Family of Antaxerxes I + and Cosmartidene + of BABYLON

Husband:	Antaxerxes I + (485-424)
Wife:	Cosmartidene + of BABYLON (520- )
Children:	Darius II + (485- )
	Arsites (480- )

Husband: Antaxerxes I +

Wife: Cosmartidene + of BABYLON

Name:	Cosmartidene + of BABYLON
Sex:	Female
Father:	Nebuchadnezzer III + ( -562)
Mother:	-
Birth	0520 B.C.

Child 1: Darius II +

Name:	Darius II +
Sex:	Male
Spouse:	Parysatis + (482- )
Birth	0485 B.C.
Occupation		King of Persia
Title		King of Persia

Child 2: Arsites

Name:	Arsites
Sex:	Male
Birth	0480 B.C.

Note on Husband: Antaxerxes I +

Artaxerxes I was king of the Persian Empire from 465 BC to 424 BC. He was the son of Xerxes I of Persia and Amestris, daughter of Otanes.

 

He may have been the "Artasyrus" mentioned by Herodotus as being a Satrap of the royal satrapy of Bactria.

 

In Greek sources he is also surnamed Macrocheir (Latin: Longimanus), allegedly because his right hand was longer than his left. [3]

 

After Persia had been defeated at Eurymedon, military action between Greece and Persia was at a standstill. When Artaxerxes I took power, he introduced a new Persian strategy of weakening the Athenians by funding their enemies in Greece. This indirectly caused the Athenians to move the treasury of the Delian League from the island of Delos to the Athenian acropolis. This funding practice inevitably prompted renewed fighting in 450 BC, where the Greeks attacked at the Battle of Cyprus. After Cimon's failure to attain much in this expedition, the Peace of Callias was agreed between Athens, Argos and Persia in 449 BC.

 

Artaxerxes I offered asylum to Themistocles, who was the winner of the Battle of Salamis, after Themistocles was ostracized from Athens and Artaxerxes I gave him Magnesia, Myus and Lampsacus to maintain him in bread, meat and wine, Palaescepsis to provide him with clothes and he gave him Percote with bedding for his house.[4]

 

Portrayal in the Book of Ezra and NehemiahArtaxerxes (Hebrew: ???????????????????, pronounced [arta??ast]) commissioned Ezra, a Jewish priest-scribe, by means of a letter of decree, to take charge of the ecclesiastical and civil affairs of the Jewish nation. A copy of this decree may be found in Ezra 7:13-28.

 

Ezra thereby left Babylon in the first month of the seventh year (~ 457 BC) of Artaxerxes' reign, at the head of a company of Jews that included priests and Levites. They arrived in Jerusalem on the first day of the fifth month of the seventh year (Hebrew Calendar).

 

The rebuilding of the Jewish community in Jerusalem had begun under Cyrus the Great, who had permitted Jews held captive in Babylon, to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple of Solomon. Consequently, a number of Jews returned to Jerusalem in 538 B.C., and the foundation of this "Second Temple" was laid the following year.

 

In Artaxerxes' 20th year (445 B.C.), Nehemiah, the king's cupbearer, apparently was also a friend of the king as in that year Artaxerxes inquired after Nehemiah's sadness. Nehemiah related to him the plight of the Jewish people and that the city of Jerusalem was undefended. The king sent Nehemiah to Jerusalem with letters of safe passage to the governors in Trans-Euphrates, and to Asaph, keeper of the royal forests, to make beams for the citadel by the Temple and to rebuild the city walls.[5]