1. Kuhrt, Amélie, 2007. The Persian Empire: A Corpus of Sources from the Achaemenid Period, vol. 1. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 53–4.
2. Isaiah 8:7–9.
3. Holloway, Steven W., 2002. Aššur Is King! Aššur Is King! Religion in the Exercise of Power in the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Leiden: Brill, p. 92.
4. Edelman, Diana, 2006. Tyrian Trade in Yehud under Artaxerxes I: Real or Fictional? Independent or Crown Endorsed? In Oded Lipschits and Manfred Oeming, eds. Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, p. 223.
5. Parpola, Simo, 2007. Letters from Assyrian Scholars to the Kings Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal, vol. 2. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, p. 488.
6. Galil, Gershon, 2007. The Lower Stratum Families in the Neo-Assyrian Period. Leiden: Brill.
7. Nahum 2:9.
8. Luckenbill, Daniel David, 2005. The Annals of Sennacherib. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, p. 18.
9. British Museum, inv. no. 1856,0909.16.
10. British Museum, inv. no. 1856,0909.53.
11. Smith, John M. P., trans., 1901. Annals of Ashurbanipal. In Robert Francis Harper, ed. Assyrian and Babylonian Literature: Selected Translations. New York: D. Appleton and Company, p. 107.
12. Carter, Elizabeth, 1996. Excavations at Anshan (Tal-e Malyan): The Middle Elamite Period. Philadelphia, PA: The University of Pennsylvania, pp. 1–6. Hansman, John, 1985. Anshan in the Median and Achaemenian Periods. In Ilya Gershevitch, ed. The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 2, The Median and Achaemenian Periods. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 25–35. Curtis, Vesta Sarkhosh, and Sarah Stewart, eds., 2005. Birth of the Persian Empire. London: I.B. Tauris.
13. Tuplin, Christopher, 2004. Medes in Media, Mesopotamia, and Anatolia: Empire, Hegemony, Domination or Illusion? In Ancient West and East, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 223–51.
14. Grayson, A. Kirk, 2000. Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, p. 108.
15. Ibid. p. 111.
16. Kuhrt, Amélie, 2007. Op. cit., pp. 47–8.
17. Xenophon, Walter Miller, trans., 1914. Cyropaedia, vol. 2. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, p. 283.
18. Ibid., p. 343.
19. Finitsis, Antonios, 2011. Visions and Eschatology: A Socio-Historical Analysis of Zechariah 1–6. London: T & T Clark, pp. 64–86.
20. Trotter, James M., 2001. Reading Hosea in Achaemenid Yehud. London: Sheffield Academic Press.
21. Wiesehöfer, Josef, 2001. Ancient Persia: From 550 BC to 650 AD. London: I.B. Tauris, p. 77.
22. Kuhrt, Amélie, 2007. Op. cit., p. 486.
23. Esther 3:12.
24. See, for example, the series of relief panels from the palace of Sargon II at Khorsabad depicting the transportation of cedar from Lebanon: Musée du Louvre, inv. no. AO 19888–19891.
25. De Jong, Matthijs J., 2007. Isaiah among the Ancient Near Eastern Prophets: A Comparative Study of the Earliest Stages of the Isaiah Tradition and the Neo-Assyrian Prophecies. Leiden: Brill, p. 221.
26. Makhortykh, S. V., 2004. The Northern Black Sea Steppes in the Cimmerian Epoch. In E. Marian Scott et al., eds. Impact of the Environment on Human Migration in Eurasia. Dordrecht: Kluwer, p. 38.
27. Panyushkina, Irina P., 2012. Climate-Induced Changes in Population Dynamics of Siberian Scythians (700–250 B.C.). In L. Giosan et al., eds. Climates, Landscapes, and Civilizations. Washington, DC: American Geophysical Union, p. 145.
28. Grousset, René, 1970. The Empire of the Steppes: A History of Central Asia. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
29. Rolle, Renate, 1989. The World of the Scythians. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, p. 100.
30. Ibid., p. 54.
31. McGlew, James F., 1993. Tyranny and Political Culture in Ancient Greece. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, p. 54.
