaemenids took to governing their empire. The lack of uniformity manifest in the local regimes throughout the empire was not a result of weakness or ineptitude: it was a key quality of Achaemenid rule. Kuhrt puts this very well, “The varieties of political relationship and domination should rather be seen as a positive element which made central government more elastic and sensitive in its response to local needs and conditions while maintaining strong overall control for its own benefit”. Both the king and the core of Persian aristocrats who ran the empire for him had estates scattered across the empire and the need for a functioning system of communication is obvious. The Persian royal road system was famous, though only hints at the actual correspondence survive, for example two purported transcripts of royal letters in literary texts and one in a Greek inscription. Kuhrt makes an intriguing case that the monumental inscriptions of the Persian kings, limited as they are, may at least in some cases be considered to be effectively missives to the people. But it is not quite true that these are the only evidence we have for the dissemination of the royal word, as a communication of a legal verdict pronounced by Darius (I) and forwarded on a cuneiform tablet makes clear (see MacGinnis “A Judgement of Darius the King”, Journal of Cuneiform Studies 60, pp. 87–99). In addition to this there are two caches of Aramaic texts, the Arsames correspondence from Elephantine and the collection from Bactria now in the N. D. Khalil collection, and much valuable information can also be gleaned by combing the archives from Persepolis, especially the texts relating to the issues of rations en route.

In “The King's Word: Hellenistic Royal Letters in Inscriptions” Alice Bencivenni turns our attention to the royal letters from the time of Alexander the Great and his successors in the third and second centuries bce, particularly the Seleucid, Ptolemaic and Attalid kings. Around 440 of these letters are known so far, preserved in Greek in lapidary inscriptions as well as in papyri and in literary texts. The classification of these letters - as addressed to cities, officials, individuals and groups - is discussed as are the criteria which led to them being inscribed on stone monuments for permanent display. In the case of letters to cities this was not a requirement set out in the letter but rather at the initiative of the cities themselves; on the other hand, in the case of letters to individuals and groups the requirement to create a public monumental record could indeed be a condition included in the text. It can be assumed that the originals written on papyrus or parchment were kept in the municipal chancery archives. As for the contents of the letters preserved, they deal, among other things, with diplomatic issues, the appointment of officials, the regulation of cultic matters, royal benefactions, the granting, confirmation and adjudication of privileges, the sale of royal land, the settling of colonists and the communication of administrative orders. A consideration of the mechanism of transmission of the royal orders leads on to a discussion of the final category of data, the sealed bullae from Babylonia and elsewhere.

Simon Corcoran brings up the rear with “State Correspondence in the Roman Empire: Imperial Communication from Augustus to Julian”. Astonishingly, the texts of somewhere in the region of 9,000 imperial pronouncements have come down to us, preserved in legal compendia such as the Code of Justinian and the Code of Theodosius, inscriptions and papyri; only one actual original document has however been recovered so far, a letter of Theodosius II to a commander in Egypt. Roman imperial government had a very reactive aspect, the overwhelming majority of imperial letters and edicts being written in response to letters to the emperor from officials, individuals and cities. The matters covered fall into four main categories - referral of legal and administrative decisions, petitions for privileges or benefits, informational reports and felicitations. Procedural aspects such as composition, writing and archiving are discussed, as are formal aspects such as chancery scripts, greetings formulae, subscriptions (which in later periods could be written in purple ink), valedictions, monograms and sealing practices.

All in all this is a rich and fascinating volume. It will go far in introducing specialists in one empire to key features in the running of others. It will be read with pleasure and profit by a large audience who through doing so will surely contribute to a new wave of comparative and empire-specific research.