Greece and Mesopotamia: Dialogues in Literature (The W. B. Stanford Memorial Lectures) [Illustrated] 1107010764, 9781107010765

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G R EE C E A N D M E S O P OTA M I A

This book proposes a new approach to the study of ancient Greek and Mesopotamian literature. Ranging from Homer and the Epic of Gilgamesh to Herodotus and the Babylonian-Greek author Berossos, it paints a picture of two literary cultures that, over the course of time, became profoundly entwined. Along the way, the book addresses many questions of crucial importance to the student of the ancient world: how did the literature of Greece relate to that of its eastern neighbours? What did ancient readers from different cultures think it meant to be human? Who invented the writing of universal history as we know it? How did the Greeks come to divide the world into Greeks and ‘barbarians’, and what happened when they came to live alongside those ‘barbarians’ after the conquests of Alexander the Great? In addressing these questions, the book draws on cutting-edge research in comparative literature, postcolonial studies and archive theory. J o ha n n e s H au b o l d is Professor of Greek at Durham University. He is the author of numerous publications on Greek literature in its historical and cultural contexts, including Homer’s People (Cambridge, 2000); Homer: The Resonance of Epic (2005, with B.  Graziosi) and Homer: Iliad VI (Cambridge, 2010, with B. Graziosi). He has edited Plato and Hesiod (2010, with G. Boys-Stones) and is currently editing the first ever collected volume on the Babylonian-Greek priest and historian Berossos, entitled The World of Berossos (with G. Lanfranchi, R. Rollinger and J. Steele).

T h e W. B . S ta n f o rd M e m o ria l L e ct u r e s

This lecture series was established by public subscription, to honour the memory of William Bedell Stanford, Regius Professor of Greek in Trinity College, Dublin, from 1940 to 1980, and Chancellor of the University of Dublin from 1982 to 1984.

G R EE C E A N D M E S O P OTA M I A Dialogues in Literature J O H A NNE S H AU B OL D

CAMBRID G E UNIVERS IT Y P RE SS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Mexico City Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge C B 2 8RU , U K Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107010765 © Johannes Haubold 2013 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2013 Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by the MPG Books Group A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Haubold, Johannes. Greece and Mesopotamia: dialogues in literature / Johannes Haubold. pages  cm Includes bibliographical references and index. I S B N 978-1-107-01076-5 (hardback) 1.  Greek literature – History and criticism.  2.  Assyro-Babylonian literature – History and criticism.  3.  Comparative literature – Greek and Assyro-Babylonian.  4.  Comparative literature – Assyro-Babylonian and Greek.  I.  Title. PA 3070.H 38 2013 880.9′001–dc23 2012048522 ISBN

978-1-107-01076-5 Hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of U R L s for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

In memory of Donald Murray (11.6.1983–10.7.2011)

Contents

Note on the transcription of cuneiform texts List of abbreviations Introduction

page viii x 1

1 Parallel worlds

18

2 Over the horizon

73

3 Scripts from the archive

127

Further dialogues

178

Bibliography Index

185 213

vii

Note on the transcription of cuneiform texts

Most Mesopotamian texts discussed in this book are written in the cuneiform script, a combination of syllabic signs and logograms. Conventions of transcription into the Latin alphabet have developed over the past decades and are still, to some extent, in flux. While it may be desirable in principle to present all cuneiform texts in a standard format, there are formidable obstacles to achieving consistency in practice: old editions (e.g. Langdon, Weissbach) cannot be converted into current systems of transcription without fresh collation, and the alternative of presenting all cuneiform texts in normalized form founders on the uncertainties of late spelling and pronounciation. At a more general level, it seemed to me that accuracy of citation must not be sacrificed to consistency of presentation in a book concerned with the close reading of texts. With longer passages, I have therefore opted to retain the style of transcription employed by the editor whose text I quote. Individual words or phrases have been normalized.

viii

Figure 1  The Babylonian World Map. © The Trustees of the British Museum

Abbreviations

AD

A. Sachs and H. Hunger, Astronomical Diaries and Related Texts from Babylon. Vienna 1988–96. Alster B. Alster, Proverbs of Ancient Sumer: The World’s Earliest Proverb Collections. Bethesda, MD 1997. BNJ Brill’s New Jacoby, ed. I. Worthington. Online publication: www.referenceworks.brillonline.com/browse/brill-s-newjacoby Borger R. Borger, Beiträge zum Inschriftenwerk Assurbanipals. Die Prismenklassen A, B, C = K, D, E, F, G, H, J und T sowie andere Inschriften. Mit einem Beitrag von Andreas Fuchs. Wiesbaden 1996. CAD The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. 21 vols. Chicago 1956–2010. Diehl E. Diehl, Anthologia lyrica Graeca. 3rd edn. Leipzig 1949–52. DK H. Diels and W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. 6th edn. Berlin 1951–2. Erbse H. Erbse, Scholia Graeca in Homeri Iliadem (scholia vetera). Berlin 1969–88. FGrHist F. Jacoby, Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker. Berlin and Leiden 1923–58. Frayne D. Frayne, The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia. Early Periods I I : Sargonic and Gutian Periods (2334–2113 B C ). Toronto 1993. Fuchs A. Fuchs, Die Inschriften Sargons I I . aus Khorsabad. Göttingen 1994. George A. R. George, The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Introduction, Critical Edition and Cuneiform Texts. Oxford 2003. Glassner J.-J. Glassner, Mesopotamian Chronicles, ed. B. R. Foster. Atlanta, GA 2004. x

List of abbreviations

xi

Heitsch E. Heitsch, Die griechischen Dichterfragmente der römischen Kaiserzeit. Göttingen 1964. Herzfeld E. Herzfeld, Altpersische Inschriften. Berlin 1938. Hordern J. H. Hordern, The Fragments of Timotheus of Miletus. Oxford 2002. Horowitz W. Horowitz, Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography. Winona Lake, IN 1998. Kent R. G. Kent, Old Persian: Grammar, Texts, Lexicon. 2nd edn. New Haven, CT 1953. Langdon S. Langdon, Die neubabylonischen Königsinschriften, trans. R. Zehnpfund. Vorderasiatische Bibliothek 4. Leipzig 1912. Lambert W. G. Lambert, Babylonian Wisdom Literature. Oxford 1960. Lambert and Millard W. G. Lambert and A. R. Millard, Atra-hasīs. The Babylonian Story of the Flood. With the Sumerian Flood Story by B. Civil. Oxford 1969. Leichty E. Leichty, The Royal Inscriptions of Esarhaddon, King of Assyria (680–669 B C ). The Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period 4. Winona Lake, IN 2011. Lenfant D. Lenfant, Ctésias de Cnide: La Perse, L’Inde, autres fragments. Paris 2004. L-P E. Lobel and D. Page, Poetarum Lesbiorum Fragmenta. Oxford 1955. M-W R. Merkelbach and M. L. West, ‘Fragmenta selecta’, in Theogonia, Opera et dies, Scutum Hesiodi, ed. F. Solmsen. 3rd edn. Oxford 1990. OGIS W. Dittenberger, Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae. Supplementum Sylloges Inscriptionum Graecarum. Leipzig 1903. Saggs H. W. F. Saggs, The Nimrud Letters, 1952. Cuneiform Texts from Nimrud 5. London 2001. Schaudig H. Schaudig, Die Inschriften Nabonids von Babylon und Kyros’ des Großen. Textausgabe und Grammatik. Alter Orient und Altes Testament 256. Münster 2001.

xii SH

List of abbreviations

H. Lloyd-Jones and P. Parsons, Supplementum Hellenisticum. Berlin and New York 1983. SVF H. F. A. von Arnim, Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta. Stuttgart 1903–5. Talon P. Talon, The Standard Babylonian Creation Myth Enūma Eliš. State Archives of Assyria Cuneiform Texts 4. Helsinki 2005. van der Spek and Finkel R. J. van der Spek and I. Finkel, ‘Mesopotamian chronicles’. Online publication: www.livius.org. van der Spek and Stol R. J. van der Spek and M. Stol, ‘The Antiochus Cylinder’. Online publication: www.livius.org. Wehrli F. Wehrli, Die Schule des Aristoteles. 2nd edn. Basel 1967–9. Weissbach F. H. Weissbach, Die Keilinschriften der Achämeniden. Leipzig 1911. West M. L. West, Homeric Hymns, Homeric Apocrypha, Lives of Homer. Cambridge, MA 2003. Westenholz J. G. Westenholz, Legends of the Kings of Akkade. Winona Lake, IN 1997.

Introduction

The fact is, we are mixed in with one another in ways that most national systems of education have not dreamed of. Edward Said

This book stems from a realization that has steadily transformed perceptions of ancient literature. When ancient texts in Akkadian, Sumerian, Hittite, Ugaritic and other languages started to be deciphered, and were then gradually edited in the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, they were found to bear a number of striking similarities with ancient Greek literature. Greece and Mesopotamia, in particular, seemed to have many genres in common. They also shared narrative techniques such as speeches, dialogue and similes; individual motifs (the quest for eternal life, for example); and even specific scenes such as the three most powerful gods casting lots for the allocation of their realms. Some Greek texts (for example the fable of the bull and the mosquito) looked so similar to newly discovered Mesopotamian ones that they were described as near-translations.1 Connections between Greek and Mesopotamian texts were there for everyone to see, yet scholars had, and continue to have, great difficulties in accounting for them. One difficulty concerns the geographical distance between Greece and Mesopotamia, which must have represented a significant obstacle to communication, particularly in the archaic period. The idea of a ‘hotline’ linking seventh-century Assyrian court literature and archaic Greece has proved controversial,2 as have the many other scenarios for cultural contact that have been proposed.3 Another considerable barrier was linguistic: Akkadian and Sumerian, the two main literary languages of Mesopotamia 1 For the fable of the bull/elephant and mosquito/wren, see below, pp. 26–9. Burkert 1992: 90–1 speaks of ‘near-translation’ when he discusses the casting of lots among the gods at Il. 15.187–93 and OB Atra-hasīs I .11–17 (Lambert and Millard). 2 West’s formulation; see M. L. West 1997: 627. 3 See Chapter 1, pp. 21–4.

1

2

Introduction

in the first millennium B C , are very different from Greek and, at some point, fell out of daily use. What to make of these linguistic barriers is an open question: there is a danger, here, of projecting current scholarly divides onto the ancient past. Few classicists learn the languages of Mesopotamia; but, at a practical level, they can of course be learnt.4 There is Hellenistic evidence for people who knew both Greek and Akkadian. For earlier periods we are in the dark, but we can imagine a situation in which some very few individuals managed to overcome both the geographic and linguistic obstacles that separated Greece and Mesopotamia. There are examples of single travellers having huge cultural impact in other historical periods: we may think of Michael Scot, for example, travelling from Scotland to Durham, then Oxford, Paris, Bologna, Palermo and finally learning Arabic in Toledo, thus opening up a whole tradition of knowledge to western readers. Or again we may think of Marco Polo making it to China, or of Ibn Battuta travelling from Morocco to India, China and sub-Saharan Africa. Without written records, the tracks of such extraordinary travellers and linguists would become invisible, and their cultural influence subterraneous. For the archaic period, we do not have evidence of actual dialogue between traceable individuals. What we do have are some striking literary similarities or ‘parallels’, as scholars working on the connections between early Greece and Mesopotamia have often called them. How these ‘parallels’ have been studied and conceived depends, in large measure, on the historical development of Classics and Assyriology as academic disciplines. Mesopotamian literatures emerged piecemeal over the past hundred years or so: to this day, many Mesopotamian texts remain difficult to access, and many more continue to languish unedited in museum collections around the world. Even famous poems have suffered from the exiguity of the assyriological workforce: the Epic of Gilgamesh finally became available in an up-to-date edition in 2003;5 but the equally important Enūma eliš (also known as the Babylonian Epic of Creation) is still awaiting a reliable edition.6 Under these circumstances, classicists devoted themselves to sifting through the emerging materials, establishing 4 Excellent Akkadian introductions, handbooks, dictionaries and grammars are now readily available, and classicists are better placed than most to make effective use of them; see M. Worthington 2010 and the literature cited there. 5 George 2003. 6 The appearance of Talon 2005 has meant that a reading text in Akkadian is now available to the wider public. A critical edition, prepared by the late Wilfred Lambert and to be published by Eisenbrauns, is eagerly awaited.

Introduction

3

broadly what was known about them, and starting a debate about their relationship with ancient Greek literature. The pioneering publications of Burkert and West offered that kind of approach, concentrating on specific parallels as a crude but effective way of bringing non-Greek texts to the attention of classicists.7 What I hope to offer, as a next step, is a broader methodological framework for comparison, rather than homing in on ‘parallels’ alone. I also move well beyond the archaic period, in order to consider how the similarities between Greek and Mesopotamian literature were received in antiquity, and how they helped to establish a meaningful cultural dialogue, particularly in the Hellenistic age. The example of Berossos, the Babylonian priest who wrote in Greek, concludes this book, but also provides a starting point. Berossos was an acute reader of both Greek and Mesopotamian texts. In modern terms, he might be seen as engaging in the project of comparative literature – and, in that sense, to be setting an example for this book. Like Berossos’ work, this study also moves between different scholarly traditions. To put it bluntly, neither Assyriology nor Classics have favoured comparative work. For the younger discipline, that of Assyriology, the priority was initially that of establishing its own academic autonomy; and, to this day, the most urgent task remains that of training young scholars to edit, translate and comment on texts that have only recently been discovered and are not yet entirely accessible. Specialized knowledge is required. In Classics, there is already an ample choice of editions, translations and commentaries for all major texts; but there are some intellectual hurdles to the project of comparison. As Walter Burkert points out, ‘European tradition, especially the scholarly tradition, used to see the Greeks … as unique and isolated, classical.’8 That is not an auspicious starting point for comparing literatures of any kind. We may contrast Hugo Meltzl’s founding statement of comparative literature: according to him, ‘a people, be it ever so insignificant politically, is and will remain, from the standpoint of comparative literature, as important as the largest nation.’9 Comparative literature, for Meltzl, requires a level playing field where no culture (or ‘people’, in the terminology of the day) is deemed a priori more important than any other. In practice, Meltzl was broadly Eurocentric in outlook, as were most of his colleagues until well into the twentieth century; but their vision was always inclusive in principle, and that inclusiveness came to the 7 E.g. Burkert 1992 and 2004, M. L. West 1997. 8 Burkert 2004: 1. 9 Meltzl 1877, quoted in Damrosch, Melas and Buthelezi 2009: 45.

4

Introduction

fore in the wake of decolonialization and globalization. Summarizing, and responding to, those developments, the influential Bernheimer Report ‘Comparative literature at the turn of the century’ insisted that ‘literature departments should play an active role in furthering the multicultural recontextualisation of Anglo-American and European perspectives … questioning and resisting their dominance’.10 Not everyone agreed, needless to say, but the committee’s recommendations certainly resonated and gained authority through time, at least in the field of comparative literature. As Emily Apter argues, ‘post-colonialism is in many respects truer to the foundational disposition of comparative literature than other more traditional tendencies and approaches’.11 It is the comparative approach of Apter and Bernheimer that provides the inspiration for this book. In tracing the dialogues between Greek and Mesopotamian literature this book too aims to ‘further the multicultural recontextualisation of … European perspectives’. Yet, since it is also a book written by a classicist, and classicists are certainly among its intended audience, its place in the history of classical scholarship needs to be clarified before we can embark on a comparative journey. For Classics has had a different intellectual history from comparative literature. In the same year that the Bernheimer Report recommended ‘questioning and resisting’ the dominance of European literary perspectives, Bernard Knox, founding director of the prestigious Harvard Center for Hellenic Studies (1961–85), wrote about ancient Greek literature: The primacy of the Greeks in the canon of Western literature is neither an accident nor the result of a decision imposed by higher authority; it is simply a reflection of the intrinsic worth of the material, its sheer originality and brilliance.12

Knox saw the privileged position of Greek literature not as a matter of a European perspective that we might wish to challenge. Rather, its supremacy was the straightforward result of its ‘intrinsic’ quality. This view has often been questioned, not least within Classics itself, but it captures something important about the study of ancient Greek literature: 10 The Bernheimer Report was presented at the MLA convention 1993. It was published in Bernheimer 1995; for the above quote see pp. 44–5. Mary Louise Pratt writes in the same collection (Pratt 1995: 62): ‘The big picture is of comparative literature as a particularly hospitable space for the cultivation of multilingualism, polyglossia, the arts of cultural mediation, deep intercultural understanding, and genuinely global consciousness. It can develop these things both as scholarly endeavours and as new forms of citizenship in a globalized world.’ 11 Apter 1995: 86. 12 Knox 1993: 21.

Introduction

5

unlike comparative literature, with its longstanding commitment to equality-in-diversity, Classics as practised since the early nineteenth century has been broadly committed to a single, exemplary tradition. In fact, it is precisely the uniqueness of the Greek experience, its non-comparability, which often gave the subject its sense of mission in a changing world.13 ‘Classics’, according to one recent definition, ‘is a subject that exists in the gap between us and the world of the Greeks and Romans.’14 The question of who is meant by ‘us’ has been much discussed in recent years, particularly in the burgeoning field of classical receptions. An ever increasing body of scholarship studies hitherto marginalized responses to ancient literature.15 One result of that work is that the tail end of the classical tradition can no longer be conceived as exclusively ‘European’ or ‘western’, under any definition of those slippery terms. But what about Greece and Rome themselves? Why those two, and why only those two? One answer might be, quite simply, that it has long been thus: from the point of view of reception, ‘the world of Greeks and Romans’ has a well-defined identity. Still, the privileging of ‘Greeks and Romans’ has come under increasing pressure, both within and without academia.16 And some of the most considerable pressure comes precisely from the literatures of ancient Mesopotamia. These are not only ancient enough to vie with Greece for seniority, in the wider field of world literature, but also close enough (both culturally and geographically) to threaten a genuine blurring of disciplinary and cultural boundaries. Is ancient Greek literature merely one among other Near Eastern literatures, as Martin West famously stated?17 In that case, does it still make sense to elevate and isolate it as ‘classical’ or are ‘the days of an exclusively “classical” scholarship … over’, as another critic puts it?18 These questions are not simply ‘academic’, they have broader cultural significance, and sometimes lead to new literary explorations. 13 For an instructive discussion of what has been at stake in learning Greek, and studying Greece, from antiquity to the present day, see Goldhill 2002. 14 Beard and Henderson 1995: 6; further remarks in Beard 2012. 15 For an early conjecture that the study of reception might be energized by comparative perspectives see Most 1997. For Classics and postcolonialism see Davies 1997, Hardwick and Gillespie 2007, Graziosi and Greenwood 2007, Hardwick and Stray 2008, Greenwood 2010, Hall and Vasunia 2010, S. A. Stephens and Vasunia 2010. 16 For a compelling synthesis, see Settis 2006. 17 M. L. West 1966: 31. 18 M. L. West 1997: xi, quoting Petriconi 1964: 338, n. 18. Similar questions have been asked in comparative literature too: after much debate, Susan Bassnett declared, in 1993, that the discipline of comparative literature, in its broadly Eurocentric guise, had ‘had its day’: Bassnett 1993: 161. The discipline has reinvented itself many times since; e.g. Bhabha 1994, Damrosch 2003, Spivak 2003, Casanova 2004, Apter 2006.

6

Introduction

Chad Gracia and Yusef Komunyakaa’s recent adaptation of Gilgamesh, for example, casts the Akkadian poem in the form of a Greek tragedy, complete with actors and chorus.19 Conversely, the Austrian poet Raoul Schrott, who translated both Homer’s Iliad and the Epic of Gilgamesh, argues (implausibly) that Homer himself came from a Mesopotamian scribal milieu.20 These examples suggest that Greece and Mesopotamia are currently closer in the popular imagination than in academic research. Indeed, the relationship between research and broader social concerns is far from straightforward when it comes to the interaction between Greece and other ancient civilizations: the controversy over Martin Bernal’s Black Athena amply demonstrates this. The book has become an important point of reference for the Afrocentrist movement in the United States, but has also come under heavy academic criticism, particularly on the part of classical scholars.21 More than twenty years after the publication of volume one, Black Athena still attracts debate, and is seldom treated in a manner that shows equal understanding of academic and social concerns.22 Similarly, Manfred Osman Korfmann’s excavations on the hill of Hisarlık in Turkey, the site where Schliemann thought he had discovered Troy, have inspired popular interest and academic controversy in equal measure. Through several exhibitions, Korfmann aimed to combine the ‘dream’ of Troy, as propagated by artists and poets from Homer onwards, with the ‘reality’ of the Hittite principality of Wilusa, which he characterized as a Bronze Age centre of trade at the crossroads between Europe and Anatolia. This vision meets the aspirations of German and Turkish audiences, as well as those of the governments and corporate investors who funded the excavation in the first place. Some of Korfmann’s academic colleagues, however, violently objected to the terms used to describe the city of Troy: the controversy is only seemingly about minutiae; in reality it stems from deep-seated assumptions about academic freedom, the new Germany and the new Europe.23 As with Black Athena, the impression is that, today, antiquity matters precisely at the boundaries of the classical. 19 Gracia and Komunyakaa 2006; cf. Gracia 2005, and for the modern reception of Gilgamesh more generally, see Ziolkowski 2011. 20 Schrott 2001, 2008a and 2008b. Schrott worked with existing translations of Gilgamesh rather than the Akkadian text; for responses to his work see Maul 2002, Rollinger and Ulf 2011. 21 For academic responses to Black Athena see e.g. Levine and Peradotto 1989, Levine 1992, Lefkowitz 1996, Lefkowitz and Rogers 1996, Berlinerblau 1999, Bernal 2001. 22 For a recent discussion, see Orrells, Bhambra and Roynon 2011. For an early and admirably balanced response, see Levine 1992. 23 For discussion, see Haubold 2002a and 2006, with further literature.

Introduction

7

This book stems from the Stanford Lectures I delivered at Trinity College, Dublin in 2008. I addressed, there, an audience of students and colleagues studying many different aspects of the ancient world; and I imagine that the readership for this book will be similar. This book aims to contribute to academic research, therefore, but is also shaped by broader social and political commitments. And the first commitment is to treat the texts of both ancient Greece and Mesopotamia as literature.24 Here I take inspiration from Terry Eagleton’s invitation to ‘think of literature less as some inherent quality or set of qualities displayed by certain kinds of writing … than as a number of ways in which people relate themselves to writing’.25 It is now well understood just how deeply our view of Greek literature is implicated in processes of reception, selection and canon formation, all of which are in turn influenced by modes of production and dissemination, readerly politics and sheer habit, both ancient and modern.26 The picture is very different, though hardly any less complicated, on the Mesopotamian side, which lacks an unbroken tradition of reading. To this day, no one has attempted to write a ‘history of Mesopotamian literature’, because there is a genuine uncertainty about the status and nature of even the most famous Mesopotamian texts.27 Treating them as literature is, in fact, in itself a gesture of commitment beyond the western canon. From that gesture, new interpretations ensue: reading them as literature (i.e. with the techniques and commitments of literary study) is likely to generate new insights into Mesopotamian texts, simply because they have often been denied the status of literature and have been approached, instead, as ‘mythology’, ‘wisdom’, ‘folklore’, ‘religion’  – terms which encourage specific interpretative techniques and fields of comparison. Relating oneself to Mesopotamian texts as literature (to use Eagleton’s description of the enterprise) has knock-on effects also for our understanding of Greece, which suddenly looks less unique, and more connected to other ancient traditions. It is the nature of that connection that I aim

24 Contra, e.g., Averintsev 1999a and 1999b, who argues that no ancient Near Eastern texts have the status of ‘literature’. 25 Eagleton 1983: 8. 26 E.g. Whitmarsh 2004a: 1–17. 27 Though there has been plenty of important preparatory work: e.g. Lambert 1960, Lambert and Millard 1969, Jacobsen 1976 and 1987, Tigay 1982, Vanstiphout 1986, 1999a and b, forthcoming, Edzard and Röllig 1987–90, Longman 1991, Bottéro and Kramer 1993, J.  G. Westenholz 1997, Dalley 2000, George 2003, Wassermann 2003, Black, Cunningham, Robson and Zólyomi 2004, Foster 2005 and 2007, Charpin 2010, Frahm 2011, Radner and Robson 2011.

8

Introduction

to explore here, by asking how it develops diachronically in relation to Mesopotamia, from the archaic to the Hellenistic period.

Dialogues through time Walter Burkert wrote about the ‘orientalizing revolution’ of archaic Greece, but there seem to have been many ‘orientalizing revolutions’ in Greek literature. The archaic period with its manifold literary parallels, the classical era with its invention of literary stereotypes such as the ‘barbarian’, the Hellenistic age with its culturally hybrid practices and literary forms, have all been singled out as periods when contact between Greek and Near Eastern cultures was particularly intense and, at least from a literary point of view, productive. This book argues that the dialogue between Greek and Mesopotamian literature was never confined to a single moment of ‘revolution’, or even to two or three revolutionary periods: although events like the Persian Wars and the conquests of Alexander fundamentally changed the terms of engagement, it is possible to trace connections from the archaic to the Hellenistic period. This study spans roughly 500 years, from the eighth century B C , when the Assyrians first encountered populations whom they called ‘Greeks’ or rather ‘Ionians’ (Akk. Yaunāya), to the third century B C , when we see the rise of a distinct Babylonian-Greek literature under the Seleucid king Antiochus I. This is a vast field, and I make no pretence of covering it in its entirety. My discussion rather focuses on a selection of texts which are of particular interest in a comparative framework: Greek and Mesopotamian mythological poetry (Chapter 1); Greek and Mesopotamian texts that we might loosely call ‘historical’ (Chapter 2); and finally the work of Berossos, who is interested in both mythological and historical narratives (Chapter 3). Several points need to be borne in mind about this selection. First, it brings together texts from different time periods. Many – though not all – Mesopotamian texts considered in this book are significantly older than their counterparts on the Greek side. Thus, the Epic of Gilgamesh dates back to the late second millennium B C in its Standard Babylonian form, which is the relevant text here. (Other versions are even older.)28 More radically, the literature about Sargon of Akkad and Narām-Sîn discussed in Chapter 2, while certainly popular in the first millennium B C , can be 28 We can trace a unified epic to the Old Babylonian period (c. 1700 B C ). Sumerian literature about Gilgamesh was older still; for discussion see George 2003: 4–17.

Dialogues through time

9

traced all the way back to those kings’ own inscriptions in the late third millennium.29 Another point concerns my Mesopotamian texts in particular, most of which are written in cuneiform Akkadian. Akkadian is an East Semitic language which was current in Mesopotamia from the third millennium B C to the first.30 From c. 2600 B C onwards, it gave rise to a diverse literature in the cuneiform script, a syllabic and logographic writing system that speakers of Akkadian had taken over from the Sumerians.31 Literature in cuneiform Akkadian flourished in Mesopotamia in the first millennium B C , but there were also other traditions, in different languages. Some of these are known to us, especially the extensive corpus of Sumerian literature which formed a close symbiotic relationship with cuneiform Akkadian.32 Others are lost: there must once have been a significant Mesopotamian literature in alphabetic Aramaic which, unlike cuneiform Akkadian, was written on perishable materials and did not survive.33 What we can still see of Mesopotamian literature is therefore only part of a broader spectrum of literary activity. Much of this literature focused on religion and history, and these aspects of Mesopotamian culture certainly interested the Greeks. Still, we do not possess a representative sample of first-millennium Mesopotamian literature; and the fragmentary state of our evidence affects the nature of our enquiry. This leads to another, more general point, which concerns the different character and institutional context of Greek and cuneiform Mesopotamian literature. Despite their many similarities, they do not always map neatly onto one another: the boundaries between genres, for example, were drawn in different ways, and some genres do not find obvious parallels at all. There were also important differences in the modes of production and reception. Cuneiform writing was a specialized scribal skill, of which practitioners were justly proud: King Assurbanipal of Assyria boasted about having mastered it, for example.34 Writing Greek required no very great 29 Collected in Frayne 1993. 30 For the history of Akkadian see George 2007a. 31 C. B. F. Walker 1987 discusses the development of the cuneiform script; for the earliest history of cuneiform writing see Glassner 2007. 32 For Sumerian language and literature see Jacobsen 1987; Edzard 2003; Black, Cunningham, Robson and Zólyomi 2004; and the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature published by Oxford University (www.etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/). I discuss some examples of Sumerian literature below, pp. 29–30 and 119. 33 For the use of Aramaic in ancient Mesopotamia, see Tadmor 1982, Fales 1986, Folmer 1995: 2–6, Parpola 2000. 34 Pongratz-Leisten 1999: 310–14, with relevant passages and discussion; for other aspects of cuneiform culture see Radner and Robson 2011.

10

Introduction

skill or learning, though various forms of literary performance certainly did.35 Much cuneiform literature was produced for storage in archives and libraries, rather than public singing and dancing.36 The Mesopotamian archives must have been particularly inaccessible to outsiders. The question arises, therefore, of what it might mean to trace ‘dialogues in literature’ under these circumstances. The answer, I argue, is complex, and crucially depends on historical context and literary genre. Chapter 1, on early Greek and Mesopotamian epic, addresses the much discussed (but little understood) ‘parallels’ between Mesopotamian texts and the literature of dark age and archaic Greece. I start with reception, and with the observation that the parallels on record are in important ways a product of how we read ancient literature today: they are neither self-evident nor self-explanatory (contrary to what Martin West has claimed).37 As cultural horizons shifted in the course of the twentieth century, readers of ancient epic increasingly challenged conventional views of the western literary canon. Parallels in Near Eastern texts furnished proof that Homer, for example, was not unique and isolated within the ancient world: other authors and literary traditions had treated similar subjects, and in rather similar ways. What was more, they had done so before Homer, suggesting a revisionist mythology of European roots. The central idea that animates Chapter 1 is that we should set aside questions of who ‘came first’, who ‘influenced’ whom, or who ‘stole’ from which neighbouring tradition. My point is not to create an updated version of the western canon. Nor do I plan to visit Mesopotamian epic like a tourist who projects onto the wider world his own local horizons. Sri Aurobindo once pointed out how easy it would be, from an Indian perspective, to misread the Iliad as ‘a crude and empty semi-savage and primitive epos’.38 A lack of readerly commitment can make a mockery of the most canonical of texts. It seems to me that we should try to encounter both ancient Greek and Mesopotamian texts as readers, by which I mean that we must approach them with the levels of commitment that they – implicitly or explicitly – demand of us. In so doing, I resist postulating 35 See variously Bakker 1997 and 2005; Dougherty and Kurke 1993; Goldhill and Osborne 1999; Thomas 2000; I. Worthington 1994. 36 Differences were perhaps not as stark as my summary suggests: cuneiform texts were also performed, and some circulated in oral form, see Vogelzang and Vanstiphout 1992 and, for the oral Gilgamesh, below, p. 105, n. 100. Conversely, Greek texts too were written down and read: as Whitmarsh 2004a: 106–21 has argued, the formation of an archive of written Greek literature was well under way by the classical period. 37 M. L. West 1997: viii. 38 Aurobindo 1972: 257.

Dialogues through time

11

a privileged relationship between Greek and Mesopotamian literature within the archaic world (since we do not actually have evidence of especially intensive contacts in this period), while taking seriously the fact that such a relationship does indeed exist in the modern imagination: for readers after Rilke, it has become almost inevitable to approach Homer with Gilgamesh in mind.39 The same was not true of ancient readers. In the words of Glenn Most, ‘the similarities between the Iliad and Gilgamesh, and between the Theogony [and] the Babylonian Enūma eliš … are evident, and fascinating, for us: they were quite unknown, and of no interest whatsoever, to the Greeks.’40 There is much artful intertextuality in Homer, but there is no suggestion, ever, that we should go in search of specifically Mesopotamian models. This fact does not impair my comparative project. We see, as readers, that Greek and Akkadian epic share a profound interest in mortality as the basis for all human life. They also share the idea of a universe that is well ordered and administered by immortal gods. Shared, and very broad, assumptions of this kind underpin more specific parallels: cosmogonic narratives use a shared narrative syntax to explain why and how the universe came into being; while other epics explore how humans experience death, and how that affects the making of human culture. Once this overall sense of broadly shared concerns is recognized, differences between the traditions are thrown into relief, and acquire significance. Drawing inspiration from David Damrosch’s concept of the ‘creation-flood epic’, I argue that Hesiod in the Theogony consciously builds the world from a series of divine births as opposed to a single act of creation; while the Babylonian Enūma eliš, just as pointedly, kills off the cosmic family tree to make room for Marduk’s creation of the world. At the other end of the cosmogonic process, Homer brings the heroic age to an end with a war – and sees this as the precondition for epic poetry itself, as κλέα ἀνδρῶν. Along the way, we contemplate a horrific alternative: obliteration through water, which would not allow for the continuities of human generations and of poetry (which is conceived as signing and listening from generation to generation). That alternative, a devastating flood, is precisely what informs the Mesopotamian Poem of the Flood and Gilgamesh. However, here too we find an awareness that the story of gods and men could have been different, and may not have involved an obliterating, silencing flood. We, as readers, compare specific Greek and Mesopotamian poems. In the archaic 39 Moran 1980, discussing Rilke 1976: 99. 40 Most 2003: 385.

12

Introduction

period there was no mutual recognition between those texts; but there was an awareness of narrative alternatives, within a broadly shared understanding of the place of gods and men in the history of the cosmos. Chapter 2 calls for a different approach, as we encounter a new type of Greek literature which displays an interest in the particulars of Mesopotamian history and culture. Thus, Herodotus describes the city of Babylon in some detail, and in that context claims to have derived at least some of his information from Mesopotamian interlocutors.41 But what exactly does that mean? On the face of it, Herodotus does not seem particularly well informed about Mesopotamia, certainly by the standards of modern historical scholarship. According to some, his account of Babylon is little more than a figment of the Greek imagination.42 Exposing the claims of Herodotus by confronting them with bona fide Mesopotamian sources has become a favourite pasttime among classical scholars and Assyriologists alike.43 And yet, that project is arguably misconceived. Our bona fide sources are not what Herodotus had in hand, clearly. But his account still emerges out of a network of interlocking narratives which ultimately do link Babylon to Greece. Here I take inspiration from the work of Hayden White, who rightly points out that historical facts become meaningful only once they are put into narratives that can be shared.44 The question then becomes how broadly they were shared. Arnaldo Momigliano, among others, has argued that Herodotus created a novel way of writing history when tracing the ‘succession of empires’ from the Assyrians to the Medes and on to the Persians. Momigliano also suggested that this way of thinking about history was to become characteristic of Greece and the western historiographical tradition as a whole.45 I disagree: the succession of empires is, in my view, precisely an example of a narrative scheme shared between Greece and the Near East. Mesopotamian authors developed similar schemes long before Herodotus; and by the fifth century B C the succession of empires formed part of a globalized discourse designed to explain events that were of interest to a global audience. There were of course differences between individual texts, which need to be taken seriously. Yet these differences do not always seem 41 Hdt. 1.181–3, where he refers to what the ‘Chaldaeans’ say; for discussion of this term see below, pp. 145–6. 42 Rollinger 1993 is the standard account. 43 For a recent example see Henkelman, Kuhrt, Rollinger and Wiesehöfer 2011; for detailed discussion, and further literature, see below, pp. 75–7. 44 White 1973 and 1987. 45 Momigliano 1994.

Dialogues through time

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determined by language or cultural background: we shall see, for example, that Ctesias portrays imperial succession in a way that is in many ways closer to classic Mesopotamian accounts than to those of his immediate Greek predecessor, Herodotus. The focus on shared narratives brings with it a question that has received relatively little attention. While much scholarly energy has been devoted to establishing how much Herodotus knew about Babylon, it is also worth considering how much Babylonians knew about Greece, and to what extent their views shaped stories that ultimately surface even in Herodotus himself. In the early fifth century, we witness a concerted attempt on the part of Darius and his son Xerxes to subject mainland Greece to the Achaemenid Empire – and an equally determined attempt on the part of some Greek states to resist that attempt. Military action ‘on the ground’ was framed by a war of words, as has long been understood: much has been written, for example, on the ‘invention of the barbarian’ in classical Greek literature, as a way of forging greater unity between (more or less) independent Greek states, all facing the Persian Empire.46 How the Greeks developed the narrative of the barbarian, and to what extent that narrative was shared and successful among Greek communities, has been intensely discussed.47 What is less clear is the role of non-Greeks in bringing about this perceived ‘clash of civilizations’.48 The oversight is telling: classicists have struggled to recognize non-Greek agency in intellectual matters. Following the lead of Ian Moyer,49 I argue that the Persians did have an input into the process of inventing the barbarian, and that it was precisely their broadly Mesopotamian discourse of world empire that precipitated the creation of a new, oppositional, sense of Greek identity. Of defining importance, I argue, was the literature about the ancient rulers of Akkad, and particularly the glamorous Sargon who, by the first millennium B C , was regarded as the ultimate model for any would-be conqueror of the world. The Sargon literature emphasized the sea as the ultimate frontier of empire: successive Mesopotamian rulers from Sargon I I of Assyria to Cyrus the Great claimed to control the world from the shores of the Upper Sea (i.e. the Mediterranean) to the Lower Sea (i.e. the Indian Ocean/Persian Gulf ). Yet they also boasted to go beyond the shoreline, into regions that lay on the other side of ‘the Bitter River’, and that 46 E.g. E. Hall 1989, J. Hall 2002. 47 E.g. Georges 1994, Miller 1997, E. Hall 2006a, Gruen 2011, Vlassopoulos forthcoming. 48 The phrase was made notorious by Huntington 1996; for similar notions among students of the ancient world see Harrison 2011: 122–7. 49 Moyer 2002 and 2011.

14

Introduction

could be reached only by heroic warrior kings. I argue that Xerxes dramatized precisely this claim in his Greek campaign: as part of the imperial drama that was to validate his rule, Xerxes celebrated his crossing of the Hellespont as an act of imperial transcendence. Greek observers, I suggest, understood this and responded in kind. Under pressure, they resorted to a form of strategic essentialism, accepting and defeating the imperial challenge on its own terms.50 Thus they endorsed the imperial narrative of the great king fighting the indomitable people of the sea. They even insisted that they could swim, while the Persians could not. The old drama was replayed, only this time from the perspective of those attacked, and with an outcome that exposed the emperor’s ambitions as foolish, and even against nature. In other ways too, Greek authors adopted and subverted the rhetoric of imperial conquest. For example, they reinterpreted Xerxes’ bridge across the Hellespont as an act of transgression – not far from the intended message, but exposing precisely the limitations of imperial control. As has often been noted, freedom from imperial rule defined the new, oppositional notion of Greekness that arose in the fifth century B C , but the point was not simply that an important war had been won. Simultaneously, a powerful discourse of imperial rule had been kept at bay: I argue that the invention of Greece as a self-contained cultural and geographical unit in contrast with non-Greek ‘barbarians’ developed very largely in response to an ancient Babylonian discourse. Chapter 3 turns to the Hellenistic period, when, after Alexander’s conquests and much bloody fighting among his successors, Mesopotamia emerged into a new period of peace and stability under the Macedonian dynasty of the Seleucids. These Hellenistic rulers have often been overshadowed, in scholarship, by the more glamorous Ptolemies in Egypt  – whose connections with Rome fixed their role in world history. Ptolemaic Alexandria had the Museum, and with it the poetry of Callimachus, Apollonius and Theocritus. Alexandria was also where the scholars Zenodotus, Aristophanes and Aristarchus edited the classical texts of Greek literature, including Homer and Hesiod. By contrast, the idea that there might be a distinctive Seleucid literature would have raised eyebrows until very recently. That attitude has changed in the wake of the pioneering work by Amélie Kuhrt and Susan Sherwin-White.51 Recent years have 50 For ‘strategic essentialism’ see below, p. 125. 51 Kuhrt and Sherwin-White 1987, 1991, 1993.

Dialogues through time

15

seen important new studies of Seleucid Greek literature and culture,52 as well as new editions of Seleucid-period cuneiform texts.53 Conferences and panels on the Seleucids are now proliferating and, as a result of all this activity, the largest of the Hellenistic empires is no longer off the map of classical scholarship. I contribute to this flourishing of interest by looking at the formative three decades when Antiochus I ruled in Mesopotamia, first as co-regent of his father Seleucus (293/2–281 B C ) and then as emperor (281–261 B C ). This period saw the development of a distinctive Babylonian-Greek literature with its own thematic concerns. In approaching this literature, I draw on John Ma’s work on role play in Hellenistic kingship and on Antoinette Burton’s approach to cultural archives as contact zones.54 I argue that, during the rule of Antiochus I, Mesopotamian literature was perceived and presented as a gigantic and incomparably ancient archive of world empire. I focus on two texts in particular, the so-called Antiochus Cylinder and the Babyloniaca by Berossos. They are in many ways quite different: one is written in Akkadian, the other in Greek; one is by King Antiochus himself (though with important qualifications, on which more below), the other is dedicated to him. The two texts also differ dramatically in scale and function: whereas the Cylinder has been read as a characteristic piece of imperial role play (Ma), Berossos’ Babyloniaca is seen as a unique attempt to compile a culturally hybrid ‘auto-ethnography’ from the ancient archives of Babylon.55 Yet, despite these differences, both texts share some important characteristics: they are both culturally composite in profound and complex ways; and they both turn to the Mesopotamian archive in order to develop their visions of world empire. I start by looking in detail at the Antiochus Cylinder. The Cylinder has often been called the ‘last Babylonian royal inscription’, a traditional text to the point of anachronism. I argue that this text is far more dynamic – and more interesting – than has often been allowed. This reading emerges by approaching the inscription as a literary construct, which is exactly how Berossos would have read it: for him, 52 E.g. Erickson 2009; see also the PhD dissertations by Paul Kosmin (Harvard) and Kathryn Stevens (Cambridge), both in progress. 53 Especially van der Spek and Finkel’s preliminary edition of the Hellenistic Babylonian chronicles on livius.org.; also Del Monte 1997, Glassner 2004. For the wider context of Hellenistic Babylonian literature see, e.g., Oelsner 1986; van der Spek 1985, 2003, 2005, 2006; Boiy 2004. 54 Ma 2003, Burton 2005. 55 De Breucker 2003a. On auto-ethnography see Pratt 1992, Reed-Danahay 1997, Buzard 2003.

16

Introduction

there was no difference in approach between interpreting an inscribed text and writing historiography. The bulk of Chapter 3 is then devoted to Berossos’ Babyloniaca, one of the most fascinating reads from the ancient world, despite its fragmentary state. I start by asking how Berossos as a ‘barbarian’ who writes for Greeks carves out an authorial persona for himself. The Babyloniaca, I suggest, shows unmistakable signs of strategic role play: in Book 1, Berossos exploits longstanding convergences between Greek and Mesopotamian cosmogonic traditions (traditions which have already come under discussion in Chapter 1) to present himself as a Chaldaean philosopher-priest and keeper of a universal archive of human knowledge. In Book 2, he traces the fortunes of that archive during the time of the great flood and develops an aetiology of his own role and that of his ‘Chaldaean’ peers. The chapter concludes by looking at Book 3 of the Babyloniaca, where Berossos reworks the succession of empires discussed in Chapter 2. Berossos provides a revisionist account in direct contrast with Ctesias, promoting Babylon to a place in imperial history which it had never before occupied in the Greek imagination. I argue that Berossos employs two strategies to achieve this aim. First, he takes up and recasts elements of imperial history as described in Ctesias, so that his narrative remains recognizable to his Greek readers. Secondly, Berossos taps into orientalizing Greek fictions about Mesopotamia, most notably the romance of a king who built a hanging garden for his homesick Iranian wife. By dressing up Nebuchadnezzar in the garb of a Greek orientalist fantasy, Berossos creates a new model king – and a new vision of Graeco-Mesopotamian romance. This, then, is the argument of the book in broad outline. But the devil is, as ever, in the detail. Like many other literary explorations, this book falls or stands by the close readings it offers. And it is above all in developing those that I need to acknowledge the help of many friends, colleagues and institutions. I am grateful to Eckart Frahm, Barbara Graziosi, Ian Moyer, Robin Osborne, Phiroze Vasunia and Tim Whitmarsh for reading, and commenting on, drafts of the whole book. Their suggestions have improved it in more ways than I can mention here. I also wish to thank Martin Worthington, who commented in detail on a draft of Chapter 1, saving me from countless errors and infelicities. Those that remain are my responsibility alone. Kim Richardson and Emma Wildsmith prepared the book for publication with great efficiency and skill. Durham University provided generous leave, enabling me to take up fellowships at the Center for Hellenic Studies and Leiden University at important moments in

Dialogues through time

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the gestation of the book. The Center, with its unrivalled resources in Hellenic Studies, and Leiden with its equally comprehensive holdings in Assyriology, provided ideal working environments for the final stages of the project. I am grateful to Greg Nagy and the staff at the Center, and to Ineke Sluiter and her wonderful colleagues at the Department of Classics in Leiden, for being such accommodating hosts. The book is dedicated to the memory of Donald Murray (11.6.1983– 10.7.2011), in fond remembrance of our many conversations about Greeks and Mesopotamians.

CH APTER one

Parallel worlds

But there is also a sense in which these poems are here, now, and if we cannot learn something about ourselves and our world as it now is by reading them … then this is dead literature indeed. Thomas Van Nortwick

This chapter looks at Greek and cuneiform Mesopotamian literature c. 750–550 B C . I focus on some of the best-loved mythological poetry of the time: Homer and Hesiod in Greece, the Epic of Gilgamesh and Enūma eliš in Mesopotamia. This is not a representative sample of the literature read in archaic Greece and Mesopotamia, but it would not have struck ancient readers as eccentric: Homer and Hesiod (in this order) were always the two most popular poets of Greece, just as Enūma eliš and Gilgamesh were among the most frequently copied of the major narrative poems in first-millennium Mesopotamia.1 Clearly, these poems were of great significance to their readers and audiences. I stress this point because modern scholars of cultural contact have not always paid sufficient attention to the experiences of ancient, and indeed modern, audiences. The focus has rather been on questions of influence, often at the expense of any sustained appreciation of the texts and their readers. My aim is to explore how ancient (and modern) readers experienced the texts in question – and how they viewed them within the context of other possible texts and stories. My starting point here is the fact that all my main texts, the poems of Homer and Hesiod, Gilgamesh and Enūma eliš, address their readers as human beings in contrast with the gods. They ask questions that were, and still are, of universal significance: how did the world come into being? What is man’s place in it? And why must we all die? To these broadly universal questions our texts offered broadly universal answers. The human condition as they saw it could not be, in any 1 For Homer and Hesiod see Graziosi 2002, Graziosi and Haubold 2005, Koning 2010; for Enūma eliš and Gilgamesh see George 2003: 39.

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Parallel worlds

19

strong sense, culturally specific: what was true of Achilles in Thessalian Phthie had to apply also to Priam in Trojan Ilios; and what could be said about human life in Gilgamesh’s royal city of Uruk had to be true also much further afield. This overall orientation, I argue, indicates not only how we should read these texts but also how we might envisage their relationship with other texts. As has often been pointed out, Homer and Hesiod, Gilgamesh and Enūma eliš do not invite us to look for borrowings from other cultural spheres. Rather, what we see is a convergence in tone and theme which reflects the shared intuition that human life, and the divine cosmos around us, must be fundamentally the same for all people on earth. Much of the argument of Chapter 1 revolves around genre as a way of framing this shared intuition. A word is therefore needed here about terminology: many scholars in Classics and Assyriology have come to refer to Gilgamesh and Enūma eliš as ‘epics’ (the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Epic of Creation), despite the obvious fact that ‘epic’ is of course a Greek category, developed in the classical period to describe a specifically Greek narrative form. The term is convenient,2 but there is nothing inevitable about it: in some contexts, it might make equal, or better, sense to employ different generic terms.3 If I call my texts ‘epic’, I do so partly to express the kind of commitment Eagleton sees as central to any form of literary engagement. ‘Epic’ has long served as a value term in debates about comparative literature, and as a way of positioning a text or narrative tradition inside or outside the western literary canon. For illustration, we need look no further than the so-called ‘African epic controversy’ of the 1970s and 1980s, which saw scholars from a range of disciplines become embroiled in a bitter dispute over the question of whether there is such a thing as sub-Saharan ‘epic’.4 This chapter argues that the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Epic of Creation (Enūma eliš) can indeed be seen as belonging to the same genre as Greek ‘epic’, in specific and at times surprising ways. 2 It is defended in A. R. George 2007b, esp. p. 10: ‘While “epic” is a term from a critical tradition alien to ancient Mesopotamia, and thus both anachronistic and suspect, in my view it can be conveniently and meaningfully adopted for the Babylonian poem of Gilgamesh, as it can too for other non-western narratives.’ For a discussion of genre in Mesopotamian literature more generally, see Vanstiphout 1986, 1999a, 1999b, 2003; Longman 1991: 3–21; Michalowski 1999. A. R. George 2007b: 7–8 notes the Akkadian terms zamāru and šēru, both of which refer to Akkadian ‘epic’ poetry as a form of ‘song’. For the parallels with pre-classical Greek terminology, where epic is known as ‘song’ (ἀοιδή) about ‘the famous deeds of gods and men’ (ἔργ’ ἀνδρῶν τε θεῶν τε, Od. 1.338), see Haubold 2002b, with further literature. 3 As I argue in Haubold 2002b. 4 For an overview, see Mulokozi 2002 and Graziosi 2007, esp. pp. 125–31.

20

Parallel worlds

Problems of transmission We have already seen in the Introduction to this book that classical Greek and Mesopotamian literature have become closely associated in the minds of modern readers.5 For illustration, let us turn to one of the most powerful recent responses to Homer. We are in Iliad 9, Agamemnon is offering boundless gifts to Achilles (Logue 2005: 39–40): ‘The whole of eastern Pel’po’nesia – An area of outstanding natural beauty – Its cities, Epi’dávros, Trów’é’zen, Their fortresses, their harbours and their fleets, Their taxpayers – glad to accept his modest ways – All this, the greatest benefaction ever known, If he agrees to fight. And he admits I am his King.’ Instantly, Nestor: ‘An offer god himself could not refuse. All that remains to say is: Who shall take it to Achilles?’ Agamemnon: ‘You will.’ Starlight. The starlight on the sea. The sea. Its whispering Mixed with the prayers Of Ajax and of Nestor as they walk Along the shore towards Achilles’ gate. ‘My lords?’ ‘Your lord.’ ‘This way.’ They find him, with guitar, Singing of Gilgamesh.

One point immediately stands out about this account of Iliad 9: Homer’s Achilles does not of course sing of Gilgamesh but of the ‘famous deeds of men’, the κλέα ἀνδρῶν.6 His frame of reference is Greek, not 5 Above, pp. 6 and 11. 

  Il. 9.189.

6

Problems of transmission

21

Mesopotamian, and in the gap between Logue’s version and Homer’s Iliad we glimpse a well-known scholarly conundrum: what, if anything, did ancient Greek readers of Homer actually know about Mesopotamian literature? The question would be far easier to answer if Logue was right and Achilles did indeed sing of Gilgamesh; but he doesn’t, or at least Homer does not tell us that he does: there remains a gap between Greek and Mesopotamian epic, one that is not likely to be closed by any accumulation of parallels in the eyes of the modern reader.7 Christopher Logue, it has recently been suggested, views Homer through a lens of remote translation, what Emily Greenwood has referred to as his ‘tele-vision’.8 What she means is that he reads Homer with the perspective of the modern reader firmly in mind. Typical are his references to the eastern Peloponnese as an ‘area of outstanding natural beauty’; and to the ‘taxpayers’ whom Agamemnon offers up to Achilles. So, when Logue introduces Achilles as singing of Gilgamesh he is really pointing out the reading habits and cultural politics of the twenty-first century: for modern readers outside academia it has indeed become obvious to see Gilgamesh as a model for Achilles. By contrast, academic scholarship has struggled to keep pace with these intuitions. Whereas Logue does not need to ask how Achilles could know about Gilgamesh, much recent scholarship in Classics, and some in Assyriology, has puzzled precisely over the question of when, where and how narrative techniques, themes and motifs travelled across the ancient world.9 Archaeological evidence shows a rapid spread of Levantine culture during the period Burkert called the ‘Orientalizing Revolution’ (eighth/seventh century B C ).10 There is no reason to doubt that literature followed a broadly similar trend, but the details have remained elusive. At least three scenarios seem possible in 7 The literature on parallels between Gilgamesh and Homer has become so vast that only a selection can be given here. Scholarly work set in with Jensen’s ‘Vorläufige Mitteilung’ of 1902, which inaugurated his controversial studies of Gilgamesh in world literature: Jensen 1906, 1928. Other pioneers include Wirth 1921 and Ungnad 1923; since then, the field has burgeoned: Virolleaud 1939–40, Szabó 1956, Webster 1956, Frenkian 1959, Dias Palmeira 1959–60, Petriconi 1964, Scheibner 1967, Considine 1967, Sasson 1972, Gresseth 1975, Carvalho 1983–4, Beye 1984, Cors i Meya 1985, Wilson 1986, Burkert 1992, 2004 and 2005, Vetta 1994, Andersen 1997, S. Morris 1997, M. L. West 1997, Burgess 1999, Haubold 2002b, Patzek 2003 and 2011, Szlézak 2004. 8 Greenwood 2007. 9 E.g. Walcot 1966, Burkert 1992, 2004, 2005; Tigay 1993, Penglase 1994; Bernabé 1995 and 2004; Patzek 1996, 2004 and 2011; Rollinger 1996 and 2012; M. L. West 1997; Dalley 1998; Latacz 2004; Rollinger and Ulf 2004; Henkelman 2006 and 2010; Rollinger and Truschnegg 2006; Rollinger, Luther and Wiesehöfer 2007; van Dongen 2007, 2008 and 2011; Ulf 2009; López-Ruiz 2010. 10 Burkert 1992: 14–24 and M. L. West 1997: 10–12 set out some of the basic facts. For a more nuanced treatment, see Gunter 2009, who locates the phenomenon within the wider context of Assyrian imperial expansion.

22

Parallel worlds

principle: occasional and haphazard ‘drift’ of narrative techniques, themes and motifs; convergence of ideas and practices within a more or less coherent narrative koinē;11 specific appropriations at a time of heightened receptivity.12 These scenarios need not be mutually exclusive. Some similarities between Greek and Mesopotamian literature are clearly very general: similes, for example, are a universal feature of human storytelling. The fact that they occur also in Greek and Mesopotamian narrative cannot be used to claim any connections between these two literary traditions in particular. Yet some types of simile suggest something more specific: lion similes, for instance, are found in a variety of Mediterranean and Near Eastern literatures, including those of Greece and Mesopotamia, but are not a universal human heritage.13 They were a traditional form throughout the region, inspired ultimately by real lions, but more immediately by shared notions of human heroism. Some would argue that this is as far as we can go. Others point out that some instances of the lion simile are so close to one another in tone, content and even context that we should see them as the result of specific acts of literary borrowing. Most famously, the simile of the bereaved lioness in SB (Standard Babylonian) Gilgamesh V I I I .61–2 seems remarkably similar to Il. 18.318–23: kīma(gim) neš-ti ša šu-ud-da-at me-ra-[ni-šá] it-ta-n[a]-as-hur a-na pa-ni-[šú u arkīšu] Like a lioness who has been deprived of [her c]ubs, he kept pacing about, hence [and forth]. … ὥς τε λὶς ἠυγένειος, ὧι ῥά θ᾽ ὑπὸ σκύμνους ἐλαφηβόλος ἁρπάσηι ἀνὴρ ὕλης ἐκ πυκινῆς· ὃ δέ τ᾽ ἄχνυται ὕστερος ἐλθών, πολλὰ δέ τ’ ἄγκε’ ἐπῆλθε μετ᾽ ἀνέρος ἴχνι’ ἐρευνῶν, εἴ ποθεν ἐξεύροι· μάλα γὰρ δριμὺς χόλος αἱρεῖ· ὣς ὃ βαρὺ στενάχων μετεφώνεε Μυρμιδόνεσσιν· … like a bearded lion whose cubs a hunting man has stolen out of the thicket; the lion comes back too late, and is anguished, and turns into many valleys in search of the man’s trail, in case he might find him, for bitter anger has seized him; so he groaned heavily, and spoke among the Myrmidons: 11 Wassermann 2001: 262.  12  Burkert 1992, M. L. West 1997. 13 For lion similes in Homer see Fränkel 1921, Moulton 1977, Lonsdale 1990; for non-Greek literatures see Strawn 2005.

