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Babylonian texts dated to the Achaemenid period too sometimes mention foreign groups or individuals (Joannès 2009: pp. 224–227) and the fact that they are rather private texts than texts belonging to the public administration makes the context in which these groups appear different from the Persepolis context. An interesting dossier is that of the Caro‐Egyptian (i.e. Carians coming from Egypt) soldiers stationed in Borsippa (Waerzeggers 2006; Heller 2010: pp. 341–344). This dossier illustrates one of the systems by which the Achaemenid state channeled the influx of foreign people in Babylonia: Borsippean citizens had to provide rations for the Caro‐Egyptians. Other systems are (i) war prisoners that were sold into slavery or donated to a temple and (ii) the military land‐grant system, which functions according to the “land‐for‐service” principle and which is fairly well attested in the late fifth‐century Murašû Archive. One text also illustrates this system for Jews (Waerzeggers 2006: p. 68). In addition, the Murašû Archive contains various names of so‐called arus, which were named after an ethnic group: Arabs, Armenians, Carians, Cimmerians, Indians, Lydians, Phrygians, and Tyrians (Stolper 1985: pp. 72–79). An Egyptian community at Susa is well‐attested in the Babylonian documentation (Joannès 1984).

From Babylonian texts can also be derived that Babylonian workers were active in the construction of a palace at Taokè (modern Borazjan, in the Bushehr region; Tolini 2008). The Elamite texts corroborate this, in naming groups of Egyptians, Skudrians, Cappadocians, and Lydians that were directed to the same place (Henkelman and Stolper 2009: pp. 279–280).

It should be kept in mind, however, that the Achaemenid Empire was not unique in using workforces not belonging to the same ethnicity of the ruling class for its own purposes. The Neo‐Assyrian Empire is notoriously famous for its deportations of workmen from conquered areas to Assyria proper. In the same way the Neo‐Babylonian Empire did precisely the same (just to mention the Babylonian Captivity) and at the royal court many non‐Babylonian people are attested (Heller 2010: p. 336; Jursa 2010: pp. 72–73). The difference between the earlier empires and the Achaemenid Empire, however, is that in the latter the ethnically‐defined groups play a role in the royal ideology whereas in Mesopotamia they are kept away from this ideology.