Governor

A governor is also a device that regulates the speed of a machine. See Governor (device).

Pre-Roman empires

Although a strictly legal organization of provinces (See also that article), administrated by governors, would be the work of the Romans, the term governor is a convenient generic description for its precursors in Antiquity.

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Nearly all would ultimately be replaced by Roman 'standardized' provincial government.

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Egypt

• In Pharaonic times, the governors of each of dozens of provinces in the kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt (called "nomes" by the Greeks, and whose names often alluded to local patterns of religious worship) are usually known by the Greek word Nomarch.
• The whole (or most) of Egypt was repeatedly reduced to the status of province of a larger empire under foreign conquerors, notably under an Achaemenid satrap (see below).

Mesopotamia and beyond

Assyria, a ruthless conqueror of a large empire, ...

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• shaknu
• bel pihati

Pre- & hellenistic satraps

• Media and Achaemenid Persia introduced the satrapy, probably inspired by the Assyrian / Babylonian examples
• Alexander the Great and equally Greco-Macedonian diadoch kingdoms, mainly Seleucids (greater Syria) and Lagids ('Ptolemies' in hellenistic Egypt)
• in later Persia, again under Iranian dynasties :
• Parthia
• the Sassanid dynasty dispensed with the office after Shapur I (who had still 7 of them), replacing them with petty vassal rulers, known as shahdars