Problems of transmission

23

What we see here is not only a striking parallel in the treatment of the lion simile but also a convergence in narrative context: Achilles, like Gilgamesh, mourns the loss of his closest friend.14 Many readers have been impressed with the similarities between the two pairs of friends, Gilgamesh/Enkidu and Achilles/Patroclus, and have suggested that some form of direct borrowing has taken place. The simile of the lion(ess) would then be evidence of that borrowing.15 There is no proof, but there also seems no reason to exclude the possibility that some features of Mesopotamian literature found their way into Greek epic. Hunter-gatherers in the woods of ancient literature have accumulated a wealth of possible connections: Greek and Mesopotamian epics employ shared narrative techniques such as speeches and similes, motifs (male friendship, the quest for eternal life, the myth of divine succession) and whole scenes such as the casting of lots among the ruling gods, or the instance of the goddess of love who, insulted by a mortal man, complains to her parents.16 The cumulative case seems difficult to resist: it is now widely agreed that some of this material will indeed have come to Greece from Mesopotamia. There certainly was no dearth of relevant contact zones, areas, that is, where Greeks could have been exposed to Mesopotamian stories:17 Mesopotamia itself, Syria and Phoenicia, Cilicia, Cyprus, western Anatolia, the Aegean and even the western Mediterranean have all had their advocates.18 Nor is it difficult to imagine relevant mechanisms of transmission: domestic contexts, especially in bilingual populations; war and trade; supra-regional cults and religious festivals; and travelling experts.19 All these are likely to have played their part in disseminating ideas, images and narratives across the ancient world. Language difference did not pose an insurmountable obstacle: translation was commonplace, both within Mesopotamia and further afield.20 Greek settlements in the 14 Beyond the two similes discussed here, lion imagery is consistently associated with the two heroes’ grief: cf. Il. 24.40–5 (Achilles has lost all restraint, like a lion); SB Gilg. X .45 = 118 = 218 (George) (Gilgamesh roams the wilderness ‘got up like a lion’). 15 For discussion along these lines, see Patzek 2011: 399–400, Rollinger 2012: 222, with further literature. 16 Overviews in Burkert 1992, M. L. West 1997. 17 For contact zones, see Ulf 2009, with further literature; for the connectivity of the Homeric world in particular, see Rollinger 2012. 18 See, variously, Burkert 1992, M. L. West 1997, Bachvarova 2002, Lane Fox 2008, López-Ruiz 2010, Rollinger and Ulf 2011. 19 These possibilities are explored in Burkert 1992, Lane Fox 2008, López-Ruiz 2010 and Bachvarova 2002. 20 Tablet X I I of Gilgamesh is a famous example of the former: written in Akkadian, it is a translation of (parts of ) an older Sumerian narrative called Bilgames and the Netherworld; see George 2003: 47–54. For translation into non-Mesopotamian languages see Beckman 2003 on the Hittite Gilgamesh; and Gilan 2008 on texts about the kings of Akkad.

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Levant were geographically no more distant from the Mesopotamian heartlands than was inner Anatolia, and Cilicia in particular provided ample opportunity for cross-cultural encounters in the eighth and seventh centuries BC.21 The early Iron Age may have been less favourable to the westward spread of Mesopotamian literature than was the late Bronze Age, but there seems to be no reason to preclude the possibility of borrowings altogether.22 And yet, problems remain. On a purely practical level, we cannot pin down specific acts of borrowing from Mesopotamian epic into Greek.23 We know that Virgil read Homer, but we cannot be certain that Homer read Gilgamesh, if indeed it makes sense to think of him as an individual, or a ‘reader’, at all.24 More importantly, this line of argument pulls away from the texts and from the experiences of their audiences and readers. The very idea of ‘borrowing’ seems difficult to reconcile with Homeric poetics. Virgil advertises aemulatio and imitatio as central concerns of his art, pointing us to Homer as his ultimate model. From antiquity on, this was well understood: Servius, for example, opened his monumental commentary on the Aeneid by explaining that imitation of Homer was one of Virgil’s main purposes.25 He was right: one cannot – and nobody ever thought one could – read the Aeneid without having the Iliad and Odyssey at the back of one’s mind. The Homeric poems do not work like that, pace some of the more extreme claims that have been made about them.26 They never allude to non-Greek sources, nor did historical Greek audiences ever spot such allusions, as far as we know: among the thousands of extant scholia on the Iliad and Odyssey not one points out what to us are glaring similarities with Gilgamesh, Enūma eliš or other Mesopotamian poems.27 This may, of course, partly be an issue of transmission. The ancient Homeric scholia come to us primarily via Alexandria and Byzantium. There is some evidence that the possible connections between Homer and Babylon mattered elsewhere: as I discuss below, Zenodotus of Mallos claimed that 21 E.g. Rollinger and Ulf 2011, with further literature. 22 Oral storytelling is likely to have played an important role, as did Aramaic and Canaanite intermediaries. For oral transmission see Henkelman 2006. For Levantine intermediaries, see Rollinger 2012. 23 Rollinger 2012 discusses the problems that arise from the loss of the ‘intermediate’ literatures of the Levant. 24 That has been doubted: Nagy 1996. 25 Serv. Praef. 83–4 (Rand et al.): intentio Vergilii haec est, Homerum imitari et Augustum laudare a parentibus; see Fleischmann 2006, Vogt-Spira 2008, with further literature. 26 E.g. Petriconi 1964, quoted on p. 5; also Pulleyn 2000: 13. 27 See also above, p. 11.

A warning to comparatists

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Homer was a Chaldaean,28 and Lucian made great fun of that idea. But in the ancient Homeric scholarship that is most visible to us, and most influential, nothing is made of possible Mesopotamian origins.

A warning to comparatists: lessons to be learnt from the fable The apparent lack of interest, on the part of Homeric scholars, in connections between Greek and Mesopotamian epic was not simply a matter of cultural myopia.29 Some Greek genres of literature did invite cross-cultural comparison, and some even claimed descent from Mesopotamian sources. The fable is a prime example. It was of course always associated with Aesop, a non-Greek;30 and Babrius went so far as to trace it back via Aesop to Mesopotamia (Mythiambi Aesopei, Prologue to Part I I , 1–5): Μῦθος μέν, ὦ παῖ βασιλέως Ἀλεξάνδρου, Σύρων παλαιῶν ἐστιν εὕρεμ’ ἀνθρώπων, οἳ πρίν ποτ’ ἦσαν ἐπὶ Νίνου τε καὶ Βήλου. πρῶτος δέ, φασίν, εἶπε παισὶν Ἑλλήνων Αἴσωπος ὁ σοφός … Fable, o son of King Alexander, is the invention of the Syrians of old, who lived long ago, in the days of Ninos and Belos. The first, they say, to tell fables to the Greeks, was wise Aesop …

When Babrius traces the history of the fable to the ‘Syrians’ under Ninos and Belos, he means the Assyrians, represented here by their two earliest rulers.31 Babrius was writing at a time when even Homer could be declared a Babylonian,32 but his genealogy of the fable articulates something that had a long tradition in the history of the genre. Intriguingly, what he says also chimes with what we know about the actual history of the fable: the most ancient known fable collections are indeed found in Mesopotamia, where they go back to at least the early second millennium B C .33 Here, then, we see a branch of Greek literature that not only echoes 28 See below, p. 178. 29 Pace Momigliano 1975, whose insistence that the Greeks learned no foreign languages and were fundamentally uninterested in non-Greek literature, continues to set the tone of the debate. 30 For Aesop see Kurke 2010. 31 For Ninos and Belos see Hdt. 1.7, Ctesias F la (Lenfant), Kastor of Rhodes FGrHist 250 F 1–2; for Greek ‘Syrians’ = modern ‘Assyrians’ see below, p. 122. 32 For the date of Babrius (first century A D ) see Morgan 2007: 61. Kim 2010: 164–6 discusses Homer the Babylonian; see also below, pp. 178–9. 33 Alster 1997.

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‘real’ Mesopotamian literature (as indeed is arguably the case with epic), but also invites its ancient readers to reflect on those connections through its association with the foreigner Aesop, and eventually through Babrius’ explicit claim about Assyria. There is an opportunity here to set our own cross-cultural comparisons in a context where they were explicitly made in antiquity too. And yet, when we do so we still run into difficulties. The fable, it seems to me, offers us a useful lesson about how not to do comparative literature, and how not to become bad readers through comparison. Let us start, then, with this lesson from the fable, before moving on to the more difficult case of epic. One useful starting point may be to ask whether – and if so how – the fable’s self-proclaimed roots in Mesopotamia correspond to meaningful relationships with Mesopotamian ‘source texts’. Consider, for example, Babrius’ fable of the mosquito and the bull, number 84 in his collection: a mosquito settles on the horn of a bull but frets that it might be a burden. In response, the bull points out that it had not noticed its arrival, and does not care whether it leaves. A prose version of the same fable is attested in the so-called Augustana collection of Aesopic fables, of uncertain date.34 A somewhat different version occurs in a poem by Mesomedes, who was active in the early second century A D . In his account, the mosquito settles, not on the horn of a bull, but on the ear of an elephant.35 No one is likely to have started an academic debate over Babrius’ bull and Mesomedes’ elephant were it not for the fact that they have an ancestor in an Assyrian collection of popular sayings which dates to 716 B C , almost a thousand years earlier (Popular Sayings VAT 8807 rev. I I I .50–4 (Lambert), modified; cf. Alster 2005: 367): diq-diq-qu ina m[u]hhi pēri ki-i ú-š[i-bu] um-ma ta-lim id-[k]a an-a-a-ma ina ši-qi mê meš e-ra-[aq-ma] pe-e-ru a-na diq-diq-qi ip-[pal] ki-i tu-ši-bu ul i-de-ma ka-la-ka mi-[i-nu] ki-i ta-at-bu-ú ul i-de-e[-ma] When a wren settled on an elephant, it said, ‘Friend, did I deflect you from your course?36 I will go [off] at the water hole.’ The elephant replied to the wren, ‘I did not know when you got on, so what is all the fuss? – nor will I know it when you have gone.’ 34   Aesop, Fable 137 (Perry).  35  Mesomedes 11 (Heitsch). 36 The Akkadian is difficult at this point. Lambert translates ‘did I press your side?’, which seems problematic if we parse an-a-a-ma as a form of ne’û, to ‘turn’ (transitive).

A warning to comparatists

27

The Assyrian story looks strikingly familiar: once again, a small animal settles on a large one – an elephant, as it happens. The small animal enquires whether its arrival has caused inconvenience and promises to depart presently. Despite the chronological and geographical gap, this text and the Greek fables of the bull/elephant are plainly related. But how exactly are they related, and what do we conclude? The first editor of the Assyrian fable, Erich Ebeling, thought his discovery signalled a new dawn in the study of ancient literature: finally, he enthused, the wall between Greece and Mesopotamia was crumbling.37 There were, however, problems with his approach: as Ebeling himself acknowledged, he did not fully understand who the protagonist of the Assyrian fable was. He translated the relevant Akkadian word Mücke (‘mosquito’), on the grounds that this was what the Greek parallels required. But he was wrong: as we now know, the animal in question is in fact a small bird, most likely a wren.38 Now, Ebeling can hardly be faulted for mistranslating an obscure word at a time when Akkadian was far less well understood than it is today. Still, the case of his ‘mosquito’ can serve as a warning to the comparatist not to let the hunt for Mesopotamian sources distort our understanding of precisely those sources. The same applies the other way round, for the Greek texts. Here too we are in danger of becoming less good readers as a result of comparative study. That is arguably what happens on a grand scale to Martin West in his East Face of Helicon.39 In a more recent publication, he discusses our fable: The Assyrian anecdote is preserved with extraordinary fidelity across eight or nine centuries during which attestation of it is lacking. The wren becomes a mosquito; the elephant becomes a bull in two of the versions, but remains an elephant in the third.40

This is hardly what one might call a close reading. West glosses over the differences between Babrius, Mesomedes and the prose Aesop, as though the point was to draw up a Lachmannian stemma of literary transmission from elephant to elephant, via a corrupted bull. What we find when we look at the texts in detail is altogether more complex. Let us start with Mesomedes. He was a lyric poet of considerable ambition and his poem about the mosquito and the elephant signals a departure from Aesopic tradition already in his choice of a lyric metre, a mixture of the paroemiac   Ebeling 1927: 50.   As shown by Borger 1964, 2004. 39   M. L. West 1997. For a critique of his approach see Haubold 2002b. 40   M. L. West 2000: 95; for an earlier discussion see West 1969. 37 38

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and the apocroton. Colourful language and a lively tone further contribute to the overall effect of pleasure born of laughter. But who has the last laugh? On closer inspection, the answer to that question is not as straightforward as it may first appear (Mesomedes 11 (Heitsch)): Ἐλέφαντος ἐπ’ οὔατι κώνωψ πτερὸν οὐ πτερὸν ἵστατο σείων, φάτο δ’ἄφρονα μῦθον· ἀφίπταμαι, βάρος οὐ γὰρ ἐμὸν δύνασαι φέρειν. ὃ δ’ ἔλεξε γέλωτος ὑφ’ ἁδονᾶι· ἀλλ’ οὐτ’ ἐδάην ὅτ’ ἐφιπτάθης [ἐπεστάθης/ἐφεστάθης Wil.] οὔθ’ ἥνικ’ ἀφίπτασαι [ἀφίπτασο Wil.] κώνωψ. On an elephant’s ear a mosquito shaking its ‘no-wing’ wings and said a foolish thing: ‘I will fly away, for you cannot support my weight.’ But the elephant laughed with pleasure and said, ‘But I neither knew when you flew down, nor when you fly off, mosquito.’

As a freedman of the emperor Hadrian, Mesomedes took a particular interest in issues of patronage and power. Tim Whitmarsh has recently argued that he ‘tell[s] us just enough about the imperial figure who looms in the background’ to invite reflection on those issues.41 With that in mind, let us reconsider the elephant as the protagonist of Mesomedes’ poem. For West, it is a literary fossil. But from a synchronic perspective, it becomes a telling poetic choice. In Babrius, the mosquito settles on the horn of the bull, which makes sense given that the horn is the least sensitive part of that animal’s anatomy. By contrast, Mesomedes’ mosquito settles on the elephant’s ear, and that is precisely its most vulnerable part. Whitmarsh rightly quotes Achilles Tatius in this connection, and his fable of the elephant and the mosquito.42 There, the elephant is in mortal danger: ‘if the mosquito were to get into the channel through which I hear’, it says there, ‘it would be the end of me’. So, is Mesomedes’ elephant strong or weak? Self-assured or foolish? Whichever way we read the poem, the hunt for sources has, it seems, dulled our senses to what really matters here: it has made us less good readers of Greek literature just as it made us misconstrue the alleged Akkadian source text.   Whitmarsh 2004b: 401.   Whitmarsh 2004b: 398–9, with ref. to Achilles Tatius 2.20–2.

41

42

A warning to comparatists

29

What all this shows, it seems to me, is that even a genre as self-consciously open to cultural exchange as the fable cannot be read simply in terms of one literature borrowing from another. It seems unlikely that many Greek readers actually knew the Assyrian fable of the elephant but more importantly, it is not clear that they would have cared if they did: like early Greek epic, but unlike Virgil, the fable is not allusive in this way. A different approach is plainly needed. In the case of the fable, it is not too difficult to see what such an approach might entail. The fable had little respect for cultural difference. In a sense, there is no such thing as a ‘Greek’ fable, though there are of course fables in Greek: the genre had a universal scope already built into it. To the literary establishment that often made it suspect. As Teresa Morgan reminds us, fables belonged near the bottom of the hierarchy of Greek literary genres, associated as they were with animals, slaves and more generally a lack of decorum.43 Yet Morgan also emphasizes how important fables were in the making of ‘high’ literary culture: they challenged established thinking and served an important purpose in education. What Morgan has argued for Greece and Rome was equally true of Mesopotamia. Here too, fables were popular in school education, and found their way into the literary mainstream.44 This genre, then, was foundational to several literatures, and, at the same time, it did not claim to be culturally specific. As far as the fable and its readers were concerned, it did not matter whether you were Greek or Mesopotamian: the truths it had to impart, and the ways it imparted them, were meant to be universal. That is why the genre travelled, why ancient readers said it travelled, and why it makes sense for us to read it across cultural boundaries. If we do, we will discover versatility, wit and wisdom wherever we look. Those who admire Mesomedes for suggesting two competing readings at the same time may wish to consider the Mesopotamian saying about the fox and the bull, also available as fox and elephant (Sumerian Proverbs 2.65 and 8B 19, ed. and trans. Alster): ka5-a gìr-súhub am-ma-ke4 gìr-ni bí-in-gub nu-ub-sì-e-še A fox trod on the hoof of a wild-ox. ‘It didn’t hurt!’, it said. ka5-a úr am-si-ka / gìri-bi mu-un-gub ab-si ab-diri-e-še A fox trampled on the feet of an elephant. ‘It’s enough, it’s too much’, it said. 43 Morgan 2007: 58–9. 44 Most notably in the fable of the serpent and the eagle which forms part of the so-called Etana Epic; see Kinnier Wilson 1985, Haul 2000. Freydank 1971 discusses fable motifs in Etana.

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Fox and bull may be read broadly along the lines of Babrius’ mosquito and bull (though of course we may suspect that ‘it did not hurt’ actually means ‘I did feel it, and it did hurt’); fox and elephant illustrates the truth that bigger is not always stronger. Collection 5 of Sumerian proverbs takes that idea to a whole new level: the entire collection is arranged by size of animal, from elephants down to bulls, then cows, etc. And, sure enough, it starts with a fable about the incomparable bulk of the elephant.45 Yet the author of the collection uses the opportunity for a wonderful joke at his own expense: the point, it turns out, is precisely not to celebrate superior size. Rather, the elephant is deflated through comparison with the tiny wren, the very same bird that the elephant scorns elsewhere. Reading the fable across cultures, then, helps us appreciate the innate versatility and wit of this genre; and reconnect with ancient readers who precisely did not see it as a specifically Greek achievement. Epic situates itself differently, in terms of cultural affiliations. Homer and Hesiod, we have seen, were always considered the central pillars of a specifically Greek – and hence European – literary tradition. Ancient readers thought of them as exemplars of Hellenismos, ‘Greekness’, and held up Homer in particular as a master of decorum – which is certainly not something that can be said about fable-mongering Aesop.46 Views of Homer as a Greek patriot were inspired by the conflict with Persia, but the trend towards investing epic with Hellenic authority can be traced back much further: Homer’s rise to Panhellenic fame was well under way in the sixth century B C ;47 and François Hartog among others has shown that epic itself, and especially the Odyssey with its emphasis on Ithaca as ‘home’, projects a strong commitment to Greece and Greekness.48 That commitment, it would seem, has a corollary at the level of poetics. Unlike the fable with its malleable, essentially open texture, epic assumes a very definite (and rather more ambitious) poetic shape, to articulate equally definite claims to truth and authority. What Homeric readers valued and enjoyed were detailed and vivid accounts of what had happened in the distant past. They relied on the Muses to tell them the truth about past events (ἀληθέα, ἔτυμα, ἐτήτυμα). They abhorred falsehoods (ψεύδεα), which they associated with a lack of narrative shape (μορφή). The genre’s emphasis on the truthfulness, fullness and ‘orderliness’ (κόσμος) of 45 Sumerian Proverbs 5.1 (ed. Alster; cf. Alster 2005: 366), with corrections in Borger 2004: 470. 46 For Homer as φιλέλλην, ‘lover of the Greeks’, see Haubold 2007; for decorum (Gk. τὸ πρέπον) as a category in ancient criticism see Pohlenz 1933, Ford 2002, esp. pp. 13–22, with further literature. 47 Graziosi 2002.  48  Hartog 2001: ch. 1.

A warning to comparatists

31

its account is closely connected to its contents  – the deeds of gods and men – and in turn explains its adherence to the time-honoured patterns of thought and expression that modern scholars call ‘formulae’ or a ‘traditional style’.49 All this seems to leave little room for sustainable models of cross-cultural reading. We have already seen that Greek epic does not allude to non-Greek texts in the manner of Roman epic: any comparisons with an Ennius or Virgil are misleading in this regard. Faced with this realization, some students of Greek epic have given up on any notion of meaningful dialogue and resorted instead to what has been dubbed the ‘argument by isolation’: Mesopotamian influences on Greek epic can be spotted precisely because they make little sense in their new context.50 Thus Walter Burkert, for example, suggests that a passage in Iliad 5 which recalls SB Gilgamesh V I can be identified as a Mesopotamian import because it is ‘on the whole irrelevant’: Ishtar’s meeting with Gilgamesh is firmly anchored in the structure of the Gilgamesh epic, since Ishtar, in her wrath, brings down the ‘Bull of Heaven’ for the next exploit of Gilgamesh and Enkidu. In Homer we have a genre scene, depicted with gusto but, on the whole, irrelevant.51

Burkert’s point raises a pressing question: does the comparative study of Greek and Mesopotamian epic require us to tear through the fabric of the Greek ‘host’ texts and suspend the project of reading them as a coherent whole? Understandably, Homerists have balked at this idea. Thus Adrian Kelly insists in a recent article that many of Burkert’s examples of Mesopotamian influence ‘make perfect sense … within the conventions and parameters of early Greek epic’.52 More generally, Kelly protests that attempts to isolate what is ‘foreign’ in Homer are misguided. As he rightly points out, this approach owes much to the now discredited analytical school of Homeric scholarship, which aimed to isolate a core of genuine Homeric poetry from later accretion.53 Faced with this latest attack on the integrity of Homer, Kelly aims ‘to incline the balance back towards the Greek side of the equation’.54 In so doing, he is careful to acknowledge the ‘utility’ of ‘Near Eastern material’.55 ‘Utility’, however, is one thing, 49 For recent discussion of Homeric poetics, see Foley 1991 and 1999, Ford 1992 and 1997, Nagy 1996 and 1999, Bakker 1997 and 2005, Scodel 2002, de Jong 2004, Graziosi and Haubold 2005 and 2010 (Introduction). 50 For an illuminating sketch, and criticism, of this approach see Kelly 2008: 260. 51 Burkert 2005: 300.  52  Kelly 2008: 273. 53 Kelly 2008: 261, n. 9 and 274, n. 55. 54 Kelly 2008: 260.  55  Kelly 2008: 303.

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committed reading quite another: Kelly may have inclined the balance back to the Greek side, but in so doing he runs the risk of causing damage on the other side. His intervention leaves us with ‘Near Eastern material’, whose ‘utility’ seems to rest precisely on the fact that it makes no claims on the Homeric reader. At a time when Homer sings of Gilgamesh (Logue) it is difficult to see how such an approach can be sustained: is it possible to read Homer without reading Gilgamesh? And why should we limit ourselves in this way? A quick look at the opening of SB Gilgamesh reminds us of what we stand to lose (I .18–28, with corrections and restorations in A. R. George 2007c: 248): e-li-ma ina muhhi(ugu) dūri(bàd) šá urukki i-tal-lak te-me-en-nu hi-it-ma libitta(sig4) su-ub-bu šum-ma libitta(sig4)-šú la a-gur-rat u uš-šú-šú la id-du-ú 7 mun-tal-ku [šár] ālu(uru) [šár giš]kirâtu(kiri6)meš šár es-su-ú pi-t[ir] bīt(é) dištar(15) [3 šár] ù pi-ti-ir ur[u]kki tam-ši-hu pi-te gištup-šen-na šá gišerēni(erin) pu-ut-ter har-gal-li-šu šá siparri(zabar) [pi-te-m]a? bāba(ká) šá ni-sir-ti-šú [i-ša]m-ma tup-pi na4uqnî(za.gὶn) ši-tas-si [mim-m]u-ú dGIŠ-gím-maš ittallaku(DU.DU)ku ka-lu mar-sa-a-ti Go up on to the wall of Uruk and walk around, inspect the foundation document, survey the brickwork, (see) if its brickwork is not fired brick, and if the Seven Sages did not lay its foundations! [One šār is] city, [one šār] plantations, one šār is clay-pit, half a šār the temple of Ištar Uruk’s measurement is [three šār] and a half. Open the tablet-box of cedar, undo its clasps of bronze! [Open] the lid of its secret, [ho]ld the tablet of lapis lazuli and read out: all that Gilgamesh went through, all the hardships!

What this passage does – radically – is to call for reflection on the value we attach to ancient literature, and on our own commitment to it as readers. For what seems striking about this opening is, first, the extent to which the text plays up its own preciousness (the box of cedar, the clasps of bronze, the tablet of lapis lazuli); and secondly, its interest in us, its readers: go up on the wall, walk around, survey the foundation and inspect the brickwork, find the tablet-box, release its clasps, open the lid, lift up the tablet … and read out the story. There are few texts to this day that seem

After Auerbach

33

quite so interested in their own reception, instructing us precisely on how we should read, when and where.56 We do not of course literally read Gilgamesh on a lapis lazuli tablet retrieved from the walls of Uruk, nor did Mesopotamian readers do so, for that matter. They too had to make a leap of the imagination. Line 28 above is of some importance here, for it makes it quite clear that the Epic of Gilgamesh demands to be appreciated as a whole: ‘all that Gilgamesh went through, all the hardships’. The virtual lapis lazuli tablet is to be imagined as complete and total in its coverage. We are certainly not invited to smash it to pieces, take little fragments here and there and stick them together with parallel shards from Greek epic. Much less are we to gather these fragments and shut them up in a drawer of ‘useful materials’. If we are to read Gilgamesh at all – and we have seen that as twenty-first century readers of Homer it makes sense to do so – there are certain commitments we must be prepared to make.

After Auerbach The nature of these commitments begins to emerge from Erich Auerbach’s celebrated Mimesis.57 In the famous opening chapter, written in Istanbul in 1942, Auerbach argues that Homeric narrative is all surface and illuminated detail, whereas the Hebrew Bible is elliptic, deep and demanding on its reader. Between these two extremes unfold more than two millennia of European literature. Despite its sweeping claims, Mimesis had its own very specific Sitz im Leben. James Porter has written eloquently about Auerbach’s battle to reclaim his Jewishness at a time of Entjudung – ‘de-Jewification’ – in his native Germany; and his attempt in Mimesis to write back to German culture by attacking its ultimate icon and mascot, Homer.58 To this, Kader Konuk has added a penetrating study of the Turkish context at a time of ambitious humanist reforms.59 Reading Auerbach through Porter and Konuk reminds us that what might seem Greek about Greek literature is always a function of where we look, when and how. Auerbach himself insisted that Mimesis was a product of its time.60 Yet this most timely of books has also struck its readers, including many   For discussion see C. B. F. Walker 1981, Michalowski 1999, George 2003: 446, Zgoll 2007.   Auerbach 1953. 58   Porter 2008: 116; further discussion in Porter 2010. 59   Konuk 2010. 60   Auerbach 1953: 573–4.

56 57

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classicists, as capturing something important about the texts it studies – beyond the original context in which it was conceived. Jenny Strauss Clay has recently used ‘The Scar of Odysseus’ as a springboard into her discussion of Homer as a visual poet, and Egbert Bakker has argued that Auerbach anticipates his own research into the structures of oral storytelling.61 Auerbach made little pretence of providing a balanced or sympathetic account of Homer: Mimesis unabashedly praises the Bible at his expense. If it has nonetheless inspired classical scholars in a way quite unlike most recent work on Greek and Mesopotamian literature, the reason, it seems to me, lies not so much in the sheer brilliance of Auerbach’s scholarship as in his commitment to literature as an expression of the human experience.62 More than sixty years after Mimesis, the need for such commitment has retained much of its urgency. Indeed, Auerbach’s essentially humanist approach to reading is of particular relevance here, in that the epics of Greece and Mesopotamia converge precisely on a shared interest in the question of what makes us (all) human.63 First, however, let us attend, as Auerbach did, to the poetic textures that helped each tradition articulate that question. Auerbach took his cue from Homer’s much-praised ability to conjure a world before our eyes, a feature of Homeric narrative that he regarded with deep suspicion. My aim here is not to set the record straight, as has so often been attempted, but to explore some of the features of Auerbach’s analysis that might enable us to develop a comparative reading of Greek and Mesopotamian literature. With Auerbach as a guide, the opening passage of the Epic of Gilgamesh, quoted above, would suddenly strike the reader as an invitation to see an absent world: amur, ‘see!’; itaplas, ‘look!’. The issue of how we are to envisage this world thus comes into focus right at the beginning of the poem. Initially, the poem takes us on an upward trajectory, as we scale the walls of Uruk and contemplate the temples, orchards and clay pits of Gilgamesh’s home town. A grand vista indeed, and open to all, but soon the focus narrows, taking us down to where the text itself awaits in its cedar box. We must find it, then open the lid of its secret (Akk. bābu, which also means ‘door’, ‘gate’), then read. Reading this text is not 61 J. S. Clay 2011: 33–4 (though her claim that Auerbach ‘admired’ the vividness of Homeric storytelling is slightly misleading); Bakker 1999: 14. 62 Auerbach’s humanism has been much discussed; see Konuk 2010: ch. 1, with further literature. 63 This is not to revive humanist certainties that have rightly been criticized, e.g. in Young 2004: ch. 7. I do, however, agree with Edward Said that a sense of shared humanity can form the basis for cultural encounter: Said 1978: 328.

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without drama, and much of the drama is located, specifically, in the visual sphere: having been introduced to Gilgamesh as ‘he who saw the deep’ (Tablet I , line 1), we have already embarked on our own, deep voyage of discovery.64 Visual clues guide us on our way, but do we know how to read them? The question resurfaces in different form in a later Babylonian text known as the Dialogue of Pessimism.65 At one point, the main speaker, a cynical slave, explains to his master why it is not worth becoming a benefactor of society (76–8 (Lambert)): i-li-ma ina muhhi tillānimeš.ni labirūti(libir.ra)meš i-tal-lak a-mur gul-gul-le-e šá arkûtimeš u pa-nu-u-ti a-a-u be-el le-mut-tim-ma a-a-u be-el ú-sa-ti ‘Go up on the ancient ruins and walk around; see the skulls of the foremost and the last. Which is the evil-doer and which the benefactor?’

As Wilfred Lambert has seen, this is a parody of the Gilgamesh prologue,66 and like most parodies it captures something fundamental about the text that it lampoons. As in Gilgamesh, we are told to go and see for ourselves: past achievements lurk amidst the ruins. But this time the gaze falters and what we see cannot be discerned. The ancient bones do not give away their secret. In Gilgamesh we never reach this state of aporia, but the challenge of accessing the past is nonetheless very real. Scott Noegel has recently argued that Gilgamesh is informed by the outlook and interests of the kalû-priest, an expert in various kinds of secret lore.67 Riddling language and double entendre formed the staple of the kalû’s art and, Noegel argues, also pervade the Epic of Gilgamesh.68 Noegel’s prize exhibits are the many dreams that punctuate the narrative.69 These dreams are vivid and memorable; in fact they offer the strongest visual experience in the text. Yet they precisely do not allow us straightforward access to reality. Their imagery 64 For parallels between the protagonist’s quest and our own, cf. amāru at I .1, 3, 7 and 13; nisirtu at I .7 and 26; atalluku at I .18 and 28; and petû at I .7 and 24. 65 Edition and commentary in Lambert 1960. 66 Lambert 1960: 326; the Dialogue of Pessimism also quotes a Sumerian poem about Gilgamesh at ll. 83–4 (Lambert 1960: 327). 67 Noegel 2007: ch. 2. 68 Noegel 2007: 58–9; he argues that Sîn-lēqi-unninni, the presumed author of SB Gilgamesh, was himself a kalû. This is debated (cf. George 2003: 28, n. 74), but the point holds true even if he was an exorcist or some other kind of religious expert. 69 Noegel 2007 discusses the earlier work of Oppenheim 1956, Kluger 1991: 53–78, Bulkeley 1993 and 1999, Butler 1998.

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is charged with symbolism and hidden meanings. The effect is confusing to the onlooker, and calls for careful decoding (SB Gilg. I V .99–107 (George)): [i]b-ri a-ta-mar šalušta(3)ta šu-ut-ta ù šu-ut-ta šá a-mu-ru ka-liš šá-šá-át [i]l-su-ú šamû(an)ú qaq-qa-ru i-ram-mu-um [u]4-mu uš-ha-ri-ir ú-sa-a ek-le-tum [ib-r]iq bir-qu in-na-pi-ih i-šá-a-tum [nab-l]u iš-tap-pu-ú iz-za-nun mu-ú-tu [id-’]i-im-ma né-bu-tú ib-te-li i-šá-tu [iš-tu?] im-taq-qu-tu i-tu-ur ana tu-um-ri [ta-’-al-d]am-ma ina sēri(edin) mit-lu-ka ni-le-’-[i] ‘My friend, I have seen a third dream, and the dream which I saw was utterly confused. The heavens cried out, the earth was rumbling, the day grew still, darkness came forth. Lightning [flash]ed, fire broke out, [flames] kept flaring, death kept raining down. The glare dimmed, the fire went out, [when] it had gradually diminished, it turned into embers. [You were b]orn in the wilderness, can we take counsel?’

Several points stand out about this dream. First, it is an intensely visual experience. Two introductory lines set the scene in terms of sound, but then silence falls, and darkness prepares for a visual display of rare intensity. Secondly, the dream frames visual experience in personal terms, and the poet further emphasizes this point by leaving it to Gilgamesh to report his impressions. Thirdly, there is a presumption that the dream has a meaning at the level of plot; but because that meaning is not obvious to the dreamer (Gilgamesh himself claims it is ‘utterly confused’), interpretation is necessary. Homeric dreams tend to be visually unremarkable by the standards of Gilgamesh, and relatively easy to decode.70 Agamemnon’s dream in Iliad 2 is deceptive, but to the reader remains transparent throughout.71 The same is true of Penelope’s dream in Odyssey 4 and Nausicaa’s in Odyssey 6.72 Penelope’s dream at Od. 19.535–69 is more elaborate and more visually captivating. It is also more enigmatic, inviting the reader to puzzle over its   Kessels 1978; Noegel 2007: 191–222 puts Homeric dreams in a Near Eastern context.   Il. 2.5–42, discussed in Noegel 2007: 212–14. 72   Od. 4.786–52, 6.13–47.

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meaning as it unfolds. However, it does of course conclude by interpreting itself, a conceit that starkly sets it apart from the dreams in Gilgamesh.73 Homer knows and mentions dream interpreters, and in a famous simile in the Iliad describes in vivid detail one specific type of dream.74 But this dream, too, does not require an interpretation: we all know what it means. Homer’s reluctance to create riddling dream images is symptomatic, I would argue, of an approach to visualization that is in many ways diametrically opposed to that of the Gilgamesh Epic – and here, I realize, I do sound rather like Auerbach. But I also sound like an ancient Homeric interpreter: enargeia, ‘vividness’, was considered a defining feature of Homeric poetry already in antiquity.75 There has been much debate about what exactly this term means,76 but one point seems reasonably certain: enargeia refers to the illusion of a direct encounter with what is being described. Such encounters make the reader an eyewitness of events, and ancient readers often describe enargeia in terms of visual experience. As a commentator on Iliad 6 remarks (Schol. bT ad Il. 6.467 (Erbse)): ταῦτα δὲ τὰ ἔπη οὕτως ἐστὶν ἐναργείας μεστά, ὅτι οὐ μόνον ἀκούεται τὰ πράγματα, ἀλλὰ καὶ ὁρᾶται. λαβὼν δὲ τοῦτο ἐκ τοῦ βίου ὁ ποιητὴς ἄκρως περιεγένετο τῆι μιμήσει. These lines are so full of vividness because we do not just hear about the events but see them too. Taking this scene from real life, the poet achieves the highest degree of imitation.77

Homeric enargeia is crucially about seeing events in the story as opposed to just hearing about them; not literally, of course, but with the mind’s eye: ‘we do not just hear about the events’, says the ancient commentator, ‘but see them too’. And that leads him to remark on Homer’s ability to imitate real life. Yet visual experience in Homer is not simply about imitating life; it also dazzles and delights us. In the Contest of Homer and Hesiod, for example, 73 Pace Noegel 2007: 198–209, who suggests a rather closer proximity to Mesopotamian practice and especially Gilgamesh. 74 Il. 22.199–201; for Homeric dream interpreters see van Lieshout 1985. 75 See the passages listed in the index to the Iliad Scholia s.vv ἐνάργεια, ἐναργής (ed. Erbse). 76 E.g. Zanker 1981, Meijering 1987, Calame 1991, Ford 1992: 49–56, A. D. Walker 1993, Webb 1997 and 2009: 87–106, Manieri 1998, Zangara 2004, Spina 2005, Otto 2009, J. S. Clay 2011: 29–35. 77 Discussion in Graziosi and Haubold 2010: 24.

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the audience react with amazement to a blindingly vivid passage from the Iliad (chs. 12–13 (West)): ὁ δὲ βασιλεὺς Πανήδης ἐκέλευσεν ἕκαστον τὸ κάλλιστον ἐκ τῶν ἰδίων ποιημάτων εἰπεῖν. Ἡσίοδος οὖν ἔφη πρῶτος· (…) μεθ’ ὃν Ὅμηρος· (…) ἔφριξεν δὲ μάχη φθεισίμβροτος ἐγχείηισιν μακραῖς, ἃς εἶχον ταμεσίχροας. ὄσσε δ’ ἄμερδεν αὐγὴ χαλκείη κορύθων ἄπο λαμπομενάων θωρήκων τε νεοσμήκτων σακέων τε φαεινῶν, ἐρχομένων ἄμυδις. μάλα κεν θρασυκάρδιος εἴη ὃς τότε γηθήσειεν ἰδὼν πόνον οὐδ’ ἀκάχοιτο. θαυμάσαντες δὲ καὶ ἐν τούτωι τὸν Ὅμηρον οἱ Ἕλληνες ἐπήινουν, ὡς παρὰ τὸ προσῆκον γεγονότων τῶν ἐπῶν, καὶ ἐκέλευον διδόναι τὴν νίκην. But King Panedes told each of them to recite the finest passage from his own poetry. So Hesiod said first: (…) Then came Homer (Il. 13.339–44): (…) The murderous battle bristled with long spears that they held to slice the skin; eyes were dazzled with the glint of the bronze from the shining helmets, the fresh-polished corselets, and the bright shields as the armies clashed. It would have been a bold-hearted man who felt joy at seeing that toil, and not dismay. Once again the Greeks were struck with admiration for Homer, praising the way the verses transcended the merely fitting, and they called for him to be awarded the victory.

Again, we are encouraged to visualize events, though this time we can enjoy them only because we are shielded from them. If Homer can create the illusion of real presence he also protects us from the potentially threatening implications of direct exposure, allowing us to marvel at situations that would otherwise be utterly terrifying. Homer himself invites this reading. Explicit expressions of amazement underline particularly impressive sights: that was a θαῦμα ἰδέσθαι, for example, ‘a wonder to behold’.78 However, what matters here are not the   E.g. Il. 5.725, Od. 7.45.

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purple patches so much as the way in which enargeia pervades Homeric discourse: from the grand panoramic vistas to detailed observations at close quarters, including the famous descriptions of battle wounds, which to this day startle the reader with their gory realism.79 Even more pervasive are the Homeric particles, which keep the audience engaged and draw attention to salient details in the narrative. Egbert Bakker has recently pointed out that many of them ‘zoom in’ on events, thus contributing to the illusion of an eyewitness encounter with the past.80 ‘Look,’ the poet seems to say, ‘look here!’, ‘look there!’ For Homer and his earliest audiences, being able to point at the past in this way was a sign of divine presence, a gift of the Muse. Homeric poetry was, as Andrew Ford has argued, a kind of epiphany.81 It seems, then, that both the Epic of Gilgamesh and Homeric poetry invite us to picture an absent world, but that there are telling differences at the level of poetics: whereas Homer’s approach is broadly epiphanic, Gilgamesh challenges its readers to develop what we might call ‘deep vision’ through a series of riddling images and visual clues. These different approaches to visualizing the past are, however, used to develop strikingly similar narrative projects. It is hardly controversial to say that both Homeric poetry and the Epic of Gilgamesh are concerned with the question of what it is to be human. As Thomas Van Nortwick has compellingly argued, Gilgamesh and the Homeric epics explore, in unrivalled depth, man’s journey towards his own humanity.82 In the course of this journey, both traditions mobilize the poetic resources that I have sketched above, in order to confront us with iconic moments of recognition and, indeed, misrecognition of the human condition. That this should be the case in Gilgamesh comes as no surprise, given what we have seen of this text’s approach to outward appearance. In Tablet I , the wild man Enkidu is told to ‘look at Gilgamesh and contemplate him carefully’: what he will see is an embodiment of human beauty, strength and power.83 Yet this apparently normative vision of humanity is immediately complicated by the fact that it finds its mirror image in Enkidu himself, who despite his lack of culture so strangely resembles Gilgamesh.84 It was again Van Nortwick who brilliantly traced the theme of the second self 79 For panoramic vistas in Homer see Purves 2010: ch. 1; for an effective discussion of Homeric battle wounds see Tatum 2003. 80 Bakker 1997; also Bakker 2005.  81  Ford 1992: 55. 82 Van Nortwick 1992: chs. 1–3. 83 SB Gilg. I .234–7 (George). 84 SB Gilg. I I .40–1 (George).

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in the Gilgamesh Epic, showing how the protagonist disowns aspects of his humanity only to find them mirrored in Enkidu.85 Van Nortwick identifies two main problems for Gilgamesh: nature (as opposed to Gilgamesh’s exaggerated attachment to culture); and death (as opposed to Gilgamesh’s quest for immortality). As a creature of the wild (Akk. sēru), Enkidu unsettles Gilgamesh’s hyper-civilized existence; and with his death, he confronts Gilgamesh with his own, suppressed, mortality. Seeing holds the key to understanding, but Gilgamesh must learn that death cannot be seen at all (SB Gilg. X .304–5 (George)): ul ma-am-ma mu-ú-tu im-mar : ul ma-am-m[a ša mu-ti-i]m im-mar pa-ni-šú ‘No-one can see death, no-one can see the face [of deat]h.’

The passage is taken from Utanapishti’s great speech in Tablet X . I shall return to it in a moment, but for now I note that Gilgamesh’s project of ‘seeing the deep’ is overshadowed by a baffling enigma. Indeed, he himself becomes a riddle as he chases after the secret of eternal life (SB Gilg. X .184–6 and 191–3 (George)): UD-napišti(zi)timana ru-qí i-na-at-ta-l[a-áš-šu(m)-ma] uš-tam-ma-a ana lìb-bi-šú a-ma-ta i-[qab-bi] it-ti ra-ma-ni-šu-ma šu-ú i[m-tal-lik] […] a-na-at-ta-lam-ma ul ia-[ú amēlu] a-na-at-ta-lam-ma u[l …] a-na-at-ta-lam-ma […] m

Utanapishti was watching [him] in the distance, deliberating with himself he [spoke] a word. He [was taking counsel] in his own mind. […] ‘I am looking, but he is not m[y man], I am looking, but [he] is not […] I am looking, but […]’

The passage describes Gilgamesh’s arrival in Utanapishti’s distant realm, an event that is explored not through his own eyes but through those of Utanapishti, on the shore. This striking inversion of the gaze results in a   Van Nortwick 1992: ch. 1.

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poignant reversal of roles, as Utanapishti ‘the distant’ is here defeated by a distant sight: ana rūqi inattalam-ma says the poet, ‘he gazed into the distance’, and that results not in recognition, but in a bewildered soliloquy. Some of these lines were already used of Siduri at the beginning of Tablet X: the poet has been building towards this crisis of the gaze. And when it comes, he takes enormous care to draw attention to it. natālu, ‘look’, is used at least six times in the passage, three of them in anaphora at the beginning of subsequent lines.86 Utanapishti quite literally cannot believe his eyes. The same is true of various other characters in the second half of the poem: the scorpion man and his wife, Siduri, Urshanabi: they all find it hard to make sense of Gilgamesh’s appearance and humanity.87 Gilgamesh, meanwhile, seems as puzzled by himself as those who look at him. Things come to a head towards the end of the epic, when he finally sets eyes on his ancestor Utanapishti (SB Gilg. X I .1–7 (George)): GIŠ-gím-maš a-na šá-šu-ma izakkara(mu)ra a-na mUD-napišti(zi) ru-ú-qí a-na-at-ta-la-kúm-ma mUD-napišti(zi) mi-na-tu-ka ul šá-na-a ki-i ia-ti-ma at-ta ù at-ta ul šá-na-ta ki-i ia-ti-ma at-ta gu-um-mur-ka lib-bi ana e-peš tu-qu-un-ti [x ]x a-hi na-da-at e-lu se-ri-ka [at-t]a ki-ki-i ta-az-ziz-ma ina puhur(ukkin) ilī(dingir)meš ba-la-ta téš-ú d

Gilgamesh spoke to him, to Utanapishti the distant: ‘I look at you, Utanapishti, but your form is no different, you are just like me. You are no different, you are just like me. I was determined to do battle with you, [but] in your presence my hand is stayed. How come y[ou] stood in the gods’ assembly, and found life?’

Gilgamesh was going to fight Utanapishti, perhaps so as to wrest from him the secret of eternal life. His confrontational approach seemed appropriate in the past, with Humbaba, the ogre, for instance; or the divine Bull of Heaven.88 But Utanapishti, it now appears, is merely another mirror which reflects the riddle of the protagonist’s own humanity back at him. What Gilgamesh learns from looking into that mirror is a ‘secret of 86 ‘At least’ because the passage is fragmentary. For a similar cluster of repeated language see SB Gilg. X .308–12 (George) (immatīma) and the discussion at p. 49 below. 87 SB Gilg. I X .48–59, X .5–14 and 35–45, 112–18 (George); cf. Utanapishti himself at X I .213–18 (George). 88 SB Gilgamesh V –V I .

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the gods’ (X I .10). That secret, darkly glimpsed after a journey to the ends of the world and ‘into the deep’, is none other than the condition of his – and our own – human existence. Homer, I have argued, adopts a very different approach to conjuring absent worlds. He presents us with epiphanic visions of the heroes, a race of beings descended from the gods. Yet that project, much as it appears to pull away from the world of ‘humans as they are now’, once again culminates in iconic visions of a humanity that we recognize as our own. This is particularly clear in the Odyssey. As has often been pointed out, the Odyssey harnesses the Muse’s gaze to reflect in ever new ways on the question of what it is to be ‘a/ the man’.89 There is a sense in which Homeric enargeia, in its emphasis on transparency and divine presence, reaches a crisis point when we explore the issue of what it means to recognize Odysseus. As Penelope finally meets her husband, towards the end of the poem, his identity has become so unstable that it literally keeps shifting before her eyes (Od. 23.93–5): ἣ δ’ ἄνεω δὴν ἧστο, τάφος δέ οἱ ἦτορ ἵκανεν· ὄψει δ’ ἄλλοτε μέν μιν ἐνωπαδίως ἐσίδεσκεν, ἄλλοτε δ’ ἀγνώσασκε κακὰ χροὶ εἵματ’ ἔχοντα. She sat in silence for a long time, and amazement came into her heart. At one moment she looked him straight in the face with her eyes, while at another she did not recognize him for he was dressed in rags.

Disguise and recognition create a hall of mirrors, which refracts the Muse’s epiphanic gaze into a myriad fleeting impressions, ever in the process of assembling and re-assembling that elusive image of ‘a/the man’.90 Yet, for all the subtleties of the Odyssean gaze, the most challenging of all Homeric recognition scenes comes – I argue – in the Iliad. Once again it occurs towards the very end of the poem. And it raises the same question that haunts the Odyssey and that already haunted Gilgamesh: what is man? The scene is justly famous (Il. 24.477–84): τοὺς δ’ ἔλαθ’ εἰσελθὼν Πρίαμος μέγας, ἄγχι δ’ ἄρα στὰς χερσὶν Ἀχιλλῆος λάβε γούνατα καὶ κύσε χεῖρας δεινὰς ἀνδροφόνους, αἵ οἱ πολέας κτάνον υἷας. ὡς δ’ ὅτ’ ἂν ἄνδρ’ ἄτη πυκινὴ λάβηι, ὅς τ’ ἐνὶ πάτρηι φῶτα κατακτείνας ἄλλων ἐξίκετο δῆμον, ἀνδρὸς ἐς ἀφνειοῦ, θάμβος δ’ ἔχει εἰσορόωντας, ὣς Ἀχιλεὺς θάμβησεν ἰδὼν Πρίαμον θεοειδέα· θάμβησαν δὲ καὶ ἄλλοι, ἐς ἀλλήλους δὲ ἴδοντο.   Goldhill 1991: ch. 1.   Discussion in Goldhill 1991, Murnaghan 2011, with further literature.

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Tall Priam came in unseen by the others and stood close beside him and caught the knees of Achilles in his hands, and kissed the hands that were dreadful and manslaughtering and had killed so many of his sons. As when dense disaster takes hold of a man who has murdered another man in his homeland, and he comes to the country of others, to a wealthy man, and wonder seizes those who behold him, so Achilles wondered as he looked at godlike Priam, and the rest of them wondered also, and looked at each other.

Priam has come to Achilles’ tent to beg for Hector’s dead body. After slipping in unseen, he suddenly appears before the man who killed his son. A poignant reverse simile captures some of the complexities of the situation: if anybody is rich it is Priam; and if anybody is a killer, it ought to be Achilles.91 The obvious mismatch between the simile and the situation it describes leads on to a challenging visual encounter. As Achilles and his men marvel at Priam, outward appearance is emphasized: Achilles ‘wondered as he looked at godlike Priam’; ‘and the rest of them wondered also’. Priam’s presence amazes but also puzzles those around him: how could he possibly have come? Slightly later, Achilles will ask that very question (Il. 24.519), and will take it as the starting point for an extended reflection on what it is to be human. We will return to his famous speech,92 but first let us consider a second moment of amazed contemplation. It comes at the very end of Priam’s encounter with Achilles (Il. 24.628–34): αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ πόσιος καὶ ἐδητύος ἐξ ἔρον ἕντο, ἤτοι Δαρδανίδης Πρίαμος θαύμαζ’ Ἀχιλῆα ὅσσος ἔην οἷός τε· θεοῖσι γὰρ ἄντα ἐώικει· αὐτὰρ ὃ Δαρδανίδην Πρίαμον θαύμαζεν Ἀχιλλεύς, εἰσορόων ὄψίν τ᾽ ἀγαθὴν καὶ μῦθον ἀκούων. αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ τάρπησαν ἐς ἀλλήλους ὁρόωντες, τὸν πρότερος προσέειπε γέρων Πρίαμος θεοειδής· But when they had put aside their desire for eating and drinking, then Priam, Dardanos’ son, marvelled at Achilles, how tall he was and how fine, for he seemed like a vision of the gods. Achilles in turn marvelled at Dardanian Priam as he saw his fine looks and listened to him talking. But when they had taken their fill of gazing at each other, first of the two to speak was old Priam, the godlike:

One detail seems worth singling out in this extraordinary scene: just as Priam is described as θεοειδής at line 634, ‘godlike in appearance’, so   Well discussed in Macleod 1982: 126.   See below, pp. 46–7.

91 92

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Achilles is described as ‘a vision of the gods’ at line 630. Both descriptions look entirely traditional: they encapsulate in a nutshell the Muse’s epiphanic gaze. And yet, in context, these visions of humanity become profoundly challenging. What we see here is Homer as a master of ‘dissonance’, reframing traditional words in a way that is deeply unsettling.93 Priam acquires the epithet θεοειδής very precisely in Iliad 24, in the context of his encounter with Achilles.94 Yet, like Achilles, he has just been reduced to the extremes of human suffering: in what sense, then, is he (are they) ‘godlike in appearance’? What is on display as we look at these two men, the most divine and yet most wretched of all mortals, is a vision of what it might mean to be human. Significantly, for the further course of my argument, this vision is articulated specifically with reference to the gods: man is both like and unlike them; godlike in appearance (θεοειδής), he is also utterly unlike the gods in his suffering. What we see here is not a stable world, but an elusive play of possibilities which finds a common core in the humanity that unites even Achilles and Priam.

Gods and mortals A comparative reading of visualization in Homer and the Epic of Gilgamesh has led us to a central question which unites these texts: what does it mean to be human? That question is at the heart of both traditions – but is, of course, not unique to them. Indeed, people in Greece and Mesopotamia recognized its universal significance. ‘Man is the shadow of a god’ went the Mesopotamian saying.95 Every man, not just Mesopotamians. ‘Man is the dream of a shadow’ said Pindar and meant this to be equally all-embracing.96 Everybody knew that, as human beings, we must all die, and in the meantime must lead a life that is far from perfect. But why? And how can we make sense of it? Greek and Mesopotamian epic tackled these questions on a grand scale, and in so doing drew on a broadly shared repertoire of ideas and narrative forms. At the heart of this repertoire lay the intuition that man is what the gods are not: while the gods are immortal and carefree, human beings must die and lead a life of misery. As Achilles explains to Priam in the Iliad, not long after marvelling at him (Il. 24.525–6): 93 For Homeric ‘dissonance’ see Graziosi and Haubold 2005: 51–6. 94 Macleod 1982: 127. 95 Lambert 1960: 282. The proverb continues: ‘and a slave is the shadow of a man’. There follows a maxim which may have been added by a writer keen to please the Assyrian king: ‘but the king is the reflection of a god’. 96 Pi. Pyth. 8.95–7.

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“ὣς γὰρ ἐπεκλώσαντο θεοὶ δειλοῖσι βροτοῖσι, ζώειν ἀχνυμένους· αὐτοὶ δέ τ’ ἀκηδέες εἰσί.” ‘In this way the gods have spun life for wretched mortals, that they live in unhappiness, while the gods have no sorrows.’

What Achilles sets out here is the idea that gods and humans are mutually defining: humans ‘live in unhappiness’, whereas the gods ‘have no sorrows’. Moreover, the gods determined that this should be so, for they ‘spun life’ for wretched mortals. They defined themselves against mortals: ‘un-troubled’ (ἀ-κηδέες), says Achilles, and elsewhere the poet uses the terms ‘un-aging’ (ἀ-γήρως) and ‘un-dying’ (ἀ-θάνατος).97 This line of thinking was widely shared in the ancient world, though the emphasis could vary. In early Greek epic, old age is seen as one of mankind’s most dreaded afflictions.98 Consequently, the gods are envisaged above all as ‘immortal and unaging’. In Mesopotamian literature, what gods and humans seem to dread more even than old age is the endless slog of working the land, restoring irrigation channels and digging canals, ‘the life of the land’, as a standard formulation has it.99 Consequently, these are imagined as the tasks that the gods devolved to human beings, so that they themselves could live in peace. The idea is expressed in several texts, most famously perhaps the Poem of the Flood. Here are its opening lines, in the Old Babylonian version (OB Atra-hasīs I .1–4 (Lambert and Millard)): i-nu-ma i-lu a-wi-lum ub-lu du-ul-la iz-bi-lu šu-up-ši-[i]k-ka šu-up-ši-ik i-li ra-bi-[m]a du-ul-lu-um ka-bi-it ma-a-ad ša-ap-ša-qum When the gods were (like?) man, they did the work, they bore the drudgery. Great ind[eed] was the drudgery of the gods, the labour was onerous, the misery was great.

This opening has much exercised scholars: does it suggest that (all) the gods were man to begin with? Or are we to think, rather, that the gods were merely like men?100 Whichever reading we adopt (and there was already some speculation in antiquity, as an Assyrian version of the text 97 The men of the Golden Age are ἀκηδέες because they are not yet fully human: Hes. WD 112 = 170; for formulaic ἀγήρως τ’ ἀθάνατός τε and similar phrases (always of the gods) see LfgrE s.v. ἀγήραος. 98 Falkner 1989.  99  E.g. OB Atra-hasīs I .22, 24 (Lambert and Millard). 100 Shehata 2001: 23–4 and Kvanvig 2011: 39–43 consider the various possibilities and chronicle the debate.

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confirms), it is clear that prior to the creation of mankind the gods had to work so humanly hard that their very divinity was in question. When they could no longer bear the burden, they created mankind to relieve them.101 A similar idea is found in Enūma eliš (V I .7–8 (Talon)): lu-ub-ni-ma LÚ.U18.LU-a a-me-lu lu-ú en-du dul-lu DINGIR.DINGIR-ma šu-nu lu-ú pa-áš-hu ‘Let me create mankind, they shall bear the gods’ burden so that the gods themselves may be at rest.’

Having just created the world, Marduk determines to create mankind as a crowning favour to his fellow gods. The gods express their gratitude by building Babylon for him, conceived here as his main shrine.102 Enūma eliš changes the emphasis of the Poem of the Flood and inverts the logic of human creation, freeing the gods before they set to work on Marduk’s behalf. As Dina Katz has argued, both changes are characteristic of the poem’s revisionist agenda: in Enūma eliš, though not in the Poem of the Flood, the ruling god is cast as benevolent, and his creation as perfect from the start.103 Yet in one respect Enūma eliš does agree with other Mesopotamian texts, and indeed with Greek epic: Marduk can simply decree that we be miserable while the gods are free. Our own task as humans is to accept the facts, as Achilles points out in the Iliad. Cultural difference does not come into this basic acceptance: as representatives of the most important forces in Homer’s universe, the gods are not confined by culture, no matter how Greek they may seem to us. Nor is the relationship between gods and men, which lies at the heart of Homeric epic, configured as specifically Greek (or Achaean). The ­universal reach of the Iliad finds its clearest expression in Achilles’ words to Priam (Il. 24.527–48): “δοιοὶ γάρ τε πίθοι κατακείαται ἐν Διὸς οὔδει δώρων, οἷα δίδωσι, κακῶν, ἕτερος δὲ ἑάων. ὧι μέν κ’ ἀμμίξας δώηι Ζεὺς τερπικέραυνος, ἄλλοτε μέν τε κακῶι ὅ γε κύρεται, ἄλλοτε δ’ ἐσθλῶι· ὧι δέ κε τῶν λυγρῶν δώηι, λωβητὸν ἔθηκε, καί ἑ κακὴ βούβρωστις ἐπὶ χθόνα δῖαν ἐλαύνει, φοιτᾶι δ’ οὔτε θεοῖσι τετιμένος οὔτε βροτοῖσιν. ὣς μὲν καὶ Πηλῆι θεοὶ δόσαν ἀγλαὰ δῶρα   OB Atra-hasīs I .174–220 (Lambert and Millard).   Enūma eliš V I .45–71 (Talon). 103   Katz 2011: 131.

