n the and we find an Ahasuerus mentioned. This may have been the Hebrew version of Xerxes' name, Xsaya-rsa. In the she is the Jewish queen of a king, Ahasuerus, This domain is the same as that of the Achaemenid Empire, as is the capital (although, historically, there were only 26 satrapies). In the text, the king's wife Vashti is deposed and Esther takes her place. There is no record of any Jewish queen for a Persian king, but the story may have had its roots in a scandal regarding Xerxes lusting after his brother Masistes' wife and then her daughter, his niece Artayante, whom he'd had married to his son, Darius, and with whom he had an affair (a sign of his and Persian degradation and decadence to Herodotus). Xerxes' queen, Amestris, took vengeance, not on the daughter but on the mother, mutilating her. Masistes fled towards his satrapy of Bactria intending to start a revolt. In we find an accusation against the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem made to Ahasuerus in his accession year (tying in with the revolt in Egypt and, perhaps, other uncertainty with the change of king). In the we find Ahasuerus seemingly as a different man, Astyages, a king of the Median empire, the father of Darius the Mede. This Darius was the king in Babylon (not mentioned in history) but this may relate to the revolt in Babylon under Xerxes. In the Ahasuerus is an ally of Nebuchadnezzar who helped him destroy Nineveh - so may be Cyaxares I, who destroyed Nineveh in 612 BCE.
