Offprint from

The World of Berossos

Proceedings of the 4th International Colloquium on The Ancient Near East between Classical and Ancient Oriental Traditions, Hateld College, Durham 7th9th July 2010

Edited by Johannes Haubold, Giovanni B. Lanfranchi, Robert Rollinger, John Steele

2013 Harrassowitz Verlag . Wiesbaden

Berossos and Greek Historiography

Christopher Tuplin (University of Liverpool) Introduction Felix Jacoby detected five types of historiography: genealogy/mythology; ethnography; chronology; Zeitgeschichte and Universalgeschichte; and local history. The first two are first exemplified by Hecataeus (but Dionysius Persica was the first full-blown ethnography); the third arrives with Hellanicus;1 the fourth, prefigured in Herodotus VIIIX, is represented by Thucydides; and the fifth was a spin-off from Herodotus. (Dionysius of Halicarnassus offered an exact reverse scheme in Thucydides 5, with local history as the starting point, but the developmental issue is not for present purposes that important.) All of these strands, except perhaps Zeitgeschichte (defined as mostly concerned with the authors own time), are represented in some measure in Berossos work, and he is duly cited by the likes of Josephus or Athenaeus alongside a variety of historians (Hecataeus, Hellanicus, Acusilaus, Ephorus, Herodotus, Ctesias and Megasthenes). So, broadly speaking, Berossos text cannot be faulted as a potential example of Greek historiography; its title Babyloniaca is of unimpeachably appropriate sort,2 and, if we conceive it (perhaps not too over-simplistically) as essentially a work about a single city, it could even be said to be of specially Hellenic character. Of course, the content also fits perfectly well two major categories of Babylonian literature (mythical epic and king-lists/chronicles), though the combination of both in a single literary text may be odder in the Babylonian than the Greek context: I am not sure whether Grayson 1975, 18 = Glassner 2004, 3, which inserts a Flood narrative into a king list i.e. something that one could describe as analogous to Babyloniaca II makes the entirety of Berossos project seem normal. By the time Berossos wrote there was a lot of Greek historiography: over 130 authors had written history of one sort of another in Greek by the start of the third century BC,3 well over half (78) of whom were in the local history category to which Berossos belongs.4 So in
1 Priestesses of Hera in Argos. Hellanicus also does local history and several items whose titles are -ika forms derived from topo- or ethnonyms (ten are attested). 2 Schnabel 1923, 16 (endorsed by de Breucker) opted for this title on the ground that it is the one given by Polyhistor the only source author whom we can believe had actually had a copy of Berossos book in his hands. The prevalence of Chaldaica or cognate forms in the tradition presumably reflects the fact that Polyhistor himself used that title. Unless otherwise indicated references to Berossos use the numeration in Jacoby. 3 The precise figure in my current list is 134, of whom 78 belong in Jacobys categories IIIAC (22 of them writing on non-Greek subjects). The formation of the list involves many imponderable questions, but the order of magnitude must be roughly right. 4 These are among the authors collected in FGrHist IIIA 262296 (Autoren ber verschiedene Stdte/ Lnder), FGrHist IIIB 297607 (Autoren ber einzelne Stdte (Lnder)) and IIIC 608856 (Autoren ber einzelne Lnder) between them much the largest single category in Jacobys vision of things.

178

Christopher Tuplin

principle he had numerous models to follow or to fail to live up to. In practice, of course, things are not quite like that. It would be astonishing if he actually encountered more than the tiniest proportion of these theoretical riches. Most readers of Greek without access to the library of Alexandria (an institution unparalleled in Seleucid Babylonia) would have been in a similar position. And so are we, for fragmentary survival means that most of these 130+ authors are literary and scientific personalities whom we can scarcely grasp at all. The project of lo cating Berossos in Greek historiography is one in which the realistic comparanda are few innumber. There is also an issue about his desire to encounter lots of potential precedents. Berossos learned Greek, but what does that imply about engagement with Hellenic paideia? We have no way of knowing what his actual spoken or written Greek was like which rules out one way of deciding whether he was a true pepaideumenos. Some historians start from the socalled Graeco-Babyloniaca and the assumption that the King communicated with everyone who mattered in Greek and deduce widespread knowledge of Greek among Babylonian temple- personnel or scholars.5 That might be fair, but does it imply paideia? The half- century since the conquest was time for some to have discovered that the Greek language had more to offer than administrative functionality, but it begs the question to take Berossos work as proof that such a process had gone very far.6 John Dillery has claimed that Manetho and Berossos used Greek because it was a prestige language (2007, 229), and that the activity was an aspect of competition with other members of the native (colonial) elite. Perhaps so.7 But does the prestige derive from entry to a new literary/cultural world or just from proximity to the levers of power? Can we be sure Berossos engagement with Greek literature was much more than a superficial by-product of conversations with Greeks who were properly educated? Are the putative signs of Stoic philosophy and Empedocles robust enough (and technically substantial enough) to demonstrate that it was?8 Precedents Three types of Greek historiographical precedent present themselves
5 See e.g. Clancier 2007, 25. 6 Some now tell us a theatre was built in Babylon at a quite early date, perhaps affording one context for discovery of Greek literature. But the fact that a Hellenic element had already entered Babylonian sealdesign in the fifth century (and received no further stimulus from the Greco-Macedonian conquest) is a doubtful pointer towards exposure to or absorption of paideia. Postulates about Babylonian influence on classical Greek thought might entail contexts-of-contact that could work both ways. Even before 331 a Chaldaean allegedly visited the dying Plato (Philip of Opus FGrHist 1011 F1 = P.Herc. 1021, col. III.35V.19) and, although exactly what transpired depends on interpretation of the fragmentary papyrus text, on one reading it included the Chaldaean reciting two Greek verses (of his own composition or from a tragic text) which criticized barbarians for being naturally unrhythmical. Irrespective of its historical veracity, the story might have generic validity as a comment on reciprocal cultural influence. But those who do not think so can scarcely be accused of excessive scepticism. (It does not help that the existence of another story about Plato and a Persian visitor raises the possibility that there is a confusion of Chaldaeans and magi going on here.) 7 I would say they did it in Greek primarily because it was the rulers language; but that it would also be read by other natives was to be expected, if appropriate literacy in Greek had some coverage in the native elite, so there would be no harm in giving a particular spin that might irk or entice groups among them but doing so might be almost instinctive if we assume some level of campanilismo to be natural to the Mesopotamian (and the Egyptian) environment. 8 See Johannes Haubolds chapter in this volume.

Berossos and Greek Historiography

179

authors writing about (some of) the same historical material: Herodotus, Ctesias, Dinon, Heraclides and other more faintly attested writers of Assyriaca (e.g. Hellanicus) or Persica.9 authors writing about different historical material but in some sense doing the same thing, that is people doing the history/customs of a Greek community (in principle lots of authors) or the history/customs of non-Greek environments: Xanthus, Megasthenes, Hecataeus, the writers of Persica, and various other (mostly not very familiar) authors.10 non-Greek authors writing in Greek: Xanthus but not Manetho whom I take to be later in date.11 Inspecting things at this level draws attention to some ways in which the substance of Berossos work has not got much to do with Greek predecessors: Assyriaca Herodotus (1.184) writes as though he had the wherewithal for a full account of Assyrian history, including the reigns and deeds of many kings. So there was in theory a Greek discourse available about pre-Persian eastern history other than the Ctesian one, a discourse which would at best have had the same disconcerting relation to reality as displayed in Herodotus history of Egypt or in what he says of Semiramis and (especially) Nitocris12 and which would probably have been quite dissimilar to what we find in Ctesias. But we do not know that anyone had written such a discourse (Hellanicus is the only candidate of any literary substance, though there are no Assyrian fragments13) or, if someone had, whether it is likely Berossos would have had access. Perhaps, if he had known of such a work, he would have made special efforts to get hold of it. But to say even that may be to make unwarranted assumptions. As for the Ctesian discourse, it is has almost nothing really to do with Babylonia, and in particular pretty much writes out of history the Babylonia encountered in Babyloniaca III.14
9 This is assuming that Berossos did do Persian-period history in sufficient detail to make Persica writers (and some bits of Alexander-historians) real precursors. Otherwise only those who also wrote about prePersian, perhaps even pre-Median, contexts are relevant and questions would then arise, e.g. whether a single reference to Semiramis guarantees that Dinon was one of them. 10 Lyceas of Naucratis (613), Dalion (666), Tauron (710), Androsthenes (711), Demodamas (428 T13, F2), Patrocles (712), Aristippus (759), Theocritus of Chios (760), Menecrates of Xanthus (769), Andron (802), Mnesimachus (841), Timonax (842). The work of Aristotle and Theophrastus on Etruscans will also belong here. 11 I assume this on the undoubtedly contentious ground that the one ancient source to address the question explicitly (Syncellus 18.224 = 609 T11b; cf. 16.35 = 609 T11c) says so (the status of his statement is disputed: see Murray 1972, 210 n. 2; but Murray eventually accepts that Manetho is later), but sustained also by other indications in the same direction (see Ian Moyers chapter in this volume). In an ideal world knowledge of Manetho might allow inferences about Berossos on the basis of assumptions about how Manetho reacted to him. In practice, we know far too little about both for this to be likely to be a persuasive approach. 12 Nitocris is variously held to be (mis)informed by Ada-Guppi ( Nabonidus mother), Nebuchadnezzar II or Naqia (wife of Sennacherib). 13 Hellanicus was an author Ctesias thought worth attacking: 688 F16(62) = 4 F184 (in a Persian context). 14 It is worth noting that, whereas Megasthenes did India (see below), no Hellenistic Greek author apparently ever did Babylonia/Assyria. (The scant information about Athenaeus, Athenocles and Simacus [FGrHist 681683] does not controvert that statement.) Perhaps it would have been different if the