101

102

Gods and mortals

47

ἐκ γενετῆς· πάντας γὰρ ἐπ’ ἀνθρώπους ἐκέκαστο ὄλβωι τε πλούτωι τε, ἄνασσε δὲ Μυρμιδόνεσσι, καί οἱ θνητῶι ἐόντι θεὰν ποίησαν ἄκοιτιν. ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ καὶ τῶι θῆκε θεὸς κακόν, ὅττι οἱ οὔ τι παίδων ἐν μεγάροισι γονὴ γένετο κρειόντων, ἀλλ’ ἕνα παῖδα τέκεν παναώριον· οὐδέ νυ τόν γε γηράσκοντα κομίζω, ἐπεὶ μάλα τηλόθι πάτρης ἧμαι ἐνὶ Τροίηι, σέ τε κήδων ἠδὲ σὰ τέκνα. καὶ σέ, γέρον, τὸ πρὶν μὲν ἀκούομεν ὄλβιον εἶναι· ὅσσον Λέσβος ἄνω, Μάκαρος ἕδος, ἐντὸς ἐέργει καὶ Φρυγίη καθύπερθε καὶ Ἑλλήσποντος ἀπείρων, τῶν σε, γέρον, πλούτωι τε καὶ υἱάσι φασὶ κεκάσθαι. αὐτὰρ ἐπεί τοι πῆμα τόδ’ ἤγαγον Οὐρανίωνες, αἰεί τοι περὶ ἄστυ μάχαι τ’ ἀνδροκτασίαι τε.” ‘Two urns stand on the threshold of Zeus’s house, with the gifts he bestows: an urn of evils, and one of blessings. If Zeus who delights in thunder gives a mixture to a man, that man will sometimes encounter evil, at other times good fortune. But when Zeus gives from the urn of sorrows only, he makes a man wretched, and evil starvation drives him over the brilliant earth, and he wanders respected neither by gods nor mortals. Such were the splendid gifts that the gods gave to Peleus from his birth, for he stood out among all men for his wealth and possessions, and was lord over the Myrmidons. The gods even gave him a goddess for a wife, although he was mortal. But even on him the god piled evil also. For he had no sons who would rule in his palace but only a single ill-fated child, and I give him no care as he grows old, since far from the land of my fathers I sit here in Troy, bringing sorrow to you and your children. You too, old man, we are told you prospered once; for as much as Lesbos, Makar’s seat, holds above and Phrygia beyond contains, and enormous Hellespont, of these, old man, you were lord once in your wealth and your sons. But now that the gods brought us as an affliction upon you, there is always fighting about your city, and slaughter.’

Achilles’ speech is of course directed at a Trojan. Although Priam lives ‘far from the land of Achilles’ fathers’ (541–2), he too is subject to the inexorable law of Zeus; as indeed are all human beings. The entire point of Achilles’ speech is arguably to show that there really are no exceptions: even Peleus (538) and Priam (543 with 547–8), favoured though they were, cannot ultimately claim special treatment. Achilles expects others to share this insight, and others in the ancient world did, in fact, share it. We need

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only compare Utanapishti’s equally profound, though less well-known, speech to Gilgamesh in Tablet X of the Mesopotamian epic (SB Gilg. X .301–22 (George)): a-me-lu-tum šá kīma(gim) qanê(gi) a-pi ha-si-pi {x} šùm-šú et-la dam-qa ardata(ki.sikil)ta da-me-eq-tum : ur[-ru-hiš? …]-šú-nu-ma i-šal-lal mu-ti ul ma-am-ma mu-ú-tu im-ma-ar : ul ma-am-ma ša mu-ti im-mar pa-ni-šú ul ma-am-ma ša mu-ti rig-ma-šú [i-šem-me] ag-gu mu-tum ha-si-pi amēlu(lú)-ut-tim im-ma-ti-ma ni-ip-pu-šá bīta(é) : im-ma-ti-ma ni-qan-na-nu qin-nu im-ma-ti-ma ahhū(šeš)meš i-zu-uz-[zu] im-ma-ti-ma ze-ru-tum i-ba-áš-ši ina māti(kur) im-ma-ti-ma nāru(íd) iš-šá-a mīla(illu) ub-lu ku-li-li -qé-lep-pa-a ina nāri(íd) pa-nu-šá i-na-at-ta-lu pa-an dšamši(utu)ši ul-tu ul-la-nu-um-ma ul i-ba-áš-ši mim-ma šal-lu ù mi-tum ki-i pî(ka) a-ha-meš-ma ša mu-ti ul is-si-ru sa-lam-šú lullâ(lú.u18.lu)a mītu(lú.ug7) ul ik-ru-ba ka-ra-bi ina māti(kur) d a-nun-na-ki ilū(dingir)meš rabûtu(gal)meš pah-ru d ma-am-me-tum ba-na-at šim-ti itti(ki)-šú-nu ši-ma-tú i-ši[m-ma] iš-tak-nu mu-ta u ba-la-t[a] šá mu-ti ul ud-du-ú ūmī(u4)meš-šú ‘Man is a creature whose progeny is snapped off like a reed in the canebrake: the fine young man, the fine young woman, [in] their [very prime] death abducts them. No-one sees death, no-one sees the face of death, no one hears the voice of death: yet savage death snaps men off. At some time we build a household, at some time we start a family, at some time brothers divide the property, at some time a feud arises in the land. At some time the river rose and brought the flood, the mayfly was floating on the river. Its countenance was gazing on the face of the sun, then all of a sudden nothing was there! The abducted and the dead how alike they are! One cannot draw the picture of death.

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49

One cannot greet someone dead in the land. The Anunnaki, the great gods, were in the assembly, Mammītum, who creates destiny, made a decree with them: death and life they did establish, the days of death they did not reveal.’

Utanapishti does not describe the human condition in quite the same terms as Achilles, but he too expresses the fundamental human experience of loss. Death is close at hand, and nobody is exempt. Even young men and women in their prime are not safe  – for the essence of death is to interrupt: unseen and unknown, it abducts and snaps us off. The gods wanted it so, they did not reveal the days of death (322). In the Old Babylonian version of Gilgamesh we hear that they gave us death and kept life for themselves.104 That idea is left implied in the Standard Babylonian text quoted above. Here, the focus is on the untimeliness of death, and the brutality of its intrusion. Utanapishti drives home the point with a five-fold anaphora of the temporal adverb immatīma, ‘at some time’, at the beginning of the line. It introduces a series of activities whose timing matters much in human life and yet matters little in the face of death – as little in fact as a mayfly floating down the river. It may seem difficult to remember that this is Utanapishti speaking to Gilgamesh, the immortal flood hero to the semi-divine king. And yet, the power of the passage rests precisely, as did that of Achilles’ speech in Homer, on the fact that not even these amazing figures from the distant past, closer in many ways to the gods than we are now, can change the inexorable laws of human life. Most poignant in this regard are the first person plural verbs that Utanapishti employs in lines 308–9: nippuša, niqannana. He may have become ‘like the gods’ (X I .204) – but he still shares in the brotherhood of man. Achilles in the Iliad and Utanapishti in the Epic of Gilgamesh invite us to see human life as governed by the same divine laws the world over. Epic poets were of course aware of cultural differences, but they insisted that, in so far as we are human at all, we share the same experience of loss. The gods are ultimately responsible, and yet we must worship them, whoever we are, wherever we are. In Book 3 of the Odyssey, Telemachus visits Pylos in search for news about his father. Telemachus is particularly close to Athena and her father Zeus, but when he arrives in Pylos, he finds his host Nestor making sacrifice to Poseidon. A potential crisis looms: will   OB Gilg. VA + BM iii.2–5 (George).

104

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the guests recognize this god? Nestor’s son Pisistratus certainly thinks they should (Od. 3.43–8): “εὔχεο νῦν, ὦ ξεῖνε, Ποσειδάωνι ἄνακτι· τοῦ γὰρ καὶ δαίτης ἠντήσατε δεῦρο μολόντες. αὐτὰρ ἐπὴν σπείσηις τε καὶ εὔξεαι, ἣ θέμις ἐστί, δὸς καὶ τούτωι ἔπειτα δέπας μελιηδέος οἴνου σπεῖσαι, ἐπεὶ καὶ τοῦτον ὀίομαι ἀθανάτοισιν εὔχεσθαι· πάντες δὲ θεῶν χατέουσ’ ἄνθρωποι.” ‘My guest, pray now to the lord Poseidon, for his is the festival you have come to on your arrival; but when you have made a libation to him and prayed, as is proper, then give this man also a cup of sweet wine, so that he too can make a libation, for I think that he also will pray to the immortals: all humans need the gods.’

Ironically, the ‘man’ who is to illustrate Pisistratus’ claim that ‘all humans need the gods’ is himself a goddess in disguise: recognition of what it is to be human is never straightforward in the Odyssey. Nonetheless, there is indeed an expectation in Homer, and throughout ancient Greek literature, that ‘human beings’ of all cultures ‘need the gods’. The same is true of Mesopotamian literature and culture. And in Mesopotamia, as also in Greece, classic texts explored the relationship between gods and humans, their history together, their mutual dependence. The genre of epic was particularly concerned with that issue. As Herodotus famously said, Homer and Hesiod ‘gave epithets to the gods, defined their due honours and spheres of expertise and described their appearance’.105 In Mesopotamia, the classic Poem of the Flood, which relates how gods became gods and human beings truly human, was retold and framed as a ‘secret of the gods’ in Tablet X I of the Epic of Gilgamesh. Here are the opening lines of Utanapishti’s account (SB Gilg. X I .8–10 (George)): [mU]D-napišti(zi) a-na šá-šu-ma izakkara(mu)ra a-na dGIŠ-gím-maš lu-up-te-ka dGIŠ-gím-maš a-mat ni-sir-ti ù pi-riš-ti šá ilī(dingir)meš lu-uq-bi-ka Utanapishti spoke to him, to Gilgamesh: ‘I will disclose to you, Gilgamesh, a secret matter, and I will tell you a mystery of the gods.’   Hdt. 2.53.2–3.

105

Generic definitions

51

Utanapishti’s narrative shows that the divine order is always at the same time familiar and strange; exotic and universal; traditional and unexpected. Narratives about the gods must be all those things. A similar picture emerges from the inset narratives of the Odyssey. When Odysseus visits the far-off Phaeacians they famously listen to epic poetry.106 In fact, there are strong hints that the songs of Demodocus are meant to sound rather Homeric. In antiquity, the blind bard of the Phaeacians was taken to represent Homer himself,107 and his repertoire could hardly be more Homeric. At another level, and like Utanapishti’s retelling of the Poem of the Flood, his songs are also ‘secrets of the gods’: Demodocus’ dazzling lay of Ares and Aphrodite focuses precisely on those aspects of the divine realm that we might never hope to see, and that the gods themselves try very hard to keep hidden.108 Demodocus introduces us to a strange and wonderful world. But as in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the strangeness of the gods is not captured in a strange song. On the contrary: epic in the land of the Phaeacians, near the edges of the world, is much the same as it is in Ithaca, and as it was among historical Homeric audiences. This has important implications for how epic texts relate to other texts. In Homer as in Gilgamesh, we are never invited to make an intertextual leap from one culture to another: it would make no sense to claim that the songs of Demodocus are imported into Homeric epic for they simply are Homeric. Similarly, Utanapishti’s account of the flood is itself a retelling of a canonical Mesopotamian text, the Poem of the Flood. What emerges here is a view of epic as a self-consciously universal, all-embracing form, not so unlike the fable: epic, too, despite its very different claims to cultural authority, plays down cultural difference; and, again like the fable, it portrays intertextual relationships not as a matter of borrowing across distinct cultural domains but as convergence around a set of universal concerns.

Generic definitions I have suggested that Homer and Gilgamesh are not just connected in the minds of modern readers, but also show some important thematic and poetic affinities. These affinities, it would seem, are of a different order from parallels that we might draw between entirely unrelated narrative traditions such as, say, Homer and the Japanese Tale of the Heike, which can   Od. 8.62–92, 256–369, 484–531.   Graziosi 2002: 138–42. 108   Graziosi and Haubold 2005: 81–4. 106 107

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be equally illuminating to the student of Homer but which do not suggest a shared cultural and historical framework.109 Greek and Mesopotamian epic do share such a framework. Indeed, they can be shown to belong to one and the same genre of ancient Mediterranean literature, in the fairly strong sense of sharing a set of well-defined narrative possibilities and thematic concerns, which they employ, and to which they respond, each in their own specific way. Sarah Morris once remarked that the gods of the Iliad and Odyssey display some obviously eastern traits.110 We can now reformulate and generalize her point: the gods of epic crystallize the core thematic concerns of a genre that, while self-consciously universal in orientation, articulates its understanding of the world in ways that, from a modern perspective, are specific to the eastern Mediterranean in the Bronze and early Iron Ages. We begin to fathom what this meant in practice by considering the so-called ‘myth of succession in heaven’ which underpins not just Hesiod’s Theogony but also the Mesopotamian Enūma eliš and indeed other texts and traditions. Greek, Anatolian and Mesopotamian narrative traditions regard the earliest history of the universe as a period of chaos, instability and succession. As the gods come into being, they struggle for power until a ruler emerges: Marduk in Enūma eliš, Teššub in Bronze Age Hittite texts known as the Kumarbi Cycle and Zeus in Hesiod’s Theogony.111 The details of the process vary, but there are important parallels, both in structure and personnel. The parallels become particularly striking in the final three generations of dominant male gods: the first is Sky, the second is an intermediate figure who is associated with cunning in the Greek and Mesopotamian traditions; the last is a storm god in Greek and Hittite tradition, and a god who is given power over the winds in the Babylonian poem (Table 1). How precisely these parallels came about has been much debated: several scholars have argued that Enūma eliš reflects West Semitic influences,112 and Carolina López-Ruiz has argued that Hesiod likewise drew on West Semitic sources.113 These are plausible suggestions, but what matters here is not literary genealogy, or precise geographical routes of transmission, but 109 On Homer and the Heike see Yamagata 1993, 1997, 2003 and 2011. 110 S. Morris 1997: 616. 111 For the Hittite tradition see Hoffner 1998, Beckman 2005, with further literature. 112 A. T. Clay 1909: 53–4 and 1923: 87–93; Jacobsen 1968; contra Lambert 1965: 295–6, Day 1985: 11–12; more recent discussion in Durand 1993, M. S. Smith 2002: 96–8 and Katz 2011: 125, all of whom argue for West Semitic influences. 113 López-Ruiz 2010.

Generic definitions

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Table 1 The final three generations of gods in Babylonian, Hittite and Greek succession myths Babylonian (Enūma eliš)

Hittite (Kumarbi Cycle)

Greek (Theogony)

Sky (no title) father of

Sky ‘king’ is castrated and deposed by

Sky (no title) father of; is castrated by

Ea (no title but kingly attire) creative, clever father of;

Kumarbi ‘king’

is superseded by

swallows and is deposed by

Kronos ‘king of the former gods’ scheming father of; tries to swallow and is deposed by

Marduk present ‘king of the gods’ lord of the winds defeats Tiamat/Qingu

Teššub present ‘king of the gods’ storm god defeats Ullikummi and others

Zeus present ‘king of gods’ lord of lightning defeats Titans/Typhoeus

the fact that the texts adhere to internationally accepted narrative models, and consciously so. That ‘Sky’ was the same figure across the board makes perfect sense: the sky is indeed common to all. Berossos also agreed that Mesopotamian Ea was equivalent to Greek Kronos, for that is how he translates his name in the Babyloniaca.114 And already Herodotus suggests that Babylonian Bel-Marduk was the same god as Greek Zeus.115 The practice of translating local deities into one another was very ancient indeed: religion often had more than merely local purchase,116 and it is thus reasonable to assume that the myth of succession was sometimes told within a framework of religious translation. The point is precisely not that Homer and/or Hesiod read, copied or memorized (a version of ) the Kumarbi Cycle or Enūma eliš (or both). They may have done, but they never say so: the point, for them, was not to borrow some exotic story from somewhere, or to learn from some random reading of some foreign text. The point, rather, was to find out about the gods. And the gods were thought to be universal: their power was manifest throughout the world.117 More generally, what Herodotus called the ‘theogony’ was, as he did indeed 114 Berossos F 4 680 BNJ.  115  Hdt. 1.181, 3.158.  116  M. S. Smith 2008. 117 There were of course purely local deities in the Greek pantheon, such as nymphs and rivers, but these were always understood as lesser gods. The major Olympian deities and the cosmic order they upheld were universal in scope.

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imply, universal – even if Homer and Hesiod had, in his view, shaped a specific version of it for the Greeks.118 Just as the myth of succession was widely shared in the ancient world, so were narratives of the flood. David Damrosch appeals to a notional ‘creation-flood epic’ in order to frame his own comparative reading of Mesopotamian poetry and Genesis 1–11. He claims that ‘four fundamental story elements appear in creation-flood epics: the creation of the world, the creation of human beings, the cataclysm of the flood and the establishment of the post-flood human order’.119 Insisting that the Mesopotamian texts be treated ‘as fully as [their] Biblical counterpart’, Damrosch argues that both display the same basic structure, and share a generic framework.120 The question is whether Greek epic also belongs to the family of creation-flood traditions. It must be said that the initial signs do not look promising: of the four ‘fundamental story elements’ that Damrosch identifies  – creation of the world, creation of humankind, the deluge, the post-flood world – not one applies to Greek epic. The world is not created in Homer and Hesiod, nor is mankind; the great flood, if it was mentioned at all, plays no significant role;121 and what Mesopotamian and Biblical literature describe as a post-flood world is rather a post-heroic world in Greek. At a surface level, then, Greek epic has little in common with Damrosch’s notion of the ‘creation-flood epic’. And yet, it seems to me that Greek epic does actually fit the wider generic context described by Damrosch. The mainstream tradition of Greek epic, as it had crystallized by the sixth century B C , fell into two main corpora, one attributed to Homer, the other to Hesiod. There were other epics, and other epic poets.122 There was also lyric poetry of various kinds, which adopted a self-consciously different, and more occasion-oriented, approach.123 But Homer and Hesiod were pre-eminent. Together they formed the backbone of archaic Greek epic, and the most authoritative formulation of Greek thought about gods and men. The texts fall into three main categories (Table 2): 118 Hdt. 2.53.  119  Damrosch 1987: 91. 120 For the stronger case that Genesis 1–11 represents a ‘counter-text’ to Mesopotamian tradition, and specifically to Enūma eliš and the Poem of the Flood, see Frahm 2010. 121 The flood may have featured in the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, but we cannot be certain; cf. frr. 2–4 M-W, with discussion in J. S. Clay 2005: 28. 122 Collected in Bernabé 1987–2007, M. L. West 2003. 123 Graziosi and Haubold 2009.

Generic definitions

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Table 2 Hesiod and Homer on the history of gods and men

Cosmogony and the gods The demigods The current world

Hesiod

Homer

Theogony Catalogue of Women Works and Days

Homeric Hymns Iliad, Odyssey

The three major Hesiodic poems told the story of gods and men in a broadly linear narrative, taking us from the making of the universe (Theogony) to the history of early mankind (Catalogue of Women) and on to the world as it is ‘now’ (Works and Days). The major Homeric texts slotted into this framework as extended meditations on the conflicts that arose along the way, both among the gods (Homeric Hymns) and among the demigods (heroic epic).124 Wars among heroes became the main focus of attention: they gave rise to Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey as the most substantial and most popular epics. However, the Hesiodic poems too were important, also as a way of placing heroic epic within an overall historical framework. That framework was fairly coherent, in that individual texts shared a poetic language (the formulaic idiom of early hexameter poetry) and an overall poetic orientation, including a reliance on the Muses and a shared vision of the fundamentals of human existence. They also agreed on the broad outlines of history, from the birth of the gods to the Trojan War, though ancient scholars such as Aristarchus did point out that there remained some gaps and contradictions in the detail.125 As a (reasonably) coherent system, Greek epic does look strikingly similar to Damrosch’s concept of the creation-flood epic. As he points out, the great mythological texts of first-millennium Mesopotamia also combined to form an overarching narrative of divine and human history, from the very beginnings of the universe to life as it is today: once again, they shared a poetic language, Standard Babylonian, and an overall outlook. They also agreed on the broad outlines of cosmic history, though 124 For the complementary nature of Homeric and Hesiodic poetry, as understood by their earliest audiences, see Graziosi and Haubold 2005: ch. 2. In passing, we may note the debate about the authenticity or otherwise of the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women: see variously M. L. West 1985, Hirschberger 2004 and the contributions in Hunter 2005. What matters here is the fact that the Catalogue was commonly attributed to Hesiod in antiquity. 125 On perceived differences between Hesiodic and Homeric poetry see Koning 2010. At p. 39, n. 83, he discusses Aristarchus’ view of Hesiod as one of the post-Homeric poets (νεώτεροι).

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Mesopotamian tradition was less uniform than Greek epic. Some texts were closely related to each other: the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Poem of the Flood, as we have seen, form a close-knit unit. Other texts, like Enūma eliš, adopt a more idiosyncratic tone and outlook.126 Yet, as the work of Berossos shows, Enūma eliš too could be considered part of an overarching historical plot that included other classics of cosmogonic literature: contradictions in the detail evidently did not jeopardize a perceived coherence of the system as a whole.127 As in Greece, the system was essentially tripartite: Enūma eliš focused on the gods and explained how the world came into being; other texts continued the narrative with the ­history of mankind in its earliest stages of existence (Poem of the Flood); and again others reflected on life as it was ‘now’ (e.g. the so-called Babylonian Theodicy). The parallels with Greek epic are not hard to spot (Table 3). Table 3 is not meant to be exhaustive, nor does it suggest a one-to-one correspondence between Greek and Akkadian epic. Rather, it illustrates the basic point that Greeks and Mesopotamians asked similar questions about the world; and that they went about addressing those questions in similar ways: in both Greece and Mesopotamia, there was an understanding that the history of the universe unfolded in three stages, punctuated by the advent of man and the destruction of the earliest form of human life (through a flood or through war). This understanding gave rise to a series of large-scale narrative texts which relate to one another in similar ways, so similar, in fact, that I suggest we see them as part of one and the same international genre of literature, rather like the fable.128 Once that is accepted, the differences become more interesting. In order to investigate them, it might help to return to Damrosch’s definition of ‘creation-flood epic’: according to him, the outstanding features of the genre are, first, the creation of the world and mankind; and secondly, the destruction of early mankind through a flood, followed by a new dispensation for the post-flood era. Now, in Homer and Hesiod, the world is not created but born: Greek epic portrays cosmogony essentially in terms of an enormous family tree, from Gaia and Ouranos down to the demigods who make up the genealogies of the Hesiodic Catalogue of 126 We have already seen that Enūma eliš departs from other texts in its account of human creation (above, p. 46). It also focuses on its protagonist Marduk at the expense of other important gods such as Ninurta and Ellil; see Lambert 1986, Katz 2011. 127 On Berossos’ reading of Enūma eliš see below, pp. 146–53. 128 Haubold 2002b makes the case for an ancient genre of ‘cosmic history’, which includes Greek and Mesopotamian epic as well as the Hebrew Bible and Canaanite, Hurrian and Hittite texts.

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Table 3 Greek and Akkadian texts on the history of gods and mortals Greek epic

Akkadian epic

Hesiod, Theogony and related texts Homeric Hymns

Enūma eliš and other cosmogonies Anzu Epic, Descent of Ištar and related texts

Early human history How did earlier forms of human life arise? Why did they come to an end?

Hesiod, Catalogue of Women Homeric epics

Poem of the Flood, Gilgamesh

The current world What is man’s role in the current order of things? How can we cope with it?

Hesiod, Works and Days and other wisdom texts

Epic of Erra; wisdom texts (e.g. Ludlul bēl nēmeqi, Babylonian Theodicy)

Cosmogony and the gods How did the world come into being? What are its constituent forces?

Women.129 These demigods, or heroes, came to a violent end, just as early humanity does in Mesopotamian epic. But the means of destruction differ significantly: the flood in Mesopotamia is a war in Greece. These events are functionally equivalent, as Ruth Scodel has shown,130 but does their equivalence matter for the interpretation of the poems? The answer will be ‘yes’ only if it can be shown that there is some awareness in the texts – the Mesopotamian texts as well as the Greek ones – that cosmogony by creation and cosmogony by birth are indeed broadly equivalent; and that the flood narrative of Mesopotamia can be translated into the war narrative of Greece (and vice versa). Further, we would expect to see at least some awareness of the poetic implications of these different approaches: after all, a flood story is not the same as a war story, however similar the two events may be in terms of function within an overall understanding of cosmic history. In what follows I argue, first, that creation and birth narratives, flood and war, were indeed experienced as broadly equivalent phenomena in Mesopotamian and Greek cosmogonic literature. Secondly, I suggest that the texts reflected openly, and often polemically, on the differences 129 Graziosi and Haubold 2005: ch. 2. 130 Scodel 1982: 40, who writes that ‘in Near Eastern myth the Deluge has a function like that of the Trojan War in Greek, serving to divide the present age and its world order from an earlier, and in some ways preferable time’.

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between alternative approaches and choose their own in full awareness of those differences. Finally, I argue that their choices have important poetic ramifications, from issues of closure in cosmogonic narrative (Enūma eliš, Theogony) to the very question of what it might mean to be singing of the ‘famous deeds of men’ (Gk. κλέα ἀνδρῶν).

Telling choices Cosmogonic birth narratives describe how someone or something sprang from someone or something else. This process is modelled on human sexuality and in the majority of cases involves two live cosmic forces, typically a mother and a father. By contrast, creation narratives describe how someone or something is made: this involves a creator and usually (not always) some pre-existing matter that lacks the status of a live cosmic force. For example, when Heaven and Earth mate in Hesiod’s Theogony to generate the Titans, this is clearly marked as a birth narrative: Earth ‘sleeps with’ Heaven (133) and as a result ‘gives birth’ (133) to ‘children’ (138). Conversely, when Marduk creates the universe in Enūma eliš (IV.135ff. (Talon)) this is a typical creation narrative: Tiamat has just been killed and is now a mere ‘corpse’ (IV.135), which Marduk manipulates as he pleases (IV.137). Ancient cosmogonies almost always include elements of both birth and creation narratives, though individual texts, and entire narrative traditions, may show a more or less pronounced preference for one of the two approaches. Thus the Biblical book of Genesis represents an extreme case of cosmogony by creation, whereas Hesiod’s Theogony puts the emphasis more squarely on birth. Yet they still combine elements of both, and in so doing betray clear signs that they regard them as complementary.131 In that respect alone, Damrosch’s definition of ‘creation-flood epic’ seems unhelpfully narrow. What we find, rather, is a dynamic and poetically productive alternative between birth and creation, with texts exploring, and taking advantage of, the fact that the two work differently. For example, birth narratives allow for change: children grow up, parents grow old. They also introduce a layer of complexity which is lacking in creation narratives: families are potentially volatile social systems, and birth narratives therefore tend to depict the cosmos in a dynamic fashion. Creation narratives, by contrast, tend to have a stabilizing effect: they emphasize the permanent control of a single generative principle over a set of ontologically inferior 131 Thus the Bible refers to the ‘generations of Heaven and Earth’ (Gen: 2.4); for creation in the Theogony see below, pp. 60–1.

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beings. Some cosmogonies therefore associate birth with the dynamic early stages of the universe, whereas creation comes to the fore in the final stages of stabilization and closure. Enūma eliš offers this kind of vision: it starts with an early, pre-cosmic phase of the universe which is associated with spontaneous procreation, and with the powerful mother figure Tiamat, ‘who bore them all’ (I .4 (Talon)). That early phase of unfettered growth comes to an end with the accession to power of Marduk, who creates the world and with it man. Marduk is the last of the born gods and puts an end to the generation of the cosmos. The switch to creation, however, is not simply a matter of defaulting to the preferred mode of ‘creation-flood epic’.132 Rather, the poet celebrates the advent of creation specifically as a triumph over birth (I V .129–38 (Talon, modified)): ik-bu-us-ma be-lum šá ti-a-ma-tum i-šid-sa i-na mi-ti-šu la pa-di-i ú-lat-ti muh-ha ú-par-ri-i’-ma uš-lat da-mi-šá ša-a-ru il-ta-nu a-na bu-us-rat uš-ta-bil i-mu-ru-ma ab-bu-šu ih-du-ú i-ri-šu IGI.SÁ-e šul-ma-ni ú-šá-bi-lu šu-nu ana šá-a-šu i-nu-úh-ma be-lum šá-lam-taš i-bar-ri UZU.ku-bu ú-za-a-zu i-ban-na-a nik-la-a-ti ih-pi-ši-ma ki-ma nu-un maš-te-e a-na ši-ni-šu mi-iš-lu-uš-ša iš-ku-nam-ma ša-ma-mi us-sal-lil The lord trampled upon the body of Tiamat, with his merciless mace he crushed her skull. He sliced open the vessels of her blood, he let the North Wind carry it away as glad tidings. His fathers saw it and rejoiced with gladness, they brought to him presents and greeting-gifts. The lord rested, and inspected her carcass, divided the monstrous lump and fashioned things of ingenuity. He split her in two, like a fish for drying, half of her he set up and roofed over heaven.

What we see here reads like a parody of the classic birth narrative: Marduk has penetrated Tiamat, but only to kill her. And he treats her dead body like an aberrant birth (Akk. kūbu), making a mockery of her role as a mother. The process of creation from killing is repeated, on a lesser scale, when Marduk fashions mankind from the carcass of Tiamat’s lover, the   This section is indebted to Haubold 2002b.

132

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rebellious god Qingu (V I .1–38). Taken together, these two acts mark a deliberate and conscious break away from procreation, which is here associated with pre-cosmic chaos. Marduk himself chooses no partner and has no offspring of his own. Although his wife Sarpanitum and his son Nabû were prominent in Mesopotamian literature and cult, in Enūma eliš he remains above all a son, frozen in this position by frequent references to ‘the gods, his fathers’.133 Marduk’s victory over the forces of procreation, together with his own sexual abstinence, have important poetic implications: for one thing, Enūma eliš presents itself as a very deliberately closed text. The poem ends with a great hymn to Marduk: that is the final word, there is no suggestion that other important events might follow. We may contrast the much more open texture of Hesiod’s Theogony: here too we start with procreation as the force that drives the early expansion of the cosmos; and end with a king who distributes divine ‘honours’ (Gk. τιμαί), a gesture transparently designed to assert central control (885). Yet, there is no shift in Hesiod from procreation to creation: the divine family continues to grow, and will do so also in the sequel to the Theogony, the Catalogue of Women. Not by coincidence have editors struggled to determine where the Theogony ends.134 Its lack of closure is neither a formal deficiency nor the result of later tampering. Rather, it correlates with a view of cosmogony as an unbroken line of births.135 A few things, however, are created even in Hesiod’s Theogony – and they mark the difference between gods and mortals, thus ultimately securing Zeus’s everlasting supremacy. Most notably, woman is formed from earth (570–2): αὐτίκα δ’ ἀντὶ πυρὸς τεῦξεν κακὸν ἀνθρώποισι· γαίης γὰρ σύμπλασσε περικλυτὸς Ἀμφιγυήεις παρθένωι αἰδοίηι ἴκελον Κρονίδεω διὰ βουλάς· Straightaway he created an evil for humans in return for the fire: from earth the famed maker of things fashioned the likeness of a respectable maiden through the counsels of Zeus.

Some aspects of this episode recall the creation of man as described in Enūma eliš, Tablet VI. There, too, the process of creation is described as 133 For this formulation see Enūma eliš I V .27, 33, 84, etc. (Talon). For Nabû in Mesopotamian religion see further pp. 135–6 below. 134 For discussion see, e.g., M. L. West 1966: 48–50. 135 J. S. Clay 2003 discusses the cosmic sex drive in Hesiod’s Theogony.

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‘ingenious’ (VI.2, 38), and defines humans as troubled creatures vis-àvis the carefree gods, as we have seen. However, the creation of man in Enūma eliš is described as the climax of cosmogony from the perspective of the gods: once humankind has been introduced to ‘bear the burden’ of work, the gods can truly be at peace and the universe reach its final form. Hesiodic woman too is created to stabilize the divine cosmos (and more specifically the rule of Zeus) after Prometheus’ theft of fire. In that sense, she is the typical product of an ancient Mediterranean creation narrative. However, she carries little novelty (man already exists) and is portrayed as ontologically inferior: creation is not as good as generation, and Zeus remains ‘the father of gods and men’ (as opposed to woman). Hesiod emphasizes Pandora’s counterfeit nature by calling her the ‘likeness of a respectable maiden’ (572) and an ‘unmanageable deception’ (589). He also dwells on the mind-numbing effect she has (575, 581, 584): the creation of Pandora reads like parody of the classic creation narrative. Zeus does not kill off cosmogonic growth, but infects it with woman: this poison seeps into the divine family and eventually separates off gods from mortals at the end of the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women.136 Only then has Hesiodic cosmogony run its course. Damrosch’s concept of ‘creation-flood-epic’ benefits from broadening its scope: creation was never simply a default mode. Even in Mesopotamian traditions about the early history of the cosmos, it was contrasted to the alternative model of cosmogonic birth. Hesiod, for his part, used elements of creation to articulate his own commitment to a model of cosmogony by birth, while also exploiting it to impose what little closure he admitted into his narrative of gods and men. Those choices, and that is my second point, have poetic implications, both for the shape of individual texts (fundamentally closed in the case of the Enūma eliš, resisting closure in the case of the Theogony), and for the wider tradition within which they place themselves – all of which leads me on to Damrosch’s second characteristic of ‘creation-flood-epic’, the role of the flood and its aftermath. On the face of it, Mesopotamian and Greek traditions conceive the destruction of early humankind in radically different ways: in Gilgamesh, human loss is configured as a flood; whereas in Homer, war brings the age of the heroes to an end. And yet, these texts also reflect on possible alternative ways of telling their story of human extinction. Towards the end of   For the end of the Catalogue see J. S. Clay 2005.

136

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the flood narrative in Gilgamesh X I , the god Ea considers alternatives to the flood (SB Gilg. X I .181–95 (George)): é-a pa-a-šú īpuš(dù)-ma iqabbi(dug4.ga) izakkar(mu)ár ana qu-ra-di den-[lil] at-ta apkal(abgal) ilī(dingir)meš qu-ra-du ki-i ki-i la tam-ta-lik-ma a-bu-bu taš-k[un] be-el ár-ni e-mid hi-ta-a-šú be-el gíl-la-ti e-mid gíl-lat-[su] ru-um-me a-a ib-ba-ti-iq šu-du-ud a-a i[r-mu] am-ma-ku taš-ku-nu a-bu-ba nēšu(ur.mah) lit-ba-am-ma nišī(ùg)meš li-sa-ah-hi-i[r] am-ma-ku taš-ku-nu a-bu-ba barbaru(ur.bar.ra) lit-ba-am-ma nišī(ùg)meš li-sa-ah-[hi-ir] am-ma-ku taš-ku-nu a-bu-ba hu-šah-hu liš-šá-kin-ma māta(kur) liš-[giš] am-ma-ku taš-ku-nu a-bu-ba d èr-ra lit-ba-am-ma māta(kur) li[š]-˹giš˺ d

Ea opened his mouth to speak, saying to the hero Enlil: ‘You, the sage of the gods, the hero, how could you not take counsel and cause the deluge? Punish him who commits a sin! Impose [his] transgression on him who does wrong! Slack off, lest it be snapped! Pull taut, lest it become [slack!] Instead of causing a deluge, let a lion arise and diminish the people! Instead of causing a deluge, let a wolf arise and diminish the people! Instead of causing a deluge, let a famine come about and slaughter the land! Instead of causing a deluge, let Erra arise and slaughter the land!’

The passage reminds us that the flood myth never existed as the one and only possibility for extermination. Alternatives are proposed for the benefit of future generations.137 One such alternative is a war, as hinted in the reference to Erra ‘aris(ing) and slaughter(ing) the land’.138 Indeed, the 137 Ea’s speech recalls the alternative approaches to cosmic destruction that are tried prior to the deluge, in OB Atra-hasīs Tablet I I (Lambert and Millard); and the measures taken to control the human population after the flood at OB Atra-hasīs I I I vi.41–50 and vii.1–8 (Lambert and Millard). 138 The Epic of Erra works out in gruesome detail what that might mean in practice; see Frahm 2011: 347–9.

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flood of Gilgamesh can itself be interpreted as a form of war, for example when the mother goddess Bēlet-Ilī regrets that she declared war on her own people (SB Gilg. X I .117–22 (George)): i-šas-si diš-tar [k]i-ma a-lit-ti ú-nam-bi bēlet-ilī (dingir.mah) ta-bat rig-ma u4-mu ul-lu-ú a-na ti-it-ti lu-ú i-tur-ma áš-šú a-na-ku ina pu-hur il[ī(dingir)meš] aq-bu-ú flemutta(hul) ki-i aq-bi ina pu-hur i[lī(dingir)meš] flemutta(hul) ana hul-lu-uq nišī(ùg)meš-ia qab-la aq-bi-ma The goddess cried out like a woman in childbirth, Bēlet-Ilī wailed, whose voice is sweet: ‘The times of old have turned (back) to clay, because I myself spoke evil in the gods’ assembly. How could I speak evil in the gods’ assembly, and declare a war to destroy my people?’

Line 122 deserves attention, for it suggests that there was an awareness, already in the Epic of Gilgamesh, not only that the flood was one among several ways of dividing gods from humans, but more specifically that war and flood could be seen as comparable ways of doing so. Indeed, earlier in the text, the flood is compared to the onslaught of battle (X I .111), and in later Mesopotamian literature battles may in turn be compared to the onslaught of the great deluge.139 That equivalence between flooding and war was felt in Greece too.140 If the god Ea in Gilgamesh accuses Enlil of lacking counsel (X I .184), a scholion on Iliad 1.5 suggests that Zeus did actually take counsel before choosing war in order to wipe out the heroes.141 Momos, blame personified, persuaded him to start the Trojan War rather than destroy the troublesome heroes with thunderbolts or a flood. How exactly Momos (or: the possibility of blame?) persuaded Zeus remains unclear, just as we cannot tell how much of the narrative preserved in the scholion goes back to the early Cypria.142 What we do know is that the author of the scholion regarded the Trojan War as equivalent to a god-sent flood; and that flood imagery plays an important part also in Homer, especially in 139 For examples see below, pp. 83–4. 140 In fact, it seems to have been shared across the eastern Mediterranean. Ronald Hendel has shown that the disappearance of the Biblical Nephilim/Rephaim could be put down to either a flood or a war, depending on context; Hendel 1987: 21–3. 141 See further the apparatus of Bernabé’s edition ad Cypria Fr. 1. 142 Scodel 1982: 39–40 is right to urge caution. Burkert 1992: 102 points out that the scholion cannot easily be reconciled with extant fragments of the Cypria. For detailed discussion see Barker 2008.

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similes.143 Of particular interest is Iliad 16.384–92, which describes the devastation visited by an angry Zeus: ὡς δ’ ὑπὸ λαίλαπι πᾶσα κελαινὴ βέβριθε χθὼν ἤματ’ ὀπωρινῶι, ὅτε λαβρότατον χέει ὕδωρ Ζεύς, ὅτε δὴ ἄνδρεσσι κοτεσσάμενος χαλεπήνηι, οἳ βίηι εἰν ἀγορῆι σκολιὰς κρίνωσι θέμιστας, ἐκ δὲ δίκην ἐλάσωσι θεῶν ὄπιν οὐκ ἀλέγοντες· τῶν δέ τε πάντες μὲν ποταμοὶ πλήθουσι ῥέοντες, πολλὰς δὲ κλιτῦς τότ’ ἀποτμήγουσι χαράδραι, ἐς δ’ ἅλα πορφυρέην μεγάλα στενάχουσι ῥέουσαι ἐξ ὀρέων ἐπὶ κάρ, μινύθει δέ τε ἔργ’ ἀνθρώπων· As all the black earth bears the brunt of a storm on an autumn day, when Zeus pours down the most violent rain in deep rage against mortals after they stir him to anger because violently they pass crooked decrees in the assembly, and drive justice from among them and do not care for the gods’ will, and all their rivers swell to full spate and mountain torrents rip out many a hillside and rush with great uproar down to the heaving sea, out of the mountains, headlong, and the works of men are diminished.

The simile starts in a rather harmless way, with autumnal rains, but then escalates in a manner that evokes Mesopotamian and, especially, Levantine deluge narratives.144 The poet of the Iliad was evidently familiar with this kind of narrative, as is shown by the standard plot elements that structure the simile: human transgression leads to divine wrath, expressed in a flood. However, the flood story is precisely not used in the main text, and that, I would argue, is no coincidence. Zeus’s plan, at the beginning of the Iliad, concerns human conflict, not natural catastrophe. Let us, then, return to poetics, and to the basic point that Homeric epic describes itself as being about the great deeds of ‘men’, the κλέα ἀνδρῶν. These ‘deeds’ are above all deeds of war: men risk their lives at Troy in order to win the κλέος which now makes up the songs that we hear about them. It is in the nature of wars that they concern men first and foremost, and against the backdrop of standard Greek cosmogony that makes good sense: the heroes were imagined as men (ἄνδρες ἥρωες), and Zeus 143 E.g. Il. 4.422–8, 452–6, 5.87–92, 11.304–9, 11.492–6, 14.394–5 with 400–1, 15.381–4, 618–22, 624–9, 16.384–93, 17.262–6; see also Il. 13.795–801. 144 See also Hes. fr. 204.128 M-W, μινύθεσκε δὲ καρπός, an expression that marks the end of the heroic age.

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was the ‘father of gods and men’.145 Women, we have seen, were created in Hesiod as a device for separating men from the gods. Women do feature in Homer, and are important: they motivate the fighting (e.g. Helen, Penelope) and provide an alternative perspective on human life.146 But Homer was always above all the poet of war; and ‘war’, as Hector puts it, ‘is a concern to men’.147 To Mesopotamian readers, any suggestion that men were ontologically distinct from women, or that an entire race of (male) heroes was descended from the gods, would have seemed quite alien. Some exceptional individuals like Gilgamesh (usually men) did claim divine parentage, but humankind as a whole, men and women, was fashioned by the gods, not descended from them.148 The standard building material was clay, sometimes mixed with the blood of a god.149 Other variations were possible: Enūma eliš leaves out the clay, in a rather characteristic departure from the Poem of the Flood: by leaving out the clay, Enūma eliš banishes any thought of a future flood.150 By contrast, Enkidu in Gilgamesh is made only from clay, a detail that presages both his own death151 and the account of the great flood in Gilgamesh X I .152 Once again, we note the productive tension between birth and creation narratives: Gilgamesh, the son of a goddess and ‘flesh of the gods’, is confronted by his second self, Enkidu, who represents clay-humanity at its most vulnerable.153 The Trojan War, we have already seen, is structurally equivalent to the flood narratives of the Mesopotamian (and Levantine) literatures. Both are ‘myths of destruction’ (Scodel’s term) which put an end to an early phase in human history. The flood myth was also known in Greece, and it has been suggested that Greek authors took it over from Near Eastern sources.154 Yet they never made it a cosmic milestone in the manner of Mesopotamian and Levantine texts, for precisely the reasons we have seen: 145 Graziosi and Haubold 2005: ch. 4. 146 See, e.g., Graziosi and Haubold 2010: 29–32, with further literature.  147  Il. 6.492. 148 Thus, explicitly, Atra-hasīs S iii.8–13 (Lambert and Millard). 149 Kvanvig 2011: 48–9; for clay mixed with blood see OB Atra-hasīs I .223–6 (Lambert and Millard). 150 For the poem’s revisionist agenda see above, p. 46. Katz 2011: 131 argues that Enūma eliš deliberately leaves out the clay so as to suggest a more positive and lasting arrangement. 151 Cf. SB Gilg. I .101–2 and X .68–9 = 145–6 = 245–6 (George); ancient readers already saw Enkidu’s creation from clay as presaging his death; see Frahm 2011: 103–4. 152 For the emphasis that that narrative places on clay, see SB Gilg. X I .119, 134 (George). 153 For Gilgamesh as ‘flesh of the gods’ see SB Gilg. I X .49, X .7 (George); at X .268 Gilgamesh is said to be made of the flesh of gods and men. 154 Bremmer 2008: ch. 6; for general discussion of the flood in classical tradition see Caduff 1986.

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cosmologically and poetically, flood myths are at odds with Greek epic as κλέα ἀνδρῶν. Wars generate stories, and early epic as the sum total of the κλέα ἀνδρῶν revelled precisely in stories. They start being told already in the Odyssey, as the survivors reminisce about the Trojan War. But the drive towards storytelling can also be felt in the Iliad: Homer’s predilection for so-called ‘minor warriors’ is well known: their fates matter and are recounted in loving detail.155 The genealogies which in Hesiod completed the process of cosmogony are ‘cashed out’ in terms of κλέος, man by man, name after individual name, in Homeric epic. Things could not be more different in Mesopotamian flood narratives. There, we have only one survivor, and only one story can be told. The break with the past is stark and radical, the silence that follows quite deafening. Here is how Utanapishti describes the immediate aftermath of the deluge in Gilgamesh Tablet X I (SB Gilg. X I .134–5 (George)): ap-pal-sa-am-ma u4-ma šá-kin qu-lu ù kul-lat te-né-še-e-ti i-tu-ra a-na ti-it-ti ‘I looked at the weather, but there was silence, and all the people had turned (back) into clay.’

Although Utanapishti has a story to tell about his own experience, no stories at all can be told about the fortunes of those who perished. For them, the lights went out during the great storm: ‘people did not see each other’, says Utanapishti (ul immar ahu ahāšu, SB Gilg. X I .112 (George)), and draws a veil over the catastrophe. After the storm, we are left with the tabula rasa of a flood plain (SB Gilg. X I .136 (George)): ki-ma ú-ri mit-hu-rat ú-šal-lu ‘The flood plain was flat like a roof.’

This is Mesopotamia’s ground zero. Utanapishti’s must be one of the most devastating reverse similes in world literature: nature is seen to resemble culture in a chilling reminder of what has been lost: ‘demolish your house and build a boat’, Utanapishti was told near the beginning of the flood narrative (SB Gilg. X I .24 (George)). Those words now come back to haunt him. In the Mesopotamian tradition, the modalities of destruction correspond closely to the process through which human beings came into existence: what was created from clay has been turned back into clay. This is just as true of the Greek tradition: what was born gets killed. Griffin 1980: 103–43.

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These schemes have, as ever, important poetic consequences: as the account of an only survivor, Utanapishti’s story strongly insists on its own uniqueness  – and, by implication, that of the Epic of Gilgamesh. Uniqueness, however, comes at a great price: it is a chilling piece of word play indeed which trades ‘silence’ (Akk. qūlu) against the destruction of ‘all people’ (Akk. kullat tenēšēti) at SB Gilgamesh X I .134–5. The Greek tradition was more open-ended: there were many stories, and many survivors. The Odyssey, in particular, dramatizes the clash between Odysseus’ own account and those of other heroes who made it home before him. Although gods and heroes move gradually apart in the Greek tradition too, there is no clean break, no moment of total silence. Still, there are some few passages which come close to the devastating visions of the Mesopotamian tradition. In Iliad 12.1–33, for example, the poet says that the gods Zeus, Apollo and Poseidon will wash away the Achaean wall without a trace. As Ruth Scodel points out, Homer uses the motif of a divinely sent flood to set up a contrast with the κλέα ἀνδρῶν: what is at issue here, uniquely, are not the stories that can be told about the end of the heroes, but a radical break with what went before: only the poet can tell us of this wall which no longer exists.156 The wall is ‘hidden’ (κάλυψεν, 12.31), and even ‘blotted out’ (ἀμαλδύνας, 12.32); and there is a sense that from this perspective even the heroes themselves become dim figures of the distant past. Homer calls them ἡμίθεοι at this point in the narrative (12.23), a term that he generally avoids.157 The entire passage thus emphasizes total destruction, a clean break, and sounds rather different from the rest of the Iliad – for ‘hiding’ is the opposite of κλέος; and κλέος is precisely what is at issue here, as Poseidon explains in Book 7 of the Iliad, when he worries about the reputation of his own wall, that is to say, the city wall of Troy.158 The passage has been much discussed,159 but what matters for my purposes is that Zeus takes the complaint seriously – and that he promises help in the form of a flood (Il. 7.454–63): τòν δὲ μέγ’ ὀχθήσας προσέφη νεφεληγερέτα Ζεύς· “ὢ πóποι, ἐννοσίγαι’ εὐρυσθενές, οἷον ἔειπες. ἄλλóς κέν τις τοῦτο θεῶν δείσειε νóημα, ὃς σέο πολλòν ἀφαυρóτερος χεῖράς τε μένος τε· σòν δ’ ἤτοι κλέος ἔσται, ὅσον τ’ ἐπικίδναται ἠώς. ἄγρει μάν, ὅτ’ ἂν αὖτε κάρη κομóωντες Ἀχαιοὶ οἴχωνται σὺν νηυσὶ φίλην ἐς πατρίδα γαῖαν, 156 Scodel 1982.  157  Nagy 2005: 82.  159 E.g. Ford 1992: 138–57, Boyd 1995.

  Il. 7.446–53.

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Parallel worlds τεῖχος ἀναρρήξας τò μὲν εἰς ἅλα πᾶν καταχεῦαι, αὖτις δ’ ἠιóνα μεγάλην ψαμάθοισι καλύψαι, ὥς κέν τοι μέγα τεῖχος ἀμαλδύνηται Ἀχαιῶν.” Deeply troubled, Zeus who gathers the clouds answered him: ‘O shaker of the earth, powerful one, what did you say? Some other god might fear this thought, one who is far weaker of hands and strength than you are; but your fame shall spread as far as dawn is scattered. Come then! Once the Achaeans of the flowing hair have gone back with their ships to their beloved home land, break up their wall and scatter it all into the sea and bury again the beach deep under the sands; and so let the great wall of the Achaeans disappear.’

Here we see how κλέος is undone in the Iliad: the Achaean wall is washed into the sea and the beach covered over with sand (462, καλύψαι): this is how the ‘great wall of the Achaeans’ can be blotted out (463, ἀμαλδύνω) – while Poseidon’s Trojan fortifications stand and bring him glory. As was the case in Mesopotamia, water is the most extreme option when it comes to obliterating what went before. Another passage suggests that flooding might obliterate the hearing and telling of great stories, the κλέος of the heroes. When confronted with the power of the flooded river Scamander, Achilles cries out (Il. 21.273–83): “Ζεῦ πάτερ ὡς οὔ τίς με θεῶν ἐλεεινὸν ὑπέστη ἐκ ποταμοῖο σαῶσαι· ἔπειτα δὲ καί τι πάθοιμι. ἄλλος δ’ οὔ τις μοι τόσον αἴτιος Οὐρανιώνων, ἀλλὰ φίλη μήτηρ, ἥ με ψεύδεσσιν ἔθελγεν· ἥ μ’ ἔφατο Τρώων ὑπὸ τείχεϊ θωρηκτάων λαιψηροῖς ὀλέεσθαι Ἀπόλλωνος βελέεσσιν. ὥς μ’ ὄφελ’ Ἕκτωρ κτεῖναι, ὃς ἐνθάδε τέτραφ’ ἄριστος· τῶ κ’ ἀγαθὸς μὲν ἔπεφν’, ἀγαθὸν δέ κεν ἐξενάριξε. νῦν δέ με λευγαλέωι θανάτωι εἵμαρτο ἁλῶναι ἐρχθέντ’ ἐν μεγάλωι ποταμῶι ὡς παῖδα συφορβόν, ὅν ῥά τ’ ἔναυλος ἀποέρσηι χειμῶνι περῶντα.” ‘O father Zeus, will no god take pity and save me from the river? What then shall become of me? It is not so much any other Uranian god who has done this but my own mother who beguiled me with falsehoods, who told me that underneath the walls of the armoured Trojans I should be killed by the swift arrows of Apollo. I wish Hector had killed me, the greatest man grown in this place.

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A brave man would have been the slayer, as the slain was a brave man. But now I am doomed to die a dismal death, trapped in a big river as if I were a swineherd boy swept away by a torrent when he tries to cross in a rainstorm.’

At this point in the narrative, Achilles has re-joined battle and, in an unprecedented rampage, is transforming his pain and fury at his loss of Patroclus into the immortal κλέος which he knows he must trade in against a short life.160 At this moment, and with consummate irony, the poet raises the possibility that there will be no κλέος after all, and that Achilles might get stuck in the mud (literally) without accomplishing the feat for which he was most famous: killing Hector. Achilles is in mortal danger. Yet he does not complain about the fact that he must die, but about how he might get killed: his κλέος, familiar to all ancient readers of the Iliad, was to fall outside Troy at the hands of Apollo. Achilles knows that. A second best option would have been to die at the hands of Hector, best of the Trojans (21.279), so that a worthy man (Gk. ἀγαθός) might kill another worthy man, thus perpetuating the glory of both.161 What is not acceptable, and leads to a ‘dismal death’ (λευγάλεος θάνατος), is to be swept away by the river, ‘like a swineherd boy’. This boy has no name and no face, and nobody will ever tell his story. Slightly later, the river himself spells out in detail what it would mean to die by drowning (Il. 21.313–23): “ἵστη δὲ μέγα κῦμα, πολὺν δ’ ὀρυμαγδὸν ὄρινε φιτρῶν καὶ λάων, ἵνα παύσομεν ἄγριον ἄνδρα, ὃς δὴ νῦν κρατέει, μέμονεν δ’ ὅ γε ἶσα θεοῖσι. φημὶ γὰρ οὔτε βίην χραισμησέμεν οὔτε τι εἶδος οὔτε τὰ τεύχεα καλά, τά που μάλα νειόθι λίμνης κείσεθ’ ὑπ’ ἰλύος κεκαλυμμένα. κὰδ δέ μιν αὐτὸν εἰλύσω ψαμάθοισιν ἅλις χέραδος περιχεύας, μυρίον, οὐδέ οἱ ὀστέ’ ἐπιστήσονται Ἀχαιοὶ ἀλλέξαι· τόσσην οἱ ἄσιν καθύπερθε καλύψω. αὐτοῦ οἱ καὶ σῆμα τετεύξεται, οὐδέ τί μιν χρεὼ ἔσται τυμβοχοῆς, ὅτε μιν θάπτωσιν Ἀχαιοί.” ‘Raise up a big wave and make a din of timbers and stones crashing, so we can stop this savage man who lords it now and rages like the immortals. For I say that his strength will not help him nor his looks, 160 As he famously points out at Il. 9.410–16. 161 For the language of worthiness in the Iliad, see Adkins 1960: ch. 1.

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Timothy Boyd rightly compares this passage with the destruction of the Achaean wall.162 And indeed, the two episodes are closely linked. As was the case in Iliad Books 7 and 12, the river wants not only to kill Achilles but rather to obliterate him (Gk. εἰλύω, καλύπτω). Again, we note the implications for Achilles’ κλέος, and indeed for the poetics of Greek epic more generally: Achilles will not receive a tomb, only a σῆμα (‘memorial’, ‘funeral mound’) made of mud, whose sole purpose is to document the hero’s final obliteration.163 We have seen that Homeric epic belonged to criss-crossing narratives about the relationship between gods and mortals, creation and destruction, poetry and memory. Damrosch’s intuition that generic frameworks could span several cultures is useful, though we should not perhaps call our genre ‘creation-flood-epic’, for neither creation nor the flood were uniquely defining features in the ancient world. The defining feature, rather, was an understanding that cosmic history unfolded in three stages, from the gods to human beings as they are ‘now’; and that those stages were demarcated by the advent of man and some great destruction that inaugurated the present era. How exactly one envisaged those moments of transition was open to negotiation, in Mesopotamia as much as in Greece. There was no default position, and there were no neutral ‘source texts’. Indeed, we might say that another defining feature of our epic traditions was precisely – as was already the case with the fable – that they presented readers with several narrative possibilities. Two sets of alternatives were particularly productive: I have argued that Mesopotamian and Greek epic alike invites us to think hard about the relationship between creation and cosmic birth; and about flood and war as complementary ways of configuring the great catastrophe of humankind. Each tradition settled for a specific mode of cosmic production, which in turn suggested a preferred mode of destruction – but alternatives were known and explicitly considered. Homer, I have suggested, countenances the horrific 162 Boyd 1995: 203. 163 For the tomb as σῆμα see Vermeule 1979: 45, Ford 1992: 138–46, Sourvinou-Inwood 1995: 131–6 and Grethlein 2008: 31–2.

