Radner Karen. State Correspondence in the Ancient World: From New Kingdom Egypt to the Roman Empire

Oxford University Press, 2014. — 320 p. — (Oxford Studies in Early Empires).This collection's central thesis is straightforward: long-distance communication plays a key role in the cohesion and stability of early states and in turn, these states invest heavily in long-term communication strategies and networks. As reliable and fast long-distance communication facilitates the successful delegation of power from the centre to the local administrations, the creation and maintenance of the necessary infrastructure to support this is a key strategy of the central state.