Ahasuerus

Is it Ahasuerus, Mordechai, or the horse?

Personal agency and consent—granted or withheld—pervade the book of Esther, and are inextricably related to pre-existing power structures such as gender and social status.

The protocols of ancient Near Eastern courts shed light on the danger Mordechai faces in reporting a conspiracy. A case in point: An Assyrian official, who tried to save Sennacherib from being assassinated by his son Arda-Mullisi, ends up being killed by the assassins himself.

Vashti insults Ahasuerus by calling him “the son of my father’s stable master” (b. Megillah 12b). Persian sources, including the story of King Ardashir I, shed light on the origin and significance of this calumny.

Why the rabbis came to imagine Ahasuerus as a usurper who halted the rebuilding of the Temple and his wife Vashti as a wicked and grotesque Babylonian princess, who lived as a libertine and persecuted Jews.

An overview of Persian history starting from Cyrus the Great’s conquest of Media (549 B.C.E.) until Alexander the Great’s conquest of Persia (334-329 B.C.E.), including related biblical references and Jewish texts.

How do the names in the book of Esther correlate with those we know from Persian history? Do some of them refer to the historical personages described in the Greek sources of Herodotus and Ctesias?