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alternative of obliteration through water as a way of reflecting not only on the nature of human existence but also on the status of his own narrative as κλέα ἀνδρῶν. The Epic of Gilgamesh, too, reflects on the loss of life and sheer disruption brought on by the flood; and considers possible alternatives in full awareness of its own status as a text born of the silence (Akk. qūlu) after the great catastrophe. The different narrative choices might, of course, have been dictated by landscape – at least in part. Floods were indeed more devastating in Mesopotamia than in Greece; and it is even possible that war was particularly defining of the Greek experience. But real-life considerations are not all that matters here. The flood, for one thing, remained an important narrative also in dry Israel. The point, rather, was that individual stories and traditions developed within the context of a very broad-ranging exploration about the world, the gods and human beings on earth. Epic texts aimed to say something true and important, and therefore gathered inspiration far and wide.

The unanswered question One question has remained unanswered: how did the similarities between Greek and Mesopotamian epic actually arise? Someone new to the field might be forgiven for thinking that this was the only question worth asking: so much work has been devoted to it, and will continue to be devoted to it in future. I have taken a different approach, one concerned not with questions of influence and transmission but with issues of reading and interpretation – across texts, cultures and times. There certainly was contact between readers of Greek and Mesopotamian epic, and perhaps its precise modalities will be better understood one day: archaeological work is clearly relevant here, as new texts continue to emerge. What I have tried to argue, however, is that some questions matter more than others – and that the precise modalities of transmission and influence may not be as important as the questions actually raised in our texts. Charles Ives famously wrote a symphonic piece entitled ‘The Unanswered Question’, and in a portentous gesture of self-exegesis, explained that his piece posed ‘the perennial question of existence’.164 Leonard Bernstein calls this ‘a charming idea’, ‘naïve and profound’ in equal measure.165 This is an alarming assessment for scholars like me: it is seldom a good idea to 164 Quoted in Bernstein 1976: 268. 165 Bernstein 1976: 268–9; he also points out that Ives’ own description of the piece is not without humour.

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seem ‘charming’ in scholarship. But, in the end, it is hard to avoid depth or naiveté when reading Homer and Gilgamesh, Hesiod and Enūma eliš: these texts do ask perennial questions about existence, after all. It seems to me that the universal ambition of these poems helps to explain why they might have been so alive to stories and insights originating from very distant lands. All human resources had to be harnessed for the purpose of understanding the human condition. And that seems to me a useful attitude today as well. We now live in a time where Achilles sits down, at least in a poem by Christopher Logue, and sings of Gilgamesh. This suggests that there may be some work to be done at the level of scholarship as well as creative writing – work of integration, of harnessing the resources of a living past. But we must be clear about what that work entails. The point, I have argued, cannot be to create fresh obstacles to reading  – whether they arise from narrow-minded comparison, or stubborn refusal to compare at all. What matters, ultimately, is the authority of ancient Greek and Mesopotamian epic poems; their claim on us as readers; and their humanity, which resides precisely in the fact that they pose questions that cannot, finally, be answered – no matter how far they, and we, attempt to travel.

CH APTER t wo

Over the horizon

Iaunāya ittalkūni The Greeks have come!

Qurdi-Aššur-lāmur

The similarities between Greek and Akkadian epic, I have argued, are best seen in terms not of literary borrowing but of a shared understanding of the universe and the place of human beings in it. Equipped with the same narrative tools, and faced with similar narrative choices, Greek and Mesopotamian cosmogonic texts tackled some of the most profound issues that affect us as human beings: how can we live in the face of certain death? And why must we suffer? Cultures interacted and intersected, and literary borrowing of various kinds must have occurred. But the fact of borrowing alone, in itself neither surprising nor significant, was of no interest to ancient readers of Gilgamesh and Enūma eliš, Homer and Hesiod. I have argued that it need not detain us either: the texts focused on large questions, rather than the details of specific encounters, and we are invited to do likewise. Still, the fact remains that Greeks and Mesopotamians did meet, and entered into a productive dialogue about cultural difference, the limits of empire and the shape of imperial history. This chapter studies that dialogue and some of its legacies, and moves on in time from the archaic to the classical period (to use the periodizations of classicists). I revisit the rise of universal history in the works of early Greek historiographers, and the invention of ‘barbarian Asia’ in the wake of the Persian Wars. In pursuing these themes, I take inspiration from the work of Hayden White, whose concept of historical ‘emplotment’ invites us to view history not as an archive of events but as an arena of competing narratives.1 White himself was most interested in the historian’s task of constructing narratives from hindsight, but scholars such as Phiroze Vasunia have   See White 1973 and 1987.

1

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argued persuasively that history may also be emplotted before it unfolds.2 It is this idea of an ‘advance emplotment’ of history, as we might call it, that interests me here: Babylonians and Persians, I shall suggest, adopted and enacted pre-existing scripts of imperial history which they found enshrined in tales about mythical kings such as Gilgamesh, Narām-Sîn and Sargon of Akkad. Those scripts had an important spatial corollary, and here I also draw on the work of Henri Lefebvre and what has been dubbed ‘the spatial turn’ in the humanities and social sciences.3 Starting from the assumption that ‘(social) space is a (social) product’,4 Lefebvre argues that we should look at space not as a fact of nature but as a function of manifold and often complex mediating processes: A social space cannot be accounted for either by nature (climate, site) or by its previous history. Nor does the growth of the forces of production give rise in any direct causal fashion to a particular space or a particular time. Mediations, and mediators, have to be taken into consideration: the action of groups, factors within knowledge, within ideology, or within the domain of representations.5

I am particularly interested here in what Lefebvre calls the ‘domain of representations’: how did Greek and Mesopotamian authors articulate social space? How did their articulations intersect with features of physical reality such as the straits at the Hellespont or the walls of Babylon? How did literature motivate action, and how was action encoded in literature, both within one culture and across cultures? These are some of the questions that motivate this chapter.

Babylon on the horizon The first Greek author to mention Babylon is Alcaeus, who describes the exploits of his brother Antimenidas (fr. 350 L-P): ἦλθες ἐκ περάτων γᾶς ἐλεφαντίναν λάβαν τὼ ξίφεος χρυσοδέταν ἔχων … τὸν ἀδελφὸν Ἀντιμενίδαν … φησὶν Ἀλκαῖος Βαβυλωνίοις συμμαχοῦντα τελέσαι ἄεθλον μέγαν, εὐρύσαο δ’ ἐκ πόνων, κτένναις ἄνδρα μαχαίταν βασιληίων παλάσταν ἀπυλείποντα μόναν ἴαν παχέων ἀπὺ πέμπων …   Vasunia 2001.   Lefebvre 1991; for a recent overview see Warf and Arias 2009. 4   Lefebvre 1991. 5   Lefebvre 1991: 77. 2 3

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You have come from the ends of the earth, having a sword with ivory hilt and bound with gold … Alcaeus says that his brother Antimenidas, while fighting as an ally of the Babylonians performed a great exploit: you rescued them from hardships by killing a fighting man who came no more than a single palm’s breadth short of five royal cubits …

Antimenidas served as a mercenary in Nebuchadnezzar’s army.6 Alcaeus does not specify that his brother visited Babylon itself, an ambiguity that will continue to haunt this chapter. Still, he associates Antimenidas’ exploits with the ‘ends of the earth’ (Gk. πέρατα γᾶς), the kind of place where warriors are five cubits tall, and weapons are made of gold, in Homer the metal of gods and heroes.7 In the badly broken fr. 48 L-P, Babylon herself acquires the epithet ἱρός, which is not unsuitable from a Mesopotamian perspective (Babylon was etymologized as bāb ilī, ‘the gate of the gods’), but to Greek ears recalls heroic cities like ‘holy Troy’.8 In Alcaeus, one must travel in time as well as space in order to get anywhere near Babylon. His account is poetic, not investigative, and draws on the language used to describe heroic cities such as Troy.9 Things change as we move into the Persian period. Herodotus for one appears to be well informed about Mesopotamia. He is not only familiar with the city of Babylon itself but has some understanding of Babylonian history, geography and culture. He even reports the opinions of Babylonian priests (though without claiming to have spoken to them in person: Hdt. 1.181–3). Although we do not have the Assyrian logos that Herodotus promises at one point – perhaps it is lost, perhaps he never wrote it – the ethnographic digression of Book 1 looks impressive in its own right and suggests a very different kind of dialogue with Mesopotamians and Mesopotamia from that which Alcaeus implies.10 We seem to have moved from poetic stereotypes to serious historical enquiry. That, however, is only part of the story. Herodotus is indeed different from Alcaeus but he is not an impartial or reliable source of information. 6 Podlecki 1984: 78, Raaflaub 2004: 208. 7 Graziosi and Haubold 2010: 144. 8 For the Homeric expression see Iliad 6.96, with Graziosi and Haubold 2010: 103; at fr. 42.4 L-P, Alcaeus too uses the phrase ‘holy Ilios’. 9 The gnomic poet Phocylides in the sixth century B C once again focuses on a single great city, though he picks out the Assyrian capital Nineveh: for him it is a byword for a mighty but poorly administered community; Phocylides fr. 4 (Diehl). 10 Assyrian logos: Hdt. 1.184; Herodotus on Babylon: Hdt. 1.178–200; for modern speculation see Asheri 2007: 203–4.

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As far as Mesopotamia is concerned, Robert Rollinger has shown just how strange Herodotus’ portrayal is.11 The city of Babylon was not nearly as large as he makes it; the Babylonians did not auction their daughters on the marriage market; and Herodotus’ history of the city is extremely inaccurate by modern standards. Rollinger expresses doubt as to whether Herodotus ever travelled to Babylon. Amélie Kuhrt leaves the question open but concludes that he ‘drew on all kinds of stories […] about Babylon already in circulation’.12 Whether or not Herodotus actually visited Babylon, he worked much more like an ancient poet, and less like a modern historian, than we might like to admit. The problem, if that is what we want to call it, goes far beyond his views on Mesopotamia.13 From the outset, Herodotus aligns his work with epic and its task of preserving κλέος, the memory of great deeds.14 In more than one sense, Herodotus was indeed the prose Homer, as he was in fact called in antiquity.15 Even where he presents himself as an impartial enquirer, we believe him at our own peril. Rosalind Thomas has shown that his emphasis on evidence and inquiry is itself a literary conceit, part of his role as a performer of wisdom.16 Herodotus was playing to expectations, and in his portrayal of Babylon he arguably did just that: as Leslie Kurke argues, he paints the picture of an oriental super-city, which is exactly what Greek audiences expected Babylon to be.17 This is broadly where scholarship on Herodotus and Mesopotamia currently stands, yet some of the assumptions behind it repay careful scrutiny. The starting point, it seems to me, has to be the widespread view that underneath the layer of Herodotean inventiveness, as described by Kurke and others, there is one of solid reality – and that solid reality is represented in the local Babylonian sources. Amélie Kuhrt recently declared: ‘The picture of Babylonia and its capital which we can disengage from the sources 11 Rollinger 1993; Rollinger’s work reignited a long-standing debate: see, e.g., Rollinger 1998, 2004 and 2008; Nesselrath 1999, who at p. 192, n. 10, lists reviews of Rollinger’s work; Bichler and Rollinger 2000: 29–31; Kuhrt 2002a and 2010; A. R. George 2005/6 and 2010; Heller 2010: 41–57; Henkelman, Kuhrt, Rollinger and Wiesehöfer 2011. 12 Kuhrt 2002a: 481.  13  As noted by Murray 2001: 322. 14 Hdt. 1, prologue. 15 ‘Pride of Halicarnassus’ 43 (see Isager 1998: 7, Lloyd-Jones 1999: 2); for similar formulations see [Longinus] 13, 3 and Dionysius of Halicarnassus Ad Pompeium 3. The idea of Herodotus as the ‘prose Homer’ is probably older than the ‘Pride of Halicarnassus’, see Lloyd-Jones 1999: 11. 16 Thomas 2000. 17 Kurke 1999: 227–46, where she discusses Herodotus’ portrayal of Babylon as a distorted mirror image of Greek civic space; for Babylon as a paradigmatic example of a Herodotean ‘soft’ society see Redfield 1985.

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differs in many fundamentals from that of Herodotus.’18 ‘The sources’, for Kuhrt, are Babylonian sources, and she rightly advocates their importance. But, at the level of methodology, there are problems with her approach. Hayden White shows just how flawed the project of ‘disengaging’ historical reality from ‘the sources’ can be.19 The problem is not simply practical, and is therefore not confined to the fact that Herodotus relied on oral accounts rather than the written records available to us.20 Rather, the issue concerns the status of history. In Mesopotamia, just as in Greece, history was told and retold, written and rewritten. By contrasting Herodotean storytelling with the reality gleaned from ‘the (Mesopotamian) sources’, as Kuhrt does, we are in danger of creating a false dichotomy between narrative and history. In a sense, the problem is not so very different from what we saw when looking at Greek and Mesopotamian epic in Chapter 1: there I argued that cross-cultural comparison can only be fruitful if we respect the poetic texture of the epics we study. In this chapter I make a similar point, about different texts: among what Kuhrt calls ‘the sources’ for Babylonian history and culture, there are many texts that repay close and sympathetic literary study. That study shows how history is made, rather than reported, in narrative. In shifting the emphasis from Mesopotamian historical reality to Mesopotamian historical literature, I take up Ian Moyer’s recent work on Herodotus and Egypt.21 Moyer detects a tendency, among Egyptian texts of the late period, to emphasize the great antiquity of the Egyptian past, and argues that Herodotus’ narrative reflects a prominent stance among Egyptian intellectuals of the late period. In his own words, ‘it is not simply the marvel of a massive expanse of time which Herodotus encountered in Egypt, but a mediated cultural awareness of that time.’22 Moyer is here reacting to a once fashionable idea, according to which Greek views of other cultures were largely a matter of independent Greek invention: the Greeks imagined others as polar opposites of themselves, without much engagement with them at all. François Hartog’s The Mirror of Herodotus, Edith Hall’s Inventing the Barbarian and Paul Cartledge’s The Greeks all promote versions of this view.23 While these studies represented important 18 Kuhrt 2002a: 495. 19 E.g. White 1973: 1–42; see also Harrison 2011, for a helpful account of similar pitfalls in the study of Achaemenid history. 20 On Herodotus and orality see, e.g., Mabel Lang 1984, Murray 1987 and 2001, Fowler 1996 and 2001, Luraghi 2001. 21 Moyer 2002; also Moyer 2011: ch. 1.  22  Moyer 2002: 70 = 2011: 74. 23 Hartog 1988, E. Hall 1989, Cartledge 1993; cf. Harrison 2001, Isaac 2004.

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advances when they were published, they now seem too extreme in denying any voice or agency at all to non-Greeks in the shaping of Greek discourse.24 The polarization of the Cold War looms large, and suggests a kind of Iron Curtain that supposedly prevented the Greeks from engaging in any meaningful dialogue beyond their own confines.25 Scholars have recently began to acknowledge that subalterns, women, slaves and foreigners do have active minds and hence have a – however limited – power of influence over how they are perceived and represented. We may think of Marshall Sahlins’ How “Natives” Think: About Captain Cook, For Example,26 but also – closer to home – of Ian Moyer’s work on Herodotus’ representation of Egypt. In what follows, I take seriously the possibility that Babylonian narratives, as well as realities, might have shaped Greek views.

Babylon and the succession of empires If there is an acid test of Greek historians’ knowledge of Mesopotamia, then it is their idea of a succession of empires. It is most famously attested in Herodotus, when he summarizes the history of what he calls ‘Upper Asia’, that is to say, Asia east of the Halys river (1.95–130). For Herodotus, that history was dominated by three major powers: Assyrian rule was followed by the empire of the Medes, and finally by Persian rule. Herodotus’ view of imperial history was well received among Greek historians. We find it again in Ctesias, Polybius, Dionysius of Halicarnassus and a host of other authors. Interestingly, we also encounter a similar scheme in the Bible, in the book of Daniel, chapter 2. Arnaldo Momigliano argues that Daniel reflects Greek influence, and he may well be right.27 But what I would like to challenge is his suggestion that the succession of empires is essentially a Greek way of conceptualizing Asian history. Momigliano argues that, because the Greeks were situated outside Asia, they could formulate the succession of empires, relying on their position as external observers.28 He further argues that the succession of empires was a central and distinctive concern of Greek historiography: What lies at the heart of the historic investigation of both Herodotus and Ctesias is the issue of imperial succession, and of the problematic exclusion 24 For a recent attempt to redress the balance see Gruen 2011. 25 As pointed out by Edith Hall herself, in E. Hall 2006a: 224. 26 Sahlins 1995.  27  Momigliano 1994. 28 The suggestion is that the Greeks alone saw this succession because they were located ‘outside of Asia’: Momigliano 1994: 29.

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of the Greeks from that succession. This accounts for the special nature of their historic enquiry, which unfolds, for the most part, as a series of military and institutional events.29

What is at stake here is not merely the question of who ruled Asia after the Assyrians. Momigliano raises the much more important question of what is distinctive about Greek historiography. As often, the thrust of classical research turns out to be an interest in the unique: the point is to define Greek literature against the (non-) literatures of neighbouring cultures. In Chapter 1 I tackled that issue by arguing against any categorical difference – that is to say, against any difference in our commitment as readers  – between Greek and Mesopotamian epic. Here the problem is similar: Momigliano makes a case for the ‘special nature’ of the Greeks’ approach to history. He concedes, however, that his statements about Greek historiography would need revising if evidence emerged of a Babylonian narrative about the succession of empires.30 And that is precisely what I propose to uncover. I argue that Mesopotamian authors did indeed develop a scheme of imperial succession very much like the one we later find in Herodotus. We shall also see that Greek historians differed a great deal less from Mesopotamian schemes, and a great deal more from one another, than Momigliano allows: Ctesias, for one, has close affinities with Mesopotamian views of imperial history; he is, in some respect, closer to them than to Herodotus. Yet my aim will not be to replace old allegiances with new ones; nor to dig a trench between Ctesias and Herodotus. Overall, the picture that emerges does not involve polar opposites, or iron-curtain fault lines, but rather criss-crossing conversations about imperial history and the fate of Babylon. Herodotus and Ctesias, each in their own way, both participated in those conversations. The Herodotean succession of empires raises two main problems. First, modern scholarship has questioned whether the Medes ever formed a centralized empire in the way envisaged by Herodotus.31 Secondly, Herodotus exaggerates the Medes’ sphere of influence at the expense of an empire that we know did exist: that of the Neo-Babylonian (or Chaldaean) kings, chief among them Nebuchadnezzar.32 Mesopotamian and Levantine sources 29 Momigliano 1994: 29.   30  Momigliano 1994: 33. 31 Heleen Sancisi-Weerdenburg famously asked: ‘was there ever a Median empire?’ Her answer was ‘no’, see Sancisi-Weerdenburg 1988. More recent discussion along similar lines can be found in Sancisi-Weerdenburg 1994 and 1995, Kienast 1999, Liverani 2003, Rollinger 2003 and 2005, Wiesehöfer 2003. 32 We shall hear more about this king and his deeds in Chapter 3.

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overwhelmingly suggest that in the sixth century B C , Mesopotamia, the Arab peninsula, Cilicia, Syria and Palestine as far as the border with Egypt were all controlled by Babylon, not by the Medes (as Herodotus suggests). Herodotus’ view that the Medes and not the Babylonians ruled Upper Asia after the Assyrians is a veritable puzzle for modern historians. Christopher Tuplin has recently argued that Herodotus deserves more credit than he is usually given for his views; but others continue to insist that he was simply wrong.33 Tuplin makes the important point that the debate is not simply about sorting out fact from fiction, and that we need to look carefully at ancient perceptions of imperial rule. In a sense, the importance of this has long been clear to readers of Herodotus, but has not influenced the interpretation of Mesopotamian sources to the same extent. Let us focus for a moment on the role of Babylonian armies in the overthrow of Assyria. According to Herodotus, the Medes alone sacked Nineveh and brought down the Assyrian Empire (1.106). Some Mesopotamian sources disagree: according to a chronicle fragment known as the Fall of Nineveh Chronicle, the first Chaldaean king, Nabopolassar, was actively involved in conquering the Assyrian heartland, alongside the Medes.34 This is the version of events that finds favour with modern historians,35 but within ancient Mesopotamia different views were possible. Nabopolassar himself never mentions the Medes in his inscriptions, claiming instead that he did all the work by himself.36 That is hardly surprising: we would certainly expect Mesopotamian kings to play up their own importance. However, Nabopolassar’s version of events does show that there was room for creative interpretation within Mesopotamia. Indeed, just how much room there was emerges from an inscription of Nabonidus, the last Chaldaean king of Babylon, in which he describes the sack of Nineveh at the time of Nabopolassar (Nabonidus 3.3a (Babylon Stele), col. I I (Schaudig)): re-su id-din-šum tap-pa-a ú-šar-ši-iš lugal um-man-ma-an-da šá ma-hi-ri la i-šu-u ú-šak-ni-iš qí-bi-tu-uš-šu ú-šá-lik re-su-ut-su e-li-iš u šap-liš im-nu ù šu-me-lu a-bu-ba-niš is-pu-un ú-tir gi-mil-lu tin.tirki i-ri-ba tuk-te-e lugal um-man-ma-an-da la a-di-ru ú-šá-al-pi-it eš-re-et-su-un šá dingir kur su.bir4ki ka-la-šu-nù u urumeš pa-at kur ki.uri šá it-ti lugal kur ki.uri na-akru-ma la il-li-ku re-su-ut-sú ú-ša-al-pi-it-ma mé-e-si-šu-un ma-na-ma la i-zib ú-šah-ri-ib ma-ha-zi-šu-un ú-ša-ti-ir a-bu-bi-iš lugal tin.tirki ši-pi-ir damar.   Tuplin 2004; Rollinger 2005 disagrees.   Chronicle 22 (Glassner). 35   E.g. Kuhrt 1995: 590; Liverani 2001; Van De Mieroop 2007: 267. 36   Nabopolassar 1 col. i.23–32 and 4.16–22 (Langdon). 33

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utu ša ši-il-la-ti ik-kib-šu la ú-bil šumin-sú a-na pel-lu-de-e dingirmeš ka-la-ma iš-ši ma-la-a ma-a-a-al qaq-qar i-na-al He (i.e. Marduk) gave him (i.e. Nabopolassar) a helper and acquired for him an ally. He subjected to his command the king of the Ummān-manda (~ the Medes) who has no equal, and sent him to his aid. Above and below, right and left, he (i.e. the king of the Medes) levelled everything like the deluge. He took revenge for Babylon, he exacted vengeance. The king of the Ummān-manda who shrinks from nothing devastated the shrines of the Assyrian gods and destroyed the cities of Akkad which were hostile to the king of Akkad and did not come to his rescue. He spared none of their cults, he devastated their places of worship, he raged like the deluge. The king of Babylon, the creature of Marduk, who abhors brazen acts, did not touch any divine cults. He wore his hair unkempt and slept on the ground.

This is one of the most detailed Babylonian accounts of the destruction of the Assyrian Empire. It is taken from an inscription known as the Babylon Stele of King Nabonidus, which has been variously dated to the beginning of his reign in 556/5 B C (Beaulieu) or somewhat later, perhaps after the king’s thirteenth regnal year (Schaudig).37 The extant text is fragmentary, but enough of it survives to give us a good sense of what it was about: columns one to five outline the history of Babylon from the sack of the city under the Assyrian king Sennacherib in 689 B C down to Nabonidus’ own time. Columns six to ten describe Nabonidus’ activities as king, focusing on cult offerings and the restoration of sanctuaries, especially the temple of the moon god Sîn at Harran. An eleventh column contains a selection of favourable omens, perhaps designed to show off Nabonidus’ learning and emphasize the divine favour he enjoyed. The Babylon Stele is one of the most important pieces of Mesopotamian royal literature. Like other texts of its kind, it is a self-consciously artful composition, adopting the literary dialect known as Standard Babylonian which, in a different inflection, was also used for canonical poetry such as the Epic of Gilgamesh. Babylonian royal inscriptions tended to focus not on military achievements but on the king’s building activities, especially his restoration of temples.38 The standard format included a self-introduction on the part of the king, an account of his building work and a concluding prayer.39 The Neo-Babylonian period saw various experiments with the form, especially under Nabonidus’ famous predecessor 37 Beaulieu 1989: 22; Schaudig 2001: 515. 38 For the contents, style and format of the Neo-Babylonian royal inscriptions see Berger 1973, Schaudig 2001, Da Riva 2008. 39 For further discussion of this structure see below, pp. 137–8 (on the Antiochus Cylinder).

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Nebuchadnezzar  – but it was Nabonidus himself who achieved hitherto unknown levels of expressiveness by introducing flamboyant narrative techniques such as dreams and extensive dialogue; and by engaging with texts from the scribal canon, such as the much-studied Poem of the Righteous Sufferer.40 By far the most ambitious of Nabonidus’ known inscriptions was the Babylon Stele from which I have quoted above. From the fragments that survive we can tell that it must have been significantly longer than other texts of its kind. Moreover, the place where it was found (the north-eastern corner of the main palace in Babylon) suggests that Nabonidus strategically positioned it near the Ishtar Gate, by the great Processional Way which was the setting of the annual New Year’s festival, the so-called akītu.41 Clearly, this was a public monument of prime importance. Its significance is further confirmed by the history of its reception: as William Gallagher saw, the Seleucid author Berossos made extensive use of the Babylon Stele when writing his account of the Neo-Babylonian Empire after Nebuchadnezzar.42 The points of agreement are not trivial: Berossos used the Stele as a guide for judging Nebuchadnezzar’s successors, thus condemning the kings Amel-Marduk and Lā-abâš-Marduk as corrupt and incompetent.43 Two hundred and fifty years after its composition, the Stele’s view of Babylonian history had evidently become canonical. The reason why this matters here is that the historical parts of the Stele strikingly resemble the succession of empires as portrayed by the Greek authors Herodotus and Ctesias. Paul-Alain Beaulieu has argued that the Babylon Stele was designed to shore up Nabonidus’ fragile claims to legitimacy.44 To that end, the king created a narrative arc from the destruction of Babylon in 689 B C to the fall of Nineveh in 612 B C , and on to his own reign. Indeed, Beaulieu shows that the Stele directs the course of history towards one specific event: the restoration of the Sîn temple in Harran.45 We shall see in a moment just how important that temple

40 Schaudig 2001: 20 and 493, n. 704.  41  Schaudig 2001: 514. 42 Gallagher 1996; cf. De Breucker’s commentary ad Berossos F 9a (146–7) 680 BNJ. 43 Amel-Marduk did not respect the legacy of Nebuchadnezzar according to Babylon Stele 3.3a, V .25’33’ (Schaudig) and ruled ‘in a lawless and licentious way’ according to Berossos (F 9a (147) 680 BNJ); Lā-abâš-Marduk ruled ill-advisedly and against the will of the gods in the Babylon Stele 3.3a, I V .37’-42’ (Schaudig), and was murdered because of his ‘wickedness’ (κακοήθεια) in Berossos (F 9a (148) 680 BNJ). A similar view of history seems implied in the Adad-guppi Stele 3.2, exemplar 2 I I I 11’-16’ (Schaudig); and in the Seleucid-period Antiochus Cylinder, for which see below, pp. 136–7. 44 Beaulieu 1989: 104–15.  45  Beaulieu 1989: 105.

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was to Nabonidus and his developing views of imperial history.46 First, however, let us return to the passage where he describes the destruction of Nineveh. According to Nabonidus, the Babylonian king Nabopolassar did not take an active part in the conquest of Assyria, even though he is the main character in the narrative. It is rather the king of the Medes who ‘levelled everything like the deluge’ (col. I I , lines 8’–10’), and ‘took revenge for Babylon’ (I I .11’–12’), that is to say, for the Assyrians’ conquest of the city in 689 B C .47 The king of the Medes is described as a powerful but problematic figure: he devastated sanctuaries and ruined cults, the worst possible thing a Mesopotamian ruler could do. Nabopolassar, by contrast, ‘did not touch any divine cults’ (I I .36’–38’), ‘wore his hair unkempt and slept on the ground’ (I I .39’–41’). In a different context, this might look like a not-so-subtle attempt on Nabonidus’ part to belittle his predecessor by making him seem passive and overwrought. But far from belittling him, Nabonidus holds up Nabopolassar as a model to emulate: Babylon and its king had nothing to do with the sack of Assyria, and that is a good thing. The war was in many ways a disastrous and messy affair: sanctuaries were destroyed not only in Assyria but throughout Babylonia too. The Babylon Stele is a remarkable text, by any standards, and in order to understand what it has to say about imperial history and the role of Babylon in it, we need to pay careful attention to its intertextual affiliations. First of all, it associates some of the less palatable imperial behaviour not with the Babylonian king, but with his anonymous Median ‘helper’. That man is described as a ‘king without equal’ (šar Ummān-manda ša māhiri lā īšû), an ancient Mesopotamian expression of world rule.48 More specifically, his actions are couched in terms of Assyrian images of world conquest: the king of the Medes is twice said to rage ‘like the deluge’. In Assyrian royal inscriptions this is a familiar way of expressing the king’s all-encompassing power, though in a Babylonian context ‘raging like the deluge’ carried negative connotations, especially in the wake of Sennacherib’s boast to have levelled Babylon with water in 689 B C .49 The untranslatable phrase ušātir abūbiš (‘he went all out like the deluge’ 46 Below, pp. 86–7. For now, it suffices to note that Nabonidus had close connections with Harran; for discussion see Beaulieu 1989: 76–8, Schaudig 2001: 9–11. 47 That event was described earlier in the text, at col. I .2’–41’ (Schaudig). 48 CAD s.v. māhiru c); for an early example see below, p. 104. 49 Sennacherib describes the destruction of Babylon in the so-called Bavian inscription (Frahm 1997: 151–4); for Esarhaddon’s revisionist account of the ‘evils’ that befell Babylon under his father’s reign, see Esarhaddon 104 cols. i–ii (Leichty).

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vel sim.) ominously drives home the point, recalling Sennacherib’s own description of how he destroyed Babylon ‘worse than the deluge’ (eli ša abūbi naspantāšu ušātir).50 Nabonidus, then, configures the Median conquest of Nineveh as continuing the traditions of the Assyrian Empire, while flagging up the ambiguities of indiscriminate conquest. Some of these are captured in the description of the Median king as ‘fearless’ (Akk. lā ādiru), which suggests not only unbridled power but also a lack of concern for the gods and their places of worship.51 Imperial power, as the king of the Medes conceives it, is plainly at odds with the religious traditions of Mesopotamia. By contrast, the Babylonian king is not only described as the ‘creature of Marduk’ (šipir Marduk) but also as someone who ‘abhors brazen acts’ (ša šillati ikkibšu). Behind some of this language we discern the outlines of a theology of history which we can trace back at least to the second millennium B C . The Akkadian term Ummān-manda, which Nabonidus uses to refer to the Mede invaders, is crucial here: Selim Adalı has recently studied Mesopotamian traditions about the Ummān-manda from Old Babylonian omen literature down to Nabonidus’ time.52 He shows that this mysterious name belongs in a wider framework of Mesopotamian thought about history as punctuated by periods of cataclysm: the Ummān-manda played the part of powerful barbarian invaders who were sent by the gods to wreak havoc before giving way to a restoration of order. At the heart of the tradition, according to Adalı, stood a text known as the Cuthean Legend of Narām-Sîn, a classic narrative of Mesopotamian literature which describes how the ancient empire of Akkad almost collapsed under its hapless ruler Narām-Sîn. Both this king and his empire really existed in the late third millennium B C . But what mattered in the first millennium B C were not the facts of his historical reign, but the popular literature that had ensued, and especially the Cuthean Legend. The extant accounts of the Cuthean Legend are fragmentary and sometimes difficult to understand. Matters are further complicated by the fact that different versions existed in antiquity, each with a slightly different emphasis.53 Still, it seems that they all shared the same basic plot: the gods sent a horde of barbarian invaders against Mesopotamia. They prove to 50 Schaudig 2001: 204 and 516, n. 770. 51 For ‘fear’ (of the gods) as a positive value in Neo-Babylonian royal inscriptions see the common epithet pālih ilī (‘god-fearing’) and similar phrases listed in Berger 1973: 72–82; for barbarian invaders who ‘do not fear the gods’ (Greeks, as it happens), see below, pp. 134–5. 52 Adalı 2011. 53 Edition and commentary in J. G. Westenholz 1997: ch. 10. Westenholz prints the Old Babylonian, Middle Babylonian and Standard Babylonian recensions.

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be horrific and invincible in equal measure,54 and they are given various names, among them Ummān-manda. The devastation they wreak is likened to the deluge.55 Narām-Sîn, who makes the mistake of trying to face up to these hordes, in defiance of divine omens, loses several of his armies, until he learns to accept the fact that, sometimes, a good king needs to stay in his city, pray to the gods and hope for the best. This is precisely the lesson he imparts at the very end of the Standard Babylonian version of the legend (Cuthean Legend SB version 160–6, ed. Westenholz):56 dūrānīka tukkil hirātīka mê mulli pisannātīka še’aka kasapka bušêka makkūrka ana āl dannūtīka šūrib kakkēka rukusma tubqāti e[mid] qarrādūtīka usur pūtka šullim littagiš mātka ē tūsīšu Strengthen your walls! Fill your moats with water! Your chests, your grain, your money, your goods, your possessions, bring into your stronghold! Tie up your weapons and put (them) into the corners! Guard your courage! Take heed of your own person! Let him roam through your land and do not go out to him!

In a history that is providentially arranged, passivity in the face of overwhelming odds can sometimes be the best course of action. We know that Nabonidus took a special interest in Narām-Sîn.57 Given the popularity of the Cuthean Legend as a classic text of the Mesopotamian literary canon, it seems plausible that he turned to it when facing the violent upheavals that engulfed the region during his own reign. He and his advisers would not have found it difficult to emplot history in this way: already the so-called 54 E.g. Cuthean Legend, SB version 31–6 (Westenholz), where they are described as nourished by Tiamat and having animal features. 55 ‘Ummān-manda’: SB version 54 (Westenholz); ‘like the flood’: OB version col. v.8’–17’ (Westenholz). 56 I quote the normalized text given at J.  G. Westenholz 1997: 330. For a transcription see J.  G. Westenholz 1997: 364–5. 57 See the index entries in Schaudig 2001: 710; cf. Da Riva 2008: 27. Particularly telling is the narrative of the Ehulhul Cylinder, 2.12, 1 I I .47–I I I .10 (Schaudig), where Nabonidus uses Narām-Sîn as a stick with which to beat his popular predecessor Nebuchadnezzar: Nebuchadnezzar looked for the original foundations of the Ebabbar temple in Sippar, but in vain: his temple lasted for only forty-five years. Nabonidus dug deeper, discovered the ‘original’ foundations of Narām-Sîn, restored the temple ‘without diverging from it by even a finger’s breadth’ and made offerings to his inscription.

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Weidner Chronicle identified the opponents of Narām-Sîn as emissaries of Marduk, and called them ummān Qutî, ‘the army of Gutium’, a term that locates them in the region known in the sixth century as ‘Media’.58 Nabonidus’ interpretation of imperial history, then, stood in a long tradition of historical literature. That explains how he could arrive at a view of history that was in some ways diametrically opposed to that of Nabopolassar himself, the Neo-Babylonian king who was active at the time of the sack of Nineveh. Nabonidus’ narrative does not give us an empire of the Medes by the standards of Herodotus (or modern scholarship), yet it does suggest that the Medes loomed very large indeed in the Babylonian imagination of the sixth century B C  – and that a vision of a succession of empires which pivoted around the Medes was already emerging at that time. That vision assumes clearer contours when the Persians enter the world stage. Nabonidus describes their first significant conquest in the so-called Ehulhul Cylinder, another inscription that commemorates the restoration of the temple of the moon god in Harran (Nabonidus 2.12 (Ehulhul Cylinder), 1 I .7–29 (Schaudig)): é.húl.húl é den.zu ša qé-reb uruhar-ra-nu ša ul-tu u4-mu sa-a-ti den.zu en ra-bu-ú šu-ba-at tu-ub šà-bi-š[u] r[a-m]u-ú qé-re-eb-šú e-li uru ù é šá-a-šu šà-bu-uš i-zu-uz-ma lúérin-man-da ú-šat-ba-am-ma é šu-a-tì ub-bi-it-ma ú-ša-lik-šu kar-mu-tu i-na pa-le-e-a ki-i-ni7 den en gal-ú i-na na-ra-am lugal-ú-ti-ia a-na uru ù é šá-a-šu is-li-mu ir-šu-ú ta-a-a-ri i-na re-eš lugal-úti-ia da-rí-ti ú-šab-ru-’i-in-ni šu-ut-ti damar.utu en gal ù den.zu na-an-na-ri an-e ù ki-tì iz-zi-zu ki-lal-la-an damar.utu i-ta-ma-a it-ti-ia dnà-ní.tuku lugal tin.tirki i-na anše.kur.ra ru-ku-bi-ka i-ši sig4hi.a é.húl.húl e-pu-uš-ma d en.zu en gal-ú i-na qé-er-bi-šu šu-ur-ma-a šu-ba-at-su pa-al-hi-iš a-ta-ma-a a-na den.líl dingirmeš damar.utu é šu-a-tì ša taq-bu-ú e-pe-šu lúérin-man-da sa-hi-ir-šum-ma pu-ug-gu-lu e-mu-qá-a-šu damar.utu-ma i-ta-ma-a it-tiia lúérin-man-da ša taq-bu-ú ša-a-šu kur-šu ù lugalmeš a-lik i-di-šu ul i-baáš-ši i-na ša-lu-ul-ti mu.an.na i-na ka-šá-du ú-šat-bu-niš-šum-ma mku-ra-áš lugal kur an-za-an ìr-su sa-ah-ri i-na um-ma-ni-šu i-su-tu lúérin-man-da rap-šá-a-ti ú-sap-pi-ih miš-tu-me-gu lugal lúérin-man-da is-bat-ma ka-muut-su a-na kur-šu il-qí Ehulhul, the temple of Sîn which is situated in the city of Harran, in which the great lord Sîn had chosen to make his abode since time immemorial  – his heart was enraged with this city and this temple. He raised up the Ummān-manda (~ Medes) and they utterly destroyed the temple and 58 Weidner Chronicle 53–4, quoted in J. G. Westenholz 1997: 263. For Gutium as a term for Media see also the passage from the Cyrus Cylinder quoted on p. 88.

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turned it into a ruin. During my legitimate reign the great lord Sîn once more became friendly with this city and this temple and took pity out of love for my legitimate kingship. At the beginning of my eternal kingship he sent me a dream: the great lord Marduk and Sîn, the light of heaven and earth, both stood before me. Then Marduk said to me: ‘Nabonidus, king of Babylon, carry bricks with your horses and rebuild Ehulhul. Let the great lord Sîn take his abode inside it!’ Fearfully I addressed Marduk, the Ellil of the gods: ‘The temple which you order me to build – the Ummān-manda roam about it and their power is overwhelming.’ But Marduk said to me: ‘The Ummān-manda to whom you refer, their land and the kings which go by their side will cease to exist.’ Three years later, the gods raised Cyrus against the Ummān-manda, the king of Anshan, their insignificant servant. With his few troops he scattered the numerous troops of the Ummān-manda. He captured Astyages, the king of the Ummān-manda, and took him in fetters with him to his land.

This passage can almost be read as a sequel to the Babylon Stele which I have quoted above:59 again we find a strong emphasis on divine will as a driving force behind world history, and again the Ummān-manda/ Medes play a central role, as they are first raised up and then destroyed by Babylon’s national gods, Sîn and Marduk. Although these gods care about Babylon, they do not rely on the Babylonians – or their king – to carry out their plans. Instead, they use first the Medes, then the Persians as their instruments. If we put together the narratives of the Babylon Stele and the Ehulhul Cylinder, what emerges is a divinely protected but passive Babylon at the mercy of precisely those three powers that resurface as the protagonists in Herodotus’ history of ‘Upper Asia’: the Assyrians, then the Medes, and finally the Persians. It may be useful to recall, at this point, that Nabonidus calls himself ‘king of the world’ in the very same inscription that casts him as powerless in the face of the Medes.60 That title is Assyrian as opposed to Babylonian and, as Paul-Alain Beaulieu points out, forms part of a thoroughgoing attempt – on the part of Nabonidus – to claim the heritage of Assyria.61 What I am arguing, then, is not that Herodotus was right after all, and that the Medes were indeed the acknowledged masters of the world in Neo-Babylonian times. Rather, my point is that the Medes were prominent in some strands of the Babylonian historical imagination long before Herodotus came to write his history of Upper Asia. We can now add one last piece to the puzzle.   For the chronology of the two texts see Schaudig 2001: 415 and 515.   Nabonidus, 2.12 (Ehulhul Cylinder), 1 I .2 (Schaudig). 61   Beaulieu 1989: 214. 59

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Cyrus the Great took up Nabonidus’ theology of empires in one of his own inscriptions, the Cyrus Cylinder (K2.1 9–14 (Schaudig)): a-na ta-zi-im-ti-ši-na d+en.líl dingirmeš ez-zi-iš i-gu-ug-m[a x x x] ki-suúr-šu-un dingirmeš a-ši-ib šà-bi-šu-nu i-zi-bu at-ma-an-šu-un i-na ug-ga-ti-ša ú-še-ri-bi a-na qéreb šu.an.naki damar.utu t[i-iz-qa-ru d+en.líl dingirm]eš us-saah-ra a-na nap-har da-ád-mi ša in-na-du-ú šu-bat-su-un ù ùgmeš kur šu-me-ri ù uriki ša i-mu-ú ša-lam-ta-áš ú-sa-ah-hi-ir ka-bat-[ta-áš] ir-ta-ši ta-a-a-ra kul-lat ma-ta-a-ta ka-li-ši-na i-hi-it ib-re-e-ma iš-te-’e-e-ma ma-al-ki i-šá-ru bi-bil šà-bi-ša it-ta-ma-ah qa-tu-uš-šu mku-ra-aš lugal uru an-ša-an it-ta-bi ni-bi-it-su a-na ma-li-ku-tì kul-la-ta nap-har iz-zak-ra šu-um-šú kurqu-ti-i gi-mir um-man-man-da ú-ka-an-ni-ša a-na še-pi-šu un.meš sal-mat sag.du ša ú-ša-ak-ši-du qa-ta-a-šú i-na ki-it-tì ù mi-šá-ru iš-te-né-’e-e-ši-na-a-tì. Marduk became very angry on hearing their complaint (i.e. of the people whom Nabonidus is oppressing) and … their ground plan, the gods, which lived in them left their temples. To the anger of Marduk, he brought them to Babylon. Glorious Marduk, the Ellil of the gods, relented. Concerning all the settlements, which were in disarray, and the people of Sumer and Akkad who had become as corpses, he relented and took pity. He searched through all the countries, examined them and sought out a just ruler to suit his wish. He took him by the hand. He appointed Cyrus, king of Anshan, to rule the world he called his name. Gutium and all the Ummān-manda (~ Medes) he made subject to him. The black-headed people, whom he (Marduk) allowed his (Cyrus’) hands to overcome, he shepherds for evermore in justice and righteousness.

Cyrus too makes sense of his historical mission by presenting himself as the tool of Marduk, conquering the powerful Ummān-manda/Medes en route to Babylon. As is now well understood, the Cyrus Cylinder was directed primarily at a Mesopotamian audience. It was written in the traditional language of Mesopotamian royal inscriptions and draws on the literary conventions of such texts.62 More specifically, Cyrus adopts the theological rhetoric of his predecessor Nabonidus, while turning it against him: Marduk was indeed concerned about Babylon and looked for a champion who could save it. In this account, the main threat comes not from outside but from within: Cyrus’ mission of conquering the Medes and liberating Babylon is subsumed under the more urgent task of removing Nabonidus himself. To summarize the argument thus far: speculation about who exactly ruled Upper Asia in the seventh and sixth centuries B C can be traced back to Mesopotamian historical literature of the Neo-Babylonian period. The   E.g. Harmatta 1971, Kuhrt 1983.

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role of the Medes in particular was debated. As one might expect, some Mesopotamian authors ignored the Medes, but at the other end of the spectrum, Nabonidus and his scribes articulated a theology of historical change that centred on the three powers that emerge also in Herodotus: Assyria – Media – Persia. Returning to Momigliano, we can now say that his view of imperial succession as an essentially Greek invention is in need of qualification. He points out that the discovery of pre-Hellenistic Babylonian texts containing a clear formulation of the theory of imperial succession would compel us to radically change the terms of the matter, and would lead us to wonder whether Herodotus or Ctesias had any knowledge of Oriental imperial theories.63

Do the Mesopotamian texts I have presented so far ‘change the terms of the matter’? Sceptics might have practical and theoretical objections. At the level of practicality, it must be said that Herodotus probably had no knowledge of the texts I discussed: they were written long before his time, and in a language (and a script) that he is not likely to have known. At the level of ideology, it may be argued that the Babylonian succession of empires does not amount to a ‘theory of imperial succession’ in Momigliano’s sense, let alone a ‘clear formulation of it’. What we find, rather, is a theologically motivated sequence of military conquests. A third objection might then follow from the second: these conquests are still seen from a Babylonian perspective: unlike Greek history, Mesopotamian historical texts are not universal in scope. Let us consider these objections one by one. Starting with the issue of knowledge and transmission, it must be conceded that Herodotus is unlikely to have read any of the Mesopotamian royal inscriptions I have discussed. However, there seems no reason to doubt that broad historical templates such as the succession of empires circulated in oral form, or even through written texts that are now lost. These inscriptions were famous, and the notions they promoted must have spread in many different forms. Any argument for or against a connection (however indirect) between Herodotus and the notions advanced in these inscriptions will have to rest on the merits of the case itself, because we have no way of tracing connections, through (e.g.) Herodotus’ interlocutors. This brings me to the question of whether there is a case in the first place: do the Mesopotamian texts fulfil Momigliano’s criteria for a ‘theory of imperial succession’? Prima facie, the answer would again have to be ‘no’: there is   Momigliano 1994: 33.

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little in the Mesopotamian texts to imply an abstract theory of any kind, certainly not by Momigliano’s standards. That, however, is arguably just as true of the Greek texts: Herodotus can hardly be said to have formulated ‘an explicit … theory of imperial succession’ when he describes what happened between the fall of Assyria and the rise to power of Cyrus. He does not explain why the Assyrian Empire, for example, collapsed when it did; or why Persia rose when it did. If anything, the underlying causes are less clear than they are in the Nabonidus texts, where divine intervention accounts transparently for all major events; and where powerful literary models guarantee the overall coherence of the narrative. Those willing to read Herodotus closely will no doubt tease out multiple layers of causation beneath the contingencies of an often untidy narrative surface: from divine will to human nature to culture to mere serendipity, there are many ways of understanding the passing of imperial rule from one people to the next in Histories Book 1. But the point is that Herodotus does not present us with a coherent and explicit ‘theory’ of imperial succession. The third question is most important for Momigliano’s claim: are the Mesopotamian texts truly universal in scope? Once again, the answer has to be ‘no’ if by ‘universal’ we mean that no specific location is given preferential treatment: for Nabonidus and Cyrus, Babylon acts as the centre of historical gravity even when the scope of events is ostensibly much broader. Thus, in the Babylon Stele the Medes destroy Assyria on behalf of Babylon and its gods, just as in the Ehulhul Cylinder, Cyrus defeats and captures Astyages in fulfilment of a Babylonian king’s prayer. In the Cyrus Cylinder, the god Marduk himself searches ‘the totality of lands’ for a champion before calling Cyrus ‘to the kingship of the entire universe’: these are processes of truly global significance, yet they unfold around one specific city and its patron deity. At one level, then, Momigliano is right: there is no such thing as a universal scheme of imperial succession in Babylonian thought: what we seem to find, rather, is Babylonian history dressed up as world history, in apparent contrast with the global perspective of a Herodotus or Ctesias. But is the contrast really that marked? After all, Herodotus’ history of the world assigns a special place to Greece. More interestingly, it also assigns a special place to Babylon. According to Herodotus, Babylonia was the only region in Asia that the Medes did not conquer (1.106.2, 185). It became the ‘royal seat’ of Assyria after the sack of Nineveh (1.178), carrying on the tradition of empire minus the empire itself. This is in fact reminiscent of the inscriptions I have considered: there too the Medes wreak havoc in Assyria but never touch Babylon. If that sounds paradoxical, then

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consider Herodotus’ claim that Cyrus attacked Babylon after he had conquered ‘all of Asia’ (1.178). Here too, Babylon is treated as a special case. Herodotus’ narrative of imperial succession was clearly more nuanced than Momigliano allows: complications cluster around Babylon’s privileged role in history – the very issue that was of such concern to Mesopotamian authors a hundred years earlier. In Ctesias’ Persica, written not long after the Histories, Babylon becomes even more prominent than in Herodotus’ account.64 Here too we find the same basic sequence of Asian empires: Assyria, Media, Persia. But Babylon plays a more prominent role: it never forms an empire of its own, but precipitates the formation of all other empires. Thus the Babylonian general Belesys (Ctesias’ counterpart of the historical Nabopolassar) helps bring down Assyria and usher in the Medes; and an anonymous Babylonian launches Cyrus’ revolt against Astyages.65 Babylon itself remains just outside the limelight of imperial history: it is founded as the second city of the Assyrian Empire, after Nineveh, and it is founded by a woman, in direct competition with the Assyrian emperor Ninos.66 As ever, the founding act proves telling: throughout his narrative, Ctesias associates Babylon with gender inversions of various kinds, from Semiramis herself to the effeminate Nannaros to the half-Babylonian queen mother Parysatis who murders the king’s wife and concludes her life in exile in Babylon.67 In all these stories, Babylon challenges (male) imperial control. Yet, apart from subverting established gender hierarchies, Babylon in Ctesias is also associated with the workings of fate and divine will. The first major setback for the Persian Empire comes with Xerxes’ defeat in Greece and his subsequent murder. Remarkably, Ctesias connects the two events, and makes them the result of a botched encounter with an ancient Babylonian ruler (Ctesias F 13b (Lenfant)): Ξέρξης ὁ Δαρείου παῖς τοῦ Βήλου68 τοῦ ἀρχαίου διασκάψας τὸ μνῆμα πύελον ὑελίνην εὗρεν, ἔνθα ἦν κείμενος ὁ νεκρὸς ἐν ἐλαίωι. οὐ μὴν πεπλήρωτο ἡ πύελος, ἐνέδει δὲ ἀπὸ τοῦ χείλους ἐς παλαιστὴν ἴσως. παρέκειτο δὲ τῆι πυέλωι καὶ στήλη βραχεῖα, ἔνθα ἐγέγραπτο· τῶι ἀνοίξαντι τὸ μνῆμα καὶ μὴ ἀναπληρώσαντι τὴν πύελον οὐκ ἔστιν ἄμεινον … (Xerxes fails to fill 64 For recent editions, translations and discussion of the Persica see Lenfant 2004, Llewellyn-Jones and Robson 2010, Stronk 2010, Wiesehöfer, Rollinger and Lanfranchi 2011, with further literature. 65 Ctesias F 1b 24ff. (Lenfant) and F 8d 8ff. (Lenfant). 66 Ctesias F 1b 7 (Lenfant). 67 Semiramis’ clothes: Ctesias F 1b 6 (6) (Lenfant); the effeminate Nannaros: Ctesias F 6 (Lenfant); Parysatis and her murderous plot: Ctesias F 29b 19 (2–10) (Lenfant). 68 Probably a mistake for Βηλιτάνου; see Lenfant 2004: L X X X V I I I –L X X X I X .

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Over the horizon up the sarcophagus) οὐ διεψεύσατο δὲ ἡ στήλη ὅσα προεῖπεν· ἀθροίσας γὰρ ἑβδομήκοντα μυριάδας ἐπὶ τοὺς Ἕλληνας, κακῶς ἀπήλλαξεν, εἶτα ἐπανελθὼν αἴσχιστα ἀνθρώπων ἀπέθανεν, ἀποσφαγεὶς νύκτωρ ἐν τῆι εὐνῆι ὑπὸ τοῦ υἱοῦ. When Xerxes, son of Darius, excavated the tomb of ancient Belos (or Belitanas), he found a glass sarcophagus, inside which the corpse was lying in oil. However, the sarcophagus was not full: rather, the oil came up to about a palm’s width from the rim. A small stele stood beside the sarcophagus, on which was written: ‘Things will not go well for anyone who opens the tomb and does not fill the sarcophagus up.’ … (Xerxes fails to fill up the sarcophagus.) The stele was not wrong in what it predicted; for after gathering 700,000 men to fight the Greeks Xerxes came off badly, and then after returning he died in the most shameful way a man can die, by being murdered by his own son in bed at night.

Aelian’s paraphrase is not entirely accurate,69 but he must be right that, according to Ctesias, Xerxes’ desecration of the tomb led to his demise. We have here a variation on a theme that pervades the Persica as a whole: Babylon controls imperial history but never has military power.70 This is especially evident when imperial rule passes from one people to the next. When the Mede Arbaces throws off the Assyrian yoke he is described as outstanding in bravery.71 Endowed with exceptional masculine virtue (ἀνδρείαι δὲ καὶ ψυχῆς λαμπρότητι διαφέρων), Arbaces leads the uprising against the effeminate Sardanapallos and eventually takes over as ruler of Asia. Yet it is the Babylonian Belesys who initiates the rebellion and brings it to fruition. By contrast with Arbaces, Belesys is no warrior: he is introduced as an eminent priest and astrologer, someone with special access to the gods. He is a typical Babylonian (Ctesias F 1b 24 (Lenfant)): ἦν δ’ οὗτος ὄνομα μὲν Βέλεσυς, τῶν δ’ ἱερέων ἐπισημότατος, οὓς Βαβυλώνιοι καλοῦσι Χαλδαίους. ἐμπειρίαν οὖν ἔχων μεγίστην ἀστρολογίας τε καὶ μαντικῆς προέλεγε τοῖς πολλοῖς τὸ ἀποβησόμενον ἀδιαπτώτως· διὸ καὶ θαυμαζόμενος ἐπὶ τούτοις τῶι στρατηγῶι τῶν Μήδων ὄντι φίλωι προεῖπεν ὅτι πάντως αὐτὸν δεῖ βασιλεῦσαι πάσης τῆς χώρας ἧς ἄρχει Σαρδανάπαλλος. ὁ δ’ Ἀρβάκης ἐπαινέσας τὸν ἄνδρα, τούτωι μὲν ἐπηγγείλατο δώσειν σατραπείαν τῆς Βαβυλωνίας τῆς πράξεως 69 According to Photius (reporting Ctesias), Xerxes was not actually killed by his son, though some suspected that he was; see Ctesias F 13b* (33) (Lenfant), with discussion at Lenfant 2004: C. 70 It seems significant that, according to Ctesias, the Babylonians were the first to be conquered by the Assyrians: see Ctesias F 1b 4–7 (Lenfant). 71 Ctesias F 1b 24 (Lenfant).

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ἐπὶ τέλος ἐλθούσης, αὐτὸς δὲ καθαπερεί τινος θεοῦ φωνῆι μεθεωρισθεὶς τοῖς τε ἡγεμόσι τῶν ἄλλων ἐθνῶν συνίστατο … This man was Belesys, the most distinguished of the priests whom the Babylonians call Chaldaeans. And since he had great experience both of astrology and divination he was accustomed to predicting the future to the masses with unerring accuracy. Because of this, and since he was also admired for it, he made a prediction to the general of the Medes who was a friend of his that it was very much fated for him to become king of all the territory that Sardanapallos ruled. Arbaces praised the man and promised to give him the satrapy of Babylon when the deed had been brought to its conclusion. For his own part, he was elated as if by the voice of a god and mobilized the leaders of the other peoples …

Belesys initiates the rebellion against the Assyrians not because of his military prowess but because he knows and controls the future. Importantly, he does not use his powers of prognosis to gain the throne of Asia for himself but plays off Medes against Assyrians in a way that secures a special status for his city. Babylon negotiates a similar role on the eve of the Persian rebellion against the Medes. While pregnant with Cyrus, Argoste dreams that she swamps the whole of Asia with her urine. On his father’s recommendation, Cyrus takes the dream to a Babylonian. It transpires then that fate has selected Cyrus to be the new ruler of the world.72 From then on, the Babylonian interpreter plays a central role in the story of Cyrus’ defection, though unlike Belesys he does not live to reap the fruits of his prophetic work. What we see here puts paid to Momigliano’s opposition between Greek universal and non-Greek local history: Ctesias too saw the succession of empires as intertwined with the history of a single city, Babylon. Indeed, his account shows close structural parallels with some of the Mesopotamian historical literature that I discussed earlier. In both cases, Babylon holds the key to imperial history, despite its essentially passive role. And in both cases the city relies on its privileged relationship with the gods and especially Bel-Marduk, and thus helps to shape a succession of empires from Assyria to Media and on to Persia. In Ctesias, the decisive figures on the Babylonian side are Chaldaean priests, whereas in the Mesopotamian texts they are (Chaldaean) kings. But the kings of the Nabonidus texts, Nabopolassar and Nabonidus himself, had already left military conquest to others, resorting instead to dreams and prayers to   Ctesias F 8d (8–9) (Lenfant).