180

Christopher Tuplin

Priestly history As an author-priest Berossos resembles some Atthidographers Cleidemus the exegete, Philochorus the mantis and hieroskopos (though his work would not yet be available), Phanodemus the hieropoios and lead-man in redevelopment of the Oropian Amphiareum. But this rather serves to point a contrast: Dillery has recently spoken of the cult-centered character of Atthidography (2005, 509) and contextualised it in what he calls sacred history an historiographical enterprise initiated by a priest, in part derived from priestly records, establishing a past seen through the lens of a religious site and its dedications (2005, 519). But this really does not sound much like Berossos, whose text seems extremely secular and focused on kingship, not temple-cult.15 Xanthus Dionysius evocation of pre-Thucydidean local historians (Thucydides 5) does in rather general terms seem appropriate to Berossos, and Xanthus (whom Dionysius mentions) in particular resembles Berossos in that he wrote an account of his homeland two to three generations after it had lost an empire. But he was not writing in the language of the new overlords, and the long history of Greco-Lydian cultural (and political) intersection makes the situation rather different. Megasthenes If Megasthenes wrote as early as Bosworth 1996 thinks (and even if he did not), his work could have been known to Berossos. Might we wish to say that the spectacle of a Seleucid Greek dealing systematically with a barbarian environment tempted a barbarian to deal with a barbarian environment?16 And there is a more specific connection. Megasthenes (715 F11 = Abydenus 685 F6) spoke of Nebuchadnezzar, saying that he was stronger than Heracles, campaigned successfully against Africa and Spain and deported people thence to the right-hand side of Pontus. That such ideas got into a work on India says something about the visibility of Nebuchadnezzar in early Seleucid Babylonia17 and might have provided
Herodotean Assyrioi Logoi had existed: i.e. perhaps the problem is that by contrast with Egypt or India there was an insufficient free-standing tradition of Assyriaca (Hellanicus alleged work being an uncertain quantity and Ctesias treatment being not free-standing) to call for Greek revisitation in the new political circumstances. 15 The stress on Nebuchadnezzars secular building is one neat illustration of this. See the chapters of Haubold and Moyer in this volume for the views (respectively) that Babyloniaca is a sort of Frstenspiegel and that its metatextual organization revolves around commemorative acts of creating, preserving, recovering and even destroying texts that constitute a central legitimating function of kingship. 16 The putatively systematic nature of the treatment and its relationship to a well-defined polity arguably distinguish Megasthenes Indica from the works of Demodamas or Patrocles. But, if all were contrib uting to the agenda of delineating the Seleucid realm by inspecting its outer boundaries (cf. Paul Kosmins chapter in this volume), they might all help to inspire a delineation of the realms inner core. 17 The possibility that there was early Seleucid building at many sites in Babylon and elsewhere normally associated with Nebuchadnezzar would entail considerable early Seleucid exposure to inscriptional evidence for that kings architectural activities which would be one contribution to his high profile. But politico-military discourse (less readily traceable now) was probably more important. It is, of course, hard to be sure how large Nebuchadnezzar actually bulked in Megasthenes text; but Beaulieu 2006 and Kosmin (in this volume) are inclined to take it seriously, and it is natural to identify a political angle reinforcement of the point that Seleucus should look west, not to the conquest of India. (On Bosworth

Berossos and Greek Historiography

181

added stimulus for composition of a real history of Babylonia. But, at first glance anyway, Megasthenes treatment of India was not much like Berossos of Babylonia. Berossos produced a species of diachronic history, whereas in Megasthenes there seems to be little history between (on the one hand) Dionysus or the indigenous Heracles and (on the other hand) the time of Alexander except for (a) the failure of Semiramis and others to invade it and (b)the claim (unadorned by any narrative elaboration?) that there was a dynastic link between Dionysus appointee as first Indian king and Chandragupta.18 In this respect (continuous narrated history) Herodotus and Hecataeus on Egypt are arguably a more pertinent (but also a more distant) precedent. It must be conceded that much of Berossos history also seems to be narrative-free but also asserted that in his work something like a real historical record starts over 450 years in the past, whereas in Megasthenes we must essentially wait for the authors own lifetime: that is a real difference. Alexander historians A significant number of historical works about Alexander appeared in the decades after his death, many of them early enough to have been accessible to Berossos. Collectively they are a special example of contemporary Zeitgeschichte. Individually they take a variety of forms (and not all of them were systematic narratives). The fact that Alexander liberated Babylon, spent an unusual amount of time there subsequently, had dealings with Chaldaean scholars and expired in the city might have made part of the Alexander historians record a matter of interest to Berossos. But, in the absence of any trace of whatever Berossan treatment of the Macedonian arrival in Mesopotamia there may have been, the question is beyond rational comment. (The problem is further encapsulated by the Hanging Gardens something that may have been in Clitarchus, but which in any case remains quite unconnected with the actual story of Alexander.) The fact that these works were characteristically written by people who were directly associated with the Alexander expedition and who in some cases later had links with one of the diadochi (Marsyas and Nearchus with Antigonus) or (in Ptolemys case) turned into a diadochus himself means that this is a historiography that is not necessarily divorced from political setting. But to take the most extreme case even if Berossos knew that the King of Egypt had produced his own spin on the story of the conqueror, I cannot say that it seems very obvious that that fact had or was likely to have had much bearing upon his own historiographic venture. Transmission and agenda The project of locating Berossos in relation to Greek history-writing is, of course, made difficult by the paucity and character of the remains. The uncontentious testimonia and fragments19 amount to the equivalent of 1516 pages of OCT Greek (about 15% the length of Herodotus II), and what we have is known through epitomes or citations of Polyhistors epitome of the original. Moreover Eusebius epitome of Polyhistor is only known through an
dating of the text, the stress is rather on the unprecedented nature of Alexanders achievement as an outside conqueror: cf. Bosworth 2003.) 18 715 F12 (Arr. Ind. 8.13), F14 (Arr. Ind. 9.9). 19 That is, excluding the astronomical material some of which may, however, be a genuine part of the account of creation in Babyloniaca I, and proved to be such in part precisely by its failure to cohere with Babylonian scientific astronomy: see the chapters of Martin Lang and John Steele in this volume. Among items assigned to pseudo-Berossos by Jacoby F16a and F22 have a reasonable claim to authenticity.

