Abstract
The royal court of Jerusalem plays a minor role in the Old Testament ; only that of Solomon is described in greater detail (one king ten). By contrast, the Old Testament takes us to foreign royal courts, those of Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar and Darius (Daniel), Artaxerxes (Nehemiah) and Xerxes (Esther). The texts describing these readings belong to the Achaemenid or Hellenistic period. Even King Ten is not a reliable source for Solomon's court, but only reveals how it was imagined in Persian times. Information on foreign readings, too, is of limited historical value. Contrary to the many attempts to evaluate the description of the Persian court in Esther as a valuable and reliable original source, it should be stressed that the author of this book relies mainly on Greek writers to describe his perception of Xerxes' court. His sources are not to be found in Susa, but in the library of Alexandria.
The foreign court lives on in numerous apocryphal writings. A particularly important source is the Roman d'Ahiqar, the earliest version of which was found in the Jewish military colony of Elephantine.