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change the course of history. There never was such a thing as a distinctly Greek ‘theory of succession’. Rather, what we find is a conversation across cultural and linguistic boundaries – and it is that conversation that shapes also Herodotus’ account. According to Herodotus, Babylon occupies an exceptional place in imperial history: it survives the fall of Assyria and remains independent of the Medes, uniquely among Asian societies. It also marks the pinnacle of Cyrus’ achievement as a conquering king; and the turning point in his career. In fact, the Persians must conquer it twice, and suffer humiliation upon opening the tomb of the Babylonian queen Nitocris (1.187). Babylon is special also in a more characteristically Herodotean sense: he judges it to be the most impressive city he knows (ἐκεκόσμητο δὲ ὡς οὐδὲν ἄλλο πόλισμα τῶν ἡμεῖς ἴδμεν, 1.178.2). As Leslie Kurke shows in detail, everything about Babylon is oversized: the walls, the gates, the temples.73 The city as a whole is so enormous that citizens defending it at one end fail to realize it is already being conquered at the other (1.191.6). And yet this giant city remains curiously passive. Babylon plays no part in the destruction of Assyria or Media and more generally remains detached from the major events of imperial history. Indeed, Herodotus barely concedes that Babylon has a history at all, relegating its kings to the elusive Assyrian logos and leaving us with two queens, one of whom remains a mere shadow, while the other spends most of her energy trying further to isolate Babylon from its surroundings. Herodotus interprets Babylon’s special role in history precisely as an experiment in self-imposed isolation. It is as though Assyria, having lost its world empire, went to the opposite extreme of withdrawing entirely into its new capital. Here, Herodotus diverges significantly from both Ctesias and the Mesopotamian texts, for whom Babylon was meek at the surface but dominant behind the scenes, sponsoring Mede aggression but remaining untouched by it. Herodotus suggests the exact opposite: the Babylonians, he says, feared the Medes and sought to isolate themselves from them. Nitocris’ waterworks  – a river diverted, a reservoir filled  – confused the Medes to the point that they never quite made it to Babylon (Hdt. 1.185.1–2). But cutting the ties with the outside world only works for a limited amount of time. In the end, the more enterprising Persians gain access to Babylon, and its isolationist stance is exposed as short-sighted and ineffectual: the very waterworks that were designed to keep away the   Kurke 1999: 230–3.

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Medes enable the Persians to conquer Babylon a few generations later (Hdt. 1.191). As imperial history moves on, Babylon is punished for failing to keep up with events. What we see here is, in many ways, a mirror image of the Babylon we encounter in the Nabonidus texts, the Cyrus Cylinder and in Ctesias: instead of directing the succession of empires from its perch close to the gods, Babylon is overtaken by events. Herodotus’ account of the first Persian conquest seems particularly pointed in this regard: in the Nabonidus texts and the Cyrus Cylinder, the rise of Persia is orchestrated by Babylon and her gods. Cyrus’ eventual arrival in the city (in broad daylight, and without fighting) is overseen by Bel-Marduk.74 Ctesias may or may not have mentioned Cyrus’ conquest of Babylon, the extant sources do not let us know. But, in any case, he cannot have made much of it, since he insists that the Babylonians supported Cyrus’ revolt. Herodotus, by contrast, makes much of the Persian conquest. What is more, he attributes it specifically to the Babylonians’ lack of foresight (Hdt. 1.191.5–6): εἰ μέν νυν προεπύθοντο ἢ ἔμαθον οἱ Βαβυλώνιοι τὸ ἐκ Κύρου ποιεύμενον οἱ δ‘ ἂν περιιδόντες τοὺς Πέρσας ἐσελθεῖν ἐς τὴν πόλιν διέφθειραν κάκιστα· … νῦν δὲ ἐξ ἀπροσδοκήτου σφι παρέστησαν οἱ Πέρσαι. Now, if the Babylonians had heard or learned in advance what Cyrus was doing, they would have let the Persians enter the city and then annihilated them … As things were, however, the Persians were upon them before they knew anything about it.

Herodotus here goes out of his way to emphasize the Babylonians’ inability to control events by foreseeing the future (νῦν δὲ ἐξ ἀπροσδοκήτου σφι παρέστησαν οἱ Πέρσαι). What is more, the Persians succeed only because the Babylonians are celebrating a religious festival just as their city is being overwhelmed. Far from controlling world history, the gods of Babylon have become a dangerous distraction. Herodotus’ first sack of Babylon, then, reflects the Babylon of Mesopotamian and Ctesianic tradition as if in a distorting mirror. The second sack, under Darius (Hdt. 3.150–60), unfolds along similar lines: it marks a high point in the king’s power, just before an unsuccessful foray into the northern steppes (Hdt. 4.1). This time the Babylonians are well prepared, and grimly determined. They have taken advantage of the upheavals surrounding the accession of Darius and stocked up on provisions. Society is forcibly defeminized: all women bar mothers and one   Cyrus Cylinder K2.1 10–17 (Schaudig).

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householder per family are killed in a bid to make the supplies last longer. As the siege begins, the question is whether Babylon can opt out of imperial history by withdrawing behind its impressive walls. As Kurke rightly points out, Herodotus’ account resonates with contemporary Greek concerns with self-sufficiency (αὐτάρκεια).75 Yet the overriding theme is still that of Babylonian exceptionalism, as can be seen from the way the city is eventually conquered. For a while it seems as though autonomy is indeed the likely outcome for Babylon. But then the city falls, partly through a display of Persian loyalty, adaptability and willingness to endure hardship; but above all because the Babylonians themselves are out of touch with fate as the driving force behind history. Buoyed by their initial successes, an anonymous Babylonian speaker taunts the Persians in the following manner (Hdt. 3.151): “τί κάτησθε, ὦ Πέρσαι, ἐνθαῦτα, ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἀπαλλάσσεσθε; τότε γὰρ αἱρήσετε ἡμέας, ἐπεὰν ἡμίονοι τέκωσι·” ‘Why do you sit here, o Persians, and do not give up? For you will conquer us only when mules give birth.’

Herodotus adds that the speaker thought a mule could never give birth, which is of course a fatal mistake. The point is not so much that Aristotle (and Herodotus) knew better, but that the ways of the gods are mysterious, as a Babylonian in particular ought to have appreciated.76 When a mule does give birth, the Persian Zopyrus recognizes that the Babylonian was speaking ‘with the god’ (σὺν τῶι θεῶι); and that the ‘fated’ (μόρσιμος) time had come for Babylon to fall.77 The irony of Herodotus’ account stands out sharply against the Nabonidus texts, where Babylonian gods arrange and communicate world historical events years in advance; and against Ctesias, where Babylonian figures such as Belesys speak ‘with the god’ in a very different sense. In Herodotus, the Babylonians fail to understand the significance of their own prophetic utterances and, as a result, are overtaken by events. This time, there is no way back. Once the city has fallen, Darius repopulates it with foreign women and razes the walls and towers that so interested Herodotus earlier in the Histories. 75 Kurke 1999: 242. 76 For mules giving birth see Aristotle, Historia animalium 6.23 (577a 22–8) and De generatione animalium 2.7 (746b 12–18). For aberrant births in Babylonian tradition, see especially the collection of portentous births called the Šumma izbu, a staple of ‘Chaldaean’ wisdom; cf. Leichty 1970, Attenborough 1993. Dalley and Reyes 1998: 109–10 discuss connections between Šumma izbu and the portent of the mule in Herodotus. 77 Hdt. 3.153.

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Left without its iconic defences, Babylon sinks into oblivion. Herodotus never revisits it. We have come a long way from the question of who ruled Asia after the fall of Nineveh; and whether Herodotus was right in claiming that it was the Medes. Momigliano’s rather monolithic vision of imperial history has opened up in interesting ways: not only were there Mesopotamian authors who thought about the succession of empire from Assyrians to Medes and Persians, but there was a range of possibilities – in the depiction of Babylon  – also within Greek literature. Ctesias shows closer affinities with the Nabonidus texts than with Herodotus, when he regards history as emanating from a divinely favoured Babylon. In Herodotus, Babylon retains its special place in history but no longer has a hand in shaping it. Indeed, the Babylonians are singularly out of touch with the gods. Babylon here becomes a local anachronism, an anomaly which stands out all the more sharply for the prominence of its female rulers. Nitocris in particular is described as both devious and effective, bamboozling the Medes with the extraordinary conceit of a river that flows through the same village three times. That, and the city’s walls, temporarily insulate Babylon from the storms that surround it. But in the end the city is brutally conquered, its ‘wisest custom’ dismantled together with its walls (Hdt. 1.196.5). What remains is an enigmatic ruin, a marvel for the reader of Herodotus (θῶμα, 1.193) and a treasure trove for the Persian conquerors (1.192). We cannot reconstruct the precise sources of Herodotus’ portrayal of Babylon, any more than we can identify precise lines of transmission from Mesopotamian to Greek epic (Chapter 1). Perhaps the Persian defector Zopyrus played a part.78 Or perhaps Herodotus really did speak to Babylonian priests. It does not ultimately matter. What matters, it seems to me, is that the Greek and Mesopotamian texts that I have considered are more closely connected than previous scholarship suggests. The ‘­succession of empires’ was not a Greek invention and cannot be used to dig a trench between Greece and Mesopotamia. The texts presented here account for the extraordinary events of the seventh and sixth centuries B C in ways that are neither simply divorced from one another, nor compatible and comparable in every detail. Each offers a perspective on imperial succession and Babylonian exceptionalism, which is meaningful within its own context: Nabonidus has an obvious interest in placing Babylon at the centre of imperial history, as does Cyrus when he establishes his own credentials in the Cyrus Cylinder. Herodotus, by contrast, uses traditions   Hdt. 3.160; cf. Ctesias F 14 (45) (Lenfant). Flower 2006: 279 is sceptical.

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about Babylonian exceptionalism as the starting point for an experiment in self-imposed isolation: can anyone opt out of imperial history, and without fighting? Of course Herodotus shapes his picture of Babylon to his own narrative and intellectual concerns. And some of his idiosyncrasies certainly reflect broader Greek cultural traits. Yet Ctesias is already so different from Herodotus that it becomes difficult to pinpoint a specifically ‘Greek’ view of Babylon and its role in the succession of empires. The lines are rather fuzzier than we are used to believing. There is no iron curtain between Greeks and ‘The Other’. Babylonian sources offer a range of representations of imperial succession, and so do Greek ones. Their different portrayals of Babylon, however, intersect on several key concerns: the exceptional history of this one city, its femininity and its special relationship with the gods. A similar criss-crossing of perspectives emerges also when we consider other Herodotean narratives, including the ‘invention of the barbarian’, which was long considered a purely Greek achievement  – if that is the right word for it. In what follows, I trace a complex exchange of views by starting from the question  – not of how the Greeks perceived Babylon, but of how Near Eastern observers perceived the Greeks.

Greeks on the horizon There is broad agreement in classical scholarship that the fifth century B C saw the rise of a new, culturally based definition of Greekness, in contrast with non-Greek barbarians. As Jonathan Hall has argued: The invention of a barbarian antitype provided a completely new mechanism for defining Hellenic identity. In the Archaic period, Hellenic self-definition was ‘aggregative’ […] Now, Hellenicity was defined ‘oppositionally’ through differential comparison with a barbarian outgroup.79

Hall captures well the prevailing view of how the Greeks came to think of themselves as ‘Greeks’. Archaic notions of Greekness had been rather loose, and were based largely around a cumulative model of blood ties: Dorians, Ionians and Aeolians were imagined as related among themselves, and with each other, through common ancestors. What was missing was a strong sense of political and cultural unity, a sense of the Greeks as an ‘in-group’ in contrast with the ‘out-group’ of non-Greeks. As Hall points out, that changed in the wake of the Persian Wars, and he rightly   J. Hall 2002: 179.

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asks whom we should hold responsible for the change: ‘the question naturally arises as to the agency involved in the invention of the barbarian’.80 So far, that question has been answered broadly by pointing to the Greeks themselves. Lynette Mitchell writes: ‘a communal identity is what a community imagines itself to be, by the ways in which it talks about itself, organizes and makes sense of the past’.81 On this premise, Greekness quite simply means what the Greeks take it to mean. Now, in one sense, Mitchell is certainly right: communal identity does not just ‘develop’. It needs to be actively imagined, and asserted. Yet communities do not imagine themselves without any reference to others. Outsiders also have opinions, and often these matter a great deal. Imperial conquest is an obvious example: the point here is not just that groups respond to outside pressure. Rather, the very terms on which colonised communities imagine and re-imagine themselves are often dictated by their imperial masters, even when they aim to break away from their domination. Thus Wole Soyinka points out that the concept of a unified black identity (négritude) as developed by Aimé Césaire and Leopold Senghor in many ways replicates European prejudice: Négritude, having laid its cornerstone on a European intellectual tradition, however bravely it tried to reverse its concepts (leaving its tenets untouched), was a foundling deserving to be drawn into, nay, even considered a case for benign adoption by European ideological interests.82

Whatever the merits of négritude as a way of articulating a black consciousness, Soyinka points out that its proponents (Senghor in particular) used many of the defining terms and concepts of European colonial discourse. The Persian Empire, it must be said, was not a colonial power in the modern sense, and the rise of Hellenicity during and after the Persian Wars differs in important ways from that of négritude – not least because the Greeks repelled the Persians. And yet we may still ask to what extent it too was a foundling child of empire. I suggest that Greece, the very Greece we know from Aeschylus and Herodotus, was to a surprising extent the invention of Mesopotamian imperial discourse.83 Mesopotamian authors start mentioning Greeks well before Greek authors betray any awareness of Mesopotamia. Relevant cuneiform sources begin to appear in the second half of the eighth century B C , around the traditional date of Homer and Hesiod. The very first of them, dated to the 730s B C , is 80 J. Hall 2002: 182.  81  Mitchell 2007: xx.  82  Soyinka 1976: 134. 83   I make a similar claim in Haubold 2012. The following pages are based on that article.

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a letter from an Assyrian official to his master, the king Tiglath-Pileser III (Nimrud Letter L X I X (Saggs), quoted from Rollinger 2001: 237): a-na LUGAL ˹EN-ia˺ ARAD-ka I.qur-di-aš-šur-IGI KUR.ia-˹ú˺-na-a-a ˹i-tal-ku-ni˺ qa-ra-bu ina URU.˹sam-si˺-m[u-ru-na] ina URU.ha-ri-˹su-ú ina˺ UR[U x x x] ú-tap-pi-šu ša AN[ŠE.BAD-HAL] [i]-tal-ka a-na URU.˹da-na?˺-[bi] [LÚ*.E]RIM.MEŠ zak-ku-ú ina Š[U.2] [a-s]a-bat a-ta-a[t]-˹lak˺ mi-m[i-ni] [l]a iš-ši-ú ˹a-ki LÚ*.ERIM˺-M[EŠ-ia] [e-mu]r-˹u˺-ni ina ŠÀ-bi GIŠ.˹MÁ˺-ME-˹šú˺-n[u] [e-te-li-ú] qab-li ta-an-ti [ih-tal-qu] ˹i-da-tú˺-u-a x[x] To the king my lord, your servant Qurdi-Aššur-lāmur: The Greeks (Akk. Yaunāya) have [c]om[e]. They have done battle at the city of ˹Sams˺[imuruna?], at the city of Hārī˹sū˺, and at the ci[ty of …]. A ca[valryman] [c]ame to the city of ˹Dana˺[bu?] (to report this to me). I gathered up troops of professional soldiers and went after them. Nothing did they (the Greeks/Yaunāya) carry away. As soon as they [sa]w my soldiers they [fled] on their boats. In the midst of the sea they [disappeared]. After my [ .… ]

What we see here is a skirmish on the margins of the Assyrian Empire, reported in a mildly self-aggrandizing manner. The Greeks have appeared and started battle. No damage was done, however: when they saw the Assyrian army they disappeared into the sea. The tone of the letter suggests that the Greeks were already familiar to the Assyrians when Qurdi-Aššur-lāmur wrote to his king. Indeed, Greek naval raids must have been commonplace at the time. Confirmation comes from the Odyssey, where Odysseus attacks the Kikones in a very similar fashion, and from the Iliad, where Paris abducts valuable weavers from Sidon.84 (Qurdi-Aššur-lāmur was probably himself writing from somewhere near Sidon.) Paris was not of course Greek in any meaningful sense of that term, and it has been argued that the term Yaunāya in the Assyrian letter does not refer to ‘Greeks’ either. While it is   Hom. Od. 9.39–66; Il. 6.289–92.

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clearly the same word as Greek Ἰάονες (‘Ionians’), it perhaps meant nothing more specific to the Assyrians than ‘sea people’ or ‘westerners’.85 We do well to exercise caution, yet we should not forget either that Yaunāya or Yaunā or Yāwān was always the preferred term for Greeks in the Ancient East (and, indeed, in many places it still is). By the time of the Persian Wars, Yaunā certainly did refer to the people who called themselves Ἕλληνες, ‘Greeks’. Whoever the Yaunāya were when they first appeared in the Mesopotamian records, and wherever exactly they came from, they certainly acquired associations which were to inform later attitudes to the Greeks. The process was well under way in the letter of Qurdi-Aššur-lāmur, where they were presented as dangerous and elusive ocean-dwellers. It gained further momentum in the royal inscriptions of Sargon II, king of Assyria in 721–705 B C , who was particularly proud of having defeated the Yaunāya. The following extract reveals as much (Zyl. 21 (Fuchs)): le-e’ tam-ha-ri ša i-na qabal(murub4) tam-tim kurIa-am-na-a-a sa-an-da-niš ki-ma nu-ú-ni i-ba-ru-ma ú-šap-ši-hu māt(kur) Qu-e ù uruSur-ri (Sargon) expert in battle, who like a fisherman caught the Yaunāya in the midst of the sea like fish and thus gave peace to Cilicia and Tyre.86

This is a very different text from the letter with which I began. Qurdi-Aššur-lāmur’s communication was part of the day-to-day running of the empire. Letters to the king were a recognized genre of imperial literature, with their own rules and conventions; but they were not meant for public consumption and did not articulate a shared vision of social space to the same extent as the royal inscriptions. The difference in genre is reflected at the level of style. In place of a self-consciously ‘informative’ narrative of events, Sargon offers a bold metaphor: the king as a royal fisherman. There is a sense that the stakes are higher here, that Sargon’s relationship with the Greeks says something important about his civilizing mission. And something else has changed too: the sea is no longer envisaged as a void from which the Greeks appear and into which they disappear again. As Robert Rollinger notes, Sargon presupposes a different sense of imperial space. He writes: Sargon intended to excel his royal forerunners concerning the extension of his empire, and it obviously was not enough to have reached the shores of the Mediterranean […] The ‘Ionians’ now functioned as a kind of marker 85 Rollinger 2001; see also Brinkman 1989, Kuhrt 2002b, Rollinger 2007. 86 Compare the other passages listed in Fuchs 1994, index s.v. Jamnāju; and Ceccarelli 1993: 39–42.

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Over the horizon of the far West, showing the far-reaching geographical horizon of the king’s enterprises.87

As Rollinger points out, Sargon realized that the Greeks could be a useful means of articulating the universal reach of his empire. That does not mean, of course, that he invented his battles against them – they will have been real enough. But they were also important for imperial propaganda. The Greeks no longer simply appeared and disappeared over the imperial horizon: they had themselves become a way of articulating that horizon. Not long after Sargon we find the first attestation of individual Greeks living in Mesopotamia.88 The gap between the two worlds was narrowing, and continued to do so throughout the seventh and sixth centuries B C .89 By the late sixth and early fifth centuries B C , the Persian king ruled over both Greeks and Mesopotamians; Greek populations were transplanted to inner Asia en masse; and ambassadors from the independent Greek states regularly made their way along the royal road to Susa. Clearly, the Greeks were no longer the outlandish nomads who they once were to the Assyrians. All the same, the topos of the Greeks on the horizon of the imperial world was to resurface under Xerxes. In order to understand how this came about, and what it meant to the Greeks themselves, we need to consider the Achaemenid Empire as a social space whose co-ordinates had been determined long before the Persians themselves arrived on the world stage. Like the Assyrians before them, the Persians claimed to rule over the entire world. The Persian king was the ‘king of kings’, and advertised his power over ‘the lands of every language’.90 With hindsight, we can say that the Persian possessions were much larger than those of the Assyrians. Yet they did not in fact encompass the entire world, not even the parts of it that were known to the Persians at the time. So, what the Achaemenids did, and had to do, was to project plausible images of universal sovereignty.91 The Greeks and their association with the sea became crucial in the project of world domination, partly because they had been important to the kings of Assyria too; and partly because they fitted into an even older, and more powerful, template of imperial space: a template that we 87 Rollinger 2001: 240.  88  Rollinger and Korenjak 2001. 89 As documented in Rollinger 2001 and 2007. 90 ‘King of kings’: DB col. I .1–2, etc.; ruling over ‘the lands of every language’: Dar. Pers. a and g §§ 1 and 2 (Weissbach), etc. For further passages see Haubold 2007: 50, n. 16. 91 For country lists and other means of projecting Achaemenid imperial space see Briant 2002: 172– 83; for the king as Ahuramazda’s chosen see Lincoln 2007: 33–49.

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can trace all the way back to the third millennium B C and the glamorous founder of the Akkadian world empire, Sargon of Akkad. Sargon of Akkad was the grandfather of Narām-Sîn, of whom we have already heard.92 He was at least as popular in the first millennium B C as was his hapless grandson, but for different reasons. Whereas Narām-Sîn had to learn humility in the face of an overwhelming military attack, Sargon was remembered as the archetypal conqueror king. By the first millennium, a burgeoning literature had developed about his career and achievements.93 From fictional biography to epic to geographical treatises and omens, these texts presented Sargon as the ultimate superstar, a template of the king as world ruler. To the modern reader it may seem difficult to accept that tales about this semi-mythical Mesopotamian monarch would have mattered to the Achaemenids, but there can be no doubt that they did: literature about Sargon of Akkad loomed large in the first millennium B C . Thus Hannes Galter has argued that the ‘later’ Sargon of Assyria, as his contemporaries already called him (Akk. arkû) systematically modelled himself on his famous namesake.94 One hundred and fifty years later, the last Neo-Babylonian king Nabonidus, whose enthusiasm for Narām-Sîn we have already encountered, excavated and displayed what he claimed was a statue of Sargon in the main temple of Šamaš at Sippar, restoring it ‘out of respect for the gods and for kingship’.95 Nabonidus proceeded to set up a cult for Sargon, which continued to be observed under Cyrus and Cambyses;96 and Cyrus himself was cast as a Sargon redivivus in popular stories about his childhood.97 It was common knowledge that Sargon had taught humankind what it meant to unite the world under one rule. Most important for our purposes, Sargon was known to have singled out the shores of ‘the upper and lower seas’ (i.e. the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf ) as defining borders of his realm.98 The image of the two seas continued to shape mental maps of world rule well into the first millennium B C . Neo-Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian and Persian rulers all defined their realm as spanning ‘the entire world’, and explained what this meant by adding ‘from the upper to 92 Above, pp. 84–6. 93 For the literary tradition about Sargon see Lewis 1980, Longman 1991, Liverani 1993, J.  G. Westenholz 1997, Horowitz 1998: chs. 2 and 4, Galter 2006. For the historical Sargon see Sallaberger and Westenholz 1999: 34–40. 94 Galter 2006; cf. Frahm 2005: 48 with n. 30. 95 Royal Chronicle iv.1–2 (Schaudig). 96 Beaulieu 1989: 133–6.  97  Drews 1974, Kuhrt 2003. 98 Sargon E2.1.1.1, ll. 73–85; E2.1.1.2, ll. 77–91; E2.1.1.11, ll. 1–13; E2.1.1.13, ll. 18–22 (Frayne).

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the lower sea’.99 Here is how Cyrus described the extent of his dominions in the Cyrus Cylinder (K2.1 29 (Schaudig)): [i-na qi-bi-ti-šú] sir-ti nap-har LUGAL a-ši-ib BÁRA.MEŠ ša ka-li-iš kib-ra-a-ta iš-tu tam-tì e-li-tì a-di tam-tì šap-li-tì … ka-li-šú-un bi-lat-su-nu ka-bi-it-tì ú-bi-lu-nim-ma. [On his (i.e. Marduk’s)] exalted [orders], all the kings who sit on thrones in the entire world, from the upper sea (i.e. the Mediterranean) to the lower sea (i.e. the Persian Gulf/Indian Ocean) …  – they all brought me their heavy tribute.

There could be no better illustration of the fact that Sargon’s mental map of empire was still relevant – indeed normative – in the Persian period: for Cyrus too, world rule was defined by two maritime frontiers, one ‘above’ and one ‘below’. Yet those frontiers had become permeable. The historical Sargon himself had left room for ambiguity in his inscriptions, by claiming that the gods had actually given him the upper and lower seas, rather than just the lands between them (Sargon E.2.1.1.2 71–81 (Frayne)): ś[ar-ru-G]I [LUGA]L [KALAM.MA].KI [šu den-l]íl m[a-hi-r]a la i-dìnu-śum6 ti-a-am-tám a-lí-tám ù śa-pi[l-tám i-dì-nu-śum6] Sargon, lord of the land, to whom the god Enlil gave no rival, and to whom he gave the upper and the lower sea.

It is not entirely clear what Sargon meant by this: control of the seashore only? Or a conquest of the sea and the lands in it? Perhaps the ambiguity was deliberate, and it certainly became productive, partly because the idea of a maritime border was seen as a provocation to later kings, who needed to outdo their forerunners; and partly because the Sargonic idea of an empire between the seas was contaminated with another tradition in which crossing the sea had always played a central role: every Mesopotamian schoolboy knew that Gilgamesh had ‘crossed the sea near sunrise’.100 What is more, they knew that his quest for life reached its climax when he crossed the waters of death near the edges of the world. As we saw in Chapter 1, Gilgamesh was not just another model king (šūtur eli šarrī, ‘he surpassed all kings’, as the opening line of the Old Babylonian epic claimed); he was also a model human being. To audiences of the Epic of Gilgamesh and related texts, crossing the sea was no longer merely a 99 Two examples will suffice to illustrate what is an extremely widespread habit: Assurbanipal Prism B § 6, I 41 (Borger); Nebukadnezar Nr. 14 col. i.21 (Langdon). 100 SB Gilg. I .37–40 (George).

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matter of unchecked outward expansion but exemplified the heightened humanity that only great kings could claim for themselves. We do not know whether the Persians were aware of Gilgamesh as a hero in his own right.101 What we do know is that by the sixth century B C the Sargon and Gilgamesh traditions had coalesced to the point that conquest of the sea was central to both.102 Late authors who updated Sargon’s achievements in light of their own changing priorities claimed – historically incorrectly – that he too had crossed the ocean and conquered countries on the other side. Here is an extract from a first-millennium text known as the Sargon Geography (ll. 41–4 (Horowitz)):103 a-na-kùki kap-ta-raki mātātu(kur.kur) eberti(bal.ri) [tâm]ti elīti(an.ta) tilmunki má-gan-naki mātātu(kur.kur) eberti tâmti šaplīti(ki.ta) ù mātātu ultu sīt dšamši(dutu.è.[a]) adi ereb dšamši(dutu.šú.a) sihirti(nigin)ti mātāti kalīšina(kur.dù.a.bi) ša šarru-kēn šàr kišša[ti] (ki[š]) adi 3-šú qat-su ik-šu-du Anaku (~ ?) and Kaptara (~ Crete?), the lands across the Upper Sea, Dilmun and Magan, the lands across the Lower Sea, and the lands from sunri[se] to sunset, the sum total of all the lands, which Sargon, the King of the Univer[se], conquered three times.

The Sargon Geography was compiled in Neo-Assyrian times (eighth/seventh century B C ), and reflects Assyrian views of imperial space.104 Yet those views were given normative force by being traced back to Sargon of Akkad, the model king who challenged his successors to follow in his footsteps. As Sargon himself is quoted as saying in one text (Res Gestae Sargonis 121–3 (Westenholz)): a-ga-n[a š]ar-rum ša i-ša-a[n-na]-na-an-ni ša a-na-ku at-ta-al-l[a]-k[u] šu-ú li-it-ta-la-ak 101 The epic certainly continued to be copied in the Persian period, and Mesopotamian audiences will have known it well, if not in written form then certainly through oral storytelling: Henkelman 2006 and 2010. Cambyses may have come across Gilgamesh when scouring the archives of Uruk for information about former kings. See BM 113249, 29.6.3 Camb, translated and discussed in Jursa 2007a: 78: ‘Nabû-mukīn-apli, the “bishop” of Eanna … said to [eleven named men], the Babylonians and Urukeans, the temple assembly of Eanna, as follows: “A messenger of the king and the governor of Babylon (šākin tēm bābili) [has come who] has said as follows: ‘Show me any inscribed stelae (a-su-mit-tu4meš) of former kings which are being kept in Eanna.’ Show any old inscribed stelae that you know of to the messenger of the king. Show everything that you remember and of which you know to the messenger of the king.”’ 102 For contamination between traditions about Sargon and Gilgamesh see George 2003: 20 and 93–4 (Cedar Forest); ibid., 152–3 (Utanapishti and Utarapashtim); Henkelman 2006 (birth narrative). 103 Edition, translation and commentary in Horowitz 1998: 67–95. 104 For a date of composition under Sargon II or his immediate successors, see Horowitz 1998: 93.

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Over the horizon ‘Lo, the king who wants to equal me, where I have gone, let him also go!’105

Many kings followed what they perceived to be Sargon’s lead: they still regarded the seashore as a natural limit to human expansion, but they also placed exceptional symbolic value on going beyond it.106 We have seen that Cyrus described his empire as stretching ‘from the upper to the lower sea’ in his Cylinder, without claiming expansion beyond the shoreline.107 But already Cyrus’ successor Cambyses was known among Persians as the king who had conquered the sea. Herodotus reveals this in connection with Cambyses’ Egyptian campaign (Hdt. 3.34). The same link between conquering Egypt and conquering the sea emerges one generation later with Darius, in a series of inscriptions which he set up to commemorate his building of the Red Sea Canal.108 Indeed, from the beginning of his reign, Darius took a keen interest in the sea and its symbolic potential, above all in connection with his campaigns in Scythia.109 Already in his Behistun inscription Darius reports crossing the sea in pursuit of the Scythians with the pointed cap.110 In his very last inscription, on his tomb at Naqsh-e Rustam, he lists the ‘Scythians from across the sea’ as his most far-flung conquest.111 Darius made sure his subjects could experience this idea first hand when he bridged the sea at the Bosporus, en route to his campaign against the Scythians of southern Russia.112 To mark the occasion, he set up two steles featuring a description of his empire in the form of a list of subject peoples.113 105 See also Sargon Birth Legend 22–31 and King of Battle 21’ (Westenholz). 106 E.g. Assurbanipal B § 6 i.44–5 (Borger); Nebukadnezar Nr. 17, col. ii.12–37 (Langdon). Both kings also use the sea to articulate the limits of their realm: see above, n. 99. 107 Cyrus Cylinder K2.1 29 (Schaudig); see above p. 104. 108 Especially DZc (the Kabret Stele), Old Persian Version (Kent); the passage is discussed in Haubold 2012: 7–8. 109 Most scholars now accept, with Ctesias, that there was more than one such campaign; see Gardiner-Garden 1987. Herodotus reports that Darius also explored (Hdt. 3.135–8) and conquered (Hdt. 3.139–49) lands in the Mediterranean; and that he was susceptible to the lure of exotic islands (Hdt. 5.31 and 5.106.6–107). Plato, Menexenus 239c–240a claims that Darius was the first Persian king to conquer ‘the sea and the islands’; cf. Högemann 1992: 319. However, he never campaigned in the Mediterranean in person. Ceccarelli 1996 discusses the portrayal of islands in Herodotus and their significance to ideas of maritime control. 110 DB, col. 5 (monolingual Old Persian), para. 74 (Kent). 111 DNa § 3 (Kent); for the wording of the Babylonian version at Dar. NRa, Section 3 (Weissbach), see below, n. 126. 112 Hdt. 4.83 and 85–9; Ctesias F 13 (21) (Lenfant). 113 Hdt. 4.87. I see no reason to doubt the historicity of the two stelae, pace Fehling 1989: 137–8. Briant 2002: 198 is sceptical about the stelae themselves but concedes that Herodotus correctly understood their function as that of ‘staging’ the empire (his term).

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Darius’ bridging of the Bosporus is important for two reasons. First, it confirms that he experimented with different ways of staging a conquest of the sea: to bridge the Mediterranean as though it was a river was just as effective a way of making the point as was linking up two oceans through the Red Sea Canal. Secondly, Darius signalled that he regarded the Scythians across the sea as the ultimate challenge to his rule: by bridging the Bosporus the king not only combined the conquest of the sea with that of Scythia, the two defining achievements of his reign according to Plato;114 he also bridged the gap between the imperial world and uncharted territories ‘beyond’. The so-called Babylonian World Map (Figure 1) perfectly illustrates what was at stake.115 As well as being a fascinating example of early map-making in its own right, the Babylonian World Map is of vital importance in the understanding of Achaemenid perceptions of their own empire, and the Greeks’ place in it. It is preserved on a single tablet, kept in the British Museum (BM 92687). Its exact provenance is unknown, as is its date of composition, though it was certainly produced in Mesopotamia during the first millennium B C .116 The tablet is inscribed on both sides. The obverse (pictured in Figure 1) contains a fragmentary description of the ocean and the monsters that dwell in it, followed by a schematic map of the world. The reverse is taken up with a description of far-flung places across the sea, including distances between unspecified locations. A colophon on the reverse informs us that the tablet is a copy made by the son of Issuru, descendant of Ea-bēl-ilī.117 At first sight it may seem as though the map on the obverse of the tablet is meant as an illustration of the text on the reverse. There are, however, differences between map and text, and it is likely that the tablet as a whole is a compilation of distinct geographical materials. The map is highly stylized. Roughly speaking, north is at the top, south at the bottom, the lines that cut across the central area represent the Euphrates, with Babylon the large rectangle above the centre point. Towards the bottom of the inner field we find two other bodies of water labelled ‘channel’ and ‘swamp’, the latter evidently representing the marshes where the Euphrates issues into the Persian Gulf. At the top there is an area representing the mountains of Armenia, while on either side of the Euphrates we find a selection of places in and around Mesopotamia which are arranged in a circle. Clockwise from the top these are: Assyria,   Plato, Menexenus 239c–240a.   Edition and commentary in Horowitz 1998: 20–42; see also Horowitz 1988. 116   Horowitz 1998: 25–6 (‘no older than the ninth century’). 117   “The Babylonian Map of the World”, Text on the Reverse 28’–29’ (Horowitz). 114 115

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Der, Bit-Yakin and Habban. The circle at the bottom of the map represents the Elamite capital, Susa. All this is surrounded by a circular body of water called the ocean or, literally, the ‘Bitter River’. Beyond it, space splinters into triangle-shaped regions called nagû. The named locations in the inner field do little more than direct us to the surrounding ocean and outlying regions, whose importance is further emphasized by descriptive labels which are attached to them. Several labels give the distance between unspecified locations: ‘six leagues in between’, ‘eight leagues in between’.118 Perhaps these figures refer to the distance between the central continent and the outlying areas. We cannot be certain, and ultimately it does not matter, for the point here is not to guide us on some actual journey but to treat as ‘real’ an area that is removed from normal human experience. One label draws attention to a ‘Great Wall’, and a ‘place where the sun is not seen’. Whatever wall is being envisaged here, reference to the sun indicates an area that lies beyond the known world even by the ambitious criteria of Near Eastern imperial geography. As well as invoking the ‘upper and the lower sea’, Near Eastern kings in the tradition of Sargon often defined their empire as stretching ‘from sunrise to sunset’.119 A place where the sun is not seen lies outside even that most inclusive definition of imperial space  – or rather, such a location challenges the emperor to venture even beyond the natural limits of that space: for that is precisely what King Sargon is supposed to have done when he travelled to the land of Utarapashtim.120 The Babylonian World Map, then, charts outer space specifically as a challenge to the conquering king. Historical rulers certainly responded to the challenge: Assurbanipal and Nebuchadnezzar, for example, both claimed to have incorporated remote nagû in or across the sea into their empire.121 The Achaemenids too boasted to have ventured across the ocean, though their rhetoric focused not on the nagû so much as on the intervening water. We recall that in the Babylonian World Map, the world is surrounded by the ‘Bitter River’, Akkadian ídmarratu. That term is already attested in the Neo-Assyrian period but became much more common under the Achaemenids, as a way of referring to the sea in the Akkadian 118 Horowitz 1998: 21–2, labels 18, 19 and 22. 119 For Sargon ‘himself ’ (i.e. in Sargonic myth) see the example from the Sargon Geography cited above, p. 105; for historical kings see e.g. Sennacherib, Annals col. i.13–14 in Borger 1979: 68; Antiochus Cylinder col. ii.17–18, discussed on p. 141 below. 120 The sun is said to have gone dark when Sargon of Akkad reached the land of Utarapashtim: Sargon, the Conquering Hero ll. 60–2 in J. G. Westenholz 1997: 70–1. 121 Horowitz 1998: 30–3, with passages and discussion.

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language.122 It is worth recalling here that Darius and subsequent Persian kings published their inscriptions in three languages, Old Persian, Elamite and Akkadian, sometimes adding a fourth in outlying regions such as Egypt or Greece.123 Past scholars have tended to focus on the Old Persian texts, on the assumption that they come closest to the meaning intended by the king. There is, however, no reason to believe that the Akkadian versions were less important.124 Indeed, one of Darius’ most explicit statements of the extent and nature of his realm was written in Akkadian only. And it used precisely the term ‘Bitter River’ in order to articulate the range of his power (DPg, Section 2 (Weissbach)): U-ru-ma-az-da ra-bi šá ra-bu-ú ina muh-hi DINGIR.MEŠ gab-bi šá AN-e u KI-tì ib-nu-ú UN.MEŠ ib-nu-ú šá dum-qí gab-bi id-di-nu-ma UN.MEŠ ina lìb-bi bal-tu-’ šá a-{na} mDa-a-ri-ia-muš LUGAL ib-nu-ú u a-na mDa-ari-ia-muš LUGAL LUGAL-ú-tu id-din-nu ina qaq-qar a-ga-a rap-šá-a-tu4 šá KUR.KUR.MEŠ ma-di-e-tu4 ina lìb-bi-šu kurPar-su kurMa-da-a-a u KUR. KUR.MEŠ šá-ni-ti-ma li-šá-nu šá-ni-tu4 šá KUR.MEŠ u ma-a-tu4 šá a-hana-a-a a-ga-a šá ídmar-ra-tu4 u a-hu-ul-la-a-a ul-li-i šá ídmar-ra-tu4 ša a-hana-a-a a-ga-a šá qaq-qar su-ma-ma-i-tu4 u a-hu-ul-la-a-a ul-li-i šá qaq-qar su-ma-ma-i-tu4 d

Ahuramazda is great. He is the greatest among all the gods. He made the sky and the earth. He made the people, and bestowed all prosperity so that people may live by it. He made Darius king and gave to King Darius the kingship of this wide earth with many lands in it – Persia, Media, and the other lands and other populations (literally ‘other tongues’), of the mountains and the plains, of this side of the Bitter River and the far side of the Bitter River, and of this side of the desert (literally ‘Land of Thirst’) and the far side of the desert.

This extract comes from a group of monumental texts from Persepolis (two in Old Persian, one each in Elamite and Akkadian) which are not translations of each other but which nonetheless seem to have been conceived as a unit. In his doctoral research, cut short by his untimely death, Donald Murray (11 June 1983–10 July 2011) discussed the relationship between these texts and their specific outlook on Achaemenid rule. The Old Persian inscriptions, he argued (DPd and DPe), emphasized Persian military 122 For passages see CAD s.v. marratu A. 123 On the use of different languages in the Achaemenid Royal Inscriptions see Stolper 2005. 124 Donald Murray argued, in an unpublished paper delivered at the Annual Conference of the Classical Association 2011, that Achaemenid Akkadian inscriptions should be regarded as the inscriptional counterpart to the Aramaic language versions that circulated in Egypt and presumably elsewhere.

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prowess, whereas the Elamite inscription (DPf ) introduced Darius as a builder king. In the Akkadian language inscription (DPg) Darius took up a specifically Mesopotamian discourse of world conquest, and described his rule as stretching beyond the desert (literally the ‘Land of Thirst’); and beyond the ‘Bitter River’, precisely the term used for the ocean in the Babylonian World Map.125 The parallel is no mere accident: in his lists of subject peoples, Darius used the same term ‘Bitter River’ to articulate the geography of his empire. Most notably, on his tomb inscription at Naqsh-e Rustam he located the Scythians not just ‘across the sea’ but more specifically ‘across the Bitter River’, illustrating by example the more general claim that the great king held sway on both sides of the ocean.126 Christoph Ulf once remarked that ‘we can easily imagine a Babylonian looking at the World Map and pointing out the place where Gilgamesh crossed the marratu … in order to reach Utnapishtim’.127 Darius, I argue, did something similar at the Bosporus, except that he no longer put Gilgamesh or Sargon ‘on the map’, as it were, but rather thought of his own place in world history: by bridging the ‘Bitter River’, and invading the lands beyond it, Darius proved himself to be a heroic conqueror of the world, one of those figures who dared to venture beyond the central field on the Babylonian World Map, and into the ‘triangles’ beyond the ocean. It helped that reality and ideology came together at the Bosporus: here the Mediterranean really did form a (bitter) river. When Darius crossed the Bosporus, he thus crossed an imaginary line between the imperial world on one side of the water and an ill-defined ‘beyond’ on the other. This was imperial conquest as drama, and like all drama it had a strong element of make-believe about it. The Persians and their allies were of course aware that the world did not end at the Bosporus, but the practicalities of imperial rule and the ideologies that helped sustain it were two quite separate issues. Xerxes followed in the footsteps of his charismatic father, in his treatment of the sea as in so many other respects.128 He too based his claims 125 The inscription has sometimes been taken to refer to lands from the sea on one side (of the empire) to the sea on the other side, and from one desert to the other; but the Akkadian text simply does not say that: the word ša (‘of ’) must refer to marratu, as recognized by Weissbach 1911: 85 and Lecoq 1997: 230. For the ancient Mesopotamian motif of kings crossing deserts cf. Esarhaddon 1, col. iv.53–61 (Leichty); Nebukadnezar Nr. 14 col. i.24, Nr. 15 col. ii.22–3, Nr. 19 col. iii.14 (Langdon); and below, p. 161 (Berossos on Nebuchadnezzar). 126 Dar. NRa (Bab.), Section 3 (Weissbach): ‘the Scythians (Sakā/Gimirri) from the other side of the Bitter River’ ([KUR Gi-]mir-ri ša a-hi ul-lu-a-a ša ÍD mar-ra-tu4); see also DSe § 3 (Bab.). 127 Ulf 2008: 155. 128 For a sympathetic assessment of Xerxes’ reign, and his relationship with his father, see Kuhrt 2007: 238–43.

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to world rule on the idea of controlling the ocean; and focused his efforts on the western regions of Egypt and the Black Sea. Herodotus tells us that Xerxes sent an expedition from Egypt around the whole of Africa under Sataspes.129 Some aspects of the story are suspect, but as a story it fits well with Achaemenid claims to control the world by controlling the sea.130 Like his father, Xerxes also bridged the Bitter River in the far north-western corner of his realm, though not on his way to Scythia. Xerxes’ target was the mainland Greeks, in many ways the ultimate ocean dwellers, from a Near Eastern perspective. In one of his inscriptions, Xerxes explicitly claimed to rule over the Greeks on either side of the Bitter River. I quote the Akkadian version (XPh, Akkadian version, Section 3 (Herzfeld, modified)): Hi-ši-’-ar-ši LUGAL i-qab-bi ina GIŠ.MI šá dA-hu-ru-ma-az-da-’ KUR. KUR.MEŠ an-ni-e-ti šá a-na-ku LUGAL-šú-nu e-lat kurPa-ar-su (…) kur Ma-da-a-a kurNIM.MAki kurAr-ra-hu-ut kurUr-áš-tu kurZa-ra-an-ga kurPa-artu-ú kurAr-ri-e-me kurBa-a-ha-ta-ar kurSu-gu-du kurHu-ma-’-ra-za-am kurDIN. TIRki kurAš-šur kurSa-at-a-gu-uš kurSa-pa-ar-da kurMi-sir kurIa-a-man-na šá ina ídmar-rat áš-bu-ú u šá a-hu-ul-lu-ú šá ídmar-rat {{rat}} áš-bu-ú kurMa-ak kur Ar-ba-a-a kurGan-da-ar kurIn-du-ú kurKa-at-pa-tuk kurDa-a-an kurGi-miir ú-mar-ga kurGi-mi-ir ti-gír-hu-ú-du kurIs-ku-du kurA-ku-pi-i-iš kurPu-ú-tu kur Ba-an-ni-e-šu kurKu-ú-šú m

Xerxes the King says: By the favour of Ahuramazda, these are the countries whose king I am, over and above Persia (…): Media, Elam, Arachosia, Urartu, Drangiana, Parthia, Aria, Bactria, Sogdia, Chorasmia, Babylonia, Assyria, Sattagydia, Sardis, Egypt, the Greeks who dwell in/by the Bitter River and who dwell on the far side of the Bitter River, Maka, Arabians, Gandara, India, Cappadocia, Dahai, Amyrgian Scythians (lit. ‘Cimmerians’), Pointed-Cap Scythians (lit. ‘Cimmerians’), Skudra, Akaufaka, Libya, Caria, Ethiopia.

There has been much debate about this inscription, and its mysterious programme of religious reform. Important and fascinating as it is, that issue does not concern me here.131 My point, rather, is this: whatever else 129 Hdt. 4.43. 130 The historicity of the voyage is accepted by Corcella 2007: 612, with further literature. Herodotus’ account shows the contested nature of Persian claims, and the resistance they encountered in some quarters: not only is Sataspes’ expedition presented as a failure, but it is also compromised by the lurid palace intrigue that occasions it. Xerxes himself shows no particular interest in exploration, reverting to his original plan of executing Sataspes as soon as he is back. Herodotus relates the story immediately after his account of a successful expedition which the Egyptian king Necho sent around Africa. The juxtaposition is hardly innocent: whereas Necho’s expedition seems well conceived and intelligently executed, Sataspes’ is marred by transgression, violence and intrigue. 131 Kuhrt 2007: 242 and 304–6, with further literature.

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Xerxes might have hoped to convey in the Daiva Inscription, he certainly used it to claim sovereignty over the Greeks who lived across the ocean (‘Bitter River’, in Akkadian), as well as those who lived in it, or by its shores. The Greeks were unique in this regard: none of the other people whom Xerxes mentioned was located on the far side of the Bitter River, not even the Scythians who so exercised his father. There is a close and suggestive fit between Xerxes’ view of the Greeks in his Daiva Inscription and his Greek campaign: like many Near Eastern rulers before him, Xerxes needed to be seen to rule even beyond the water. The Greeks were to furnish the ultimate test of his achievement. And so Xerxes built another bridge across the Mediterranean, this time at Abydos: bridging the ocean as his father had done perfectly expressed the political and ideological purpose of his Greek campaign. We have seen that long before Xerxes, the Assyrian king Sargon II prided himself in catching the Greeks out of the sea ‘like fish’.132 Xerxes developed this thought. To be sure, he did not simply march against Greece because he wanted to be seen to conquer the ocean. He continued what his father had begun, and, as I argued elsewhere, posed as the avenger of Priam in a belated sequel of the Trojan War.133 There must also have been more specifically Iranian ways of interpreting his campaign.134 Several different stories could and were told about it, not all of them equally relevant to every observer. References to the Trojan War would have interested Greek audiences more than others. By comparison, the conquest of the ocean had broader resonance in the Near East, and Xerxes made sure he publicized it to the widest possible audience. Major building projects such as the canal through Mount Athos and, later on, the unfinished mole across the Saronic Gulf to Salamis advertised his conquest of the sea in terms that were meaningful across linguistic and cultural barriers.135 The battle of Salamis was to be the climax of his oceanic campaign. George Cawkwell has shown that Xerxes staged the battle quite deliberately 132 See above, p. 101. 133 For Darius’ Greek policies leading up to Xerxes’ attack see Cawkwell 2005: 87–8; for Xerxes and the Trojan War see Haubold 2007. 134 As argued by Kingsley 1995. 135 Canal: Hdt. 7.22–4; bridge: Aeschylus, Persae 744–8 etc., Hdt. 7.33–7, Ctesias F 13 (27) (Lenfant); mole: Hdt. 8.97, Ctesias F 13 (30) (Lenfant). Cawkwell finds the story of the mole ‘too absurd to excite criticism’ (Cawkwell 2005: 92), and complains that building such a structure was not feasible under the circumstances. However, Herodotus merely presents it as a diversionary tactic to assert the king’s continued commitment to the naval campaign. As such, it is perfectly plausible.

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as imperial drama, though he misses the significance of the event when he simply attributes it to Xerxes’ misguided quest for glory.136 In truth, the king was, as ever, acting out an ancient script (Esarhaddon 1, cols. iv.82– v.2 (Leichty)): LUGAL.MEŠ-ni a-ši-bu-te tam-tim ša BÀD.MEŠ-šú-nu tam-tim-ma e-du-u šal-hu-šú-un ša ki-ma GIŠ.GIGIR GIŠ.MÁ rak-bu ku-um ANŠE. KUR.RA.MEŠ-e sa-an-du par-ri-sa-ni pal-hiš ul-ta-nap-šá-qu lìb-bašú-nu i-tar-rak-ma i-ma-’u mar-tú ul ib-ši šá-ni-ni ul im-mah-ha-ru GIŠ. TUKUL-u-a ù ina ma-al-ki a-lik mah-ri-ia la im-šu-la a-a-ú-ma Kings who lived in the sea, whose (inner) walls were the sea and whose outer walls were the waves, who rode ships like chariots and harnessed rowers instead of horses – they were very afraid. Their hearts were pounding, and they were vomiting gall. There was none like me, my weapons are irrestistible. And among my princely ancestors none could equal me.

This passage is taken from an inscription of Esarhaddon, one of the last great kings of Assyria. It shows what was at stake when Xerxes set up his throne on Mount Aigaleos, to watch his fleet defeat the Greeks who ‘rode ships like chariots and harnessed rowers instead of horses’.137 Cawkwell may well be right that in strictly military terms the Persians did not need to risk a battle at Salamis. But no campaign is ever fought in ‘strictly military’ terms, and in the context of Xerxes’ quest for world rule, the opportunity for staging a comprehensive victory at sea was, one suspects, quite irresistible: if all went well at Salamis, Xerxes could rightfully claim to have surpassed his ‘princely ancestors’ – perhaps even his swashbuckling father. Unfortunately for him, Xerxes was however defeated, and withdrew to Sardis. Greek propaganda cast his retreat as a panicked flight, which was of course wide of the mark.138 But the king’s entire approach to the campaign, down to his presence at Salamis, suggests that the Persians had lost far more than a mere battle.139 They had been robbed of a narrative that underpinned the king’s prowess as a warrior in the Sargonic tradition. 136 Cawkwell 2005: 108–9. 137 For Xerxes on Mount Aigaleos see Hdt. 8.90.4; cf. Aeschylus, Persae 466–7. For ships like chariots from a Greek perspective, see Od. 4.708–9; cf. Od. 13.81–5. 138 As Herodotus had already pointed out; cf. Hdt. 8.119–20. Briant 1992 argued that Xerxes faced a revolt in Babylon in 479 B C . We now know that this cannot be used to explain his departure from Greece: the king stayed in Sardis and oversaw the campaign until after the battle of Mycale; see Briant 2002: 531–5. 139 Pace Cawkwell 2005: 109–10.

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Enough reason, then, to end Xerxes’ immediate involvement and withdraw the fleet: for the time being, the Persians would pursue the war without grand pretensions to conquering the sea. Soon after Xerxes wound down his role as master of the ocean, Greek authors began to rub salt in his wounds: Xerxes’ campaign had shown the opposite of what he had intended to demonstrate. The Persians could not control the sea, indeed they were essentially landlubbers. The Greeks, by contrast, had proven their fish-like nature and, by defeating the Persians at Salamis, had established themselves as beyond the reach of their empire, and indeed free by nature.140 To make the point, successive Greek authors appropriated the language and imagery of imperial discourse and turned it against the king. As one might expect, some of the more dramatic gestures of reversal attached to the defeat at Salamis itself. Thus Edith Hall draws attention to the ironic use of sea imagery in Aeschylus’ Persians.141 Here is what becomes of the time-honoured image of the imperial fisherman (Persae 424–8): τοὶ δ’ ὥστε θύννους ἤ τιν’ ἰχθύων βόλον ἀγαῖσι κωπῶν θραύμασίν τ’ ἐρειπίων ἔπαιον ἐρράχιζον, οἰμωγὴ δ’ ὁμοῦ κωκύμασιν κατεῖχε πελαγίαν ἅλα, ἕως κελαινὸν νυκτὸς ὄμμ’ ἀφείλετο. The Greeks hacked and stabbed at our men, as fishermen do with tunnies or some other catch, using broken oars and pieces of wreckage. The sea was all one din of cries and groaning, till night and darkness hid the scene.

Imperial literature from the eighth century B C onwards had likened the Greeks to fish, and had emphasized thus their natural affinity with the sea, as well as their helplessness when confronted with the arts of civilization: the net as a prime symbol of culture’s control over nature signalled the emperor’s civilizing mission.142 Aeschylus’ description, by contrast, suggests that the sea is an element beyond Persian control. Of course, I am not suggesting that Greek observers knew the written texts that, to an Achaemenid audience, explained what it might mean to conquer the sea. What they encountered, rather, were the public gestures that made 140 E. Hall 2006b shows how the ability to swim became a marker of Greek identity in the wake of the Persian Wars. 141 E. Hall 1996: 21. 142 For the symbolic significance of the net see Ceccarelli 1993, esp. pp. 36–9.

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the imperial drama visible to all: the bridges and canals, and the stories that attached to them; the battles, and especially Salamis, the climax of the Persian maritime campaign. One can exaggerate Greek knowledge of Achaemenid realities, but one can hardly exaggerate Greek exposure to this onslaught of symbolic gestures. Unsurprisingly, the Greeks felt the need to respond in kind. Xerxes’ bridging of the Hellespont came in for particularly harsh criticism because it was always meant as a stunning gesture of world conquest. This is certainly how Greek authors perceived it – only that they rejected its claims (Aeschylus, Persae 744–51): παῖς δ’ ἐμὸς τάδ’ οὐ κατειδὼς ἤνυσεν νέωι θράσει, ὅστις Ἑλλήσποντον ἱρὸν δοῦλον ὣς δεσμώμασιν ἤλπισε σχήσειν ῥέοντα, Βόσπορον, ῥόον θεοῦ, καὶ πόρον μετερρύθμιζε καὶ πέδαις σφυρηλάτοις περιβαλὼν πολλὴν κέλευθον ἤνυσεν πολλῶι στρατῶι, θνητὸς ὢν θεῶν δὲ πάντων ὤιετ’ οὐκ εὐβουλίαι καὶ Ποσειδῶνος κρατήσειν. πῶς τάδ’ οὐ νόσος φρένων εἶχε παῖδ’ ἐμόν; And this my son achieved, uncomprehending in his youthful audacity; who thought he could contain with fetters, like a slave, the sacred flowing Hellespont, the divine stream of the Bosporus. He altered the nature of the strait, and, casting around it hammered shackles, created a great road for his great army. Although only a mortal, he foolishly thought he could overcome all the gods, even Poseidon. Surely this must have been some disease affecting my son’s mind?

Aeschylus here psychologizes as youthful audacity what was in reality a long-standing discourse of empire. He is not entirely wrong when he attacks Xerxes’ bridge as contrary to nature (745–8): after all, Xerxes himself portrayed his mission as transcending a forbidding natural boundary. Of course, in his view (and perhaps that of his Greek allies too), this will have been an act of splendid daring, rather than hybris.143 As for the gods, there is no reason to suppose that Xerxes ever claimed to have defeated Poseidon and other Greek deities: he will have respected them as a matter of policy. But slander of the cruder sort was meted out to whoever lost a power struggle in the ancient Mediterranean and the Near East: the Persians themselves were masters of the game, and their ostentatious

143 For Greek connivance in the imperial project of world conquest, see Hdt. 4.87–8 and the inscription of Mandrocles that he quotes there.