182

Christopher Tuplin

Armenian translation and Syncellus extracts. The transmission process leaves us vulnerable to misunderstandings of genuine text, intrusion of non-genuine text not just (perhaps) some of the astronomica but (with varying degrees of certainty) things such as Sennacheribs invasion of Egypt (F7c), the Tower of Babel (F4) or a reference to Zoroaster (F5b) and extremely skewed selection of material: a large proportion is preserved because of a JudaeoChristian historical or chronographic agenda. In these circumstances the niceties of linguistic or literary analysis are scarcely available: discussing the fragments of Manetho, John Dillery felt able to say the Egyptian author used and in a proper Greek manner (1999, 99). I should hesitate to speak thus of Berossos. Various Greek agendas have been postulated for Berossos project. Do they imply a specific engagement with Greek historiography? The assumption that the work was intended to inform or influence Greek rulers is consonant with the authors assimilation of himself to the persona of a Greek historian, but it hardly requires it. This is no less true (though perhaps no more true either) if we stress AntiochusIs special interest in Babylonian tradition or even (perhaps wildly) conjecture on the basis of T4 (from Moses of Chorene) that Antiochus asked Berossos to produce the text. Claims that (a) construction of Nabopolassar as a successful rebellious subordinate is intended to provide a parallel for Seleucus and, more generally, that the rise of post- Assyrian Babylon is a precedent for the rise of post-Achaemenid Babylon, with Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar foreshadowing Seleucus and Antiochus20 or (b) Sennacherib and Nebuchadnezzar are good and bad role models for Seleucid kings (Burstein 1978) or (c)alleged Babylonian possession of Egypt is a model for Seleucid claims (Beaulieu 2006) or (d)Nebuchadnezzars Iranian (garden-loving) wife is a precedent for Seleucus-Apame ( Van der Spek 2008) do not in themselves require Greek historiographical thinking unless we suppose that historical analogy and a kings sense of his relationship to his predecessors are purely Hellenic phenomena. That would be dangerous. One may hesitate to draw a direct analogy between the presupposition underlying the Astronomical Diaries (that marrying astronomical and historical data is a worthwhile process in the interests of allowing evidencebased consideration of the future) and Thucydidean claims about the value of historiography, if only because the interplay of celestial phenomena and human activity rather contrasts with the primacy in Thucydides of to anthrpinon. But one could imagine a more deistic version of the Thucydidean principle; and it would seem bizarre to claim that a Babylonian was likely to need more than the slightest (and essentially political rather than literary) prompt to see that his country had history that was relevant to current circumstances.21 Less grandly, one
20 Beaulieu 2006; Kuhrt 1987. There is reason to think Nabopolassar came from a pro-Assyrian background (Jursa 2007; Jursa 2010, 99); and it is a point upon which Berossos and Ctesias effectively agree though the latter calls him Belesys and gives him a relation to the Medes that is foreign to Berossos picture of things. 21 This is, of course, a different scale of prediction on the basis of the past than any discussion of future flood or conflagration that Berossos may have offered. But the authenticity of F21 (in its current form) is suspect; and if it is at least partly authentic and evidence of Berossos exposure to Stoic ideas about ekpursis then we are in the realm of philosophy rather than historiography. At the same time, if the principle that the association of certain events and astronomical situations has predictive potential is valid at all, the possibility that it might (on Babylonian principles) apply to, for example, the Flood can hardly be precluded, whatever general views may be taken about Babylonian attitudes to cyclical history (cf. Lambert 1976, 1723, as against Drews 1975, 505). Any difficulty in predicting a new Flood would be practical, viz. absence of appropriate records of the astronomical conditions at the time of

Berossos and Greek Historiography

183

may also observe that the same trick of drawing parallels between the early Neo-Babylonian and early Seleucid eras has been detected in the so-called Dynastic Prophecy a purely Babylonian product.22 The suggestion that the construction of ancient history seen in Berossos and in the Uruk King-List23 (in both of which early kings have their associated wise men) is intended to validate a special relationship between the likes of Berossos and Seleucid kings24 would have Berossos devising a role for the historian-scholar that has few prior analogues in Greek historiography at least outside the Macedonian monarchic environment. (I have in mind Antipater of Magnesia, author of a historical work potentially helpful to Philip II [FGrHist69], or more famously Callisthenes, Alexanders ill-fated court historian.) Even so, this is a long way from the Babylonian situation, which (if it is to be taken seriously) is surely much more of a Babylonian than a Greek phenomenon something spun out of the necessary tendency of Greek rulers (if they cared at all) to engage with local experts on issuesof native custom, divine goodwill and forecasts of the future. If there is the slightest possibility that Berossos was constructing himself as a sort of culture-hero, he was certainly not being constrained by a Greek historiographic model; and even if we take a less extreme line and see him as assimilating himself to the sort of logioi to whom Herodotus refers any consciousness of such a model has resulted in a degree of detachment from it. 25 Authority and choice of material It seems likely that the texts opening contained three important statements: that Berossos was a contemporary of Alexander (T2, F1b[1]), that he was a priest of Bel (T 2), and that his sources were or included extremely antique documents (T3, F1[1]).26 About the priesthood of Bel little more need be said: it clearly seeks to establish status and access to sources. Contemporary with Alexander is trickier. It is not clear whether he means he was born around the same time as Alexander (356) or in the reign of Alexander (331323).27 The former would confer on Berossos (writing in the 280s) the authority of personal age perhaps with the additional twist that, being older than the Greek dispensation (old enough to remember the world before 331), he has some special entitlement to explain Babylonia to the Greeks. The latter would make him a man whose lifespan equated with the new disthe first one and provision of a calendar date for the latter may not prove that Berossos was implicitly claiming that such records did exist after all. 22 E.g. Beaulieu 2006, 1434. See below, p.193. 23 Van Dijk 1962, 4361 = Van Dijk & Mayer 1980, 89 = ANET3 566. 24 Cf. Joanns 2000 and Kosmins chapter in this volume. The related notion that Berossos wrote in the role of a priest educating a royal successor is articulated in Mastrocinque 2005. Some have seen Onesicritus work on Alexander as being about the princes education, but that is far too uncertain to legitimate speculation about an influence upon Berossos project. 25 Culture hero or logios: see the chapters elsewhere in this volume by (respectively) Lang and Kosmin. On logioi see Luraghi 2009. 26 It is less clear whether he said that he was a Chaldaean (T3, T5). There is some danger that the record (here and indeed more generally in the presence of Khaldaios in the fragments) is contaminated by de scription of his work as Chaldaica (cf. n.2) and/or Berossos association with astronomical or magical lore. This uncertainty is sad, given the prominence of Chaldaeans in the Alexander historians treatment of the conquerors engagement with Babylon. 27 phsi genesthai auton kata Alexandron tou Philippou tn hlikian. The use of hlikian here has no precise parallel in Syncellus. References to the hlikia Kekropos (pp.74, 75) or the despotik hlikia (p.387: apparently the Roman imperial period) are the closest and may slightly favour the second interpretation.

184

Christopher Tuplin

pensation; perhaps that too could be claimed as some sort of ground for authority. Either way he is not making a quasi-Thucydidean point, since he was not writing contemporary history and assertions about date-of-birth are not otherwise (I think) a normal programmatic issue in Greek history-writing. As for sources: the insistence that the whole span of Babylonian history is preserved by anagraphai (underlined by the preservation of Kulturgut buried at Sippar during the Flood) is striking. I shall say more about one aspect of this flow of documentation later; here I just note it has a parallel in Ctesias decidedly novel claim to have spent time working on the basilikai diphtherai (688 F5) and to be able to report what is said about Memnon in the basilikai anagraphai (688 F1b = Diodorus 2.22.5). There is, of course, a notable difference Ctesias putative documents were royal documents, presumably taken from a palace archive, whereas no such thing is asserted (or likely to be implied) in the Berossan case28 and (after all) the Babylonians actually did have (copies of) very old records, so Berossos did not need Ctesias to make him think of such things. But the analogy is a real one and likely to be of some significance. Self-presentation and claim to authorial individuality and authority is normally seen as alien to Babylonian literature (a world where preserved names are those of scribes, not authors). Does this mean that Berossos behaviour is modelled on the programmatic utterances of Greek historians? Perhaps. But, since he was in any case doing an entirely novel thing, he might in any case have felt a need to state his claim to do so. He cannot be proved to have said anything very complicated (even to have said why he was doing it); did he need Greek models to do so?29 As preserved, Babyloniaca consists of a diachronic history of Babylon, organised by dynasties and kings, preceded by some observations about geography. Where in this might we look to uncover the effect of Greek historiography? The geographical opening is appropriate to a Hellenic ethnographic discourse, as is specification of the crops grown and the fertility or lack of it of particular parts of the country not that Babylonians needed Greeks to tell them that Babylonia was fertile or that this was a distinguishing feature of the region or (what is presumably implicit) that it was tied up with the two great rivers and the hydraulic system enabling their exploitation. But the prominence of the geography draws ones attention to the apparent absence of other expected features of synchronic description of foreign places: there are no advertised thaumata (the wondrous primeval monsters are rather different, I think) and no description of the customs of the Babylonians. There is also (by notable contrast with earlier Greek treatments of Assyriaca) no description of the city of Babylon. Now perhaps these absences are illusory. Perhaps the account of Oannes invention of civilisation embraced much talk of how things are still done in Babylon: after all, it is asserted that nothing has been invented since Oannes time. Perhaps description of Nebuchadnezzars building activities broadened into a description of the whole city as its great imperial ruler had made it. That would be a sensible enough disposition of material. Oswyn Murray (1972, 210) suggested that, as a Babylonian, Berossos could not distance himself enough to see his society as an outsider or (therefore) describe
28 The Moses attestation (T4) also does not specifically associate royal records with Berossos. And as a matter of fact Berossos is plainly empowered in documentary terms by the temple rather than the palace. 29 The fiction of Berossos retiring to Cos to engage in iatromathematics (T 5) arguably presupposes a parallel in someones mind not (or not just) with Eudoxus (cf. Kuhrt 1987, 41) but with Ctesias, a doctorhistorian from the other great medical centre, Cnidus. (Note also T6, giving Berossos a Hippocrates-like status.) But that conjecture neither authorizes precise inferences about the actual relationship between the two authors nor is invalidated by disagreements between them (cf. below pp.180181).