32. Hesiod, Hugh Evelyn-White, trans., 1914. Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Homerica. London: William Heinemann, p. 21.
33. Ibid., p. 5.
34. McGlew, James F., 1993. Op. cit., pp. 52–86.
35. Gerber, Douglas E., trans., 1999. Greek Elegiac Poetry: From the Seventh to the Fifth Centuries BC. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, p. 57.
36. Sage, Michael M., 1996. Warfare in Ancient Greece: A Sourcebook. London: Routledge, p. 28.
37. Barnstone, Willis, trans., 2010. Ancient Greek Lyrics. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, p. 16.
38. Ibid., p. 88.
39. Morris, Ian, 2006. The Growth of Greek Cities in the First Millennium BC. In Glenn R. Storey, ed. Urbanism in the Preindustrial World: Cross-Cultural Approaches. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, pp. 37–8.
40. Thucydides, Rex Warner, trans., 1972. The Peloponnesian War. Harmondsworth: Penguin, pp. 148, 122.
41. Aubet, Maria Eugenia, 1993. The Phoenicians and the West: Politics, Colonies and Trade. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
42. We do not know a lot about Tarsus, not even where it was located, although it was most probably part of the Phoenician sphere of influence. Culican, W., 1991. Phoenicia and Phoenician Colonization. In John Boardman et al., eds. The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. III, part 2, The Assyrian and Babylonian Empires and Other States of the Near East from the Eighth to the Sixth Centuries B.C. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 519.
43. Zolfagharifard, Ellie, 2015. Huge Tomb of Celtic Prince Unearthed in France. Daily Mail (6 March).
44. Livy, B. O. Foster, trans., 1919. History of Rome: Books I–II. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, p. 81.
45. Bodhi, Bhikkhu, trans., 2012. The Numerical Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Anguttara Nikaya. Boston: Wisdom Publications, p. 300.
46. Ibid., p. 747.
47. Legge, James, trans., 1872. The Chinese Classics, vol. 5, part 1. London: Trübner & Co., p. 2.
48. Von Falkenhausen, Lothar, 1999. The Waning of the Bronze Age: Material Culture and Social Developments, 770–481 B.C. In Michael Loewe and Edward L. Shaughnessy, eds. The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221 B.C. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 450–544. Hsu, Cho-yun, 1999. The Spring and Autumn Period. In ibid., pp. 545–86.
49. Milburn, Olivia, trans., 2015. Urbanization in Early and Medieval China: Gazetteers for the City of Suzhou. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, p. 222. Schinz, Alfred, 1996. The Magic Square: Cities in Ancient China. Stuttgart: Edition Axel Menges, p. 54.
50. Miller, Harry, 2015. The Gongyang Commentary on The Spring and Autumn Annals: A Full Translation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 14. This summit took place in 498.
51. Liu, Daqun, 2014. International Law and International Humanitarian Law in Ancient China. In Morten Bergsmo et al., eds. Historical Origins of International Criminal Law, vol. 1. Brussels: Torkel Opsahl, p. 91.
52. Ibid.
53. Ibid., p. 92.
54. Legge, James, trans., 1872. The Chinese Classics, vol. 5, part 2. London: Trübner & Co., p. 534.
55. Zhong, Guan, W. Allyn Rickett, trans., 2001. Guanzi: Political, Economic, and Philosophical Essays from Early China: A Study and Translation, vol. 1. Boston, MA: Cheng and Tsui Company, pp. 111, 206, 96, 210, 99.
56. Legge, James, trans., 1861. The Chinese Classics, vol. 1. London: Trübner &. Co., pp. 122, 139, 120.
57. Lao, Tzu, Arthur Waley, trans., 1997. Tao Te Ching. Ware: Wordsworth Editions, p. 31.
58. Ibid., p. 82.
59. Sun, Tzu, Lionel Giles, trans., 1910. Sun Tzu on the Art of War: The Oldest Military Treatise in the World. London: Luzac & Co., p. 2.
60. Ibid., p. 13.