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i­nterest in some aspects of Greek religion may have played its part in provoking the backlash.144 A similar interplay between imperial discourse and local response can be observed in Herodotus’ portrayal of Xerxes at the Hellespont (Hdt. 7.35): ὡς δ’ ἐπύθετο Ξέρξης, δεινὰ ποιεύμενος τὸν Ἑλλήσποντον ἐκέλευσε τριηκοσίας ἐπικέσθαι μάστιγι πληγὰς καὶ κατεῖναι ἐς τὸ πέλαγος πεδέων ζεῦγος. ἤδη δὲ ἤκουσα ὡς καὶ στιγέας ἅμα τούτοισι ἀπέπεμψε στίξοντας τὸν Ἑλλήσποντον. ἐνετέλλετο δὲ ὦν ῥαπίζοντας λέγειν βάρβαρά τε καὶ ἀτάσθαλα· “ὦ πικρὸν ὕδωρ, δεσπότης τοι δίκην ἐπιτιθεῖ τήνδε, ὅτι μιν ἠδίκησας οὐδὲν πρὸς ἐκείνου ἄδικον παθόν. καὶ βασιλεὺς μὲν Ξέρξης διαβήσεταί σε, ἤν τε σύ γε βούληι ἤν τε μή. σοὶ δὲ κατὰ δίκην ἄρα οὐδεὶς ἀνθρώπων θύει, ὡς ἐόντι καὶ θολερῶι καὶ ἁλμυρῶι ποταμῶι.” τήν τε δὴ θάλασσαν ἐνετέλλετο τούτοισι ζημιοῦν καὶ τῶν ἐπεστεώτων τηι ζεύξι τοῦ Ἑλλησπόντου ἀποταμεῖν τὰς κεφαλάς. When Xerxes heard this he took offence and ordered his men to give the Hellespont three hundred lashes and to sink a pair of shackles into the sea. I once heard that he also dispatched men to brand the Hellespont. In any case, he did tell the men who were thrashing the sea to revile it in a barbaric and outrageous way: ‘O bitter water’, they said, ‘your master punishes you in this manner for wronging him when he did no wrong to you. King Xerxes will cross you, with or without your consent. People are right not to sacrifice to a muddy, brackish river like you!’ So the sea was punished at his orders, and he had the supervisors of the bridging of the Hellespont beheaded.

This is one of the climactic moments in the Histories, and one of the few where Herodotus portrays Xerxes in an entirely negative way. François Hartog rightly points out that it conforms to a more general pattern in Herodotus, whereby eastern despots display their delusion by crossing various bodies of water.145 But there are other resonances too: does Herodotus echo Persian ideology when he calls the Hellespont a ‘brackish river’ and ‘bitter water’? The lines of transmission remain uncertain, and in any case what matters here are not the (in truth rather detailed) 144 For Persian propaganda against ‘enemies of the gods’ see, e.g., the Cyrus Cylinder and the so-called Persian Verse Account, both aimed against Nabonidus: K2.1 and P1 (Schaudig). For Persians honouring Greek gods see Hdt. 6.97–8 and 118 (offerings to Delian Apollo), 7.43 (sacrifice to Athena of Troy), 7.191 (sacrifice to Thetis and the Nereids), 8.54 (unspecified sacrifices on the Athenian acropolis). In literature throughout the ancient world the ocean was populated by monsters and demons of various kinds; e.g. “The Babylonian Map of the World”, The Text on the Obverse 3’-5’ (Horowitz). Imperial observers would have found it easy to make the imaginative leap from victory over the sea to victory over those divine forces that inhabited it. By the same token, hostile Greeks such as Aeschylus could denounce the entire project as blasphemy. 145 Hartog 1988: 331.

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verbal echoes. What seems more important to me is the fact that Herodotus, like Aeschylus before him, engages with the mental maps of imperial space that the Persians had inherited from their Mesopotamian predecessors.

Greeks and barbarians Aeschylus, Herodotus and other Greek authors did not just write back (to use Salman Rushdie’s famous phrase) to Mesopotamian notions of imperial space but also to some of the cultural preconceptions that came with them. We have already seen that they appropriated and inverted the ancient cliché of the fish-like Yaunā(ya). In a similar vein, they discovered the Greek language as a way of emphasizing their own difference from non-Greek ‘barbarians’. As Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin point out, ‘one of the main features of imperial oppression is control over language’.146 That is certainly true of the Assyrian Empire and its self-declared successor, Achaemenid Persia: already the Assyrian king Assurbanipal boasted that he had control over ‘the languages of sunrise and sunset’, and the Persian kings Darius and Xerxes systematically claimed to rule ‘over the lands of every language’.147 In a climate where control over language was advertised as a measure of imperial control, the failure of barbarians to speak Greek ‘properly’ became a powerful symbol of the failure of empire more generally. Aristophanes had fun with Persian ambassadors addressing a Greek assembly in bad Greek;148 and Timotheus offers the following cameo in his description of the battle of Salamis (Timotheus, Persae 145–50 (Hordern)): ὁ δ’ ἀμφὶ γόνασι περιπλεκεὶς ἐλίσσετ’, Ἑλλάδ’ ἐμπλέκων Ἀσιάδι φωνᾶι διάτορον σφραγῖδα θραύων στόματος, Ἰάονα γλῶσσαν ἐξιχνεύων· “†ἐγω μοι σοι† κῶς καὶ τί πρᾶγμα;” 146 Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin 2002: 7. 147 For the Persians continuing Assyrian traditions of empire see Harmatta 1971 on the Cyrus Cylinder; Root 1979 on imperial iconography; Lanfranchi forthcoming on world rule. For Assurbanipal on the languages ‘of sunrise and sunset’, see Assurbanipal, E-Prismen, Stück 16.9–10 (Borger); for the Persian approach (‘lands of every language’) see above, n. 90. The Greek author Xenophon admiringly described Cyrus as having ‘ruled over these nations even though they did not speak the same language as he, nor one nation the same as another’: Xenophon, Cyropaedia 1.1.5; cf. Briant 2002: 179. 148 Aristophanes, Acharnians 99–105.

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‘Asian’ speech is here opposed to Greek in a manner that suggests two essentially separate realms: Hellenes speaking proper Greek against an ‘Asian-speaking’ empire which includes some bastardized version of the Greek language. The difference between them is clearly audible and signals the failure of the imperial project: the man whom Timotheus describes is not only defeated, but unable to supplicate properly – because he does not command the right words. His failure to master the Greek language quite literally becomes a measure of his defeat.149 In practice, there were of course plenty of Greek speakers in Xerxes’ service, and plenty of Greeks familiar at least with Aramaic as the language of international diplomacy. Linguistic competence was never really a practical issue. Rather, what was at stake was social space: the Persian Empire had emphasized its ability to control ‘all languages’, so Greek authors emplotted its failure at Salamis as a failure regarding that claim. This inspired a new emphasis on the Greek language as distinctive of a unique ethnic identity (Hdt. 8.144.2): “αὖτις δὲ τὸ Ἑλληνικόν, ἐὸν ὅμαιμόν τε καὶ ὁμόγλωσσον, καὶ θεῶν ἱδρύματά τε κοινὰ καὶ θυσίαι ἤθεά τε ὁμότροπα, τῶν προδότας γενέσθαι Ἀθηναίους οὐκ ἂν εὖ ἔχοι.” ‘Then again, there is our Greek identity – one race speaking one language, with temples to the gods and religious rites in common and with a common way of life. It would not be good for the Athenians to betray this shared heritage.’

One blood, one language, one religion, one way of life: as Herodotus suggests in this famous passage, language became part of a much more thoroughgoing redefinition of what it meant to be Greek in the wake of the Persian Wars. Within a purely Greek context, all this was radically new. Within an imperial context, the emphasis on linguistic and cultural difference had an established provenance. Long before the fifth century B C , Mesopotamian authors had emphasized local differences in their claims to universal rule. Thus the Sargon Geography, the blueprint for world empire 149 ‘Ionian’, in this connection, evokes the ‘Asian’ man’s perspective on the Greeks, whom he would have regarded as Yaunā. For an analysis of the suppliant’s language see Hordern 2002: 204–8.

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in the Assyrian period, offers explicit ethnographic reflections (ll. 57–60 (Horowitz)): … ú-ru-[uh-š]u-nu i-n[a] nag-la-bi bé-e-ru i-kil-ti išāti(izi) šá la i-du-ú qé-bé-ra a-kil šīri(uzu) a-kil šizbi(ga) lapti(še.sa.a) š[a a-kal t]i-nu-ri lìb-b[a-šu-n]u la i-du-ú kar-as-su-nu dsiriš an-nu-tum [ …. ] mihrit(gaba.ri) tâmti … those whose ha[ir-style] is chosen with a razor, devoured by fire, who do not know burial. Meat-eaters, milk (and) roasted-grain eaters, whos[e insi]des do not know oven-bake[d bread], whose bellies (do not know) beer. These are the [ …. ] facing the sea.

We have already had occasion to look at this text in connection with Xerxes’ Greek campaign across the Hellespont. This time, the context is a description of places to the north and east of Mesopotamia which Sargon of Akkad was supposed to have conquered, despite their remoteness. The text is lacunose at this point, and it is not altogether clear who these people ‘really’ are, and where they are supposed to live. Ultimately, this does not matter for my argument (and perhaps did not matter much even to most Assyrian readers of the Sargon Geography): the point is that even these strange and marginal people become imperial subjects. For the classically trained reader, some details of the description, such as milk-drinking and strange hair styles, recall the nomads of the northern steppe, as described in Homer and Hesiod, even before Herodotus.150 Other details, such as proximity to the sea and cremation of the dead, recall the Greeks themselves. We have already seen that Mesopotamian literature cast the Greeks as uncouth nomads of the sea. It therefore comes as no surprise that they should be associated with barbaric burial customs too. In Mesopotamian tradition, the absence of a ‘proper’ burial by interment was a barbaric trait par excellence. From early on, it was linked with nomadism, as in the following description of the western tribe of the Amorites from a Sumerian text known as The Marriage of Mardu (quoted from Horowitz 1998: 91): u4 ti.la.na é nu.tuku.a u4 ba.ug7.a.na ki nu.túm.mu.dam While he lives he has no house. When he dies there is no burial. 150 For milk-drinking see Hom. Il. 13.5 and Hes. fr. 150.15 M–W; with further discussion in Bichler 2000: 45–7.

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Burial by cremation continued to function as a marker of cultural marginality well into the Persian period. According to Herodotus, Darius once conducted an ethnographic experiment during which he confronted Indians and Greeks, as the easternmost and westernmost of his subject populations, with each other’s burial customs.151 The Indian tribe of the Callatiae, Herodotus explains, eat their dead, whereas the Greeks burn theirs. Neither group can be persuaded to swap with the other, and although to a Greek audience it would have been obvious which of the two approaches was preferable, Herodotus does not use the incident as proof of Greek superiority. Rather, he illustrates the general maxim, lifted from Pindar, that ‘custom is king’. Herodotus is not likely to have had any reliable information about any actual ethnographic experiment conducted under Darius. If he did, that is in any case not the point of his story. Rather, he wants to suggest that, from an imperial perspective, the Greeks belong to the margins of empire, not simply by virtue of their geographical remoteness (sometimes emphasized in the Achaemenid royal inscriptions, as we have seen), but also by virtue of their strange culture. In Herodotus’ story, cultural difference poses no overt challenge to imperial rule, though Greek readers would no doubt have appreciated how easily burial practices could become a tool of resistance.152 But, at a deeper level, the story is indeed challenging to the empire: the great king (μέγας βασιλεύς), who wants to rule over all people, must come to terms with the fact that custom is actually the true ruler of all (πάντων βασιλεύς). Herodotus illustrates the tension between imperial control and local culture in countless episodes, from the Lydians who must abandon their ancestral customs in order to become part of the Persian Empire, to the Scythians who are so alien culturally that they cannot be incorporated at all.153 Thinking of custom in this way is, however, not a Herodotean invention. The standard iconography of Achaemenid subject peoples acknowledges cultural difference, ostensibly in order to emphasize the exploitability of local culture: the Apadana relief, for example, shows each subject people bringing a specific gift.154 But cultural difference can also express a 151 Hdt. 3.38; for strange burial customs as a sign of marginality in Herodotus see Bichler 2000: 48–9. 152 Sophocles’ Antigone may serve as illustration from Herodotus’ own lifetime; for the social and political dimensions of ancient Greek burial more generally, see I. Morris 1987 and 1992. 153 For the Lydians see Hdt. 1.155–6; for the Scythians Hdt. bk. 4 and Bichler 2000: 69–73, S. West 2002, with further literature. 154 Root 2007 focuses on the Greek contribution (and considers Greek responses to it); for general discussion see Briant 2002: 172–8.

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threat: in Darius’ Behistun relief, the Scythian chief Skunka is placed at the very end of a long line of defeated rebels. He is the tallest, and thus most threatening: indeed, his Scythian pointed cap actually makes him as tall as Darius himself. How to harness and control local difference had long been an issue for the great rulers of the Near East. An inscription of the Assyrian king Esarhaddon shows how powerful this preoccupation was (Esarhaddon 1, col. v.15–25 (Leichty)): su-te-e a-ši-bu-te kul-ta-ri šá a-šar-šú-nu ru-u-qu ki-ma ez-zi ti-ib me-he-e as-su-ha šu-ru-us-su-un ša tam-tum a-na dan-nu-ti-šú KUR-ú a-na e-muqi-šú iš-ku-nu ina sa-par-ri-ia a-a-um-ma ul ú-si na-par-šu-du-um-ma ul ip-par-šid šá tam-ti a-na KUR-i šá KUR-i a-na tam-tim a-šab-šú-nu aq-bi ina qí-bit daš-šur EN-ia man-nu šá it-ti-ia iš-šá-an-na-nu a-na LUGAL-u-ti ù ina LUGAL.MEŠ-ni AD.MEŠ-ia ša ki-ma ia-a-ti-ma šur-ba-ta be-lusu ul-tu qé-reb tam-tim LÚ.KÚR.MEŠ-ia ki-a-am iq-bu-ni umma KA5.A la-pa-an dUTU e-ki-a-am il-lak The Sutû who live in tents and whose home is far away  – like the onset of a raging storm I tore up their roots. Those who had made the sea their stronghold, the mountain their fortress, none escaped my net or managed to get away. Those of the sea I ordered to make the mountain their home, those of the mountain, the sea. By the command of Assur, my lord, what man is there who can rival me in kingship? And who among the kings, my fathers, commanded an empire as great as mine? From out of the sea my enemies spoke thus: ‘Where can the fox go to escape from the sun?’

Esarhaddon adduces three limit cases to his power: the nomadic Suteans who ‘live in tents’; unnamed populations who inhabit the mountains; and finally people who dwell in the sea. All these groups live in marginal locations, and adopt lifestyles that make them hard to control: the tent-dwellers because they live ‘far away’; the inhabitants of the mountain and the sea because they turn their inhospitable surroundings into ‘strongholds’ and ‘fortresses’. Nature here conspires with culture to create pockets of resistance to the empire. Esarhaddon’s response is to break the bond between nature and culture: the mountain dwellers are settled in the sea and vice versa. This is where Xerxes failed: nature prevailed at Salamis, and so did its ally, local culture. Herodotus makes this very clear in a climactic sequence in his Histories, where the Athenians harness the resources of local geography and culture in order to defeat the Persian imperial army – together with a much older imperial discourse. At Histories 7.138, the Persians have already begun their invasion of mainland Greece, and the Athenians ask advice of the Delphic

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oracle. They first receive a response that acknowledges the overwhelming odds they face (Hdt. 7.140): “ὦ μέλεοι, τί κάθησθε; λιπὼν φεῦγ’ ἔσχατα γαίης δώματα καὶ πόλιος τροχοειδέος ἄκρα κάρηνα. οὔτε γὰρ ἡ κεφαλὴ μένει ἔμπεδον οὔτε τὸ σῶμα, οὔτε πόδες νέατοι οὔτ’ ὦν χέρες, οὔτε τι μέσσης λείπεται, ἀλλ’ ἄζηλα πέλει· κατὰ γάρ μιν ἐρείπει πῦρ τε καὶ ὀξὺς Ἄρης, Συριηγενὲς ἅρμα διώκων. πολλὰ δὲ κἆλλ’ ἀπολεῖ πυργώματα κοὐ τὸ σὸν οἶον, πολλοὺς δ’ ἀθανάτων νηοὺς μαλερῶι πυρὶ δώσει, οἵ που νῦν ἱδρῶτι ῥεούμενοι ἑστήκασι, δείματι παλλόμενοι, κατὰ δ’ ἀκροτάτοις ὀρόφοισι αἷμα μέλαν κέχυται, προϊδὸν κακότητος ἀνάγκας. ἀλλ’ ἴτον ἐξ ἀδύτοιο, κακοῖς δ’ ἐπικίδνατε θυμόν.” ‘Wretches, why do you sit here? Escape to the ends of the earth, leaving your homes and the lofty heights at the heart of your city. For neither does the head remain in its place nor the body, nor the feet below, nor the hands, nor anything in between – but all is doomed. Fire will bring it down, and bitter War, hastening in his Syrian chariot. He will destroy many other strongholds too, not yours alone; many temples of the immortals he will give over to raging fire, temples which even now stand streaming with sweat and quivering with fear, and down from the roof-tops dark blood pours, foreseeing inescapable ruin. So leave my temple! Shroud your hearts in misery!’

The Pythia here echoes the rhetoric of terror that is routine in Assyrian royal inscriptions.155 Indeed, reference to the ‘Syrian chariot’ (literally ‘Syrian-born’) points very directly towards Mesopotamian traditions of world conquest: although Herodotus himself distinguishes between ‘Syrian’ and ‘Assyrian’, he explains that the Greeks in general did not (7.63).156 War on its (As)syrian chariot, then, brings fire, fear, blood and sweat. Imperial power is imagined as inevitable and total, and any claims to local exceptionalism are violently quashed (vv. 7–8). The ‘ends of the earth’ alone can offer refuge, as world space is reduced to imperial space. There are distant echoes, here, of a rhetoric of power already 155 As discussed in Liverani 1979, Fales 1982, Zaccagnini 1982, Tadmor 1997. 156 Rollinger 2006 shows that Syria and Assyria were originally one and the same, and that the alternative arose in a context (Cilicia/the northern Levant) where the name Assyria was transcribed differently into different local languages.

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fully exploited in Assyrian royal inscriptions, and especially the Annals of Esarhaddon’s father, Sennacherib. Sennacherib failed to capture many of his most powerful opponents, a potentially embarrassing sign that his power was limited, but he made a virtue of necessity, turning his enemies’ escapes into something of a leitmotiv of his Annals and insisting that those who did get away had to retreat into spaces that could not legitimately be called part of the civilized world.157 To all intents and purposes, they had vanished from the face of the earth. The Pythia’s first response, then, as well as placing the Persian attack in a genealogy of Assyrian Empire, reads strikingly like a piece of Near Eastern propaganda: imperial power is portrayed as irresistible and all-embracing. Local differences are levelled out (πολλὰ δὲ κἆλλ᾽ ἀπολεῖ πυργώματα κοὐ τὸ σὸν οἶον), leaving all earthly space open to violent appropriation. Retreat to ‘the ends of the earth’ is still possible but merely confirms that there is no viable space outside the empire. The Athenians despair of this response and are advised to ask for another, more positive one. And here is the second oracle (Hdt. 7.141): “οὐ δύναται Παλλὰς Δί’ Ὀλύμπιον ἐξιλάσασθαι λισσομένη πολλοῖσι λόγοις καὶ μήτιδι πυκνῆι. σοὶ δὲ τόδ’ αὖτις ἔπος ἐρέω ἀδάμαντι πελάσσας. τῶν ἄλλων γὰρ ἁλισκομένων ὅσα Κέκροπος οὖρος ἐντὸς ἔχει κευθμών τε Κιθαιρῶνος ζαθέοιο, τεῖχος Τριτογενεῖ ξύλινον διδοῖ εὐρύοπα Ζεὺς μοῦνον ἀπόρθητον τελέθειν, τὸ σὲ τέκνα τ’ ὀνήσει. μηδὲ σύ γ’ ἱπποσύνην τε μένειν καὶ πεζὸν ἰόντα πολλὸν ἀπ’ ἠπείρου στρατὸν ἥσυχος, ἀλλ’ ὑποχωρεῖν νῶτον ἐπιστρέψας· ἔτι τοί ποτε κἀντίος ἔσσηι. ὦ θείη Σαλαμίς, ἀπολεῖς δὲ σὺ τέκνα γυναικῶν ἤ που σκιδναμένης Δημήτερος ἢ συνιούσης.” ‘Pallas Athena cannot placate Olympian Zeus, though she begs him with many words and cunning arguments. But I shall tell you this more, and re-enforce my words with adamant: while all else that lies within the borders of Cecrops’ land and the vale of holy Cithaeron is falling to the enemy, far-seeing Zeus gives you, Tritogeneia, a wall of wood. Only this will stand intact and help you and your children. You should not stay and await the advance of the vast host of horsemen and foot soldiers from the mainland, but turn your back 157 Sennacherib, Annals I .16–19 (Borger 1979: 68) provides a headline (his enemies escape ‘like bats’ to some inaccessible place); for other passages see Frahm 1997: 262–3.

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Over the horizon and retreat. The time will come for you to confront them. O blessed Salamis, you will be the death of mothers’ sons either when the seed is scattered or when it is gathered in.’

The Pythia’s second oracle is of equal length to the first and clearly meant to be equivalent to it at some level. Yet it brings a shift in focus, from a predominantly imperial outlook to a more markedly local, Athenian one. We now hear of Pallas Athena, Cecrops’ land, holy Cithaeron, divine Salamis. With these specific deities, heroes and locations (themselves conceived as divine) comes the promise of a stronghold that will remain unscathed (v. 7, μοῦνον ἀπόρθητον τελέθειν). Prima facie, the idea of taking refuge behind a wall of wood seems unpromising: walls are not usually built of wood if they are to withstand the fire of an invading army.158 Herodotus explains that two interpretations were being mooted: the elders recommended that the Athenians make a stand on the acropolis as the ancient core of the city (7.142); whereas professional interpreters recommended abandoning Attica and re-founding Athens elsewhere (7.143). Each group gives voice to its own perspective and allegiance: local in the case of the elders, global in the case of the professionals. Neither interpretation brings anything new: each effectively returns us to the first oracle. What is needed, rather, is a specifically local response that can yet transform imperial space. Themistocles appreciates that local space can be the basis of resistance provided it is both locally owned and yet embedded in imperial space. Importantly, he too pays tribute to Mesopotamian imperial discourse: we recall Esarhaddon’s opponents who ‘made the sea their fortress’.159 Themistocles takes advantage of an ambiguity which has been haunting the empire ever since the days of Sargon: does it include the sea? Can it? Should it? We have seen that Mesopotamian imperial literature never quite resolves this issue, and that the Persians inherited the problem. This is Themistocles’ starting point: he too cedes ground, but appreciates that mention of horses and foot soldiers, and especially the Pythia’s passing reference to the army that comes from ‘the mainland’, suggests that – ominously for the invaders  – social space is already splintering along ancient fault lines. Salamis holds the key, and Salamis is of course an island, not part of the mainland. The wall of wood, finally, translates what is at heart a question of space – imperial vs. local space – into the idiom of cultural 158 Destruction by fire is common in the Assyrian royal inscriptions; see Sennacherib Annals I .79 (Borger 1979: 71), etc. For walls of wood in Herodotus see 4.123 (the Scythian town of wood burned down by the Persians). 159 Above, p. 121.

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difference. As the queen in Aeschylus’ Persians finds out to her dismay, things are done differently in Athens.160 Herodotus does not see the Greeks’ successful resistance to the Persians merely as a matter of innate cultural difference, however. The Athenians, for him, are unique not because they adhere to some strange customs of their own, but because they appropriate and invert the terms of imperial cultural discourse. Unlike the elusive Scythians, and the fish-eating Paeonians in their lake (Hdt. 5.16), they do not simply resist imperial conquest but entrap and destroy the invader. Manning the ‘wall of wood’ and taking to the sea, they engage in what Gayatri Spivak has termed an act of ‘strategic essentialism’, transforming the imperial cliché of the seafaring Yaunā into a powerful weapon against the invader.161 Herodotus frames his account of the wooden walls oracle by arguing that it was Athens who ‘saved’ Greece from the Persians, with the battle of Salamis marking the turning point of the campaign (Hdt. 7.139). The Spartans provide a contrasting foil. As ancient Hellenes par excellence (1.56) and the ones most determined to uphold ancestral custom (7.104), they mount a formidable challenge to the Persians. Yet the Spartans are ultimately ineffectual, both at Thermopylae and in their longer-term plan of manning the Isthmus: without control of the sea, the Peloponnese could not have been defended. At Histories 7.139 Herodotus excoriates the Spartans’ strategic blunder: the war, he suggests, is won, and can only be won, at sea. But that means also that it is won at the level of reading, or rather, of remapping imperial space and its associated notions of local culture. What Herodotus describes in the episode of the wooden wall oracle, the winning move in the war as he himself stresses, is not just a military feat but a discourse of resistance in the making, forged from the co-ordinates provided by imperial space. To the making of Greece, Themistocles contributes an aggressive interpretation of imperial discourse, a hostile appropriation of its claims. At one level, this is of course Herodotus’ own take on the events of 480/79 BC. But his analysis seems to me to be both brilliant and enduring, precisely because it has ancient Near Eastern roots.

Other voices Greek historians did not invent Babylonian history, nor did they create a radically new type of historical thinking. Others had emplotted history   Aeschylus, Persae 235–45.   For Spivak on strategic essentialism see Spivak 1996 and Morton 2007: 126–7.

160 161

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before them, and would continue to do so after the Persian Wars, as becomes obvious in the next chapter.162 Herodotus’ enterprise thus needs to be seen within the wider context of Near Eastern imperial narratives. This is true even when it comes to the definition of Greece itself. The fundamental divide that emerged at the Hellespont, between a free and Greek Europe on one side and a servile and barbarian Asia on the other, cannot be properly understood without paying due attention to the ancient Mesopotamian discourse of empire. This discourse underpins Xerxes’ wild gesture of transcendence – but also informs the response of people whose ‘Greekness’ emerged precisely in dialogue with Mesopotamian imperialism. The new maps of Greek and non-Greek culture that emerged were not created by the Greeks alone, nor were they imposed on a virgin landscape: they were part of many dialogues about empire and resistance, which had very ancient roots indeed. What seems to me to matter, in all this, is the notion that ‘the other’ does speak, and indeed has always already spoken. Herodotus never tires of reminding us that non-Greek voices are important, that they need to be heard and understood. That modern scholars have sometimes read his work as a lonesome projection of purely Greek assumptions onto ‘the other’ seems counterintuitive, especially when we take seriously Herodotus’ own claims. It remains true, of course, that his engagement with Mesopotamian literature was mediated and refracted  – and yet it nevertheless informed some fundamental aspects of his work. For us as readers, more important perhaps than the question of his sources (which, yet again, remains largely unanswered), is a more general sense that ‘other voices’ can be heard in his narrative. Authors before Herodotus had long developed ambitious schemes, in their attempts to account for imperial succession and geographical space, and those schemes informed not just Herodotus, but the Persians too. Xerxes and his advisors invented Greece just as much as Greek authors like Herodotus invented Xerxes. We are fortunate in that many Mesopotamian texts have now been rediscovered, edited and, at times, even translated. Given some patience and attention, they might start speaking to us, as readers of Herodotus, in ways that are both informative and new. My suggestion is that they reveal a complex, criss-crossing ancient conversation about local and global history, space and identity. 162 For Berossos’ revisionist account of the succession of empires from a Babylonian perspective see below, pp. 174–6.

CH APTER three

Scripts from the archive

The archive is a contact zone. Antoinette Burton

This chapter investigates the dialogue between Greek and Mesopotamian literature in a period of closer contact, after the conquests of Alexander the Great. The texts I discuss were produced in an extraordinary period of thirty years at the beginning of the third century B C , when Antiochus I ruled in Babylon, first as co-regent of his father Seleucus, and then as king. I consider how Antiochus enacted the age-old drama of Mesopotamian empire; but I also discuss how his entourage of scribes, chroniclers and historians helped him retrieve and replay the relevant roles from the archives of Mesopotamian literature. This question naturally leads to Berossos, the Babylonian priest who wrote about the history and culture of Mesopotamia for the benefit of Antiochus himself, and a wider Greek readership. Texts that have featured in previous chapters, such as Enūma eliš and Ctesias’ Persica, need to be revisited because they were re-read, and rewritten, in the Hellenistic period. But there are also new texts which deserve greater attention than they have so far received, for they reward literary study. The cuneiform chronicles tend to be described as historically accurate but intellectually and stylistically ‘dry’  – hardly a genre of historiographical literature in its own right. The Antiochus Cylinder, the one royal inscription in cuneiform Akkadian to survive from the Hellenistic period, is often described as a strange relic, echoing a distant past, rather than a product of the Hellenistic imagination. Even Berossos, whose literary aspirations can hardly be denied, has not been treated to an extensive literary interpretation since the emergence of Assyriology in the nineteenth century. Earlier times had been more appreciative of his achievements: in the Renaissance, Berossos was among the most influential of classical authors, inspiring not only the popular fraudster Annio da Viterbo but also such 127

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leading scholars as Joseph Justus Scaliger.1 His popularity persisted until Europe reinvented itself (in the nineteenth century) as something that Berossos most certainly was not: modern and western. The aftershocks of that development are still felt today. Berossos is no longer read, not even among professional classicists and Assyriologists. He is, in fact, a marginal figure in both disciplines: not Greek enough for classicists, not Babylonian enough for Assyriologists, who tend to see his work as a poor reflection of genuine cuneiform sources. The problems must, by now, seem familiar. The contention of this chapter is that if we are interested in the literary dialogue between Greece and Mesopotamia, then Berossos becomes a central figure, rather than a marginal oddity. His active engagement with both Greek and Babylonian literature, and his creative reworking of both, offer a fitting conclusion to my overall exploration.

Acting the part When Alexander the Great arrived in Babylon after the battle of Gaugamela, the city welcomed him with open arms. Alexander reciprocated by acting the part of a good Babylonian king: he arranged for its temples to be restored and spent more time in the city than he lingered anywhere else.2 Contact with local intellectuals was close and, it seems, fruitful too: Alexander repeatedly, and ostentatiously, took advice from Babylonian priests.3 After his death, his successors wrestled for control of this fertile and strategically important area. Eventually, Seleucus emerged as the new king of Babylon:4 the year 311 B C marked the beginning of the so-called ‘Seleucid era’, an ingenious new way of reckoning time by running together the reigns of individual kings within the same dynasty.5 The early Seleucids controlled a vast territory, stretching from the Mediterranean to Bactria. It has sometimes been suggested that their realm had no shape at all;6 but, if anything, we might say that there 1 For Berossos in the Renaissance and early modern period see Grafton 1975, 1990 and 1991: 76–103; W. Stephens 2004; and the literature collected in Whitford 2009: 45 with n. 7. 2 Kuhrt 1990 and 2007, Boiy forthcoming. 3 See Boiy forthcoming, who cites Arrian, Anabasis 3.16.5 and 7.16.5–18.6; Appian, Civil Wars 2.153; Curtius 10.4.6; Diodorus Siculus 17.112; Justin 12.13.3ff.; and Plutarch, Alexander 73. For the story that Callisthenes procured Babylonian writings about astronomy for Aristotle see Simplicius FGrHist 124 T 3, with discussion in Schiffer 1936, Burstein 1984 and Boiy 2004: 309–10. 4 For this process, see Kuhrt and Sherwin-White 1993: 8–14; Kuhrt 1996; Boiy forthcoming. 5 See Kuhrt and Sherwin-White 1993: 27–8, who stress the role of Antiochus I in defining the Seleucid era. 6 Austin 2003: 122–3.

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was a surplus of possible shapes under which it could be described. Paul Kosmin has studied early attempts to map the Seleucid realm: he considers authors such as Demodamas and Patrocles, who wrote about the enormous Iranian hinterland; and Megasthenes, who described India as a land just beyond the Seleucid pale.7 Alternatively, definitions of the Seleucid Empire focused on its core cities and territories: Mesopotamia, with the royal city Seleucia-on-Tigris; and Syria, with Antioch as the empire’s other major urban centre.8 These attempts coexisted with a more dynamic model of westward expansion, which culminated in Seleucus’ widely publicized return ‘home’ to Macedonia in 281 B C . When Seleucus was murdered on the way, his son Antiochus banished any thoughts of regaining Macedonia and focused instead on consolidating what Kosmin has brilliantly called his ‘diasporic empire’.9 It was under Antiochus that we see an astonishing flowering of Babylonian-Greek literature, dealing with the key themes of history, culture and empire. In addressing this literature, I take my initial inspiration from John Ma, who argues that Hellenistic kings were, essentially, actors: ‘Kings appeared in a diversity of local roles and under a diversity of local images, interacting with communities, elites and traditions in the various areas they ruled.’10 Ma documents well the range of roles that the Seleucid actor-kings were required to play: charismatic military leader; patron of sanctuaries the world over; benefactor of priestly elites, or of entire cities and communities (both Greek and non-Greek); patron of Hellas; ‘great king’ of ‘the world’. Ma suggests that the empire’s ability to adjust to local contexts was in itself a source of unifying power;11 though he also insists that role play was neither unilateral nor straightforward: ‘royal power [was] a field of negotiation’,12 with the outcome affecting all parties involved. Ma’s essay provides an important context for my reading of the Babylonian-Greek literature that developed during the reign of Antiochus I. That literature, I argue, provided some of the scripts for imperial role play, helping the emperor harness Mesopotamian tradition in the interest of sustaining his enormous new empire. Antiochus did not just preside over ‘a network of bilateral relationships between the ruling kings 7 Kosmin forthcoming a. Compare attempts to claim the Eastern Ocean by naming it ‘Seleucis’ and ‘Antiochis’: Pliny, Natural History 2.167–8. 8 For North Syria and Mesopotamia as core Seleucid lands since Seleucus, see Austin 2003: 122. North Syria (and perhaps more?) named ‘Seleucis’: OGIS 219. 9 Kosmin unpublished. 10 Ma 2003: 179; for Seleucid kingship see also Bikerman 1938, Edson 1958, Kuhrt and Sherwin-White 1993: ch. 5, Ma 1999, Austin 2003, Erickson and Ramsey 2011. 11 Ma 2003: 186.  12  Ma 2003: 186.

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and the communities in their sphere of power’;13 and Mesopotamia in particular, with its ancient archives, offered unique opportunities for imagining and sustaining the empire as a whole. We saw in Chapter 2 that already the Achaemenids drew on those archives to promote notions of a world united under Persian rule. Persia in turn provided models for the Hellenistic period;14 but, while the Seleucids certainly followed Persian precedent in practice, they also claimed to revive older traditions of empire which had been disrupted by the Achaemenids. Just as the Ptolemies aligned themselves with the last pharaohs, so the Seleucids rediscovered the Neo-Babylonian Empire and modelled themselves on the glamorous figure of Nebuchadnezzar.15 Although he has not featured much in this book so far, Nebuchadnezzar was a national hero in Babylon, at least since the time of Nabonidus.16 The so-called Persian Verse Acount, a pamphlet against Nabonidus written just after the Persian conquest, suggests that, initially, he was invoked as a model for Persian rulers too (P1 col. V I .8’–11’ (Schaudig)): [x x x] x šà-ba-šú ub-lam-ma [x x x t]up-šik-ku bàd tin.tirki uš-tak-lil [x x x ki-m]a md+nà-níg.gub-ùru ina mi-gir šà-bi-šú e-pe-šú [ši-pir-šú u]š-tal-lim hal-si ib-ta-ni ina im-gur-d+en.líl […] he (i.e. Cyrus) desired in his heart […] the brick basket. He perfected the wall(s) of Babylon. [… lik]e Nebuchadnezzar, to do as was his wish [the work of the wall(s) he r]estored. He built bastions on Imgur-Ellil.

To say that Cyrus acted like Nebuchadnezzar gave him the ultimate seal of approval, at least from the Babylonian perspective adopted in the Verse Account. However, Nebuchadnezzar’s example was also used against the Persians: Darius reports that he had to fight two Babylonian

13 Austin 2003: 123.  14  Kuhrt and Sherwin-White 1993: 38–9. 15 Moyer 2011: 87–8 shows that Ptolemaic texts exploited shared Graeco-Egyptian resentment towards Persian kings; see also Lloyd 1982: 175–6 on the Satrap Stele and more generally Kuhrt and Sherwin-White 1993: 39. The Seleucids do not appear to have been as vocal in disowning the Achaemenid past, perhaps because, for them, continuity with Persia was more of an embarrassment. Hostile Greek sources seek to exploit this by casting the Seleucids precisely as the heirs of Persia; see, for example, OGIS 54 ll. 20–2 (the Adoulis Inscription). For the Seleucids’ apparent lack of enthusiasm for Achaemenid traditions of empire see Del Monte 2001: 154, Austin 2003: 128; for continuities between Achaemenid and Seleucid Babylonia see Kuhrt and Sherwin-White 1994. 16 Especially in the Adad-guppi Stele and the Babylon Stele, 3.2 and 3.3a (Schaudig).

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rebels who adopted Nebuchadnezzar’s very name.17 After this Persian/ Babylonian fight over the legacy of Nebuchadnezzar, he disappeared from view for a while. Persian anxieties about a resurgent Babylon may help to account for Nebuchadnezzar’s lack of prominence, and may explain the silence of classical Greek authors: Herodotus and Ctesias knew nothing of Nebuchadnezzar.18 It was only in the early Seleucid period that Nebuchadnezzar made a comeback. Role play was at the heart of his reappearance: successive Seleucid emperors acted the part of a suitably mythologized Nebuchadnezzar. Although the basic script was Mesopotamian, new versions of the Nebuchadnezzar myth soon became available in Greek. The first-generation Seleucid historian Megasthenes had this to say about him (F 1a 715 FGrHist): καὶ Μεγασθένης δὲ ἐν τῆι ᾱ τῶν Ἰνδικῶν μνημονεύει αὐτῶν, δι’ ἧς πειρᾶται τοῦτον τὸν βασιλέα τῆι ἀνδρείαι καὶ τῶι μεγέθει τῶν πράξεων ὑπερβεβηκότα τὸν Ἡρακλέα· καταστρέψασθαι γὰρ αὐτόν φησι Λιβύης τὴν πολλὴν καὶ Ἰβηρίαν. Megasthenes too mentions them (i.e. the deeds of Nebuchadnezzar) in Book 1 of the Indica, in which he tries to show that this king (i.e. Nebuchadnezzar) surpassed Heracles in terms of his valour and the scale of his achievements: for he says that he conquered much of Libya and also Iberia.

In claiming that Nebuchadnezzar was greater than Heracles, Megasthenes invites his Greek readers to view him as the ultimate role model for Hellenistic kings, and creates a precedent for Seleucid westward expansion.19 Megasthenes’ portrayal may have originated in a specific historical context, when Seleucus was forced to relinquish some territories at the eastern fringes of the empire to the Indian king Chandragupta Maurya, in exchange for support with his wars in the west.20 Yet the explanatory power of Nebuchadnezzar as a model for the Seleucid kings endured well beyond that particular historical circumstance.21 Antiochus III, who 17 DB col. I .16 and col. 3.49; Nebuchadnezzar III and IV are also mentioned in other cuneiform sources: see Zawadski 1995. 18 Lanfranchi forthcoming suggests that Herodotus and Ctesias reflect Achaemenid imperial tradition in this regard. 19 For Heracles in the iconography and literature of the early Seleucid Empire see Erickson 2009: 84–6 (Seleucus) and 131–2 (Antiochus I). 20 Strabo 15.2.9; discussed in Kosmin forthcoming a. 21 Nor is Megasthenes likely to have been an isolated case to begin with. As Christopher Tuplin points out, the fact ‘that such ideas got into a work on India says something about the visibility of Nebuchadnezzar in early Seleucid Babylonia’: Tuplin forthcoming. Del Monte 2001 discusses the Seleucids’ predilection for Nebuchadnezzar.

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pushed furthest west of all Seleucid rulers, was presented with a cloak of Nebuchadnezzar upon returning from his European campaign in 187 B C , as duly noted in the Astronomical Diaries, a genre with close connections to Babylonian chronicle literature.22 Antiochus IV’s Egyptian campaign appears to have been mythologized in a similar way: it too was celebrated in Babylonian historiographical literature as an act of unfettered heroism, in the spirit of Nebuchadnezzar.23 Our texts never mention that Antiochus III and Antiochus IV became embroiled with Rome and had to retreat ignominiously. Their silence is understandable, but is hardly a matter of sycophancy alone: there was enough vagueness about what exactly Nebuchadnezzar had done in the west that uncomfortable details could always be elided.24 The example of Nebuchadnezzar shows that the Seleucids were not just following local scripts, but also using Babylonian models to establish their imperial credentials far and wide. Nebuchadnezzar marching west was a useful story in this respect, and it appealed to Greek readers of Megasthenes, just as it worked for Mesopotamian readers of Babylonian chronicle literature. Conquest of the west, however, was not the only way in which Nebuchadnezzar proved useful as a role model. We have already seen, when looking at the Persian Verse Account, that there was a second strand to the Nebuchadnezzar myth, which focused on the king as patron of the walls and temples of Babylon and, closely related, as a pious worshipper of the gods. Seleucid kings were eager to place themselves in that tradition too. In this, they went beyond narrow local acts of accommodation, as we can see from the so-called Ruin of Esagila Chronicle (obverse ll. 4’–8’ (van der Spek and Finkel)): 4’ … u PAD dINNIN 5’ ina muh-hi ni-ip-lu šá É.SAG.GÍL [x iš-k]u-nu ina muh-hi ni-ip-lu 6’ šá É.SAG.GÍL in-da-qut GU4.MEŠ.H[I.A? ù] PAD.dINNIN GIM GIŠ.H UR 7’ KUR Ia-a-ma-nu DÙ-uš lúDUMU LUGAL [lúERÍN.ME]Š-šú gišGIGIR.MEŠ-šú 8’ (u) AM.SI.MEŠ SAH AR.H I.A šá É.SA[G].G[ÍL i]d-de-ku-ú 22 For an introduction to the historical sections of the Astronomical Diaries see van der Spek 1993. For Antiochus receiving the cloak of Nebuchadnezzar see AD 2–187A obv. 11’; cf. Del Monte 1997: 67–8. 23 See especially the formulation šaltāniš ittallak (‘he marched about in triumph’), used of Nebuchadnezzar at Chronicle 24.12–13 and 23 (Glassner) and of Antiochus IV at AD 2–168A 15; cf. Del Monte 1997: 76. For discussion of the astronomical diaries involving Antiochus IV see Gera and Horowitz 1997. 24 Antiochus IV himself glossed over the humiliating ‘Day of Eleusis’ with a spectacular parade in Antioch; see Gruen 1999: 263–4.

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… and an offering on the ruin of Esagila they [arran]ged. On the ruin of Esagila he fell. Oxen [and] a sacrifice in the Greek fashion he offered. The son of the king, his [troop]s, his wagons, (and) elephants removed the debris of Esagila.

Antiochus I, as crown prince, makes sacrifice at the Esagila, the main temple of Marduk in Babylon. What this text shows well is, first, the importance of keeping the Babylonian temples in good repair. In a region where mud brick provided the main building material, restoring the crumbling temples (as also the city walls) was a constant challenge, for which the king had to take responsibility. Secondly, and more surprisingly, perhaps, the text suggests a close link between Babylonian and Greek religion: while conducting what must have been a Babylonian ritual, Antiochus slips on the debris of the unrestored temple. He then offers a Greek sacrifice (lit. ‘in the manner of the land of Yauna’), presumably to propitiate the gods after his inauspicious fall.25 Finally, he clears the debris of the Esagila with ‘his troops, wagons and elephants’, thus involving the entire Seleucid army in a typically Mesopotamian piece of imperial role play.26 What seems remarkable here is the way in which Greek and Babylonian ritual interlaces within the overall setting of Seleucid state religion – or rather, the way in which they are made to interlace in our chronicle text: for we do well to remember that this is a piece of historical literature (however ‘dry’ it might seem), not a transcript of reality.27 Notice the carefully observed sequence of events: a Babylonian ritual leads on to an incident of ill omen, which in turn elicits responses in two religious idioms, one Greek, one Babylonian. The two idioms are not incompatible: they converge, very precisely, around the main temple of Babylon and the person of the king. The Ruin of Esagila Chronicle, then, celebrates the empire’s ability to harness competing cultural idioms. This is still done from a broadly Mesopotamian perspective, and in Akkadian as the ancient language of this type of literature. However, with the story of Antiochus’ fall and his propitiation the chronicler also acknowledges the king’s Greek identity. 25 Erickson 2011: 54–5, who compares Plutarch, Life of Demetrius 29.2 and Appian, Syrian Wars 56; for further discussion and parallels see van der Spek’s commentary in livius.org, ad Ruin of Esagila Chronicle 6’. Van der Spek rightly insists that the Akkadian verb maqātu, ‘slip’, describes an accident (as opposed to prostration, Akk. šukênu), which must have been interpreted as ill-omened. 26 For ‘clearing the debris’ of a temple see, e.g., Nabonidus 2.5 1 I I .29–30 (Schaudig) and the other passages cited in the index of Schaudig 2001, s.v. eperu. Nebuchadnezzar too was keen to advertise his clearing work, and even went so far as claiming that the god Marduk himself cleared the debris of a temple on his behalf: Nebukadnezar Nr. 10, col. i.7–22 (Langdon). The practice persisted under Macedonian rule: Boiy forthcoming. 27 The famed ‘objectivity’ of the Babylonian chronicles notwithstanding, on which see van der Spek 2008.

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And it seems significant that he first turns to the gods in his own idiom of origin, before performing as his new context requires. We saw in Chapter 1 that religion could provide a basis for reconciling cultural differences in the ancient world.28 As Homer claims in the Odyssey, ‘all people need the gods’, and all people could thus come together in worship. Only the godless were excluded, and they hardly existed in the ancient world. Still, the charge of ‘godlessness’ could be, and occasionally was, used as a political tool. The so-called Chronicle of Ptolemy III, composed some fifteen years after the death of Antiochus, may serve as an example of this. It records the invasion of Mesopotamia by a Ptolemaic army in 246/5 B C (obverse ll. 6’–8’ (van der Spek and Finkel)): 6’ AB ITI BI UD 15 [KAM] [l]ú[ERÍN.MEŠ KUR] H a-ni-i [šá l]a a-dir DINGIR.MEŠ šá AN.BAR [giš]TUKUL 7’ lab-šu-’ ú-nu-t[u] MÈ [u kal-b]a-na-tum MAH-tum TA URU Si-lu-ku-’-a 8’ URU LUGAL-ú-tú šá ina muh-hi ÍD UD.KIB.NUN.KIsic ana E.KI KU4.MEŠ-ni In the month Tebêtu, on the fifteen[th] day, the Hanaean [troops, who do n]ot fear the gods, who are clad in iron armour, transferred battle equipme[nt] [and] numerous [siege en]gines from the city of Seleucia, the royal city, which is on the Euphrates, to Babylon.

Two points seem worth making about this passage. One concerns cultural identity: the people whom the chronicler calls ‘Hanaeans’ would almost certainly have thought of themselves as Macedonian Greeks.29 ‘Hanaeans’ is a much-discussed term, and scholars are yet to reach final agreement on its precise use and range of meanings.30 What seems clear is that it originally referred to a nomadic tribe living around the middle Euphrates; and that from early on it was associated with disregard for the gods of Babylon.31 By the Hellenistic period, the actual Hanaeans had become a distant memory, but the name Hanaeans could still be used to describe hostile foreigners.32 Other defunct ethnic labels such as ‘Gutaeans’ worked in a very similar way; as does indeed the term ‘Hun’ in modern idiom. The author of the Ptolemy III Chronicle calls the Ptolemaic soldiers ‘Hanaeans’, thus suggesting that they are entirely different from the army of his master, 28 Above, pp. 44–51.  29  Van der Spek 2003: 298, 305 and 321. 30 For recent discussion and overview see van der Spek 2003, Boiy 2010. 31 Van der Spek 2003: 298, 305. 32 The Dynastic Prophecy, for example, predicts a period of violent ‘Hanaean’ interregnum in Babylonia, after which law and order will be restored; see Grayson 1975: ch. 3, van der Spek 2003: 311–42; more recent discussion in Shayegan 2011: 49–59.

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the Seleucid king (although that army too is actually Macedonian/Greek). The difference, as far as this text is concerned, is above all religious. The Hanaeans, as enemies of Babylon, have no religion at all: we are told, ‘they do not fear the gods’. The Ptolemaic armies who invaded Mesopotamia in 246/5 B C plundered the land and presumably the Babylonian temples too. That much we gather from the classical sources, and indeed from an inscription of Ptolemy III himself, which advertises the recovery of some sacred objects which had been looted by the Persians.33 The author of our chronicle then superimposes the dichotomy Babylonians/Hanaeans onto Graeco-Macedonian Seleucids/Ptolemies. All of a sudden, the Seleucids and their Babylonian subjects are united against a common, supposedly godless enemy. It seems clear, then, that a Mesopotamian discourse of religion and empire helped to define and sustain the early Seleucids. The kings enacted traditional Mesopotamian roles not merely to meet local expectations but also to give their empire a definition and coherence which it might otherwise have lacked. Akkadian authors provided the scripts and in turn interpreted and recorded the public gestures those scripts inspired. Greek authors such as Megasthenes, meanwhile, translated for a Greek audience what some of these gestures meant. What we see here is the rise of a Babylonian-Greek literature, much concerned with the nature of the Seleucid Empire. In what follows I therefore focus first on an Akkadian, and then on a Greek text belonging to that literature.

Antiochus I writes Akkadian The Antiochus Cylinder commemorates the restoration of a major Mesopotamian temple, the Ezida of Nabû in Borsippa (268 B C ).34 Many have claimed that this text ‘continue[s] Babylonian tradition not only in the choice of its material form, language and script but also in its literary content and formulations’.35 More specifically, Paul Kosmin has argued that the Cylinder casts Antiochus as a latter-day Nebuchadnezzar, the prototypical Babylonian king.36 Nebuchadnezzar too had rebuilt the Ezida. Moreover, the god Nabû, who features prominently in the Cylinder, was 33 The classical sources are collected and discussed in van der Spek’s commentary at livius.org; for Ptolemy claiming to have recovered Persian loot, see OGIS 54 ll. 20–2 (the Adoulis Inscription). 34 Edition and commentary in Kuhrt and Sherwin-White 1991 (historical) and van der Spek (philological) at livius.org. 35 Kuhrt and Sherwin-White 1991: 78. 36 Kosmin forthcoming b; for a sceptical view see Stevens forthcoming.

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not just the patron deity of the Neo-Babylonian dynasty as a whole, he was more particularly the patron god of Nebuchadnezzar, who liked to present himself in his inscriptions as narām Nabû, ‘the beloved of Nabû’,37 and whose very name translates as ‘Nabû, protect my heir!’ The Cylinder culminates in an extended prayer to Nabû, in which Antiochus asks for a long life and dynastic continuity. Such prayers standardly round off the inscriptions of Assyrian and Babylonian kings, including those of Nebuchadnezzar himself. They can be read as legitimizing gestures, since a long life and stable reign were the ultimate markers of divine approval. Nebuchadnezzar in fact ruled for forty-three years, more than twice as long as his father or any of his successors,38 so he was clearly favoured by the gods. The dating of the Cylinder suggests that Antiochus was aware of Nebuchadnezzar’s success (Antiochus Cylinder col. i.13–16 (van der Spek and Stol)): ITI ŠE UD 20.KAM MU 43.KAM uš-šu šá É.ZI.DA É ki-i-ni É dAG šá qé-reb BAR.SÌP.KI ad-de-e uš-ši-šu On the twentieth day of the month of Addaru, in year 43, the foundations of Ezida, the true temple, the temple of Nabû which is in Borsippa, I did lay.

Precise dates are not a common feature of Babylonian royal inscriptions, so it seems significant that Antiochus gives one here.39 Scholars usually point out that ‘year 43’ of the Seleucid era corresponds to 268 B C , which is true, but is of course irrelevant from a Seleucid perspective. What mattered then was the number forty-three, and the knowledge that Nebuchadnezzar had reigned for precisely forty-three years. If this is a coincidence, it would certainly have struck many of Antiochus’ Mesopotamian subjects as meaningful: they were painfully aware that Babylonian fortunes took a turn for the worse after Nebuchadnezzar’s death.40 In fact, Greeks could know this 37 Berger 1973: 75. 38 For comparison: Nabopolassar twenty-one years; Amel-Marduk two years; Neriglissar four years, Lā-abâš-Marduk six months, Nabonidus seventeen years. The exceptional length of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign is already noted and exploited in the Adad-guppi Stele of Nabonidus’ mother, at col. 3.2 I I .41 (Schaudig). 39 Babylonian practice, in the royal building inscriptions, is deliberately vague: e.g. ‘now’ (Akk. inanna) at Nabonidus 2.2 I .19 (Schaudig); ‘at that time’ (Akk. inūšu) at Nabonidus 2.1 I .17, 2.3a 1 I .33, 2.5 1 I I .16 (Schaudig). 40 Nabonidus had already portrayed Nebuchadnezzar’s son and successor Amel-Marduk as degenerate: Babylon Stele 3.3a I V .25’-33’ (Schaudig); and compare the Adad-guppi Stele 3.2 2 I I I .12’–23’. Nebuchadnezzar himself appears to have imprisoned his wayward son: Finkel 1999.

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too  – because Berossos had taken care to explain the matter some ten years earlier (Berossos F 8d (146–7) 680 BNJ): Ναβουχοδονόσορος μὲν οὖν … μετήλλαξε τὸν βίον βεβασιλευκὼς ἔτη μγ, τῆς δὲ βασιλείας κύριος ἐγένετο ὁ υἱὸς αὐτοῦ Εὐειλμαράδουχος. οὗτος προστὰς τῶν πραγμάτων ἀνόμως καὶ ἀσέλγως, ἐπιβουλευθεὶς ἀπὸ τοῦ τὴν ἀδελφὴν ἔχοντος αὐτοῦ Νηριγλισάρου ἀνηιρέθη, βασιλεύσας ἔτη β. So, Nebuchadnezzar … died after ruling for forty-three years and his son Amel-Marduk took over the kingship. He ruled in a lawless and depraved manner until his brother-in-law Neriglissar overthrew and killed him after two years in power.

According to Berossos, moral depravity, usurpation and murder descended on the Neo-Babylonian dynasty after the death of Nebuchadnezzar in year forty-three of his reign. Berossos’ narrative was dedicated to Antiochus, and was clearly meant as a warning; the Antiochus Cylinder suggests that the king took that warning seriously, since ‘in year 43’ he sought to please the gods.41 There is good reason, then, to read the Antiochus Cylinder as an example of Babylonian role play: the emperor wears Akkadian clothes. Yet the question arises of how local a text this really was. There is, first of all, the issue of Nebuchadnezzar as a role model: we have seen that by the early 260s he was well known to both Mesopotamians and Greeks. Then there is the issue of religion: Antiochus I developed a distinctive imperial iconography around Apollo as the ancestor of the Seleucid dynasty. Kyle Erickson plausibly suggests that he and his contemporaries already saw Greek Apollo as the equivalent of Mesopotamian Nabû.42 If Erickson is right, Antiochus’ restoration of Nabû’s main temple would certainly have appealed to Greek observers too. The Antiochus Cylinder, then, does not simply dress up a Greek king in Mesopotamian garb, but invites its readers to reflect on the question of how Mesopotamian traditions and institutions relate to the concerns of a universal empire. My point is not simply that Antiochus introduces himself as a ‘king of the world’, thus using a Mesopotamian trope to express his global aspirations. Rather, what seems striking about the Cylinder is that it refuses to take the king’s Mesopotamian credentials for granted. The overall structure of the text is significant in this respect. The Cylinder 41 Peace and harmony did not last, however: Antiochus executed his son for rebellion only one year after the Cylinder was written; see Kuhrt and Sherwin-White 1991: 77. 42 Erickson 2009: 94–103 and 2011: 51–3 (iconography of Apollo); Erickson 2009: 106–20 and 2011: 58–9 (syncretism Apollo-Nabû).

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falls into three main section: a self-introduction on the part of the king (col. i.1–6), an account of his building activities and their circumstances (col. i.7–16), and a concluding prayer (col. i.16–ii.29). This structure is common,43 but the Cylinder is unusual in the proportions of its parts, especially the enormous concluding prayer, which alone takes up forty-three of a total of fifty-nine lines. Some scholars have dismissed this prayer as merely derivative, or worse: Benjamin Foster, for example, calls it ‘stilted’.44 This dismissive description does not actually explain the proportions of the text.45 Antiochus’ relationship with ‘his’ god Nabû in the Antiochus Cylinder needs more careful scrutiny. In his self-introduction, Antiochus does not mention any gods at all. By Mesopotamian standards, that is strange,46 as is the fact that no gods are involved in the preparations for the building work. Indeed, Antiochus does not give any of the standard reasons for why the temple needed rebuilding (e.g. it was old; the king received a divine command; successful campaigns have provided him with ample building materials). All we hear is that the king wished to build Esagila and Ezida (col. i.6–13 (van der Spek and Stol)): i-nu-ma a-na e-pé-eš15 É.SAG.ÍL ù É.ZI.DA ŠÀ-bi ub-lam-ma SIG4.H I.A É.SAG.ÍL ù É.ZI.DA i-na KUR H a-at-tim ina ŠUII-iá el-le-ti i-na Ì.GIŠ ru-uš-ti al-bi-in-ma a-na na-di-e uš-šú šá É.SAG.IL ù É.ZI.DA ub-bi-il When my heart bade me build Esagila and Ezida I moulded the bricks for Esagila and Ezida in the Land of Hatti (i.e. Syria) with pure hands and with fine oil; and to lay the foundations of Esagila and Ezida I brought them.