Berossos and Greek Historiography

185

its habits; that may be extreme but, if he was not in fact consciously trying to follow a Greek ethnographic template, he might end up not separating out the relevant material into a self-contained section in quite the Greek manner. On the other hand, Athenaeus unique report that the Sacaea appeared in Babyloniaca I (680 F2) confirms that fragmentation has concealed material about nomoi that was originally there and that Book I is where such material might be; and one might in the end feel that a combination of literal geography with everything that could have come out via the account of Oannes meant the Book I functioned as an introductory account of land and customs before continuous diachronic history started in II.30 So perhaps, after all, the effect was not so very different from Herodotus II. But the question is open; and I cannot wholly suppress the feeling that there is a significant difference between setting out to describe more (or less) systematically some customary features of a contemporary society and presenting a discourse about the origin of civilisation albeit a civilisation that still exists.31 Babyloniaca starts with mythological material but eventually deals with the deeds of what are undoubtedly real historical figures. Under the influence of the Thucydides-Polybius model of history-writing, we may be uncomfortable about this combination of the fabulously unreal and the real in a single through-composed diachronic narrative. On the other hand: There are caesurae at the Flood and, especially, at the reign of Nabonassar (F16); Berossos implicitly distinguishes the various spatia historica, so the most mythological is well-distanced from the rest. Berossos does not directly narrate the creation of the world he says Oannes narrated it: cosmogony is thus only indirectly in the historical narrative. Greek histories certainly did mythology. Herodotus may spend relatively little time retailing myths, Thucydides might affect to reject to muthdes altogether (while, of course, treating Minos and the Trojan War as part of a historically analysable narrative), and Ephorus might start his universal history with the Return of the Heraclidae (at the historical end of mythology) and rationalize things from earlier horizons (70 FF3134), but the wider historiographical discourse had room for mythology. Some of the earliest historiographical prose writing (Hecataeus, Pherecydes, Acusilaus32) deals precisely with mythology, mythological genealogy and even cosmogony and theogony, and with Damastes and Hellanicus at least we encounter authors who do both this sort of thing and what we would see as more straightforward history, if not necessarily in the same works. The first authors to articulate a history of the western Greeks (Antiochus, Philistus) began with the story of Daedalus flight to the refuge of King Cocalus court, while even the rebarbatively cynical Theopompus not only described a fantasy-continent beyond the Ocean (evidently for purposes of moral admonition) but also put that description into the mouth of the satyr Silenus, a mythological figure allegedly captured by King

30 Sarachero (F13) might very well belong there too. But the Anahita statue of F11 explicitly belongs in Babyloniaca III. 31 Briants hypothetical suggestion (1991, 4) that the Sacaea was connected with annual re-affirmation of the kings right to rule alerts one to the possibility that material on customs in Babyloniaca I shared a slant towards the issue of kingship that some feel characterised the work as a whole (cf. n.15). But cf.n.41 below. 32 Acusilaus claimed to know genealogies thanks to a bronze tablet left by his father (2 T1).

186

Christopher Tuplin

Midas (115 FF7475).33 And more generally, and pertinently to Berossos (at least generically), authorsof local history characteristically gave a mythographic slant to community origins. It is true that Hecataeus already said the Greeks tell silly stories (1 F1) and engaged in rationalisation (so Cerberus becomes a deadly dangerous snake: 1 F27); but we should be wary of assuming a generally sceptical/critical attitude about mythological stories that firmly marks Greeks off from the mind-set of someone like Berossos Of course, there are myths and myths. Dillery 2007, 222 comments that Oannes the talking fish-man is not the sort of wonder Herodotus would be comfortable with. That is true he is much less happy than Ctesias with mixed-species oddities and neither of them wants them anywhere but at the remoter edges of the oecumen34 but perhaps not quite the point. Oannes is myth, not an aspect of contemporary bio-diversity. How far can the feeling that he is a bit outr really stand up to the fact that the various autochthonous figures at the origins of Athens included the half-man, half-snake Cecrops35 or that even Hecataeus allowed Phrixus ram to talk. And, as for the Flood, Greeks had a flood story too: that it might be a relic of eastern cultural influence is neither here nor there So, in the end one may have to concede that Babyloniaca did not so far as the presence of myth goes represent a discourse radically unlike anything possible in Greek historiography. We may remember that Zoilus of Amphipolis and Anaximenes of Lampsacus (nestling at nos. 71 and 72 in Jacobys Universal- und Zeitgeschichte) had written historical works which, though they ended respectively with the deaths of Philip and Alexander, began with the Birth of the Gods. And yet: Johannes Haubolds chapter elsewhere in this volume leaves a clear feeling that, if there is a Greek context for Babyloniaca I, it may be as much a philosophical as a historiographical one.36 Berossos certainly engaged directly at least once with the Greek historical tradition. F8a reports that he criticised Hellnikoi sungrapheis for attributing the building of Babylon to Semiramis. Burstein (1978, 34) additionally claimed that the statement about 45 kings in 526 years towards the end of Book II is the remnant of a statement about the date of the real Semiramis relative to Antiochus I, and thus part of another prong of an attack on the Ctesian picture.37 At the same time, since Abydenus says that the Chaldaeans paid little heed to Ninus and Semiramis, it looks as though Berossos chief strategy was to sideline Semiramis rather than substitute a vivid alternative account of Sammuramat (if it is she). Might one say that this shows that, while aware of (some aspects of) Greek tradition, his project is not (in his mind) formed by that tradition? It is simply his business to tell the truth, as he sees it (which still does not have to be the truth as we see it). It is also, incidentally, more generally not his business to follow the Greek vision and fill the Orient with over-powerful women.
33 Admittedly this was part of what seems to have been a sustained but perhaps clearly delimited part of Philippica VIII on thaumasia (a word used as an alternative or sub-title by some who cite the book). 34 See Lenfant 1999. 35 Others were Ogygus (the first man), Actaeus (from whose name comes the term Attica), Erichthonius (the child of Athenas thigh and Hephaestus sperm): Harding 2007, 184. Theban Cadmus had snakeassociations too, and there were people (Spartoi) literally born from the earth. 36 Is there a relationship between such philosophical colour and Megasthenes observation that Brahmans and Jews anticipated Greeks in ta peri phuses philosophoumena? Was Berossos suggesting that the Babylonian account of origins anticipated Greek ones? 37 The suggestion is mentioned without assessment by De Breucker 2010 (on F5a), but effectively rejected in Verbrugghe/Wickersham 1996, 27.

