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The Priest And The Great King: Temple-palace Relations In The Persian Empire (Biblical and Judaic Studies, V. 10.)

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Fried examines different theories about Achaemenid rule (Theory of 1. Self governance 2.Imperial authorization 3.Bureaucratic Empire) and she bases her arguments in favour of third theory. But there are several weaknesses in her arguments:

Fried discusses Verse Account of Nabonidus and concludes that "these post-Cyrus documents can not testify to a pre defeat conflict between Nabonidus and the Marduk priesthood" and "The Nabonidus Chronicle notes that the Akitu festival took place as normally during his 17 Th year of his reign"!!!but she ignores rest of the information about previous years of reign of Nabonidus.According to Chronicle of Nabonidus ,he did not take part in Akitu festival between 7th and 11th year of his reign.

It was a Babylonian custom that the legitimate king was present in the festival.

Nabonidus wanted to construct at Tayma, in the north of Arabia Penisula, a replica of the palace in Babylon (S. Smith 1924:27-28,ii 28-29).Clergy of Marduk , seeing their power crumbling away in proportion to their distance from the king, made desperate efforts to prevent it.

In chapter 2(page 22) she discusses Cyrus Cylinder and concludes "Cyrus's flamboyant titulary in the cylinder is that Assyrian kings who ruled Babylonian , Ashurbanipal in particular and Akkadian royal inscriptions provided a close model for the authors of the cylinder'.

But if we have a closer look at Ashurbanipal's inscription,

Ashurbanipal, described his ferocious behaviour proudly, "Within a month and a day, I destroyed Babylonia and Xuziyan completely. I myself slaughtered 3000 warriors and let some burn in fire. I took out many eyeballs, and then set fire to the city, massacred many and created a blood bath over there,"

I can not see any similarity between statements above and Cyrus Cylinder!!!

In addition to these there are many other weaknesses in her arguments (she tried to justify deportation of gods by Nabonidus for protection against Persian army and it is not acceptable from historical point of view(study of Mesopotamian chronicles shows that when gods were deported it was to punish the population not to protect them).