Kathryn Stevens points out that Antiochus has reduced the standard construction ‘when … then’ (Akk. inu … inūšu) which, in Neo-Babylonian 43 See Da Riva 2008: 92–3. 44 Foster 2005: 866; cf. Foster 2007: 87. 45 Or its many other surprising features, for that matter, including Antiochus’ mention of Queen Stratonice, which has attracted much comment – I return to it below, p. 174. 46 As Stevens, forthcoming, rightly notes; for general discussion see Da Riva 2008: 28–9.

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inscriptions, justifies the building project in terms of external factors (typically divine will, or the state of the old temple), to a single clause which advertises the king’s decision (‘when my heart bade me’).47 The overall impression is that the king alone acts and decides on what to do. This impression is further strengthened by the fact that ubil (‘I brought’) in l. 13 takes up libbī ublam in l. 8 (lit. ‘my heart brought’, a common Akkadian idiom for ‘I wished’); and by the fact that Antiochus sources the bricks in the ‘Land of Hatti’, a traditional Mesopotamian expression for (northern) Syria. Antiochus seems to combine two ancient Mesopotamian motifs: that of the king himself inaugurating the building work, and that of the king using the spoils of his victorious campaigns to patronize the temples of Mesopotamia.48 Nebuchadnezzar’s wars in the ‘Land of Hatti’ (as the Akkadian chronicles have it) may well be in the background here,49 especially given Antiochus’ own western campaigns now known as the ‘First Syrian War’ (280/79 and 274–1 B C ).50 It is all the more remarkable, therefore, that Antiochus does not in fact bring any spoils. This is not the first we hear of Antiochus’ role as patron of the Babylonian temples, nor is it the last. Already in line three he had introduced himself as ‘caretaker of Esagila and Ezida’ (Akk. zānin Esagila u Ezida), a traditional title of the Neo-Babylonian kings which describes them as patrons of the Marduk temple in Babylon and the temple of Nabû in Borsippa.51 This seems to be a classic case of imperial role play, borne out by what follows immediately after. Yet we have seen that there are complications when it comes to Antiochus’ actual support for the temple, and by the end of the inscription things get even more complicated. Antiochus revisits his commitment to the two temples in the context of his great prayer to Nabû (col. ii.17–21 (van der Spek and Stol)): KUR.KUR.MEŠ TA si-it dUTU-ši a-di e-re-eb dUTU-ši lik-šú-da ŠUII-a-a man-da-at-ti-ši-nu lu-us-ni-iq-ma 47 Stevens forthcoming; for the construction inu-inūšu in Neo-Babylonian inscriptions see Da Riva 2008: 57–9 and 96. 48 For the former see Kuhrt and Sherwin-White 1991: 79–80; for the latter see Berossos’ description of Nebuchadnezzar at F 8a 680 BNJ, discussed below, pp. 165–6. 49 Chronicle 24 (Glassner). 50 For the so-called First Syrian War see Kuhrt and Sherwin-White 1993: 35–6, who point out at p. 37 that ‘it is probably no accident that Antiochus’ building at Borsippa (and Babylon) was undertaken after the Syrian War’. 51 For zānin Esagila u Ezida in the Neo-Babylonian inscriptions see Da Riva 2008: 94 (‘the standard epithet of the dynasty’); details in Da Riva 2008: 107 and Berger 1973: 73 (Nabopolassar), 76 (Nebuchadnezzar), 82 (Nabonidus). The epithet seems to have been particularly popular with Nebuchadnezzar.

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Scripts from the archive a-na šuk-lu-lu É.SAG.IL ù É.ZI.DA lu-bi-il May my hands conquer the countries from sunrise to sunset that I might collect their tribute and bring it to make perfect Esagila and Ezida.

Here again, Antiochus describes himself as the patron of two of the main temples of Mesopotamia at the time, Esagila and Ezida. However, the promise to act as a proper Neo-Babylonian ruler, a latter-day Nebuchadnezzar in effect, now turns out to be conditional upon the support of the god Nabû: the king has made a first gesture of commitment, but as yet without bringing spoils, and that alone is not sufficient. The details are important here: what Antiochus has brought for Nabû after his exertions in Hatti (Akk. abālu, ‘bring’ at i.13), are bricks for laying the foundations of Esagila and Ezida. He does not yet claim to have perfected the temples. That will follow once he is able to bring (Akk. abālu, again, at ii.21) the fruits of his future conquests (Akk. šuklulu, ‘perfect’, at ii.20). The king’s hands may be pure now (Akk. ina qātīya ellēti at i.10), but they will need to become conquering hands too if things are to go further (Akk. likšudā qātāya at ii.18–19). The god is called upon to make this possible, the ‘pure hands’ of the king deserve a ‘pure mouth’ (Akk. ina pîka elli at ii.16). Universal kingship is not something that Antiochus can simply ‘bring’ to Borsippa: Nabû needs to confirm and ratify the claims of the opening lines. Trust is required here, and trust is in fact a central theme in the text: Nabû’s temple at Borsippa was called the Ezida, a Sumerian expression which translates into Akkadian as bītu kīnu, the ‘true/legitimate temple’.52 The Cylinder translates the Sumerian temple name into Akkadian three times (i.15, ii.7, ii.23). Its meaning evidently mattered.53 Words derived from the same root as Akkadian kīnu appear also at ii.10–11, ii.13, ii.15; and, throughout the concluding prayer, emphasis is placed on the unalterable word of Nabû (e.g. Akk. qibītu ša lā innennû at i.23–4; cf. ii.10–11). At the end of the Antiochus Cylinder, the king expresses the hope that Nabû will endorse his aspirations: ina pîka, ‘in your mouth’, are the very last words of the text. Much has been written about the royal speech act 52 George 1993: 155. 53 Translation of the Sumerian temple name is not a unique feature of this text, but Antiochus’ insistence on it is unusual.

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as a privileged way of exercising imperial power in the Hellenistic world.54 Here we end with the prospect of a divine speech act. Antiochus, it seems, has used the traditional building blocks of the Neo-Babylonian royal inscription to create a distinctive new narrative: after the king’s unilateral gesture of commitment, the god must complete what he has begun. His temple must prove itself to be ‘truly’ a bītu kīnu, so that Antiochus may truly become the ‘caretaker of Esagila and Ezida’. On a fairly basic model of role play, Seleucid kings adopted local idiom to meet local expectations and impose their will. My reading of the Antiochus Cylinder suggests that this model is not entirely adequate. In this text, royal self-assertion quickly gives way to prayer: the king has spoken, now the god must speak. The onus is on Nabû to ensure that the king can expand ‘from sunrise to sunset’ (another traditional trope of world rule) and bring back the spoils to finish off the work on the temples. Imperial role play, in this text, is not a matter of empire talking down to the local population. Rather, what we see is a careful process of negotiation between the king, his god and those who can speak on the god’s behalf and support the king in his future campaigns. The Cylinder itself does not tell us who advised the king and helped him present his actions and aspirations in such an elaborate Akkadian idiom. But a Babylonian chronicle fragment sheds some light on the matter (Chronicle Concerning Antiochus and the Sîn Temple, obverse ll. 8–12 (van der Spek and Finkel)): 8 [ITI .. UD .. K]AM DUMU LUGAL šá É UŠ-tum ina qí-bi šá 1-en lú DUMU E.[KI] 9 [.. .. .. .. ..] gi-nu-ú šá 30 É.GIŠ.NU11.GAL u 30 EN.TE. [EN.NA .. .. ..] 10 [mAn-ti-’-uk-s]u DUMU LUGAL ina É d30 É.GIŠ. NU11.GAL u É [d30 EN.TE.EN.NA] 11 [KU4 DUM]U LUGAL MU-/tim\ uš-kin-nu DUMU LUGAL 1-en UDU.NITA ana nin-[da-be-e .. .. ..] 12 [.. .. uš-ki]n-nu ina É d30 É.GIŠ.NU11.GAL u É d30 EN.T[E.EN.NA .. .. ..] [Month .., ..]th [day], the crown prince at the instruction of a certain Bab[ylonian] [performed] regular [offerings] for Sîn of Egišnugal and Sîn of Enit[enna]. [Antiochu]s, the son of the king, [entered] the temple of Sîn of Egišnugal and the tem[ple of Sîn of Enitenna] [and the s]on of the king aforementioned prostrated himself. The son of the king [provided] one sheep for the offering [of Sîn and he pro]strated himself in the temple of Sîn, Egišnugal, and in the temple of Sîn, En[itenna].

54 Bertrand 1990, Ma 1999, who rightly stresses the interplay between the king’s utterances and those of his subjects (ch. 4).

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Antiochus is performing a Babylonian ritual, apparently during his time as co-regent to his father, Seleucus. He visits the temples of the moon god Sîn in Babylon, makes offerings and prostrates himself. Antiochus’ actions are not remarkable in themselves, nor are we surprised by the studied precision with which they are recorded (we might say ‘dramatized’) in the text: all that is expected. We are not surprised either to learn that the prince acted on the advice of a Babylonian expert: that too was never in doubt. Striking, rather, is the fact that the Babylonian expert is mentioned, that he is given an explicit role in this mini-drama about the exercise of proper kingship. We are meant to see him, and appreciate that Antiochus acts according to his ‘instruction’ (Akk. ina qībi). What was unacknowledged ventriloquism in the Antiochus Cylinder is here staged as an exchange between king and local expert. Antiochus’ advisor is not named. All we hear about him is that he was ‘a certain Babylonian’ (lit. ‘a son of Babylon’). Already Nabonidus reports consulting unnamed ‘sons of Babylon and Borsippa’ – and explains that these were ‘wise men and experts’.55 The primary audience of the Sîn Chronicle, the priests and scribes of the major Mesopotamian temples, hardly needed such a gloss. The same episode recorded in Greek, and for a Greek audience, would have called for an altogether different explanatory apparatus – especially if the ‘Babylonian man’ was himself addressing a Greek readership; and if he offered not just a piece of ad hoc advice, but a guided tour around the ancient archives of Babylon as a whole. That is arguably what Berossos of Babylon promises in his Babyloniaca, the second major text I wish to study in this chapter. And in this text the ‘Babylonian expert’ comes into even sharper focus.

Berossos writes Greek Berossos’ work is largely lost, and his life is shrouded in mystery. We do not even know his real name,56 though we do know that he lived during the reign of Alexander the Great and the first two Seleucid kings, and that he wrote a work about Babylonian history and culture, the Babyloniaca. The Babyloniaca was written in Greek, and for a Greek audience, yet from a self-consciously Mesopotamian perspective. Berossos describes himself as a Babylonian and a priest of Bel (T 2 BNJ). According to Vitruvius, he later moved to the Aegean island of Cos to open a school of astronomy. 55 Nabonidus 2.13 I .55’-6’ (Schaudig). 56 ‘Berossos’ is a Greek rendering of an Akkadian name. Our best guess is that his fellow Babylonians may have known him as Bēl-rē’ûšunu (‘Bel is their shepherd’), but this is not certain.

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Pliny the Elder mentions a statue which the Athenians set up to celebrate his powers of prophecy; and Pausanias makes him the father of the Sibyl.57 With Pausanias we are plainly in the realm of mythmaking. Whether Vitruvius or Pliny are any more trustworthy has been debated.58 Whatever we make of their testimonies, it is not implausible that Berossos had connections with the astronomers of the Esagila while in Babylon, and he must certainly have had some connection with, or at least an interest in, the Seleucid court, for he dedicated his Babyloniaca to Antiochus I (T 2 BNJ). Also, clearly, he knew Greek – and (as I go on to discuss) a range of Greek literary texts. We can reconstruct that the Babyloniaca was a history of Babylon in three books. After an opening section on the geography and culture of Babylonia, Book 1 describes how the world came into being. Book 2 takes the story from the first king Aloros down to Nabonassaros/Nabû-naşir (i.e. the eighth century B C ). Book 3 outlines the more recent history of Babylon, from the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser III, or Pulu, down to Alexander. In putting together his account, Berossos draws extensively on cuneiform Mesopotamian (i.e. Akkadian and Sumerian) sources. These shape his narrative, making for a varied reading experience: much of the colourful account of Book 1 is based on the Babylonian Epic of Creation (Enūma eliš), while the rather arid Book 2 reflects the style of Akkadian and Sumerian king lists. Book 3, finally, owes much in tone and content to the inscriptions of important Babylonian kings, especially Nebuchadnezzar and Nabonidus. Unfortunately, the Babyloniaca as a whole is lost, and all we have are fragments which are sometimes corrupt, often difficult to interpret and almost always at some remove from the original text. In this already very complicated picture of transmission, a group of fragments dealing with astronomical matters (in the broadest sense) pose a special set of problems. Scholars have long questioned the authenticity of these fragments (15–22 BNJ), on the grounds that they seem rather general and do not reflect cutting-edge Babylonian astronomy of the third century B C .59 However, in the case of Berossos what might be meant by ‘authenticity’ needs to be questioned at a more fundamental level than the debate on 57 Vitruvius, On Architecture 9.6.2 = T 5 BNJ; Pliny, Natural History 7.123 = T 6 BNJ; Pausanias, Description of Greece 10.12.9 = T 7 BNJ. 58 The sojourn in Cos at least seems entirely plausible. Although doubted by Kuhrt 1987, van der Spek 2008: 288 rightly points out that this kind of movement was common in the Hellenistic period; for the Chaldaean Sudines who lived and worked in Pergamon not long after Berossos, see below, p. 178. 59 Kuhrt 1987; Steele forthcoming.

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the astronomical fragments suggests. Berossos himself insists that he faithfully transmits the ancient archives of Babylon, yet in some cases his ‘faithfulness’ seems to limit itself to authenticating gestures calculated to impress his Greek readers. The astronomical fragments may well fall in this category: Greek readers knew that astronomy as a science had originated in Mesopotamia and associated it with ‘Chaldaean’ experts. It is therefore possible that Berossos pitched the astronomical fragments to Greek readers who cared little about cutting-edge Babylonian astronomy, but demanded reassurance that he was an ‘authentic’ Chaldaean, astronomy and all. Alternatively, general astronomical knowledge might have been attributed to him because he was known to be a Chaldaean, and was therefore expected to have dealt with the subject. In short, the question of what is authentically Babylonian in Berossos is inextricable from his attempt to engage a politically dominant Greek readership. Before Akkadian and Sumerian were deciphered, some suspected that Berossos had made up his narrative for a Greek readership without any regard at all for authentic Mesopotamian sources.60 Now that his text can be compared with actual Akkadian and Sumerian texts, it is quite clear that he knew them and used them – though how he used them remains an important question.61 Here is how Berossos’ most recent editor, Geert de Breucker, assesses his work: Berossos’s goal was a propagandistic history of his land and culture. He claimed that what he had done was to provide an authentic history based on very old native traditions and sources. As we have seen, Berossos did indeed use very old (cuneiform) material. At the same time, however, Berossos tailored his work to the Greek way of thinking. He wrote in Greek and used a Greek genre (historiography/ethnography). He even adopted Greek concepts, such as the prototype of the cultural hero, and Greek ideas about the East. This combination of local traditions and Greek influences is characteristic of all the other native writers. It can be seen as being a typical Hellenistic phenomenon in the sense that local and Greek elements are intermingled.62

De Breucker is right to insist that Berossos’ work is culturally composite, despite his own protestations that he faithfully followed Babylonian sources. He also rightly points out that Berossos resembles other historians 60 E.g. Ersch and Gruber 1818, cited in Ruffing forthcoming. 61 For discussion see Komoroczy 1973; Drews 1975; Kuhrt 1987; van der Spek 2008; De Breucker 2003a and his commentary in BNJ; Frahm 2010; Haubold, Lanfranchi, Rollinger and Steele forthcoming, especially the contribution by Dalley. 62 De Breucker 2003a: 31–2, who builds on Fornara 1983: 39–40.

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and ethnographers of the classical and early Hellenistic period.63 He certainly knew Ctesias (more on their relationship below), and quite possibly knew Megasthenes, whose Indica may have served as a model for his own Babyloniaca.64 He may also have known Manetho’s Aegyptiaca: the two works display striking similarities, so it is likely that one influenced the other.65 In short, then, the Babyloniaca formed part of a broader phenomenon of ‘native ethnography’. There is, however, a risk in applying broad assumptions about such ethnographic works without due attention to the specific context of each. De Breucker’s willingness to use broad-brush categories such as ‘propaganda’, ‘the Greek way of thinking’ and ‘native writers’ seems worrying in view of what we already know about Babylonian-Greek literature at the time of Antiochus I. As Gianni Lanfranchi reminds us, there are important differences even between the Babyloniaca and the Aegyptiaca.66 More generally, I would argue that, before treating Berossos as a ‘typical Hellenistic phenomenon’ (de Breucker’s phrase), we may want to understand how the Babyloniaca makes sense as a text in its Seleucid Babylonian context. Here it may be useful to revisit the notion of role play that we encountered when considering Hellenistic kings. The subjects and advisors of the role-playing king, I now argue, were themselves actors in the drama of empire. We saw in Chapter 2 that, from the classical period onwards, there was a powerful essentialist strand in Greek thought which cast non-Greeks as barbarians, people who by virtue of their language and culture were essentially inferior to Greeks. Even somebody as intelligent as Aristotle could claim – shockingly to us – that all barbarians were natural slaves.67 Did these views matter to Berossos? Much depended, as ever, on context. Greeks of the early Hellenistic period regarded Babylonian priests as guardians of ancient wisdom,68 and the same Aristotle who thought of all non-Greeks as natural slaves also held that ‘the Chaldaeans among the Babylonians or Assyrians’ were among those who invented philosophy.69 ‘Chaldaeans’ is a problematic notion, and one that does not translate well: 63 On this point see also Drews 1973, Bichler 2007. 64 Kosmin forthcoming a. 65 Partly for that reason, the two works have often been edited, translated and read in tandem. E.g. Verbrugghe and Wickersham 1996; Dillery 2007. Many scholars now accept that Berossos came first, but the question of priority remains unresolved: see Moyer forthcoming. 66 Lanfranchi forthcoming. 67 See Fortenbaugh 1977, N. D. Smith 1983, Garver 1994, Schofield 1999, Heath 2008. 68 De Breucker 2003a: 30–1. 69 Quoted in Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers 1.1; cf. Strabo, Geography 3.7, with discussion in Erler 2011.

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in Greek thought it was (often rather vaguely) associated with Mesopotamia and its priests since at least the classical period.70 In Akkadian, by contrast, the corresponding word Kaldu referred to the southern Mesopotamian tribe that gave rise to the Neo-Babylonian dynasty of Nebuchadnezzar II.71 Berossos seems to have been aware of both usages, and even suggested a way of combining them.72 He certainly played to Greek preconceptions about Babylonian priests as a source of esoteric knowledge. Even his self-description as a ‘priest of Bel’ may not be entirely neutral (T 2 BNJ). There was no such office as ‘a priest of Bel’ in Babylon, though there was of course a wide range of personnel attached to the main temple of Marduk, the Esagila.73 Perhaps Berossos was the šatammu of the Esagila, the official in charge of the temple as a whole.74 But the point is that he seems to have introduced himself in typically Greek rather than Mesopotamian terms. ‘Priests of Bel’ are familiar from the classical authors Herodotus and Ctesias, where they are portrayed as masters of prophecy and experts in Mesopotamian lore. Here, then, we find a first indication that Berossos plays to Greek expectations: as a ‘priest of Bel’ he was in a good position to speak truth to his king about Mesopotamian history and culture. Book 1 of the Babyloniaca seems calculated to build on that. After an ethnographic section, Berossos reports how the super-sage Oannes emerged from the Southern Ocean in year one of human history, and how he taught mankind the arts of civilization. Berossos then proceeds to give a taste of Oannes’ teachings by recounting the history of the world and, probably, much more besides. How much more is, given the state of our evidence, difficult to establish. Some scholars argue that Oannes covered astronomy in Book 1 of the Babyloniaca, and that many of our so-called astronomical fragments belong in that context.75 Others disagree.76 There can, however, be no disagreement about the cosmogonic parts of Oannes’ teachings because here we have Berossos’ Babylonian source text, the Epic of Creation or Enūma eliš. In Chapter 1 I argued that Enūma eliš belongs to a set of ancient texts which expressed a broadly shared understanding of the divine cosmos 70 See van der Waerden 1972, Kuhrt 1982, Thomsen 1988, Erler 2011. 71 For Kaldu see Edzard 1977. Jursa 2007b casts doubt on the established view that the Neo-Babylonian kings came from Kaldu. 72 See below, pp. 153–63: the Chaldaeans as a priestly collective took charge of the archive of human wisdom after losing their (ethnically) Chaldaean king. 73 Ringgren 1979: 151.  74  Van der Spek 2000: 439. 75 E.g. Burstein 1978; see also above, pp. 143–4. 76 E.g. Kuhrt 1987; for recent discussion see Steele forthcoming.

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and man’s place in it. Now, Berossos returns precisely to this text in order to introduce Greek readers to Mesopotamian history and culture. I have already mentioned that Berossos opens his narrative in the terms favoured by Greek ethnographic writing: he describes its geographical position, its fauna, its customs. The ethnographic gaze is discretely sanitized (the extant fragments hardly suggests that Berossos offered Babylonian wonders of the type we find in Herodotus or Ctesias), but he allows Greek readers to encounter Mesopotamia as outsiders, without any adjustments to their own sense of cultural belonging. Soon, however, this description of a foreign culture acquires historical depth; and that in turn brings about a dramatic shift from the purely local to the truly global. We see here the same complex interplay that we have already observed in the Antiochus Cylinder: just as Antiochus’ kingship was rooted in Babylon but acquired global significance, so the wisdom that Berossos has to impart is both Mesopotamian and universal. How, then, did Berossos take his Greek readers along on this journey from ethnography to the origins of the universe? It was not sufficient that Enūma eliš was a staple of Babylonian scribal culture,77 crucially important to Babylonian religion78 and foundational to kingship as an institution.79 All that was familiar, and important, in Mesopotamia – but did not immediately speak to readers of Greek. In a Babylonian context, the fish-man Oannes was likewise well known, as a sage, mythical author of important archival texts and teacher of kingship, even though, from a Greek perspective, he was quite strange.80 Beate Pongratz-Leisten has shown that successive Assyrian kings claimed the wisdom of Oannes (or Adapa, as he was also called) for themselves.81 Under the Babylonian king Nabonidus, he became the focus of heated debates regarding proper royal behaviour: texts favourable to Nabonidus presented the king as an expert reader of Oannes’ alleged masterpiece, the astrological omen collection Enūma Anu Ellil.82 Hostile sources, on the other hand, alleged that Nabonidus thought he knew better than Oannes, and that he introduced a perverse cult unknown to the great sage as a result.83 As Berossos himself 77 See above, p. 18.  78  Dietrich 2006. 79 Babylonian kings answered very directly to the divine king Bel-Marduk at the New Year’s Festival, where Enūma eliš was solemnly performed on a regular basis: Zgoll 2006, with further literature, and below, p. 164. 80 For Oannes/Uan – Adapa in Mesopotamian thought see Streck 2003–5; for Oannes as author see below, n. 82. 81 Pongratz-Leisten 1999: 309–20. 82 Royal Chronicle P4 col. I I I .2’-5’ (Schaudig). For Oannes/Uan – Adapa as the author of Enūma Anu Ellil see Machinist and Tadmor 1993. 83   Persian Verse Account P1 col. I I .2’–5’ and col. V .8’–15’ (Schaudig).

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points out, Oannes knew everything that was worth knowing (F 1 (4) 680 BNJ), so claiming better insights than Oannes was simply foolish. By casting Oannes as an internal narrator, Berossos implies that his work is far more than a mere handbook of Babylonian ethnography and history: it is meant as a Fürstenspiegel, a full-blown introduction to the art of legitimate kingship. But, from a Greek perspective, Oannes was quite baffling. Once again the question poses itself: how, if at all, could any of this work for a Greek audience? Geert de Breucker has pointed out that Berossos cast Oannes as a culture hero in the Greek tradition, a prōtos heuretēs; and that he adds a ‘zoological’ gloss in the manner of Aristotle to explain how this creature could survive both in water and on land.84 These are important observations, for they show that Berossos made an effort at cultural translation; but they hardly capture the brilliant balancing act that he performs with his paraphrase of Enūma eliš. Berossos, I argue, illustrates the universal scope of Babylonian creation epic by turning it into (Greek) philosophy  – and himself into a Greek philosopher along the lines of his contemporary, the Stoic Zeno. In his account of creation, he describes the universe as being created from two main forces, Tiamat and Bel. Tiamat provides the matter from which Bel shapes all things. She is female, he is male; she is passive, he is active; she is chaotic, dark and watery, he is orderly, bright and airy. In Babylonian terms, this is not a bad paraphrase of Enūma eliš, though it skips over the opening genealogies and radically condenses the rest of the narrative. Some of this work of condensation may not be down to Berossos, but rather Alexander Polyhistor, the first-century B C compilator from whom we know Berossos’ work. Polyhistor had little reason to preserve details of Berossos’ account when they did not suit his sensationalist agenda.85 But even the abridged version of Babyloniaca Book 1 that Polyhistor passed on to Eusebius still betrays signs of Berossos’ original approach: what Berossos seems to have done is to extract two cosmic principles from the jumble of divine characters in Enūma eliš. The resulting account of creation strikingly resembles Stoic physics as formulated by Berossos’ contemporary Zeno of Citium. For Zeno too, the universe was based on two entities, matter and god. Like Bel in Berossos, Zeno’s god was active, male, the shaping principle that pervaded matter; and like Berossos’ Tiamat, Stoic matter was passive, female, waiting to be dissected and moulded.86   De Breucker in BNJ ad F 1b (4); cf. De Breucker 2003a: 28–9.   For Polyhistor treating the Babyloniaca as a source of mirabilia see Schironi forthcoming.   SVF I 88 (= Chalcidius 292); cf. SVF I I 300 (= Diogenes Laertius 7.134), Chalcidius 293.

84 85

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Sceptics might object that this convergence between Berossos and Zeno could as well be pure coincidence; after all, there are only so many ways one can imagine a cosmogony, and this kind of ‘Stoic’ opposition between Marduk and Tiamat was of course prefigured in Enūma eliš itself. As ever with Berossos, we also have to allow for the distorting effects of paraphrase and condensation: who knows what Polyhistor and Eusebius, these unlikely bed-fellows, precisely did with the Babyloniaca. On the face of it, however, it seems that they reported his work rather faithfully: it is quite easy to map their quotations from Berossos onto Enūma eliš and other cuneiform sources they could not have known. We can therefore also trust that the connections between Berossos and the Greek philosophical tradition reflect his work: there was no reason for Polyhistor the grammarian and paradoxographer, or Eusebius the church father, to add a Stoic tinge to Berossos’ work. Thus, despite the uncertainties of transmission and the general state of our evidence, there is good reason for believing that Berossos really did cast himself as a philosopher in the mould of a Zeno. After all, his reading of Enūma eliš was not the only possible one, nor was Berossos the first to isolate cosmic principles from the poem. A generation or so earlier, Aristotle’s pupil Eudemos of Rhodes had interpreted it as follows (Eudemos fr. 150 (Wehrli)): τῶν δὲ βαρβάρων ἐοίκασι Βαβυλώνιοι μὲν τὴν μίαν τῶν ὅλων ἀρχὴν σιγῆι παριέναι, δύο δὲ ποιεῖν Ταυθὲ καὶ Ἀπασών, τὸν μὲν Ἀπασὼν ἄνδρα τῆς Ταυθὲ ποιοῦντες, ταύτην δὲ μητέρα θεῶν ὀνομάζοντες, ἐξ ὧν μονογενῆ παῖδα γεννηθῆναι τὸν Μωϋμίν, αὐτόν, οἶμαι, τὸν νοητὸν κόσμον ἐκ τῶν δυεῖν ἀρχῶν παραγόμενον, ἐκ δὲ τῶν αὐτῶν ἄλλην γενεὰν προελθεῖν, Δαχὴν καὶ Δαχόν, εἶτα αὖ τρίτην ἐκ τῶν αὐτῶν, Κισσαρὴ καὶ Ἀσσωρόν, ἐξ ὧν γενέσθαι τρεῖς, Ἀνὸν καὶ Ἴλλινον καὶ Ἀόν· τοῦ δὲ Ἀοῦ καὶ Δαύκης υἱὸν γενέσθαι τὸν Βῆλον, ὃν δημιουργὸν εἶναί φασιν. Among the barbarians, the Babylonians appear to pass over the idea of a single principle in silence and instead to assume two principles of the universe, Tauthe (~ Tiamat) and Apason (~ Apsu), making Apason the husband of Tauthe, and calling her the mother of the gods. Of these was born an only-begotten son, Moumis (~ Mummu), who, it seems, brought about the intelligible universe from the two first principles. The same parents also gave rise to another generation, Dache and Dachos (~ Lahmu and Lahamu); and yet another, Kissare and Assoros (~ Kišar and Anšar), who in turn had three sons, Anos (~ Anu), Illinos (~ Ellil) and Aos (~ Ea). Aos and Dauke (~ Damkina) begot a son called Belos (~ Bel-Marduk) who they say is the demiurge.

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Like Berossos, Eudemos reads Enūma eliš as an account of physics and singles out two cosmic principles, one male one female.87 However, unlike Berossos he identifies these principles with Tiamat and Apsu, rather than Tiamat and Bel, and focuses on the opening genealogy of the gods rather than on Tablets I V –V I of Enūma eliš, which describe the battle among the gods and the creation of the world and man. Judging by Polyhistor’s summary, Berossos seems to have skipped over those early genealogies; or at least to have shifted the main weight of his paraphrase elsewhere. It may seem hazardous to argue from absence in a text as badly mutilated as the Babyloniaca. However, the entire thrust of Polyhistor’s narrative, including the framing account of Oannes, seems to suggest that the primordial soup of F 1b (6) 680 BNJ, and the monsters in it, really did come first. There is another feature of Berossos’ narrative which sets him apart from Eudemos: he translates the names of Babylonian deities into their Greek equivalents.88 Unlike his forerunner, Berossos was clearly interested in making his account accessible to a wider Greek audience. This leads me to my second reason for thinking that Berossos was quite actively modelling himself on contemporary Greek philosophers, and that is his method of reading myth, as encapsulated in the phrase, ‘but he says that this amounts to an allegorical account of physics’ (F 1b (7) 680 BNJ). Whether or not Berossos himself said ἀλληγορικῶς πεφυσιολογῆσθαι,89 the notion is clearly attributed to him, and the remains of his text bear evidence: he, and not Polyhistor, must have translated Omorka/Tiamat into Greek θάλασσα, hardly a mythological figure in the Greek imagination.90 More generally, the thrust of Berossos’ reading of Enūma eliš seems to be rationalizing in a way that indeed recalls contemporary Greek philosophy. Berossos was hardly a card-carrying Stoic, and allegorizing, or rationalizing, or even just equating the names of gods with the names of physical 87 Betegh 2002 discusses possible contexts within Eudemos’ work; for the paraphrase itself see Erler 2011: 231. 88 For Bel = Zeus and Tiamat = ‘the Sea’, see F 1b 680 BNJ; for Ea = Kronos see F 4 (14) 680 BNJ; for Sarpanitum = Hera, see F 13 BNJ. This last example is particularly interesting as it seems to involve etymological play across two languages, with Sarachero (explained by Berossos as ‘adorner of Hera’) > Akk. šarāhu, ‘adorn’, and Greek Ἥρα. 89 De Breucker ad Berossos F 1b 680 BNJ is sceptical. 90 Compare the ‘reversal of personification’ at Il. 16.33–5 (Edwards 1987: 257), where Achilles’ mother Thetis is polemically equated with the sea. Most 1993 interprets the passage as the earliest extant case of allegory in Greek poetry.

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entities (Omorka/Tiamat = θάλασσα) was not exclusive to the Stoics.91 But by the third century B C they were among the most prominent exponents of these techniques.92 For example, Zeno argued in a now fragmentary work that the Greek name Chaos referred to water (SVF I 103): ἔστι δε χάος μὲν τὸ πρὸ τῆς διακοσμήσεως γενόμενον ὑγρόν, ἀπὸ τῆς χύσεως οὕτως ὠνομασμένον. Chaos is the moisture that obtained before creation, so called from χύσις (‘outpouring’).

We know from another fragment that Zeno developed this etymology in connection with a reading of Hesiod’s Theogony (SVF I 104): καὶ Ζήνων δὲ τὸ παρ’ Ἡσιόδωι χάος ὕδωρ εἶναί φησιν, οὗ συνιζάνοντος ἰλὺν γίνεσθαι, ἧς πηγνυμένης ἡ γῆ στερεμνιοῦται. And Zeno says that Hesiod’s Chaos is water, from which there developed mud through condensation. The mud then solidified, creating the earth.

The parallel with Berossos is striking. One should not of course conclude that Berossos read Zeno’s book on Hesiod, and on that basis came to his own views about Omorka/Tiamat. The point is rather that, like Zeno, he used his reading of myth so as to present himself as the kind of man whom Hellenistic Greek audiences would have recognized as a σοφός, ‘wise man’, or φιλόσοφος, ‘a lover of wisdom’. In pursuit of this goal, Berossos seems to have proceeded eclectically or even, one might say, opportunistically. His account of Tiamat’s army is telling in this regard. As expected, Berossos takes inspiration from Enūma eliš.93 But he lists many creatures that are not found in the Babylonian epic, and some at least seem specifically added to appeal to a Greek audience.94 What is more, Berossos fundamentally changes the tone and overall meaning of the original, 91 The old academy had already employed many of the reading techniques associated with the Stoics; see Dillon 2003. 92 For Stoic rationalizing/etymologizing/allegorizing of myth see further Ramelli 2007. Struck 2004 discusses the broader intellectual developments that underpin Stoic reading practice. 93 Enūma eliš I .133–46 (Talon). 94 Most obviously perhaps the centaur-like creatures that Berossos describes: οὓς ἱπποκενταύρους τὴν ἰδέαν εἶναι. De Breucker ad F 1b 680 BNJ considers the possibility that the explanation was added at a later stage, but the phrasing recalls other passages where Berossos suggests Greek equivalents for Mesopotamian objects or characters: e.g. F 1b (2) 680 BNJ, where he describes roots that have the same properties as barley (ἰσοδυναμεῖν δὲ τὰς ῥίζας ταύτας κριθαῖς). Centaur-like creatures are attested in Mesopotamian iconography, but play no role in Tiamat’s army (De Breucker ad loc.).

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transforming the list of Tiamat’s monsters into a piece of philosophical speculation about spontaneous generation, a popular philosophical motif in his time.95 Here is Empedocles (Fr 61 DK): πολλὰ μὲν ἀμφιπρόσωπα καὶ ἀμφίστερνα φύεσθαι, βουγενῆ ἀνδρόπρωιρα, τὰ δ’ ἔμπαλιν ἐξανατέλλειν ἀνδροφυῆ βούκρανα, μεμειγμένα τῆι μὲν ἀπ’ ἀνδρῶν τῆι δὲ γυναικοφυῆ σκιεροῖς ἠσκημένα γυίοις. (It is said that) many creatures with two faces and two chests came into being, offspring of cows, with human prows, and others again growing forth with human physique and the head of oxen, mixed beings, partly equipped with female and partly with male members.

Berossos’ account offers some striking similarities (F 1b (6) 680 BNJ, modified): γενέσθαι φησὶ χρόνον, ἐν ὧι τὸ πᾶν σκότος καὶ ὕδωρ εἶναι, καὶ ἐν τούτωι ζῶα τερατώδη καὶ ἰδιοφυεῖς τὰς ἰδέας ἔχοντα ζωογονεῖσθαι. ἀνθρώπους γὰρ διπτέρους γεννηθῆναι, ἐνίους δὲ καὶ τετραπτέρους καὶ διπροσώπους· καὶ σῶμα μὲν ἔχοντας ἕν, κεφαλὰς δὲ δύο, ἀνδρείαν τε καὶ γυναικείαν, καὶ αἰδοῖα δὲ δισσά, ἄρρεν καὶ θῆλυ· καὶ ἑτέρους ἀνθρώπους, τοὺς μὲν αἰγῶν σκέλη καὶ κέρατα ἔχοντας, τοὺς δὲ ἱππόποδας, τοὺς δὲ τὰ ὀπίσω μὲν μέρη ἵππων, τὰ δὲ ἔμπροσθεν ἀνθρώπων, οὓς ἱπποκενταύρους τὴν ἰδέαν εἶναι. ζωογονηθῆναι δὲ καὶ ταύρους ἀνθρώπων κεφαλὰς ἔχοντας καὶ κύνας τετρασωμάτους, οὐρὰς ἰχθύος ἐκ τῶν ὄπισθεν μερῶν ἔχοντας, καὶ ἵππους κυνοκεφάλους καὶ ἀνθρώπους καὶ ἕτερα ζῶα κεφαλὰς μὲν καὶ σώματα ἵππων ἔχοντα, οὐρὰς δὲ ἰχθύων, καὶ ἄλλα δὲ ζῶα παντοδαπῶν θηρίων μορφὰς ἔχοντα· πρὸς δὲ τούτοις ἰχθύας καὶ ἑρπετὰ καὶ ὄφεις καὶ ἄλλα ζῶα πλείονα θαυμαστὰ καὶ παρηλλαγμένας τὰς ὄψεις ἀλλήλων ἔχοντα, ὧν καὶ τὰς εἰκόνας ἐν τῶι τοῦ Βήλου ναῶι ἀνακεῖσθαι. There was a time, he says, when the universe was darkness and water and in it fabulous beings with peculiar forms came to life. For men with two wings were born and some with four wings and two faces, having one body and two heads, male and female, and double genitalia, male and female. Other men were born, some having the legs and the horns of goats, others with the feet of horses. Yet others had the hind parts of horses, but the foreparts of men, and were centaurs in form. Bulls were also engendered having the heads of men as well as four-bodied dogs having the tails of a fish from their hind parts, dog-headed horses and men and other beings having heads and bodies of horses, but tails of fish and still other beings having   Quinn 1964 gives an overview.

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the forms of all sorts of wild animals. In addition to these, there were fish and reptiles and snakes and many other marvellous creatures having their appearances interchanged with one another. Images of these were also set up in the temple of Belos.

Bull-men, two-faced creatures and gender confusion look rather more like Empedocles than one might have expected from a mere paraphrase of Enūma eliš. Can we seriously entertain the possibility that Berossos responded to Empedocles? Allowing ourselves to contemplate the question can be a salutary exercise, for we immediately realize that Berossos did not have to read pre-Socratic philosophy in order to learn about spontaneous generation. Although Empedocles always remained associated with the idea of spontaneously formed primordial monsters, Aristotle integrated Empedocles’ argument into a much more far-reaching theory about purpose in nature.96 The issue of spontaneous generation was certainly debated in the Hellenistic period, as can be seen also from a passage in Apollonius, which compares the creatures of Circe to spontaneously formed pre-cosmic monsters.97 At a fairly basic level, such monsters were sensational, which may be one reason why Berossos included a detailed account of them (and why Alexander Polyhistor reported Berossos’ views). But they also featured in serious philosophical discussion. Like Aristotle, the Epicureans also grappled with the legacy of Empedocles’ idea, accepting spontaneous generation as an important part of their non-teleological account of the universe.98 From the extant fragments, it is difficult to reconstruct where precisely Berossos positions himself in this debate, and perhaps that does not matter. More important is the fact that there was a philosophical debate, and that Berossos rather ostentatiously joined it – at the very least so as to present himself as a sage, a σοφός, in the eyes of the Greeks.

Archive stories Book 1 of the Babyloniaca was, in many ways, Berossos’ signature piece. In it he established his credentials as a barbarian philosopher priest and keeper of the archive of human civilization. The fortunes of this archive form the central theme of Book 2 of the Babyloniaca: in investigating this, 96 Aristotle, Physics 196a20–3; for discussion see Dudley 2012: 163–98. 97 Apollonius, Argonautica 4.672–84; for discussion of the passage see Fränkel 1968: 521–4, Livrea 1973: 205–9, Fusillo 1985: 63–4, Hunter 1993: 164–6, Clauss 2000: 13–14. 98 Rist 1972: 70–1, Garani 2007: 81–9.

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recent approaches to archival knowledge provide my framework. After groundbreaking work by Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida,99 scholars have studied the role of archives in shaping knowledge, the ways in which knowledge is ‘ordered’, stored and stored away in archives; and the function of archives as contact zones (past and present, one culture or social group with another).100 Archives emerge from this debate as sites of longing, but also as battlegrounds of the imagination, where memory sits uneasily alongside oblivion, and where the politics of access (and its denial) suggests, at a surface level, some of the deeper rifts that run through society. This work has had a profound impact on students of the ancient world. In Assyriology, a large-scale research project entitled ‘The Geography of Knowledge in Assyria and Babylonia’ brings to bear sophisticated new approaches on the study of four Mesopotamian libraries.101 In Classics, Tim Whitmarsh has recently made what he calls ‘the creation of the archive’ the central point in his overall history of ancient Greek literature.102 He argues that the Hellenistic period saw the rise of an ‘archival sensibility’ in Greek culture.103 For Whitmarsh, this is largely a matter of shoring up notions of Greekness, and of figures such as Callimachus battling for control over important Greek cultural scripts and practices.104 I now suggest that this phenomenon had a corollary in attempts to open up existing archives of non-Greek literature and culture, with the aim of harnessing the age-old traditions of world empire which were stored in them. Archives were a very ancient institution in Mesopotamia.105 By the Hellenistic period, archival practices and sensibilities had for centuries been a driving force behind the preservation of canonical literature in cuneiform Akkadian, such as Enūma eliš; as well as the production and consumption of new literature such as the Antiochus Cylinder or the Babylonian chronicles, of which we have already seen several extracts. 99 Foucault 1970, Derrida 1996. 100 E.g. Bradley 1999, Featherstone 2000 and 2006, Hamilton et al. 2002, Freshwater 2003, Burton 2005; for recent work on the ancient world see, for example, Brosius 2003, Dorleijn and Vanstiphout 2003, König and Whitmarsh 2007 and the research project ‘Science and Empire in the Roman World’ recently conducted by the Logos Centre of the University of St Andrews (www. st-andrews.ac.uk/classics/research/logos/); for Mesopotamia in particular, see below, n. 105. 101 http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/gkab/. 102 Whitmarsh 2004a, esp. chs. 7–8. 103 Whitmarsh 2004a: 227. 104 On Callimachus and his pinakes in particular, see Whitmarsh 2004a: 128–30. 105 Pedersén 1998, Vanstiphout 2003, Michalowski 2003, De Breucker 2003b. Waerzeggers 2010 studies the archives of the Ezida, the temple that so interested Antiochus I.

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These texts can hardly be said to have had ‘a readership’ in the usual sense: the extant copy of the Antiochus Cylinder, for example, was built into the walls of the temple itself, as was customary with this type of text,106 and that was precisely where archaeologists later found it. Copies were also kept ‘on file’, as it were, in the archives of the great temples,107 where they could be consulted by experts but remained out of reach for most people. In truth, this type of literature was almost as inaccessible to Mesopotamian readers as it was to Greeks. In Hellenistic times, Akkadian as a language was no longer widely used or even understood outside the milieu of the great temples: Aramaic had long replaced it as the main language of commerce and communication.108 If few people understood Akkadian, we can assume that even fewer would have mastered the cuneiform script – Hellenistic cuneiform literature, it would seem, was not only kept in archives, but also destined for them. The paradox of a literature without readers becomes less baffling once we allow for the enormous prestige, and continued importance, of the Mesopotamian archives for successive world empires. In Chapter 2 we saw that the Persian king Cambyses scoured the library of the Eanna at Uruk for information about earlier kings.109 Yet, as Thomas Richards points out, an imperial archive as a ‘repository of total knowledge’ can exert a pull quite beyond the practicalities of storing and retrieving information.110 Thus Antiochus I, we also saw, styled himself as a new Nebuchadnezzar and, with the Antiochus Cylinder, inscribed himself into the archive of royal literature. It is safe to assume that the vast majority of Hellenistic Babylonians, who never set foot in the great temple libraries, and never read any of the texts they contained, nonetheless accepted the role of those libraries as repositories of human history, literature and culture. Such universalizing assumptions were less straightforward for Greek observers. As Hamilton, Harris and Reid have argued in connection with modern South Africa, ‘the archive – all archive – every archive – is figured’,111 which means that any library of human knowledge, however ancient and extensive, is of necessity partial and may look quite idiosyncratic to those who do not feel they own its contents. Earlier in this chapter we saw how carefully the Antiochus Cylinder negotiates Antiochus’

106 Da Riva 2008: 39. 107 For this practice, see Schaudig 2001: 46. 108 And, in all likelihood, of popular literature too; see above, p. 9. For the possibility that Akkadian was still spoken in the temples see De Breucker forthcoming: 16, n. 9, with further literature. 109 Chapter 2, n. 101.  110  Richards 1993: 14.  111  Hamilton et al. 2002: 7.

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portrayal as a Babylonian king between local commitments and universal aspirations. Berossos puts the spotlight on the Babylonian archive itself, asking where, when and how seemingly local scripts of empire become global in their reach. The flood narrative of Babyloniaca Book 2 was of crucial importance in this regard. We saw in Chapter 1 that the flood was a necessary corollary to creation in what David Damrosch has called the ancient ‘creation-flood epic’. And so it proves to be in Berossos, except that for him the flood results in the fixation and transmission of the primordial archive of human culture. Berossos assumes three points. First, with the advent of the flood the archive is closed, its closure expressed in terms of completeness (‘all writings, beginnings, middles, and ends’). Secondly, the transmission of the archive is configured in terms of a vertical movement through time (‘before’ and ‘after’ the flood) rather than lateral movement through cultural space: Babylonian literature thus becomes the heritage of anybody who comes after the flood, regardless of their cultural background – because it is the only antediluvian literature. Finally, Berossos organizes his flood narrative as a handover of cultural stewardship from the Chaldaean king to a collective of (Chaldaean) advisors. Berossos’ flood narrative thus contains an aetiology of his own role as keeper of the archive. In order to understand better how Berossos tells the story of the archive in Babyloniaca Book 2, we need to go back to the very beginning of the text. Here is how Berossos first introduces his treasures (F 1b (1) 680 BNJ): ἀναγραφὰς δὲ πολλῶν ἐν Βαβυλῶνι φυλάσσεσθαι μετὰ πολλῆς ἐπιμελείας ἀπὸ ἐτῶν †που ὑπὲρ μυριάδων ιε περιεχούσας χρόνον· περιέχειν δὲ τὰς ἀναγραφὰς ἱστορίας περὶ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ καὶ θαλάσσης καὶ πρωτογονίας καὶ βασιλέων καὶ τῶν κατ᾽ αὐτοὺς πράξεων. (Berossos says … that) records of many were being preserved with great care in Babylon, which encompassed a period of †somewhat more than 150,000 years ago. The records, he says, comprised stories about the sky and the sea, creation and the kings and the events in their reigns.

Synkellos’ summary seems brutally compressed, and it may well be corrupt; but some points can still be gleaned from it: the Babylonian archive is unimaginably ancient; it has been preserved with care (φυλάσσεσθαι μετὰ πολλῆς ἐπιμελείας; with πολλῆς taking up πολλῶν); and it encompasses the whole world, sky and sea, as well as the kings and their deeds. This description of Berossos’ sources is echoed when Berossos describes the writings of Oannes later on in Book 1 (F 1b (5) 680 BNJ):

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τὸν δὲ Ὠάννην περὶ γενεᾶς καὶ πολιτείας γράψαι, καὶ παραδοῦναι τόνδε τὸν λόγον τοῖς ἀνθρώποις. But Oannes, he says, wrote about creation and society, and passed the following discourse on to humankind.

περὶ γενεᾶς καὶ πολιτείας here takes up περὶ … πρωτογονίας καὶ βασιλέων in the description of the Babylonian archive at the beginning of the Babyloniaca. Berossos’ Babylonian sources are framed as Urtext, a canon of writings that go back to the very beginning of the world: we recall that Oannes appeared from the Red Sea in year one of human history. Indeed, as a fundamentally amphibious creature (land and sea, air and water, light and darkness), he even straddles the divide between pre-creation chaos and the cosmos of Zeus/Bel. Berossos insists that nothing new was invented after Oannes, yet he does mention other primordial sages who emerged from the sea during the time of the earliest kings – a view that he shares with other Mesopotamian literature of the Hellenistic period.112 These later sages elaborated what Oannes wrote (F 3 (12) 680 BNJ): already at this point, the archive moves towards closure in the sense that one can interpret and elaborate it, but not rewrite it. The period of elaboration comes to an abrupt end with the flood of F 4 680 BNJ, and it is here that Oannes’ writings are confirmed as, and crystallize into, an all-encompassing blueprint of human post-flood civilization. The main lines of Berossos’ flood narrative are familiar also from cuneiform texts, primarily the Sumerian Flood Story, the Akkadian Poem of the Flood and the Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet X I : the god Kronos (Akk. Ea) appears to the flood hero Xisouthros in a dream (a Greek transcription of Sum. Zi(u)sudra), warning him that ‘humankind’ (Gk. οἱ ἄνθρωποι) is about to be destroyed by a flood.113 He is to build a ship, load it with provisions and take on board all animals that can fly or have four legs. Xisouthros does just that, and survives the flood together with his family and closest ‘friends’ (more on this term in a moment). As the waters 112 F 3b (12) 680 BNJ; for parallel texts in Akkadian see De Breucker’s commentary in BNJ ad F 3, especially the Apkallu List from Uruk, which dates to 165 B C , just over a century after Berossos; cf. van Dijk 1962 and, for discussion, Lenzi 2008. 113 Zi(u)sudra is the Sumerian name of the flood hero known as Utanapishti/Atrahasis in Akkadian epic, see above, pp. 48–51 and 66–7. It was used in the Sumerian version of the Flood Myth (ed. Civil in Lambert and Millard 1969: 138–45) but also in some Akkadian literature such as omen collections: see George 2003: 117. For Zi(u)sudra in the Akkadian Poem of the Flood see the late fragment published in Spar and Lambert 2005: 195–201.

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recede, he releases three sets of birds. When the third no longer returns, he disembarks in the mountains of Armenia, offers sacrifice and disappears from view. A voice from heaven explains that he has gone to live with the gods. All these elements can be paralleled in cuneiform versions of the story. There are, however, important differences in Berossos’ version, none more striking than the fact that Berossos concentrates not on the survival of human life but on the fate of what he calls ‘the writings’ (Gk. τὰ γράμματα).114 The relevant passage is this (F 4b (14–17) 680 BNJ): τὸν Κρόνον αὐτῶι κατὰ τὸν ὕπνον ἐπιστάντα φάναι μηνὸς Δαισίου πέμπτηι καὶ δεκάτηι τοὺς ἀνθρώπους ὑπὸ κατακλυσμοῦ διαφθαρήσεσθαι. κελεῦσαι οὖν [διὰ] γραμμάτων πάντων ἀρχὰς καὶ μέσα καὶ τελευτὰς ὀρύξαντα θεῖναι ἐν πόλει Ἡλίου Σι[σ]πάροις (…) γενομένου δὲ τοῦ κατακλυσμοῦ καὶ εὐθὺς λήξαντος (…) τὸν (…) Ξίσουθρον (…) ἐκβῆναι μετὰ τῆς γυναικὸς καὶ τῆς θυγατρὸς καὶ τοῦ κυβερνήτου προσκυνήσαντα τὴν γῆν καὶ βωμὸν ἱδρυσάμενον καὶ θυσιάσαντα τοῖς θεοῖς, γενέσθαι μετὰ τῶν ἐκβάντων τοῦ πλοίου ἀφανῆ. τοὺς δὲ ὑπομείναντας ἐν τῶι πλοίωι μὴ εἰσπορευομένων τῶν περὶ τὸν Ξίσουθρον, ἐκβάντας ζητεῖν αὐτόν, ἐπὶ ὀνόματος βοῶντας· τὸν δὲ Ξίσουθρον αὐτὸν μὲν αὐτοῖς οὐκ ἔτι ὀφθῆναι, φωνὴν δὲ ἐκ τοῦ ἀέρος γενέσθαι, κελεύουσαν ὡς δέον αὐτοὺς εἶναι θεοσεβεῖς· καὶ γὰρ αὐτὸν διὰ τὴν εὐσέβειαν πορεύεσθαι μετὰ τῶν θεῶν οἰκήσοντα (…) εἶπέ τε αὐτοῖς, ὅτι ἐλεύσονται εἰς Βαβυλῶνα, καὶ ὡς εἵμαρται αὐτοῖς, ἐκ Σι[σ]πάρων ἀνελομένοις τὰ γράμματα διαδοῦναι τοῖς ἀνθρώποις (…) ἐλθόντας οὖν τούτους εἰς Βαβυλῶνα τά τε ἐκ Σι[σ]πάρων γράμματα ἀνορύξαι, καὶ πόλεις πολλὰς κτίζοντας καὶ ἱερὰ ἀνιδρυμένους πάλιν ἐπικτίσαι τὴν Βαβυλῶνα. Kronos stood over him in his sleep and said that on the fifteenth of the month of Daisios mankind would be destroyed by a flood. He ordered him to deposit the beginnings and middles and ends of all writings under ground, in the city of the Sun, Sippar. (…) After the flood had come and straightaway ended, Xisouthros (…) disembarked with his wife and daughter, and the captain, and made obeisance to the earth, erected an altar and sacrificed to the gods. Then he disappeared together with those who had disembarked from the ship. When Xisouthros and the others did not come back in, those who had remained on the ship disembarked and searched for him, calling out his name. Xisouthros himself they no longer saw, but there was a voice from the air telling them that they should be god-fearing. For Xisouthros, it said, had gone to live with the gods because of his piety. (…) The voice also told them that they would go back to Babylon and that 114 There are other differences. Berossos alone among extant Mesopotamian authors dates the flood very precisely to the fifteenth of the Macedonian month Daisios. A passage in Seneca’s Quaestiones Naturales, 3.29.1, suggests that Berossos associated floods and conflagrations with specific configurations of the planets.

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they were fated to fetch the writings from Sippar and hand them down to humankind. (…) So they went to Babylon and dug up the writings from Sippar. After that, they founded many cities and temples, and settled Babylon anew.

In retelling the story of the flood, Berossos focuses on the survival of human civilization, envisaged as a discrete body of writings. As de Breucker points out, individual aspects of this narrative can be compared to other Mesopotamian literature. For example, specialized medical literature was traced back to ‘the word of the ancient sages from before the flood’; and the Assyrian king Assurbanipal boasted of consulting stone inscriptions from before the deluge.115 Moreover, Berossos’ choice of Sippar as the place where the writings were stored may be motivated by older traditions according to which this city alone was exempt from the flood.116 Berossos’ version of the flood narrative, then, was by no means outlandish from a Mesopotamian perspective. However, it does assemble known elements in a new and striking manner. As ever, the text is poorly preserved, but even through the fog of our fragmentary and indirect transmission, we can still sense that Berossos planned his account carefully, and developed it in several stages. The beginning of his story springs a first surprise: when the god Kronos appears to Xisouthros to warn him about the flood, he mentions the fate of the writings before that of humankind. Introduced as a headline, the theme recurs two more times. Indeed, it gradually wins out as the main concern of the narrative: after the flood, a voice from heaven instructs Xisouthros’ friends to retrieve and pass on the writings; and eventually, Berossos narrates in his own voice how they do so, and how they re-establish human culture and resettle Babylonia. Notice the careful interweaving of the local with the universal: the archive of human culture encompasses ‘all writings’ and must be passed on to (all) ‘mankind’ – though it is also tethered to Babylonia: to Sippar, the city of the sun, and of course to Babylon itself. Kronos in the dream speaks of ‘the beginnings, middle parts and ends of all writings’. That is a fascinating description, with intriguing Aristotelian resonances (Poetics 1450b 33–4), though its precise meaning remains elusive: does Berossos refer to the ‘beginnings, middle parts and ends’ of each 115 De Breucker ad F 4b 680 BNJ; for Assurbanipal’s claim see also Pongratz-Leisten 1999: 312, who puts it in the wider context of Herrschaftswissen (knowledge of power) in ancient Mesopotamia. 116 De Breucker, commentary ad F 4b 680 BNJ, with reference to Erra I V .50. For the possibility that Sippar was regarded as ‘the place of writing’ par excellence (cf. Aramaic spr) see Knobloch 1985, Martin Lang forthcoming.