Berossos and Greek Historiography

187

Semiramis is not the only context in which that strategy might be evident. In the case of Sardanapalus we can see Berossos effectively denying two Greek versions: Sardanapalus did not self-immolate in Nineveh (that was Saracus = Sin-sharra-ishkun: F7d) and he did not build Tarsus and Anchiale and erect a funerary monument at the latter (that was Sennacherib except that his was not a funerary monument, and he did it after defeating some Greeks: F7c).38 The assumption (cf. Abydenus F5[8]) has to be that in Berossos the only Sardanapalus was indeed Assurbanipal,39 but, as things stand, we learn absolutely nothing about him not even from Abydenus. This is odd: if Sardanapalus succeeded Samoges = Shamash-shuma-ukin (F7c), then, without prejudice to the identity or non-identity of Kandalanu and Assurbanipal, there was a long period (21 years) to be accounted for that should have generated something in Berossos text. Could it be (again) that part of the strategyof seeing off the Ctesian Sardanapalus was actually to assign his real counterpart next to no history at all? Other visible deviations from Greek tradition are more straightforward Berossos had an alternative version of Cyrus capture of Babylon to that in Herodotus or Xenophon (and perhaps pre-emptively ruled out the Greek version in his description of Nebuchadnezzars building activity40) and an alternative version of Cyrus death in battle to that in Herodotus and Ctesias, at least to the extent of naming its agents as Dahae, not as Massagetae or Derbices or Indians. Others again are simply speculative: is the material about Pythagoras in F7 and Abydenus 685 F5 the remnant of some unusual attempt to associate the philosophers engagement with Chaldaeans with the reign of Sennacherib? Was what he said about the Sacaea plainly different from what Ctesias said (whatever that was)?41 And then there is the Hanging Garden:42 one view would make this the appropriation and corrective supplement of a Greek story a contribution to the greater glory of Nebuchadnezzar and the elimination of any claim by Iranians before Cyrus to universal domination in Asia.43 But, in any event, whatever we make of the Hanging Garden, Berossos general celebration of Nebuchadnezzar
38 Amyntas (122 F2) gave Sardanapalus a funeral mound and an inscribed monument (but with a different inscription) at Nineveh. There are probably more complications in the traditions about Assyrias final ruler than we can now disentangle. On Sennacheribs Cilician activities see also Giovanni Lanfranchis chapter in this volume: the defeat of Greeks is, it seems, a (creative) confusion with events under Sargon and, at first sight paradoxically, part of a historiographical strategy intended to appeal to Antiochus. 39 This assumes that one rejects as erroneous Syncellus assertion that Nabopolassar was called Sardanapallus in the Babyloniaca (F7d). 40 See F8(139): Nebuchadnezzar arranged things so that besiegers could not make any headway by turning the river aside. In other words, what Herodotus and Xenophon said happened could not have happened. 41 688 F4. If Ctesias espoused the sort of Persian aitia encountered in Strabo 11.8.5, he was certainly in a different place from Berossos; and the way Athenaeus 639C cites Berossos and Ctesias does not guarantee that the latter shared the formers view of the festival. On the other hand Ctesias did mention it in Persica II (the Assyrian, not Persian, part of his history) and Strabos explanations of its origins might both derive from Anatolian Iranian sources. For a recent view of the Sacaea see Huber 2005: there was a Babylonian festival (its name involving the word sakku = obtuse, half-witted, obscure [CAD]: cf. Langdon 1924), associated with Ishtar-temples (thus Strabo) but also celebrated domestically (thus Berossos), and belonging at the time of year indicated by Berossos. But, despite the reference to clothing like the kings in Berossos and the claims of Dio Chrysostom 4.37, it had no direct link with the Ersatzknig ritual. Huber offers no conjectures about Ctesias treatment of the matter or, therefore, about whether Berossos was correcting his account. 42 On which see Robert Rollingers chapter in this volume and the further literature cited there. 43 Van der Spek 2008, 30213, esp. 31113. Rollinger (this volume) takes a similar view.

188

Christopher Tuplin

is, for any reader familiar with the Ctesian tradition, a de facto corrective to that authors complete suppression of the Neo-Babylonian empire.44 All of this taking of positions against other Greek views certainly fits the profile of the Greek historian. But is Berossos doing it because he is a species of Greek historian? How much Greek historiography did he have to know at first hand in order to do what he did? And is every disagreement a conscious one? His motive for deviation is certainly substantive and Babylonian, not adventitious and merely literary, and I think it is at least tricky to tell apart the inheritor of Greek histori from the Babylonian who wants to get things (as he sees them) right. Hellenic colour Let us look next at some features of the text (or what passes for the text) as text. Is there Hellenic colour? Did any of it actually read like a Greek historiographical discourse? One thing is clear: Berossos is not engaged in excavating a defunct tradition of literary or chronicling activity; the Babylonian texts his work relates to were still being copied and recopied; and Esagila has even been seen as a state-favoured scholarly centre in late Achaemenid and early Seleucid times (Beaulieu 2006).45 The state of mind in which he approaches his task can essentially be that of a translator or interpreter (albeit a selective one). That it was more than that is something we need to prove. The default is Babylonian colour, as is immediately obvious, whether in the presence of fish-men as inventors of human culture or the prodigious lengths of documented history46 or in the way that BabyloniacaII recalls the Babylonian Royal Chronicle47 (the one that mixes kings and flood narrative) or the Uruk king-list (which shares Berossos characteristic pairing of kings and wise-monsters48) or in tell-tale traces like Sennacheribs building Tarsus as an image of Babylon (F7c) or the ideologically significant contrast between the wall-building of Nebuchadnezzar and Nabonidus and the wall-destruction of Cyrus.49 More substantively partisan points of a purely Mesopotamian significance (and a substantial degree of opacity from the modern historians point of view) may well be embedded in the choices Berossos made in the anteand post-diluvian king lists of Babyloniaca II. But there is some Hellenic veneer at a verbal level examples include post-diluvian Median and Arabian dynasties (F5a), the rebellious satrap of F8 (i.e. the Egyptian king Necho, ideologically re-interpreted as a mere Babylonian governor),50 Sennacherib invading
44 See Lanfranchis chapter in this volume and also Lanfranchi 2011. 45 Beaulieu ascribes fourth century Esagila a library like Assurbanipals. It must be allowed that those elements of Beaulieus argument that relate to technical astronomy belong in that bit of the scholarly world that seems unlikely to have anything to do with Berossos. 46 432,000 years of kings; a text base covering 2,150,000 years or 150,000: either way not really consistent; but we are not dealing with real arithmetic. 47 Grayson 1975, 18 = Glassner 2004, 3. 48 Though not the provision of numbers of regnal years. 49 Destroying the citys walls is a thing that the king must positively undertake not to do (Akitu festival). Since what Cyrus destroyed (F9[152]) was probably ta ts ex poles teikh (not as Josephus MSS have it ta ex ts poles teikh), the target was precisely that creation of an extra new Babylon for which the great Nebuchadnezzar was responsible (F8[139]). Hdt.3.159, by contrast, said Cyrus did not destroy any Babylonian walls. See further Rollingers chapter in this volume. 50 Hellenic in the sense that it is a familiar anachronism suitable to Greek discourse about an oriental empire, just as Median and Arabian would be more familiar than Gutian or Amorite. If Khaldaios was

Berossos and Greek Historiography

189

Babylon and carrying off the kings friends (instead of invading Akkad and carrying off the great men of the King),51 Macedonian calendar dates, both the enigmatic 15 Daisios as the date of the Flood (F4b)52 and 16 Loos as the date of the Sacaea (F2)53 and perhaps in other more substantive ways: one may not wish to think that the statement that nothing pros tn hmersin was been discovered after the time of Oannes buys into a familiar Greek perspective in which barbarian wisdom lies in the (distant) past, but might it cast Oannes as a prtos heurets or Platonic dmiourgos?54 Do we get an Enuma Elish washed in Greek philosophy? Still, as I have already remarked, philosophy of this sort is not historiography (and we are also some way from what people mean when they speak of Hecataeus philosophizing the Hellenic reception of Egypt55) and, more mundanely, precise calendar dates are not a standard feature of the discourse of Greek historiography. I would also note that, whereas Herodotus Ninus is the great-great-grandson of Heracles (1.7)56 and Ctesias and Manetho both engineer links with Greek myth (the Trojan War; Danaus),57 there is none of this in Berossos: there is no attempt to subordinate Greek gods or heroes (and so recorded Greek history) to Babylon by genealogical game-playing or other means. One may also contrast the intercutting of Egyptian and Greek myth in Hecataeus (producing weird pheused in Berossos text (cf. n. 26), that would probably represent another piece of Hellenic colour ( Van der Spek 2008, 289) a more remarkable one inasmuch as it affects Berossos own identity. 51 F7c. Friends in the translation of the original Armenian in Jacoby, Burstein 1978 and Verbrugghe/ Wickersham 1996 has become companions in the new translation in De Breucker 2010; for Berossos use of friends see also Dillerys chapter in this volume. 52 On this date see Langs chapter in this volume. 53 Van der Spek 2008 suggests that apotumpanizein in F9(148) corresponds to the Akkadian concept of the rack of interrogation (to his citations from four second century Astronomical Diaries add BCHP 15 rev.3 [222BC], 17.11,24 [162/1BC]) and paratattein in F8a(136) and F9a(151) corresponds to Akkadian karu, but of these only the former might count as the substitution of a familiar Greek concept in place of an unfamiliar foreign one and, even so, the case would be odd: although there is dispute about the precise sense of apotumpanizein, it is clear that it is a means of killing someone, whereas application of a rack of interrogation precedes the execution of sentence. 54 For the Platonic parallel see Langs chapter in this volume. There is also the potential analogy of Dionysus in Megasthenes Indica (cf. Kosmin, in this volume). Of course, Dionysus is a god, and a Greek one at that, who improved an unsatisfactory nomadic non-Greek environment, so we have here a version of that Greek mythological colonisation of the non-Greek world that is lacking in Berossos (see below) a version originally driven in the early 320s at the point of a sword (Bosworth 2003). It remains, of course, possible that Berossos Oannes is a reaction to Megasthenes model; but the lack of proper parallel in surviving cuneiform literature for the role he ascribes to Oannes cannot confidently be adduced in favour of the determinative influence of Megasthenes because it is increasingly clear that our knowledge of the cuneiform literature available to Berossos is decidedly limited: see e.g. Stephanie Dalleys chapter in this volume. 55 Hecataeus marriage of the travellers innocent eye with local tradition and with Greek philosophy is a renewal of Herodotus for a more sophisticated age (Murray 1972, 207). Diogenes Laertius cited Hecataeus work as peri ts tn Aiguptin philosophias (264 F1). See in general Murray 1970. It is not clear whether Berossos engaged in the sort of quasi-philosophical utopian idealisation of alien environ ments that is perhaps to be seen in what Megasthenes says about slavery in India. (Murray 1972, 209 held that material of this sort in Megasthenes was a deliberate response to Hecataeus idealisation ofEgypt.) 56 And also the father of the founder of the Heraclid dynasty of Lydian king all this on the reasonable assumption that the Ninus of Hdt.1.7 is the same Ninus as the founder of a great city on the Tigris (2.150). 57 Post-Semiramis Assyrians in the Trojan War: Ctesias 688 F1 = Diod.2.22.25. Pharaoh Armais = Danaus: Manetho 609 F3b (p.41), 9a: cf. Dillery 1999, 95.

