Thursday, September 19, 2019

The Lydian famine under Artaxerxes Longhand

About the last record in the Lydiaca, at least as later Greeks found it, was a famine under Artaxerxes Shah, first of that name, nicknamed "Longhand". Famines in peacetime imply poor growing conditions for crops and, one imagines, for trees. Which leave behind tree-rings, per growing-season.

It would be nice to have a date for that event but, by then, there was a wood shortage in the affected region, western Anatolia. Artaxerxes reigned four decades, 464-24 BC, so that's not great for narrowing stuff down.

Lydian trees may have been a victim of Lydia's prosperity first as an empire and then as a satrapy. If the wood was used in architecture, it has all burned by now, thanks to Anatolia's turbulent history. Some Anatolian wood was also likely used in Carian shipping; one hopes for more discoveries of Achaemenid-era shipwrecks.

Until then, this looks promising: a volcanic event dated not long before 426 BC. That's late in this shah's reign but it is in the span.

BACKDATING 9/20

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