190

Christopher Tuplin

nomena such as Macedon, the son of Osiris) or the important presence of Dionysus and an indigenous Heracles in Megasthenes Ur-history of India. Greeks liked to colonize the world mythologically; Berossos does not follow suit. Greeks may count as enemies of bad universal domination,58 but they are newcomers to the eastern environment. Narrative The essential feature of Greek historiography is historical narrative. Let us at last come to this crucial matter. First, this being Berossos, there is the narrative that is not there. Some absence is accidental, and this includes not just the general fragmentation of Babyloniaca but specifically tantalizing things like a direct citation of narrative about Sennacherib and Egypt that has dropped out of the MSS of Josephus AJ 10.20 (F7a) or passages such as F7c (Polyhistor again recounts several works and deeds of Sennacherib. He also mentions his son in accordance with the Scriptures of the Hebrews and enumerates everything in detail) or F8a (Berossos provided polla pros toutois on the reign of Nebuchadnezzar).59 More interesting is deliberate absence. In Babyloniaca II, we are told, virtually no detailed information was supplied about the long list of post-diluvian kings and we find ourselves wondering how the pages got filled. The idea of an oriental history of huge temporal extent filled with numerous kings about whom there is no specific record is not unique: this was apparently true of much of Ctesias Assyrian and Megasthenes Indian history; and it may later have been the case in some parts of Manetho just as (mutatis mutandis) it had earlier been the case in HerodotusII. But the Berossan situation is different in that it comes with a surviving and somewhat remarkable explanation. Nabonassar, we learn in F16a, destroyed earlier records in order to ensure special status for himself. There is no sign that this was standard Babylonian spin on the fact that chron icles and astronomical diaries started in the time of Nabonassar (a phenomenon significantly nuanced but not eliminated by Waerzeggers 2012, 298); and the statement might seem both to cohere with Greek stereotypes about overweening monarchs and to draw a distinction in the Babylonian historical record vaguely reminiscent of that drawn by Herodotus between Saite and pre-Saite Egyptian history (2.99,147). The claim allows Berossos to account for the lack of praxeis of pre-Nabonassar kings without compromising the essential claim to a hugely long documented history. But would it normally have occurred to a Babylonian to think an explanation was needed? So the next question is: is it something about what Greeks specifically required by way of historical evidence that prompts the explanation? Familiarity with Greek historiography would have left an ambivalent impression about documents: Berossos might have had some sympathy for Josephus later observation that Greek historians were concerned with literary style at the expense of documents. On the other hand Herodotus intermittently claims to cite documents and Ctesias exceptionally professed to be unloading the contents of royal records on to his Greek readers.60 But Greek historiography certainly likes praxeis (whether of kings or others), and the actual state of pre-Nabonassar
58 See Lanfranchi (this volume). 59 Josephus makes no such remark in the case of the material in F9. 60 Note that Ctesias F5 (Diodorus) uses polupragmonsai and ta kath hekasta of the engagement with basilikai diphtherai that asserts a claim to systematic effort. The Herodotean situation is pretty much in line with what Lane Fox 2010 articulates about Thucydides. There is no working of archives going on. It appears possible that (leaving Ctesias aside) Hieronymus of Cardia was the earliest Greek historian

Berossos and Greek Historiography

191

Babylonian history would be an embarrassment. What then emerges as remarkable is that Berossos did not solve the problem it seems with inventively imaginative story-telling or the weaving of even a few popular fables into the king-list record. Here there seems a contrast with Manetho: did Knigsnovelle lay to his hand more readily than equivalents did to Berossos? Is that really likely?61 What about the historical narrative in Babyloniaca III that is there? What survives is the equivalent of fewer than four pages of Herodotus, none of it in Berossos own voice. That is not much of a basis for judgement. As it stands it is disproportionately dominated by Sennacherib and Nebuchadnezzar. There must be a suspicion that a bible-defined agenda rather than the reality of Berossos text produced this result. But, if this is not (or not wholly) so, do we really want to say that the disproportion is the result of Berossos applying critical judgement to an undifferentiated documentary record and that, intellectually speaking, there is something distinctively Greek about this? Sennacherib and Nebuchadnezzar would stick out for a Babylonian for purely Babylonian reasons. And the virtually total failure of anything to survive of the history of Achaemenid rulers after Cyrus might also, at least in part, reflect purely Babylonian priorities and prejudices though it must be conceded (indeed, asserted) that, even if the reigns of kings from Cambyses to Darius III only figured for their impact in Babylonia,62 there were at least three moments when that local impact was prima facie so large that it ought to have generated interesting narrative: Darius accession year (when there were two Babylonian attempts to resist the new regime), the early years of Xerxes reign (when, it becomes increasingly clear, there is a significant caesura in the experience of Babylon under Persian rule) and of course 331BC. One distinctive feature of Greek historical judgement is normally said to be a concern for causes. There is nothing in Berossos as provocative as Manethos statement in 609 F8 that he has no explanation for an attack on Egypt from the east that he then proceeds to narrate.63 But causal statements are quite rare Nebuchadnezzar campaigns because his father is too old, an explanation missing in the parallel chronicle text (F8a); Evil-Marduk was killed because he behaved anoms kai aselgs, Labashi-Marduk was killed because he was kakoths, Nebuchadnezzar fortified the city to stop attacks via the river, and Cyrus destroyed walls that made the place hard to capture (F9a) and there is not even the slightest surviving causal commentary on striking events such as Sennacheribs murder or Nabopolassars rebellion. Perhaps it was different in the original,64 but as the evidence stands Berossos was not in this respect at the supposed Greek end of the spectrum of historical narrative. More generally and again as the evidence stands Berossan historical narrative was fairly bald. Exceptions are modest: Sennacherib went boldly against the Babylonians,
to undertake such activity (cf. Hornblower 1981, 1317), but his work which stretched at least until 272BC was not complete when Berossos produced Babyloniaca. 61 Bichler 2004 already remarked on the few traces of real stories, of all that rich tradition of novels and even romances. 62 Thus we hear about Artaxerxes II and Anahita (F11) because one of the statues was in Babylon. We are entitled to suppose that chronicle texts continued to be written, though direct evidence is exiguous and the parsimonious efforts of surviving Persian-era astronomical diaries at recording historical (politicomilitary) information only help us a little to imagine the contents of such chronicles. 63 See Dillery 1999, 989, 1045; Dillery 2007, 227. The missing explanation was doubtless that the Egyptian king had done something that merited punishment. 64 Note Lanfranchis conjecture (this volume) that Berossos pictured the failure of Assyrian and Persian domination as due to moral decadence. On other Greek views of these matters see Tuplin (forthcoming).

192

Christopher Tuplin

hastened against the Greeks, ordered that his own courage and heroic deeds be inscribed (F7c). Saracus, dismayed at the enemys approach, burned himself to death (F7d). Nebuchadnezzar was an energetic man and the more fortunate than any previous king, and his building activity is variously ambitious, worthy and pious (F8a). Cyrus treated Nabonidus humanely (F9a). Sometimes one can make a direct comparison with chronicle texts. Sennacheribs boldness is absent in the relevant chronicle65 though for the rest there is little to choose stylistically between he took Bel-ibni and his great ones into exile in Assyria as against he took Belibos prisoner together with his friends and had them taken to Assyria or between Sennacherib made his son Assur-nadin-umi sit on the throne of Babylon and he ruled over the Babylonians and he put his son Asordanios as king over them. The chronicle version of Nebuchadnezzars Levantine campaign has more geographical specificity and colour than Berossos, and the same is true of Cyrus invasion of Babylonia.66 Contrariwise the account of Nabopolassars death and Nebuchadnezzars sub sequent actions is fuller, if still fairly colourless, in Berossos. Consideration of chronicle texts that do not overlap with surviving bits of Berossos gives the same mixed result. Sometimes there are just occasional words that lift the record from the purely objective. Sometimes there is more and more than the Berossan epitome generally offers. But, of course, it is avowedly an epitome, whereas chronicle entries are presumably in the state in which their immediate scribe thought they were intended to be: this may not be a wholly straightforward matter (and some detailed chronicle texts have been thought to be preparatory for other less detailed ones), but by any reckoning the comparison is not of entirely commensurate entities and (tiresome though it is to keep saying it) what we are reading when we read Berossos is not really Berossos. Trying to decide whether a text once had the allure of Greek historiography rather than Mesopotamian chronicle is intrinsically problematic when epitomisation naturally turns historiography into chronicle. But, then, we should not only be talking about chronicles. Some material plainly recalls building inscriptions. Berossan narratives are unlike most chronicles in that they are not of a rigorously annalistic, Year XXX : such and such happened, type. The manner is more like parts of Grayson 1975, 20A = Glassner 2004, 39 (a late Babylonian report of the reigns of Sargon of Akkad and successors) or Grayson 1975, 22 = Glassner 2004, 45 (a late Babylonian copy of a chronicle of the Cassite kings), in that they present a continuous narrative of each king rather than a year-by-year one. (The second of these has long bits of direct speech and is much more elaborate in literary terms than any surviving Berossos.) Taking the first two points together one might feel that the Nebuchadnezzar narrative (F9a = Josephus In Apionem 1.135f) really recalls the sort of royal text that combines campaign narrative with the description of a building project. Context- and consequence-setting statements like Cyrus had previously come out from Persia with a large army and, after he had conquered all of the rest of Asia, he made for
65 Grayson 1975, 1a = Glassner 2004, 16. 66 Grayson 1975, 5 = Glassner 2004, 24 and Grayson 1975, 7 = Glassner 2004, 26. Van der Spek 2008 compares Nabonidus flight with a few companions (F9a[151]) with the return of Nebuchadnezzar to Babylon (F8a[137]) and with passages in the Alexander-Darius Chronicle and an Astronomical Diary (relating to Antiochus). The same trope applies to the flight of some of Darius opponents in the Behistun narrative.

Berossos and Greek Historiography

193

Babylonia (F9[150]) or Cyrus gave him [ Nabonidus] Carmania as his residence and expelled him from Babylonia; Nabonidus spent the rest of his life in that country and died there (F9[153]) are not characteristic of chronicles. The description of Nebuchadnezzar as an energetic man and more fortunate than any previous king evidently derives from a summarizing judgement, before or after the narrative of the reign, and is not in chronicle manner What is said of Nabonidus reign and defeat is not factually consonant with the Nabonidus Chronicle to any great degree and actually recalls the Dynastic Prophecy.67 The statement that Labashi-Marduk was executed because he was kakoths is not so different in intent (if blander in expression) from the statement that the child was untutored in proper behaviour and placed himself on the throne against the will of the gods but that is from Nabonidus Babylon Stele.68 The Aramaic story-telling forms of the names of Shamash-shuma-ukin and Assurbanipal are a significant hint of non-Chronicle background;69 and if we accept that the Sennacherib-Tarsus narrative is an artificial historical confection70 we have another reason to say that Berossan narrative may not be simply dictated by the chronicle model or the contents of the chronicle series. The question remains: how far does any of this make Berossos text significantly Greek? Is Berossos actually engaged in an exercise in source combination that is, after all, conceptually distant from just transferring Babylonian documents into Greek and presupposes an idea of what constitutes the historical record that could only come from reading Greek historians?71 I have to say that I am not convinced. Even if ones initial sense on opening Babyloniaca III of being in the world of Graysons Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles is too simple, the next or additional ports-of-call can still be non-Greek texts. And even if the idea of constructing an account of Babylon was prompted by the existence of an alien audience and by the questions future members of that audience put to learned Babylonians what happened here before we Greeks came? have you heard of Semiramis? of Sardanapalus? the fact that his response in Babyloniaca III was so much dictated by the categories (and mind-set) of Babylonian literature makes it seem most likely that the same was essentially true throughout.72

67 A document (for which see Van der Spek 2003, 31124) whose coverage corresponds to the post- Assyrian phase of Babylonian history. Since one difference between Berossos and the Nabonidus Chronicle is the role played in the formers version by Borsippa, it is tempting in the light of Waerzeggers 2012 to wonder whether he was drawing on a lost chronicle from the Borsippa tradition. 68 IV 3742. In Schaudigs translation (2001, 524) the child [wollte] keine Fhrung annehmen, which (as Schaudig himself notes: 524 n. 813) is perhaps even closer to Berossos kakoths. 69 I have in mind the story of the two brothers as told in P.Amherst 63 (in Aramaic written in Egyptian Demotic characters): cf. Steiner/Nims 1985, Steiner 1997. 70 Perhaps facilitated by the possibility that Sennacherib fought on Sargons behalf as crown prince: see Lanfranchi (this volume). 71 Kuhrt 1987, 46 remarked that the apparent coincidence of the literary style of Berossos and the chron icles should not be over-estimated (contra Drews 1975), but did not elaborate. 72 Any lack of correspondence in detail between Babyloniaca III (especially on post-diluvian kings) and cuneiform sources that happen to be available to us is not Hellenic in nature.

194

Christopher Tuplin

Conclusion That Berossos wrote in Greek guarantees a Greek context for his project. He must minimally have been aware that Greek readers consumed texts other than purely functional administrative or political ones in effect, that there was such a thing as Greek literature. But how far did his knowledge of such literature and susceptibility to its influence go? One thing that requires stress is that there really is no proof that Berossos was aware of Herodotus.73 That being so, we should hesitate to canvass as a significant model any author remote from him in time or subject-matter and much inferior to Herodotus in status. The fact that Megasthenes Indica was produced within the ambit of the Seleucid court makes it quite likely that he was aware of it. But it also means that any such awareness does not necessarily indicate a wider engagement with Greek history-writing and that any influence the Indica exerted may have to be seen as a function of Seleucid politics rather than of the impact of a Hellenic literary genre of more than two centuries standing. Megasthenes (like Patrocles and Demodamas) was doing what he did asserting an intellectual possession of India in case or because no actual politico-military possession would ever be asserted as a (quite important) servant of the state, not (just) as a scholar or an artist: he doubtless had the literary education that ensured that acting in the first capacity did not preclude acting in the second as well, but it is precisely that assumption that we cannot casually make in the case of the Babylonian priest. Berossos was also evidently aware of some aspects of the Ctesian tradition about the history of Asia; and if his attribution to Nebuchadnezzar of a wife called Amytis is a knowing re-assignment of the marital arrangements of the Ctesian Cyrus, his awareness of Ctesias stretched to apparent points of detail though, lacking a text of Ctesias, we cannot be sure that Astyages daughter Amytis was not familiar even to those with only a relatively superficial knowledge of it. But neither the grand narrative of Asian empires in Persica nor the entirely ahistorical account of the diversity of distant India in Indica provides a satisfactory structural or conceptual precedent for Berossos work, which focused on a single polity and one that was very close to home. In that regard, Xanthus Lydiaca remains the closest single analogy but one that we can hardly dare to assert Berossos had ever encountered. This does leave us with Megasthenes as the next best candidate. The ways in which Megasthenes India differs from that of the Alexander historians the exploitation of the Dionysiac and Heraclean associations perceived by Alexander to create an ancient historical context for contemporary India; the greater concentration upon a single kingdom, and one not represented in earlier texts did produce a three-book logos with some similarities to the one that would subsequently appear from the pen of Berossos. How far the stimulus went beyond the basic project of presenting the core (rather than the periphery) of the Seleucid Empire and a general idea that such a presentation would embrace history, geography and customs, we cannot tell: the state of preservation of both authors, and especially Berossos, precludes the necessary analysis of intertextual relations. One thing we can tell, however, is that the close parallel between Ctesias affectation of keen engagement with royal documents and Berossos excavation of a Babylonian past from the most ancient anagraphai raises a historiographical theme that appears not to have a significant profile in Megasthenes. I have already remarked that Berossos did not need Ctesias or any Greek to tell him that Babylonia had ancient documents, but we might nonetheless describe the Berossan project as in part a
73 The contrast with Manetho (609 FF1,13) is to be noted. (Manetho also cited Homer: 609 F3b [p.43]).

Berossos and Greek Historiography

195

response to the provocative Ctesian claim that archival study validated an Asian history in which Babylon was variously the artefact and mere pawn of foreigners. If so, it is a pleasing irony that one crucial impact by a Greek historian upon Berossos lay in a feature that was quite untypical of Greek historiography.74

References
Beaulieu 2006 P.-A. Beaulieu, Berossus on late Babylonian history, Oriental Studies, Special Issue (2006), 11649. Bichler 2004 R. Bichler, Some observations on the image of the Assyrian and Babylonian kingdoms within the Greek tradition, in: R. Rollinger/C. Ulf (eds.), Commerce and Monetary Systems in the Ancient World: Means of Transmission and Cultural Interaction, Stuttgart 2004, 499518. (Reprinted in R.Bichler, Historiographie Ethnographie Utopie: Gesammelte Schriften I: Studien zu Hero dots Kunst der Historie, Wiesbaden 2007, 20928.) Bosworth 1996 A. B. Bosworth, The historical setting of Megasthenes Indica, Classical Philology 91 (1996), 1224. Bosworth 2003 A. B. Bosworth, Arrian, Megasthenes and the making of myth, in: J. A. L. Ferez (ed.), Mitos en la literatura grega helenstica e imperial, Madrid 2003, 299320. Briant 1991 P. Briant, Le roi est mort: vive le roi! Remarques sur les rites et rituels de succession chez les Achmnides, in: J. Kellens (ed.), La religion iranienne, Gent 1991, 111. Burstein 1978 S. M. Burstein, The Babyloniaca of Berossus, Malibu, CA 1978. Clancier 2007 P. Clancier, La Babylonie hellnistique: aperu dhistoire politique et culturelle, Topoi 15 (2007), 2174. De Breucker 2010 G. de Breucker, Berossus of Babylon (680), Brills New Jacoby. Dillery 1999 J. Dillery, The first Egyptian narrative history: Manetho and Greek historiography, Zeitschrift fr Papy rologie und Epigraphik 127 (1999), 93116. Dillery 2005 J. Dillery, Greek sacred history, American Journal of Philology 126 (2005), 50526. Dillery 2007 J. Dillery, Greek historians of the Near East. Clios other sons, in: J. Marincola (ed.), A Com panion to Greek and Roman Historiography, Malden, MA and Oxford 2007, 22130. Drews 1975 R. Drews, The Babylonian chronicles and Berossus, Iraq 37 (1975), 3955. Glassner 2004 J. J. Glassner, Mesopotamian Chronicles, Atlanta 2004. Grayson 1975 K. Grayson, Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles, New York 1975.
74 I should like to thank the organisers for inviting me to participate in a most pleasurable and stimulating conference. I am also very grateful to Paul-Alain Beaulieu and Bert van der Spek for sending me copies of publications not available to me in Liverpool.

196

Christopher Tuplin

Harding 2007 P. Harding, Local history and Atthidography, in: J. Marincola (ed.), A Companion to Greek and Roman Historiography, Malden, MA and Oxford 2007, 1808. Hornblower 1981 J. Hornblower, Hieronymus of Cardia, Oxford. Huber 2005 I. Huber, Der Ersatzknig in griechischem Gewand: Die Umformung der ar phi-Rituale bei Herodotos, Berossos, Agathias und den Alexander-Historikern, in: R. Rollinger (ed.), Von Sumer bis Homer (Fs. Manfred Schretter), Mnster 2005, 33998. Joanns 2000 F. Joanns, Le parcours intellectuel des lettrs de la Babylonie rcente, Revue Historique 302 (2000), 693717. Jursa 2007 M. Jursa, Die Shne Kudurrus und die Herkunft der neubabylonischen Dynastie, Revue dassyriologie et darchologie orientale 101 (2007), 12536. Jursa 2010 M. Jursa, Der neubabylonische Hof, in: B. Jacobs/R. Rollinger (eds.), Der Achmenidenhof, Wies baden 2010, 67106. Kuhrt 1987 A. T. Kuhrt, Berossus Babyloniaca and Seleucid rule in Babylonia, in: A. T. Kuhrt/S. M. SherwinWhite (eds.), Hellenism in the East, London 1987, 3256. Lambert 1976 W. G. Lambert, Berossus and Babylonian eschatology, Iraq 37 (1976), 1713. Lane Fox 2010 R. J. Lane Fox, Thucydides and documentary history, Classical Quarterly 60 (2010), 1129. Lanfranchi 2011 G. B. Lanfranchi, Gli ASSYRIAKA di Ctesia e la documentazione assira, in: J. Wiesehfer/ R.Rollinger/G. B. Lanfranchi (eds.), Ktesias Welt/Ctesias World, Wiesbaden 2011, 175224. Lenfant 1999 D. Lenfant, Monsters in Greek ethnography and society in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE, in: R. Buxton (ed.), From Myth to Reason: Studies in the Development of Greek Thought, Oxford, 197214. Luraghi 2009 N. Luraghi, The importance of being , Classical World 102 (2009), 43956. Mastrocinque 2005 A. Mastrocinque, I magi e leducazione dei principi, in: V. A. Troncoso (ed.), Diadokhos tes Basileias. La figura del succesor en la realeza helenstica, Madrid 2005, 17784. Murray 1970 O. Murray, Hecataeus of Abdera and pharaonic kingship, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 56 (1970), 14171. Murray 1972 O. Murray, Herodotus and Hellenistic culture, Classical Quarterly 22 (1972), 20013. Schnabel 1923 P. Schnabel, Berossos und die babylonisch-hellenistische Literatur, Leipzig 1923. Schaudig 2001 H. Schaudig, Die Inschriften Nabonids von Babylon und Kyros des Groen, Mnster 2001. Steiner 1997 R. C. Steiner, The Aramaic text in Demotic script, in: W. W. Hallo/K. L. Younger (eds.), The Context of Scripture I: Canonical Compositions from the Biblical World, Leiden, 30927. Steiner/Nims 1985 R. C. Steiner/C. F. Nims, Ashurbanipal and Shamash-shum-ukin: a tale of two brothers from the Aramaic text in Demotic script, Revue Biblique 92 (1985), 6081.

Berossos and Greek Historiography

197

Tuplin (forthcoming) C. J. Tuplin, Death of an empire: fourth century historians on the end of the Achaemenids, in: G. Parmeggiani (ed.), Greek Historiography in the Fourth Century BC, Cambridge, MA (forthcoming). Van der Spek 2003 R. J. van der Spek, Darius III, Alexander the Great and Babylonian scholarship, in: W. Henkelman/ A. T. Kuhrt (eds.), A Persian Perspective. Essays in Memory of Heleen Sancisi-Weerdenburg, Leiden, 289346. Van der Spek 2008 R. J. van der Spek, Berossus as a Babylonian chronicler and Greek historian, in: R. J. van der Spek et al. (eds.) Studies in Ancient Near Eastern World View and Society Presented to Marten Stol on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday, Bethesda, MD 2008, 277318. Van Dijk 1962 J. Van Dijk, Die Inschriftenfunde, in: Vorlufiger Bericht ber die Ausgrabungen in Uruk-Warka 18 (1962), 3962. Van Dijk/Mayer 1980 J. Van Dijk/W. R. Mayer, Texte aus dem Re-Heiligtum in Uruk-Warka, Berlin 1980. Verbrugghe/Wickersham 1996 G. P. Verbrugghe / J. M. Wickersham, Berossos and Manetho. Native Traditions in Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, Ann Arbor 1996. Waerzeggers 2012 C.Waerzeggers, The Babylonian chronicles: classification and provenance, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 71 (2012), 285298.