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individual piece of writing? Or does he rather mean, as the Armenian translation suggests, the beginnings, etc., of all the writings taken together? The latter interpretation suggestively chimes with the shape of Berossos’ own work, which also falls into three clearly defined sections, of which the first describes the beginnings of the world (Book 1), the second an intermediate period of transmission (Book 2) and the third what Greek readers might have called history ‘proper’ (Book 3).117 Berossos clearly had a notion that overall coherence – and a tripartite division – were among the characteristics of Mesopotamian literature as a whole; and that his own work reflected that structure. It seems, then, that Berossos transforms the age-old drama of human destruction in the tradition of creation-flood epic into a drama of textual transmission. Into this drama he weaves a narrative of loss and compensation, as the saviour king disappears, leaving responsibility for the archive to his friends. This process deserves careful attention. To begin with, Xisouthros is the main protagonist of the flood narrative: he communicates with Kronos, buries the writings, builds the ship and lands it safely in Armenia. But then he and his immediate family disappear. Even our miserably mutilated fragments preserve some of the drama of this moment, as Berossos emphasizes the loss of visual contact (γενέσθαι ἀφανῆ; οὐκ ἔτι ὀφθῆναι) after a narrative that has so far been rich in visual detail. We also hear of the unsuccessful search for the king (ἐκβάντας ζητεῖν), as the emphasis switches from seeing to hearing (ἐπὶ ὀνόματος βοῶντας, φωνὴν … γενέσθαι). Implied in this switch is a greater distance between gods and humans; in the extant cuneiform texts, the fact that human beings survive the flood creates tensions among the gods: who helped Atrahasis (Utanapishti/Ziusudra) escape the disaster?118 What needs to be done about it? In Berossos, the emphasis is on the human realm, and especially on the remaining survivors, who are instructed on what needs to happen next. The gulf between gods and humans seems to have widened, and what matters now is human life after the deluge. Above all, Berossos emphasizes that we have lost a king. Even our condensed fragments relate at some length how the remaining survivors go in search of Xisouthros. They do not see him again, but instead receive a new dispensation: they are to become ‘god-fearing’ (Gk. θεοσεβεῖς), and must transmit the antediluvian writings to humankind. What is at issue here, I suggest, is an aetiology of the Chaldaeans as a priestly collective charged 117 For a suggestion that this scheme reflects a much older understanding of the history of the cosmos in three major stages see above, pp. 55–7. 118 For the various names of the flood hero in Akkadian and Sumerian see above, n. 113.

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with guarding human civilization. Mesopotamian flood narratives always balanced loss with new beginnings, despite the devastation they described. In the Poem of the Flood, the end of an earlier form of human life makes possible the continued existence of humanity as a whole. That trade-off was dramatized in the person of the king who survived the flood. Thus, although so much life is destroyed in Gilgamesh X I , life is also found: the name of Utanapishti is etymologized in the epic itself as ‘he found life’ (Akk. (w)atûm, napištum).119 In Berossos, this narrative of compensation is rewritten so that the king himself is lost but the archive that he buried is found – and with it a group of religious experts charged with preserving and transmitting ‘the writings’. The king is the protagonist of the story and acts as the first point of contact with the gods: he saves mankind from destruction and secures the archive from obliteration. But it is his ‘friends’ (Gk. φίλοι) who must rescue the writings after the flood and pass them on. Here it is important to remember that the φίλοι of a Hellenistic king are not his personal acquaintances. As Rolf Strootman points out: ‘Hellenistic courtiers were commonly known as philoi tou basileōs, “Friends of the King”.’120 That Berossos was familiar with this meaning of φίλος becomes clear from a passage in F 8 (137) 680 BNJ, where Nebuchadnezzar must leave behind his army in order to claim his throne after the death of his father, Nabopolassar: αἰσθόμενος δὲ μετ’ οὐ πολὺν χρόνον τὴν τοῦ πατρὸς τελευτὴν Ναβοκοδρόσορος, καταστήσας τὰ κατὰ τὴν Αἴγυπτον πράγματα καὶ τὴν λοιπὴν χώραν, καὶ τοὺς αἰχμαλώτους ᾽Ιουδαίων τε καὶ Φοινίκων καὶ Σύρων καὶ τῶν κατὰ τὴν Αἴγυπτον ἐθνῶν συντάξας τισὶ τῶν φίλων μετὰ τῆς βαρυτάτης δυνάμεως καὶ τῆς λοιπῆς ὠφελείας ἀνακομίζειν εἰς τὴν Βαβυλωνίαν, αὐτὸς ὁρμήσας ὀλιγοστὸς παρεγένετο διὰ τῆς ἐρήμου εἰς Βαβυλῶνα. When Nebuchadnezzar learnt of his father’s death not long thereafter, he settled his affairs in Egypt and the rest of the territory and gave control over the captives – Judeans, Phoenicians, Syrians and the populations settled in Egypt  – to some of his friends, ordering to bring them to Mesopotamia together with the bulk of his army and the rest of the spoils. He himself set out with a few companions and reached Babylon by crossing the desert.

Nebuchadnezzar’s ‘friends’ are clearly more than personal acquaintances. These men must be his highest officials, who alone have authority to take 119 Tigay 1982: 229–30. 120 Strootman 2011: 70; cf. Savalli-Lestrade 1998, Kuhrt and Sherwin-White 1993: 133, Habicht 2006, Strootman 2007: 119–80.

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over command of the army in the absence of the king. But what do these army generals have to do with the ‘god-fearing’ friends of Xisouthros? And what, if anything, might they have to do with Seleucid φίλοι? Here it is instructive to read on in the narrative of Nebuchadnezzar’s accession (F 8 (138) 680 BNJ): καταλαβὼν δὲ τὰ πράγματα διοικούμενα ὑπὸ Χαλδαίων καὶ διατηρουμένην τὴν βασιλείαν ὑπὸ τοῦ βελτίστου αὐτῶν, κυριεύσας ὁλοκλήρου τῆς πατρικῆς ἀρχῆς. Finding on arrival that the affairs (of the empire) were administered by the Chaldaeans and that the kingship was maintained by the best of them, he gained possession of his father’s entire realm.

The counterpart of Nebuchadnezzar’s ‘friends’ who look after his army while he is away in Babylon, are the Chaldaeans who administer affairs and ‘maintain the kingship’ while the king is away from Babylon. They are not called φίλοι in this passage, but are imagined as acting much like Nebuchadnezzar’s φίλοι – in fact, their guardianship is if anything more important, for it concerns not just the army but kingship as a whole. Berossos offers us a model of how to view his own role in the Seleucid Empire and that of his peers. The Chaldaeans are not technically φίλοι of the Seleucid king. But Berossos explains that they are much like them, or better – and uses the narrative of the great flood to explain how that came to be: they once were the φίλοι of the great Chaldaean king Xisouthros who saved all mankind, and who passed on to us the archive of human civilization, to maintain not only kingship but the very preconditions for it. Berossos, then, invites his Greek readers to think of him and his fellow Chaldeans as a group at the very heart of the Seleucid Empire: people who complement Antiochus’ φίλοι, men of action close to the king, by staying behind in Babylon and ‘maintaining kingship’. There is a line that leads from Berossos himself back to Nebuchadnezzar’s Chaldaeans and the ‘friends’ of Xisouthros. Indeed, Berossos may suggest that he tried something not so dissimilar from what the ‘original Chaldaeans’ achieved, when they rescued human knowledge at the time of the flood. To be sure, a deluge was no longer at stake in the third century B C . But Berossos’ unprecedented attempt to compile a library of canonical Babylonian writings, beginnings, middles and ends, strikingly recalls the crisis of transmission which he describes in Babyloniaca Book 2. Then as now, unearthing ‘the writings’ from the depths of time is hedged with a profound sense of

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loss – for where is Xisouthros now?121 Still, the job must be done because, without those writings, imperial history  – and thus human history tout court  – comes to an end. If it had been ‘fated’ (εἵμαρται in our extract from Berossos) for human civilization to survive even through the flood, perhaps it was fated that civilization should continue, even now (after Alexander, as it were).

‘Great kings from former days till now’ In Mesopotamian thought, any form of social continuity depended on kingship as an institution: history started when ‘kingship came down from heaven’ and unfolded in an orderly succession of rulers and dynasties.122 There was only one kingship, in principle, and it was universal. So too in Berossos: we have seen that the flood marked a significant break in his list of kings, but the overwhelming impression is that of one single unbroken line of succession. The Seleucids were welcome to continue that line, as long as they behaved as good kings should. Not all kings had behaved well in the past, of course. There was for example the Persian king Cyrus who, according to Berossos, had torn down the walls of Babylon, so as to make the city ‘less difficult to conquer’ (F 9a (152) 680 BNJ): Κῦρος δὲ Βαβυλῶνα καταλαβόμενος, καὶ συντάξας τὰ ἔξω τῆς πόλεως τείχη κατασκάψαι διὰ τὸ λίαν αὐτῶι πραγματικὴν καὶ δυσάλωτον φανῆναι τὴν πόλιν, ἀνέζευξεν ἐπὶ Βορσίππων, ἐκπολιορκήσων τὸν Ναβόννηδον. Cyrus seized Babylon and ordered that the outer walls of the city be razed, because the city seemed to him extremely troublesome and difficult to capture. He then set off for Borsippa to lay siege to it and force Nabonidus to surrender. 121 That question, so memorably dramatized by the original Chaldaeans’ search for their king in Babyloniaca Book 2, calls to mind the Ballad of Early Rulers, a Sumerian and Akkadian drinking song about the transience of human life (ed. Alster 2005: 288–322). I quote lines 11–17, in the translation of Benjamin Foster: ‘Where is king Alulu, who reigned for 36,000 years? Where is king Etana, who went up to heaven? Where is Gilgamesh, who sought life like Ziusudra? Where is Huwawa, who was seized and knocked to the ground(?)? Where is Enkidu [who] showed forth strength in the land? Where is Bazi? Where is Zizi? Where are the great kings from former days till now?’ 122 E.g. Glassner 2004: 55–6; and Chronicle 1 (the Chronicle of the Single Monarchy) col. i.1–2; see also Abydenos F 2b (2) 685 BNJ.

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Later on in the same passage, Berossos acknowledges that Cyrus could be φιλάνθρωπος (in the tradition of Xenophon’s Cyropaedia) and that he treated the king of Babylon humanely, after he had defeated him – but he suggests that this is not enough.123 Cyrus behaved like a good human being towards his defeated enemy; but he behaved like a bad king in relation to the city of Babylon and its walls. The problem, with Cyrus, was that he disregarded the principles of Babylonian kingship. A Hellenistic text known as the Akitu Programme preserves the words that all kings of Babylon had to declare before the god Bel-Marduk at the New Year’s Festival (Linssen 2004: 223, ll. 423–8): [ul ah]-tu EN KUR.KUR ul e-gi ana DINGIR-ti-ku [ul ú-ha-a]l-liq Eki ul aq-ta-bi BIR-šú [ul ú-ri]b-bi É.SAG.GÍL ul ú-ma-áš- ME-šú [ul am-da]h-ha-as TE lúsab-bi ki-din-nu .…. [ul] áš-kun qa-lal-šú-nu [ú-pa-a]q ana Eki ul a-bu-ut šal-hu-šú [I have not sin]ned, lord of the lands, I have not neglected your godhead. [I have not dest]royed Babylon, I have not ordered it to be dispersed. [I have not made] Esagila tremble, I have not forgotten its rites. [I have not st]ruck the people of the kidinnu in the face.124 […] I have [not] humiliated them. [I have paid attenti]on to Babylon, I have not destroyed its (outer) walls.

Not to destroy the city’s walls is here seen as one of the most important criteria for the proper exercise of kingship. Cyrus himself was well aware of this: after capturing Babylon he made a point of restoring its walls.125 We have already seen that Babylonian intellectuals compared him to Nebuchadnezzar in this regard.126 In the Babyloniaca, by contrast, we are told that Cyrus undid the work of Nebuchadnezzar for the distinctly problematic reason that he wanted to make Babylon less ‘difficult to conquer’ (δυσάλωτος). Against the background of Babylonian royal ideology, this amounts to declaring him unfit for kingship. Here we see Berossos develop a stronger didactic impetus than perhaps anywhere 123 For Cyrus’ ‘philanthroy’ in Xenophon see Due 1989: 163–70, Gera 1993: 183–4. At pp. 296–9, Gera argues that Xenophon had already portrayed Cyrus as an ambivalent character; and that for him, too, Cyrus’ arrival in Babylon marked a turning point in his portrayal as a ruler. For the importance of φιλανθρωπία in Seleucid royal ideology see Ma 1999: 149–50, 172 etc. 124 The kidinnu was a special form of social and economic privilege; see Reviv 1988. 125 Cyrus Cylinder K.2.1 38 (Schaudig): ‘I made every effort to reinforce Imgur-Ellil, the great wall of Babylon.’ 126 Above, p. 130.

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else in his work; unsurprisingly so, given his emphasis on ‘maintaining kingship’. Nebuchadnezzar is his main model,127 and that is predictable: we have seen that this king was iconic in early Seleucid literature and served as a model for Antiochus I in the Antiochus Cylinder. Megasthenes had already extolled Nebuchadnezzar as a conqueror of the west. Berossos, too, describes his western campaigns, going beyond what he must have known as historical fact.128 But unlike Megasthenes, Berossos was more interested in Nebuchadnezzar as a great builder, in line with cuneiform traditions and his own focus on Babylon (F 8a (139–41) 680 BNJ): αὐτὸς δὲ ἀπὸ τῶν ἐκ τοῦ πολέμου λαφύρων τό τε Βήλου ἱερὸν καὶ τὰ λοιπὰ κοσμήσας φιλοτίμως, τήν τε ὑπάρχουσαν ἐξ ἀρχῆς πόλιν καὶ ἑτέραν ἔξωθεν προσχαρισάμενος, καὶ †ἀναγκάσας πρὸς τὸ μηκέτι δύνασθαι τοὺς πολιορκοῦντας τὸν ποταμὸν ἀναστρέφοντας ἐπὶ τὴν πόλιν κατασκευάζειν, ὑπερεβάλετο τρεῖς μὲν τῆς ἔνδον πόλεως περιβόλους, τρεῖς δὲ τῆς ἔξω, τούτων τοὺς μὲν ἐξ ὀπτῆς πλίνθου καὶ ἀσφάλτου, τοὺς δὲ ἐξ αὐτῆς τῆς πλίνθου. καὶ τειχίσας ἀξιολόγως τὴν πόλιν, καὶ τοὺς πυλῶνας κοσμήσας ἱεροπρεπῶς, προσκατεσκεύασεν τοῖς πατρικοῖς βασιλείοις ἕτερα βασίλεια ἐχόμενα ἐκείνων, ὧν τὸ μὲν ἀνάστημα καὶ τὴν λοιπὴν πολυτέλειαν μακρὸν ἴσως ἔσται, ἐάν τις ἐξηγῆται, πλὴν ὄντα γε ὑπερβολὴν ὡς μεγάλα καὶ ὑπερήφανα συνετελέσθη ἡμέραις δεκαπέντε. ἐν δὲ τοῖς βασιλείοις τούτοις ἀναλήμματα λίθινα ὑψηλὰ ἀνοικοδομήσας, καὶ τὴν ὄψιν ἀποδοὺς ὁμοιοτάτην τοῖς ὄρεσι, καταφυτεύσας δένδρεσι παντοδαποῖς, ἐξειργάσατο καὶ κατεσκεύασε τὸν καλούμενον κρεμαστὸν παράδεισον διὰ τὸ τὴν γυναῖκα αὐτοῦ ἐπιθυμεῖν τῆς ὀρείας διαθέσεως, τεθραμμένην ἐν τοῖς κατὰ τὴν Μηδίαν τόποις. He himself lavishly decorated the temple of Belos and the other temples from the spoils of war. He … (text unclear) the existing old city and added(?) another city outside the walls. And making sure(?) that attackers should no longer be able to change the course of the river and use it against the city, he surrounded the inner city with three walls and the outer city with three. Of these walls, the former were made of baked brick and bitumen, the latter of brick only. After he had fortified the city in this remarkable way and decorated the gateways in a manner that befitted their sanctity, he built in addition to his father’s palace another palace adjoining it. It would perhaps take too long to describe the majestic proportions and general opulence of this palace, except to say that, despite its extraordinary size 127 Berossos F 8a (133) 680 BNJ, where he says that Nebuchadnezzar surpassed all previous kings of Babylon. For discussion see Kuhrt 1987: 55–6, Beaulieu 2006; also Reade 2000: 200. 128 For example, Berossos claimed that Nebuchadnezzar ruled over ‘the satrapy of Egypt’ (F 8 680 BNJ). This was factually incorrect but would have been music to the ears of Antiochus.

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Berossos here describes Nebuchadnezzar as a model Babylonian king (and husband – a point to which I return below). He used the spoils gathered on campaign to provide for the city and its main temples. Antiochus was meant to follow this example and, in fact, we know that he did, because the Cylinder tells us as much.129 In order to reinstate Nebuchadnezzar as the ultimate good king, however, Berossos had to correct earlier Greek accounts of Babylonian history. Megasthenes had paid due homage to Nebuchadnezzar, but Ctesias had not – and he was, in the Hellenistic period, the main Greek authority on the history of the Near East. Now, Ctesias not only said nothing about Nebuchadnezzar, but filled the time between c. 700 and c. 400 B C with his popular scheme of a succession of empires, Assyria – Media – Persia, leaving no room for a Babylonian empire at all. Berossos knew Ctesias well (we can be less certain about his knowledge of Herodotus) and was fully aware of the problem. How did he address the difficulty? With characteristic subtlety. We know that, on at least one occasion, Berossos did attack Ctesias outright.130 But, in an astonishing number of cases, he preferred to work with what he found in existing Greek (and indeed cuneiform) literature, reassembling the parts, and re-configuring the whole. And this is precisely the course he adopts when dealing with Nebuchadnezzar, and his absence in Ctesias’ work. The result is one of the most complex and multivocal historical narratives to survive from the ancient world, a tour de force of cultural translation, and a fitting climax to the present study. In Book 3 of the Babyloniaca, Berossos offers a series of sketches – some positive, others highly critical  – of what it might mean to be a king of Babylon. As we saw in Chapter 2, preserving and recalling the deeds of former kings – Sargon, Narām-Sîn and others – had always been one of the most important functions of Mesopotamian literature, and after much preparatory work in Books 1 and 2, Berossos shows the archive to be as prolific as ever in this regard. However, we also saw that the archive of former kings was constantly updated and rewritten for a new time: Sargon, as the 129 Above, pp. 138–41, where I discuss the careful process of negotiation involved in this act of role play. For Berossos using the language of Seleucid euergetism to advertise Nebuchadnezzar’s activities see Dillery forthcoming. 130 See below, pp. 167–8.

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Assyrians read him in the first millennium BC, was not the same as Sargon in the Old Akkadian inscriptions; and even relatively recent characters such as Nebuchadnezzar underwent major renovations. The archive of Mesopotamian kings, then, acted not as an inert repository of information so much as a highly dynamic contact zone, a place where the relationship between past and present could be negotiated, re-aligned and encoded in new ways. That, I suggest, is precisely what we see in Babyloniaca Book 3: rather than simply confronting his readers with tales of kings from the past, Berossos combines existing Greek views of those kings with Mesopotamian ones, in order to forge a new synthesis. His approach is malleable, as ever, and reflects the importance and function of each king within his overall script of imperial history. In the case of Semiramis, Berossos bluntly puts an end to Greek rumours  – and there were plenty. She was supposedly born of the Syrian goddess Derketo, had married the Assyrian king Ninos, had founded Babylon and, after conquering much of the known world, had turned herself into a dove. The story can be found in Ctesias, though at least part of it was older.131 Ctesias’ account in his Persica is almost certainly what Berossos had in mind when he took issue with ‘the Greek historians’ in Babyloniaca Book 3 (F 8a 680 BNJ): ταῦτα μὲν οὗτος ἱστόρησε περὶ τοῦ προειρημένου βασιλέως (…) ἐν τῆι τρίτηι βίβλωι τῶν Χαλδαϊκῶν, ἐν ἧι μέμφεται τοῖς Ἑλληνικοῖς συγγραφεῦσιν ὡς μάτην οἰομένοις ὑπὸ Σεμιράμεως τῆς Ἀσσυρίας κτισθῆναι τὴν Βαβυλῶνα, καὶ τὰ θαυμάσια κατασκευασθῆναι περὶ αὐτὴν ὑπ’ ἐκείνης ἔργα ψευδῶς γεγραφόσι. Berossos gives this account about the above-mentioned king (…) in the third book of the Chaldaika, in which he criticizes the Greek historians for wrongly thinking that Babylon was founded by Semiramis of Assyria and for falsely writing that the marvellous constructions within it were built by her.

Taken at face value, this might seem like a straightforward example of Berossos checking the claims of Greek orientalizing fiction against his trustworthy Mesopotamian sources. But he does not simply create a dichotomy between Greek fiction and Babylonian historical record. We should be wary of reading his attack along the lines of much recent scholarship, where Greeks ‘invent the other’, and Babylonians possess actual, true sources, which give direct access to fact. Ctesias himself already claimed to have consulted Persian royal records (βασιλικαὶ ἀναγραφαί or 131 F 1b–m (Lenfant); for discussion of Semiramis and Sammu-rāmat see Pettinato 1985, Weinfeld 1991, Comploi 2000 and Dalley 2005.

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διφθέραι), and whatever we make of that claim, Berossos was quite possibly imitating Ctesias’ own rhetoric of authenticity in Babyloniaca Book 1: Berossos too consulted ancient records, like any good (Greek) historian.132 In truth, criticizing one’s predecessors was also a trope of Greek historiography, and the figure of the non-Greek informant (often a priest, like Berossos himself ) had been used before to debunk Greek mainstream opinion.133 So, what is at issue when Berossos accuses ‘the Greek historians’ of writing falsehoods about Semiramis is not simply a Babylonian’s view of the historical truth but yet another complex piece of authorial role play, which includes some defining traits of Greek historiography.134 The second point is that Berossos did not seem particularly concerned with the more fanciful claims made by Ctesias. According to Josephus, his complaints did not focus on Semiramis’ alleged descent from a goddess, or her metamorphosis into a dove. What exercised Berossos was a less obviously extravagant aspect of Ctesias’ narrative: the description of Semiramis’ building work in Babylon. That this queen, rather than the great Nebuchadnezzar, should be credited for building Babylon was something that Berossos could not accept. I return to Nebuchadnezzar in a moment, but first I consider Berossos’ depiction of another character  – the notorious Assyrian king Sardanapallos – because this depiction seems to me to confirm one crucial point: Berossos was determined to bring together Greek and Mesopotamian perspectives; he was not generally interested in denying one perspective and asserting the other. Berossos equated the Sardanapallos of Greek literature with the historical Assyrian king Assurbanipal, Akk. Aššur-bāni-apli.135 Yet, rather than transliterating the Akkadian name, as he so often did elsewhere, Berossos adopted the well-known Greek form Sardanapallos, evidently in a bid to connect his account with what his readers already knew. With the Greek 132 For Ctesias’ alleged use of Persian royal chronicles see T 3 (Lenfant) and F 1b 22(5) (Lenfant); for discussion see, e.g., Lenfant 2004: XXXVI–XXXIX, Stronk 2010: 15–25; for Berossos see above, pp. 156–7. If Synkellos can be trusted, Berossos too used the term ἀναγραφαί: F 1b (1) 680 BNJ. 133 Hdt. 2.113–20 is a prime example. For a more sustained attack on the historical ignorance of the Greeks see Plato, Timaeus 22b–23b. 134 Kuhrt 1987: 47, who quotes Murray 1972. 135 Chronologically, he places him between the predecessor and successor of that king, Esarhaddon/ Aššur-aha-iddina and Sîn-šarra-iškun. (Berossos calls them Axerdis and Sarakos respectively.) Berossos also mentions that Sardanapallos had a brother called Sammuges, the historical Šamaš-šuma-ukīn, brother of Assurbanipal and king of Babylon from 667 to 648 B C ; see Berossos F 7 680 BNJ and Abydenos F 5 685 BNJ; and cf. below, n. 140. The Aramaic form of the name Assurbanipal, which Berossos must have known, was very similar to Greek ‘Sardanapallos’: for Akkadian ‘Aššur-bāni-apli’ = Aramaic ‘Sarbanabal’ = Greek ‘Sardanapallos’, see De Breucker’s commentary on Abydenos F 5 685 BNJ, ad ‘Sardanapallos’.

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name came Greek stories, as Berossos knew full well. He realized, for example, that a full-blown Greek Sardanapallos romance had developed some time before he was writing. As with Semiramis, he probably encountered some of this material in Ctesias, where Sardanapallos appeared as the debauched last king of Assyria who lived only for pleasure and killed himself just before the fall of Nineveh.136 No such account can be found in Berossos’ cuneiform sources. Nevertheless, and somewhat surprisingly, Berossos did not dismiss the Sardanapallos traditions out of hand, but rather set about putting them to his own use. Berossos appears to have appreciated two popular motifs in particular: Sardanapallos setting himself alight on a pyre, and Sardanapallos at Tarsos. Ctesias tells us, in characteristically sensationalist tones, how the king burnt himself together with his belongings just before Nineveh fell to the Medes.137 Berossos knew from his cuneiform sources that this could not possibly have happened: Sardanapallos ~ Assurbanipal was not the last king of Assyria, so at the very least the story had to be brought forward by a generation. And that is precisely what Berossos did when he reported that Sarakos (the Assyrian king Sîn-šarra-iškun), and not Sardanapallos, set himself on fire.138 What seems remarkable here is not that Berossos corrected Ctesias, but that he told the story at all, that he revised Ctesias rather than dismissing his account out of hand. Babylonian chronicles tend to be matter-of-fact about major historical events. The chronicle fragment known as Nabopolassar and the Fall of the Assyrian Empire reports that in conquering Nineveh the Babylonians and Medes ‘inflicted a crushing defeat on a [gr]eat [people]’.139 There is pathos in this formulation, but it would hardly have impressed Greek readers brought up on Ctesias. What we might call their storytelling approach to history was of course not exclusively Greek: Berossos himself is likely to have encountered it in the Aramaic milieu of his home city.140 However, dramatic stories are not a feature of the Babylonian chronicles on which Berossos claimed to base his 136 Ctesias F 1b 23–7, with F 1p–q (Lenfant). For other sources and discussion of the Sardanapallos romance see Drews 1970, Schneider 2000, Lenfant 2001. 137 Ctesias F 1q (Lenfant). 138 Abydenos F 5 BNJ. Clitarchus may have paved the way by denying that Sardanapallos committed suicide during the sack of Nineveh; cf. FGrHist 137 F 2. Berossos probably knew Clitarchus’ work; see below, p. 174. 139 Chronicle 22, line 43 (Glassner). 140 Note, for example, the story of the two brothers told in P. Amherst Egyptian 63; cf. Steiner and Nims 1985, Steiner 1997, esp. pp. 322–7. The Assyrian royal inscriptions were closer to this way of recording history than the Babylonian chronicles and royal inscriptions that Berossos used. For example, Assurbanipal claims that his rebellious brother Šamaš-šuma-ukīn was killed in the flames of his palace in Babylon; see MacGinnis 1988.

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own account. All they told him was that Sarakos, and not Sardanapallos, was the last ruler of Nineveh, and that he died during the sack of that city.141 There remained a gap between Berossos’ cuneiform sources and Greek expectations of how imperial history might meaningfully unfold in Nineveh. Berossos understood the problem and, for the benefit of his Greek readers, adapted the story of the last king of Assyria, claiming that he had set himself alight in his palace.142 Just how creative he was in adapting Greek orientalizing fiction becomes clearer once we turn to the story of Sardanapallos in Tarsos. The Alexander historian Aristoboulos reports that Sardanapallos built the cities of Tarsos and Anchiale in Cilicia in one day, adducing as evidence a statue of the king with an inscription on it.143 The inscription was supposed to say: ‘The son of Anakyndaraxos (i.e. Sardanapallos) built Anchiale and Tarsos in one day: eat, drink, play; for the rest is worth nothing at all.’144 Eating, drinking and enjoying oneself was not too far removed from Ctesias’ priorities in offering his sensationalist account of Sardanapallos. But building cities in a single day was clearly not a matter of taking things easy and enjoying life at leisure. Athenaeus remarks in this connection that Sardanapallos was not after all an idler (ἄπρακτος), and already Hellanicus had suggested that there were in fact two Sardanapalloi, one energetic and virtuous (δραστήριος καὶ γενναῖος), the other lazy and effeminate (μαλακός).145 Berossos takes up this idea and pushes it further: he leaves us with no fewer than three Sardanapallos figures: the king of that name; his successor Sarakos who burnt himself in his palace; and yet another Assyrian king who defeated the Greeks in Cilicia, set up his statue there and built Tarsos. Berossos calls him Senecheribos.146 Babylonians would have known him as Sîn-ahhē-erība, the Sennacherib of modern Assyriology. This is what we can glean from the Armenian version of Eusebius on Berossos (F 7c 680 BNJ): 141 See Chronicle 22, line 44 (Glassner). 142 Pace Drews 1975, who argues that Berossos closely followed the chronicles in both tone and content. 143 FGrHist 139 F 9; related sources and discussion in Jacoby’s commentary ad loc. and Lenfant 2001: 49–50. 144 Σαρδανάπαλλος Ἀνακυνδαράξου παῖς Ἀγχιάλην καὶ Ταρσὸν ἔδειμεν ἡμέρηι μιῆι. ἔσθιε, πῖνε, παῖζε· ὡς τἆλλα τούτου οὐκ ἄξια. The ancient sources take the concluding words as a reference to the image of the king which supposedly showed him snapping his fingers. 145 Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 12.529d; Hellanicus FGrHist 4 F 63. Berossos may have encountered the idea of two Sardanapalloi in the Alexander historian Callisthenes; cf. FGrHist 124 F 34, with Jacoby’s commentary ad loc. For further discussion see Schneider 2000: 123–7. 146 For the likely form of the name in Berossos see de Breucker’s commentary on Berossos F 7c 680 BNJ, ad ‘Sinek’erib’.

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Իբրև լու եղև նմա, եթէ եկեալ հասեալ են յոյնք յաշխարհն կիլիկեցւոց՝ տալ պատերազմ, ի վերայ դիմէր, ճակատ առ ճակատ յարդարէր. և զբազումս ի յիւրոց զօրացն կոտորեալ՝ թշնամեացն յաղթէր պատերազմին. և յիշատակ յաղթութեան զիւր պատկերն ի տեղւոջն կանգնեալ թողոյր. և քաղդէական գրով զքաջութիւնն իւր և զզօրութիւն դրոշմել հրամայէր ի յիշատակ առ յապա ժամանակաց։ Եւ զտարսոն քաղաք ասէ՝ նա շինեաց ի նմանութիւն բաբէղոնի, և անուն դնէր քաղաքին թարսին։ When the news reached him (i.e. Sennacherib) that the Greeks had come and reached the land of Cilicia to give battle, he rushed against them, (and) drew up in battle array; and (although) many from his own army had been massacred, he vanquished the enemies in battle; and he raised up and left a statue (as) a memorial to his victory in that place; and he ordered that his bravery and strength be commemorated in Chaldaean script (as) a memorial to future eras. And he says that he built Tarson city in the likeness of Babylon, and gave it the name Tharsin.147

Assyrian kings built and rebuilt numerous cities, and perhaps there existed a Mesopotamian tradition linking Sennacherib, in particular, to Tarsos. Stephanie Dalley has shown that this is, at the very least, a possibility.148 But why should Berossos mention Tarsos at all? The answer, it seems, lies in his engagement with Greek readers and their expectations: Berossos takes his cue from them, though not without some telling adjustments.149 His starting point is Greek stories about Sardanapallos and his building activities in Cilicia. Berossos confirms that an Assyrian king did indeed build Tarsos, but insists that he was called Senecheribos, not Sardanapallos. He also connects the building of Tarsos to that king’s conquest of Babylon and his subsequent campaign against an invading Greek army; and he describes the new city as being modelled on Babylon. It is perhaps best to take each of Berossos’ claims separately. First of all, the historical king Sennacherib did indeed sack Babylon and deport its king in 689 B C . The event was among the most traumatic in Babylonian history: almost 150 years later, under Nabonidus, Babylonians still remembered Sennacherib as a national hate figure.150 Berossos places himself in this tradition when he reports Sennacherib’s 147 Trans. Andrews.  148  Dalley 1999. 149 Burstein 1978: 24, n. 80; cf. De Breucker on Berossos F 7c 680 BNJ, ad ‘Tarson’. 150 Babylon Stele, 3.3a col. I (Schaudig). For Sennacherib’s destruction of Babylon and its significance in Assyrian and Babylonian historical discourse see Van De Mieroop 2004.

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conquest of Babylon.151 But he also does something more interesting. Having portrayed Sennacherib as the arch-enemy of Babylon, he goes on to describe how he went to war against the Greeks. Berossos quite literally plugs his Greek readers into Babylonian mythmaking about Assyria, with Sennacherib as the villain. Once Greeks and Babylonians have acquired this shared enemy, the Assyrian king builds Tarsos ‘on the model of Babylon’. This is where the story begins to look familiar to Greek readers, but it is also the point at which it takes a particularly disquieting turn from a Mesopotamian perspective: Babylonian rulers ought to use their spoils to build up Babylon, not other cities. Least of all should they erect imitations of Babylon in the far west.152 The Seleucids were themselves keen founders of cities, and there must have been a certain amount of unease about this activity in Babylonian quarters.153 Berossos, it seems, used Greek traditions about Sardanapallos in order to negotiate between Seleucid ambitions and Babylonian anxieties. Berossos reworked orientalizing fantasies about Mesopotamia in several different ways, in the course of Babyloniaca Book 3: far from drawing a clear line between the archive of Babylonian royal history and Greek historical fiction, he strategically absorbed one into the other. Berossos’ portrayal of King Nebuchadnezzar is the most striking example of this technique; and here I finally return to this most important of all characters in the Babyloniaca. If Sennacherib is Berossos’ ultimate hate figure, Nebuchadnezzar is the darling of his account. He too rules over (most of ) the world, but, unlike Sennacherib, he uses his power to strengthen and enrich the city of Babylon. This point is of crucial importance for Berossos. In fragment eight of the Babyloniaca, Berossos adapts one of Nebuchadnezzar’s own inscriptions to record how Nebuchadnezzar returned to Babylon from his victorious campaign in the west.154 He enlarged the city and rebuilt its walls, gates, temples and palaces. Bert van der Spek has shown just how closely this section of Berossos’ text adheres to Nebuchadnezzar’s own view of events,155 and that faithfulness 151 Berossos F 7 680 BNJ, Abydenos F 5 685 BNJ; cf. Kuhrt 1987: 54, who also points to the story of his murder at the hands of his own son: a fitting end to a wicked life. 152 See De Breucker’s commentary on Berossos F 7c 680 BNJ ad ‘likeness of Babylon’, with reference to Chronicle 38, line 60 (Glassner); Chronicle 39, lines 18–23 (Glassner); and Persian Verse Account P1 col. I I .28’–29’ (Schaudig). 153 De Breucker on Berossos F 7c BNJ ad ‘likeness of Babylon’. Classical sources suggest that the foundation of Seleucia-Tigris brought about a catastrophic decline in the fortunes of Babylon. The reality was much less dramatic; see Sherwin-White 1987: 18–20, Hauser 1999. 154 Nebukadnezar No. 15 (Langdon), the so-called East India House Inscription. 155 Van der Spek 2008: 296–301.

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deserves attention in itself. In my view, it should not be interpreted as passive adherence to Babylonian sources (as has sometimes been claimed), but rather as an example of adopting a particular voice, tone and genre, and thus speaking through it, as it were. I have argued that the Antiochus Cylinder was an example precisely of such ventriloquism: the Seleucid king spoke in the ancient idiom of cuneiform inscriptions, while adapting their idiom to his purposes (surely on the advice of some local expert who could master such cultural translation, somebody like Berossos in fact). Meanwhile, Berossos, for his part, adopted and adapted the voice of Nebuchadnezzar in his own work. His text adheres very closely to the Nebuchadnezzar inscriptions at this point, but there is at least one detail that could not simply have been lifted from them. As a final flourish in his narrative, Berossos tells us that Nebuchadnezzar built the Hanging Garden of Babylon for his homesick Median wife.156 The garden, Berossos says, reminded her of the mountains of her native country. On the face of it, this is a strange story in a Babylonian work, and Assyriologists have, understandably, been baffled by it.157 There are at least three questions that need addressing before we can understand how and why Berossos came to include such a blatant piece of romance in his otherwise rather sober account of Babylonian history. First, where did he encounter the motif of the hanging garden, and what made it attractive to him? Secondly, what was at stake in the story about Nebuchadnezzar and his homesick Iranian wife? And finally, why did Berossos claim that Nebuchadnezzar’s wife was called Amyitis, daughter of Astyages? My contention is that Berossos inherited all these ingredients from Greek traditions, but that he reconfigured and mixed them to new effect  – securing a prominent place for Nebuchadnezzar in the Greek imagination (and simultaneously establishing himself as a guide to the marvels of Babylon). There is no trace of a hanging garden in Mesopotamian sources, and archaeologists have not been able to locate one either.158 Did the building actually exist, even if the homesick queen was a fiction? One weak answer is that it certainly existed in the Greek imagination.159 Although the extant sources are later than Berossos, the combined testimonies of Curtius and 156 It has become common to refer to the ‘Hanging Gardens of Babylon’ (plural). Berossos uses the singular παράδεισος. 157 Dalley 1994: 56 has declared it spurious but her arguments do not convince; see also the remarks in van der Spek 2008: 311–12. 158 For detailed discussion see Bichler and Rollinger 2005. 159 Brodersen 1996: ch. 4, esp. pp. 56–7.

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Diodorus suggest that already the Alexander historian Clitarchus had described this marvellous hanging garden in some detail.160 There is every reason to believe that it was known to Greeks of the early Hellenistic period, and that Berossos included it ‘to cater to the interests of his Greek readers’, as Stanley Burstein has argued.161 Clitarchus also told the tale of the king and his homesick wife, though probably without naming them.162 Royal couples are a prominent feature of Hellenistic literature, politics and culture.163 Callimachus’ Lock of Berenice is a famous example, as is the novella of Antiochus I falling in love with his stepmother, Stratonice.164 Nobody knows how old that story is, or how true – but it confirms the importance of dynastic couples at every level of Seleucid culture. Even the Antiochus Cylinder mentions Stratonice as queen and consort of Antiochus – against the ancient conventions of the genre.165 In telling the story of the king who built a marvellous garden for his wife, Berossos seems, once again, to have catered to Greek taste. Moreover, by calling him Nebuchadnezzar, he created a prominent place for the Seleucids’ favourite Babylonian ruler in the imagination of his Greek readers. Dressed in the garb of an orientalizing legend, Nebuchadnezzar came to embody the desire of Seleucid Greeks for a glorious oriental past, with all the nostalgia, voyeurism (historical and otherwise) and sheer delight in exotic role play that that exercise involved. It remains to be seen what we should make of Nebuchadnezzar’s homesick wife. Berossos calls her Amyitis, daughter of Astyages (F 7d 680 BNJ). This Amyitis, it turns out – or rather a princess called Amytis, without the first ‘i’  – is a major figure in Ctesias. In a context where Berossos has already signalled his engagement with Ctesias, that can hardly be coincidence. Indeed, the two princesses quickly turn out to share similar roles in their respective narratives. Ctesias introduces his Amytis as the daughter of Astyages, last king of the Medes. She marries Cyrus after her father’s defeat and helps him secure the eastern parts of his empire (F 9, 1–2 (Lenfant)): 160 Boncquet 1987: 95–6, Prandi 1996: 122–4, Bichler and Rollinger 2005: 169–70. Van der Spek 2008: 307–9 considers the possibility that it was already mentioned in Ctesias. For a suggestion that the motif was even older, see De Breucker’s commentary on Berossos F 8 680 BNJ ad ‘Hanging Garden’. 161 Burstein 1978: 27, n. 106. 162 Bichler and Rollinger 2005: 169–70.  163  Ogden 1999. 164 For the Lock of Berenice and its Ptolemaic context see Gutzwiller 1992. For the novella of Antiochus and Stratonice see Kuhrt and Sherwin-White 1993: 24–5; Lightfoot 2003: 373–9. 165 Antiochus Cylinder col. ii.21–9; for discussion see Kuhrt and Sherwin-White 1991: 83–5.

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φησὶν οὖν αὐτίκα περὶ τοῦ Ἀστυάγους, ὡς οὐδὲν αὐτοῦ Κῦρος πρὸς γένος ἐχρημάτιζεν· οὗτος δὲ αὐτὸν καὶ Ἀστυΐγαν καλεῖ: φυγεῖν δὲ ἀπὸ προσώπου Κύρου Ἀστυΐγαν ἐν Ἐκβατάνοις, καὶ κρυφθῆναι ἐν τοῖς κριοκράνοις τῶν βασιλείων οἰκημάτων, κρυψάντων αὐτὸν τῆς τε θυγατρὸς Ἀμύτιος καὶ τοῦ ἀνδρὸς αὐτῆς Σπιτάμα· ἐπιστάντα δὲ Κῦρον Οἰβάραι ἐπιτάξαι ἀνακρίνειν διὰ στρεβλώσεων Σπιτάμαν τε καὶ Ἀμύτιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοὺς παῖδας αὐτῶν Σπιτάκην τε καὶ Μεγαβέρνην περὶ Ἀστυΐγα, τὸν δὲ ἑαυτὸν προσαγγεῖλαι ἵνα μὴ δι’ αὐτὸν στρεβλωθείησαν οἱ παῖδες· ληφθέντα δὲ πέδαις παχείαις ὑπὸ Οἰβάρα δεθῆναι, λυθῆναι δὲ ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ Κύρου μετ’ οὐ πολὺ καὶ ὡς πατέρα τιμηθῆναι, καὶ τὴν θυγατέρα Ἀμύτιν πρότερον μὲν μητρικῆς ἀπολαῦσαι τιμῆς, ἔπειτα δὲ καὶ εἰς γυναῖκα ἀχθῆναι τῶι Κύρωι, Σπιτάμα τοῦ ἀνδρὸς αὐτῆς ἀνηιρημένου ὅτι ἐψεύσατο ἀγνοεῖν εἰπὼν ἐρευνώμενον Ἀστυΐγαν. ταῦτα λέγει Κτησίας περὶ Κύρου, καὶ οὐχ οἷα Ἡρόδοτος. καὶ ὅτι πρὸς Βακτρίους ἐπολέμησε καὶ ἀγχώμαλος ἡ μάχη ἐγένετο· ἐπεὶ δὲ Βάκτριοι Ἀστυΐγαν μὲν πατέρα Κύρου γεγενημένον, Ἀμύτιν δὲ μητέρα καὶ γυναῖκα ἔμαθον, ἑαυτοὺς ἑκόντες Ἀμύτι καὶ Κύρωι παρέδοσαν. He (i.e. Ctesias) begins by stating that Astyages, whom he calls Astyigas, was not at all related to Cyrus; that he fled from him to Ecbatana and hid himself in the … (text unclear) of the royal palace with the aid of his daughter Amytis and her husband Spitamas; that Cyrus, when he arrived, ordered Oebares that not only Spitamas and Amytis, but also their sons Spitaces and Megabernes should be interrogated about Astyigas under torture; that the latter, to save his grandchildren from being tortured on his account, gave himself up and was taken and bound in heavy chains by Oebares; that shortly afterwards he was set free by Cyrus and honoured as his father; that his daughter Amytis was first honoured by him as a mother and afterwards became his wife. Her husband Spitamas, however, was put to death, because, when asked, he had falsely declared that he did not know where Astyigas was. This is what Ctesias says about Cyrus, which differs from what Herodotus says. He adds that Cyrus made war upon the Bactrians, without winning a decisive victory; but when the Bactrians learnt that Astyigas had been adopted by Cyrus as his father, and Amytis as his mother and wife, they voluntarily submitted to Amytis and Cyrus.

A powerful Iranian princess, Amytis makes possible the transition from one Asiatic empire (that of the Medes) to another (that of the Persians). Her role is overtly dynastic: at one point, Ctesias describes her dowry as being quite literally the whole of Media – to marry this woman is to take over as king of Asia.166 Amyitis plays an analogous role in Berossos, though some crucial details differ. According to Berossos, she married Nebuchadnezzar, not Cyrus. So Amyitis for him marked the transition to   Ctesias F 8d 8 (Lenfant).

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Babylonian (rather than Persian) domination.167 The timing of the marriage is significant too: it happens just before the fall of Nineveh, anticipating the transition from Assyrian to Babylonian rule which that event entails. Berossos’ Greek readers may well have wondered where the Median Empire had gone in all this, since it was so familiar to them from Herodotus and Ctesias (Chapter 2). They may even have worried about Berossos’ chronology: a daughter of Astyages ought to have lived several decades after the fall of Nineveh. Modern scholars too are troubled by the anachronism, but we should not assume that upsetting the chronology of the Median royal family by a few decades was something that would have worried Berossos.168 What did worry him (and, one presumes, his Seleucid patrons) was the role of Babylon and its rulers in earlier Greek accounts of Mesopotamian history. Bluntly put, Berossos needed to replace the accepted succession of empires, Assyria – Media – Persia, with a scheme that centred around Nebuchadnezzar’s splendid Babylon. Princess Amyitis helped him to achieve his aim in at least two ways: first, she enabled him to cast Nebuchadnezzar as the rightful heir to Assyria by drawing on Ctesias’ account of Amytis and her role in the succession of empires; secondly, she helped to present Nebuchadnezzar as a model for the Seleucids by linking him to the romantic tale of the Mesopotamian king who built the hanging garden for his Iranian wife. Nebuchadnezzar was a true Babylonian ruler, of course, indeed the best ruler; but he was accommodating to the needs of his foreign wife. Antiochus’ own mother was, as it happened, Iranian, so the story of Nebuchadnezzar and Amyitis fit very well the context of early Seleucid Babylonia which, in Berossos’ account, had always had a cosmopolitan ruling family. But the point was more general than that: Babylon was a place that could accommodate the needs and desires of its foreign residents. Nebuchadnezzar could build Iranian-looking gardens. Berossos could write a Greek history of Babylon for the new Seleucid rulers.

Longing for the universal archive ‘Desire’, it has been said, ‘is a crucial constituent of the archive experience,’169 and Berossos was a master at harnessing archival desire. Heaven 167 Berossos F 7d BNJ. 168 We know from other passages that Berossos was perfectly capable of distorting known historical facts. For an example, see above, n. 128. 169 Burton 2005: 11.

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and earth, the lost depth of time, the wisdom of the Chaldaeans, the romance of the oriental king and his hanging garden  – all found room in his account of Babylon. Above all, Berossos’ archive was a contact zone, a place where local histories could blend and fit into an unchanging narrative of world empire, a narrative that the antediluvian Oannes had already written at the beginning of time. Berossos’ work seems to me to capture a quintessential quality of Babylonian-Greek literature under Antiochus I: much of that literature was archival in the positive sense of retrieving, transcribing and continuing imperial traditions, traditions that supposedly continued ‘unchanged’. As everybody knows, in order to preserve things unchanged, it is necessary to implement quite a few changes in practice: and Berossos was a master at changing things so as to keep things unchanged. In his treatment, Enūma eliš begins to sound like Greek philosophy, while the history of Babylon departs rather pointedly from Ctesias’ account. But the point is never to substitute one local tradition for another; the aim, rather, is to arrive at a universal account. Tensions between local and global aspirations are evident in the Antiochus Cylinder, a curiously searching royal inscription, in which the king plays his role as ruler of Babylon while seeking reassurances that his commitment will be matched by the temple and its god. If the Cylinder inscribes Antiochus in the archives of cuneiform literature, Berossos claims to have opened up those archives to Greek readers. At one level, this is a strikingly revisionist gesture: it brings Berossos into conflict with some of the most cherished myths of Greek historiographical literature. The ‘succession of empires’ is a case in point: Berossos effectively turns Ctesias’ scheme on its head. Yet it would be misleading to think that Berossos is simply promoting his local tradition. The Babylonian archive may seem local to the ethnographer approaching it from the outside, yet what it yields to those who are prepared to enter is truly universal: a cosmos of gods and men (all gods, all men); an unbroken line of empire – one empire for one world; and the cultural archive of humanity itself, preserved from before the great flood, for the benefit of all mankind. As ever – as in the texts considered in Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, the challenge was to fit the local detail, the specific insight and turn of phrase, into an account that would hold true for all.

Further dialogues

Literary dialogue between Greece and Mesopotamia did not end in the early Hellenistic period, nor was it restricted to the Seleucid Empire. It would be possible, for example, to discuss the expatriate Babylonians, Graeco-Babylonians and Greek Babylonophiles who gravitated towards the court of the Attalids in Pergamon during the third and second centuries B C . One of the earliest of these figures was the ‘Chaldaean’ Sudines (Akk. Šuma-iddina?), a bona fide Mesopotamian expert in astrology and omen interpretation who acted as advisor to Attalus I.1 A few generations later, the Attalid scholar Zenodotus of Mallos suggested that Homer himself was a Chaldaean.2 What became a joke for Lucian seems to have been a respectable hypothesis for Zenodotus, at least judging from the remaining traces of his argument.3 Zenodotus was a pupil of Crates of Mallos, the leading intellectual of the Attalid court, and main rival to the great Homeric scholar Aristarchus of Samothrace in Ptolemaic Alexandria.4 Aristarchus argued that Homer was an Athenian and supported his theory with detailed linguistic arguments, based on a close reading of the texts.5 Zenodotus’ claim for a Chaldaean Homer opened up very different horizons, and should be seen as part of a sustained battle between the schools of Aristarchus and Crates over the literary legacy of Greece. Another pupil of Crates, the grammarian Herodicus of Babylon, plunged his readers into the midst of that battle by composing a witty poem about literature, belonging and exile (SH 494 = Athenaeus, Deipnosophists 5.222a):

1 Rochberg 2010: 8–9. 2 For this slippery term see above, pp. 145–6. Kim 2010: 165, n. 89 argues that ‘Chaldaean’ here means no more than ‘astrologer’, but its eastern associations cannot be so easily ignored. 3 Schol. AT ad Il. 23.79b (Erbse). For Lucian see A True Story 2.20, with Kim 2010: 164–6. 4 For Crates and his work see Broggiato 2001. 5 Janko 1992: 71, ad Il. 13.195–7.

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φεύγετ’, Ἀριστάρχειοι, ἐπ’ εὐρέα νῶτα θαλάττης Ἑλλάδα, τῆς ξουθῆς δειλότεροι κεμάδος, γωνιοβόμβυκες, μονοσύλλαβοι, οἷσι μέμηλε τὸ σφὶν καὶ σφῶιν καὶ τὸ μὶν ἠδὲ τὸ νίν. τοῦθ’ ὑμῖν εἴη δυσπέμφελον· Ἡροδίκωι δὲ Ἑλλὰς ἀεὶ μίμνοι καὶ θεόπαις Βαβυλών. Flee, Aristarcheans, over the broad back of the sea from Greece, you who are more cowardly than the fallow deer, angle-droners, monosyllabists, who worry over sphin and sphoin, and min as well as nin. May you have a stormy passage. But for Herodicus may Greece always remain – and Babylon, child of the gods.

As Akira Yatsuhashi points out, Herodicus casts the debates between the two grammatical schools as a battle over Greece itself.6 Both sides claim the literary legacy of Hellas: the Aristarcheans through painstaking work on grammatical issues, such as the pronouns σφίν, σφῶιν, μίν and νίν; Herodicus by responding to what he seems to suggest might be the competitive ‘spirit’ of Greece.7 Five lines establish Herodicus’ ownership of Greece, and the Greek literary tradition. All this is done with typically Hellenistic sophistication and wit. Nothing in those lines quite prepares us for the final twist: Greece is where Herodicus belongs … ‘and Babylon, child of the gods’. That massive transcontinental journey is made in a wink (indeed, to be technical about it, in the space of the central diairesis, precisely in the middle of the last pentameter line) and it leaves us entirely baffled. What do we make of this sudden leap from Greece to Babylon? What does it mean? The joke is, of course, on Herodicus himself. He has staged a single combat of words, using Homer’s language to claim that he has fought it out with the school of Aristarchus, and won. The losers are banished from Hellas while Herodicus alone claims Greece for himself … together with Babylon. There is an admission, in that last line, that nobody, in this poem, is only Greek. So the duel is not about purity, but rather about how we relate to Greece – whether it is through painstaking grammatical detail, or through a fighting spirit which finally admits both distance and defeat.

Yatsuhashi 2010: 186–8. 7 As one might expect, the main point of reference is Homer: ἐπ’ εὐρέα νῶτα θαλάττης is an epic formula; δυσπέμφελος a learned Homeric gloss. γωνιοβόμβυκες and μονοσύλλαβοι are coined in the epic style, with tongue firmly in cheek. The opening couplet with its colourful language recalls Homeric ‘flyting’, the practice of insulting enemies on the battlefield: Martin 1989. 6

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Herodicus’ poem can give a taste of just how much I have not covered in this short book, and in the even shorter lectures on which it was based. There are many texts that deserve, and would reward, attention: elegies, satires, wisdom poems, scholarly literature, lullabies. Not all Mesopotamian literature is about gods and kings, despite the impression I may have given. There was also the astronomical tradition, which helped to spread (and transform) Mesopotamian notions of ‘heavenly writing’.8 There were the Greek readers of Mesopotamian literature: we have encountered Alexander Polyhistor, who in fact belonged to the school of Crates; and Eusebius the church father, both of whom kept the dialogue between Greece and Mesopotamia alive, by excerpting Berossos.9 There were many other, close and distant readers: in the Christian period, Greek perceptions of Babylon were revisited in the light of the Bible. The famous forger of Berossos, Annio da Viterbo, belongs in this tradition  – and would deserve more space than I have given him. Likewise, I have only touched on Babylonian interactions with Greek philosophy: there would be, in fact, many more aspects to consider.10 For example: in what sense might the school founded by Archedemus of Tarsos be a Mesopotamian phenomenon?11 It would also be interesting to revisit the so-called Graeco-Babyloniaca, that late and mysterious flowering of Babylonian-Greek literary culture, which saw cuneiform texts transcribed into the Greek alphabet.12 It would likewise be rewarding to look at Iamblichus’ Babyloniaca, a self-consciously ‘Mesopotamian’ text from a time when Mesopotamian literature was transforming itself under new political pressures.13 I have no doubt that all this, and much more besides, would deserve attention. But I have written only a short book. I share Franco Moretti’s insight that the challenges posed by comparative literature are not always, or necessarily, solved by reading more. Moretti’s response has been to advocate distant reading.14 My own contribution 8 E.g. Rochberg 2004, 2008a, 2008b, 2010. 9 For Polyhistor and other early readers of Berossos see Schironi forthcoming. 10 For ‘Chaldaeans’ and the Academy see Horky 2009: 47, n. 1 and 93–6; Erler 2011. For Berossos and the Stoa see above, pp. 148–51. Schnabel 1923: 94–133 discusses Posidonius’ reception of Berossos; for his interest in Sudines see P. Gen. inv. 203, discussed in Rochberg 2008a, s.v. ‘Sudinēs’, with further literature. 11 Cf. van der Spek 2009: 110: ‘The holistic world view of the Stoa fitted nicely in with the holistic premisses of Babylonian astrology.’ Van der Spek also considers the possibility (first mooted by Plutarch) that the leading Stoic philosopher and teacher of Crates, Diogenes of Babylon, was a native Babylonian. 12 Geller 1997, A. Westenholz 2007. 13 S. A. Stephens and Winkler 1995: 179–245, Morales 2008: 49–52; S. A. Stephens 2008: 58. 14 Moretti 2000 and 2005.

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takes a diametrically different route, selecting a few texts – and offering some close readings, which is what classicists like me are, after all, trained to do. Still, perhaps even a close reading of some few texts can open up new horizons. It may be useful here to recapitulate some of the findings of this book, in order to reflect on their implications for how we might approach ancient literature, and indeed history. Chapter 1 started by looking at some of the ‘parallels’ between Greek and Mesopotamian epic, from shared expressions to motifs, scenes and narrative techniques. These parallels have often lured scholars away from the texts and towards the historical questions of who influenced whom, when and how. I have argued that reading the texts must take precedence over such questions – even, and especially, if we ask how early Greek hexameter poetry related to Mesopotamian epic. The point is not that reading literature is superior to establishing literary history, but rather that the two cannot be separated: those who make history are themselves readers. Contact and exchange between ancient epic traditions took place within a wider context where communities across the Eastern Mediterranean and the Near East explored some of the same questions: what does it mean to be human, as opposed to divine? How did the history of gods and humans unfold? These shared questions underpin the rise of shared literary forms. The real work of comparative reading starts when we ask how individual texts – and specific traditions – went about telling the history of gods and men. What aspects did they emphasize, which ones did they play down or reject outright? Both Greek and Mesopotamian epics negotiate the alternative between cosmogony by creation and cosmogony by birth; and between a deluge and a war as a means of ushering in the current world order. There are many other shared questions, and shared ranges of answers, that might have been explored in this book: how do different traditions portray the rise of human civilization?15 How do they treat the invention of civic life? How do they analyse the dynamics of leadership?16 The point of Chapter 1 was not to answer, or even raise, all possible questions, but to outline an approach – and to illustrate the benefits of committed literary reading. Chapter 2 also stressed the primacy of reading, and the importance of communities of readers. Starting from the question of what Herodotus knew about Babylon, I suggested that the city attracted a globalized 15 Graziosi and Haubold 2005: ch. 4 provides a starting point. 16 The shared metaphor of a ‘shepherd of the people’ in particular would deserve attention here; see Haubold 2000.

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discourse about the succession of empires, from the Assyrians to the Medes and Persians. This discourse stemmed from popular Mesopotamian literature about the ancient emperors of Akkad, and especially the hapless Narām-Sîn. Under Nabonidus and Cyrus in the sixth century B C , the succession of empires acquired the form that we later find in the Greek historiographical mainstream. There was, however, no single Greek version: Ctesias was fairly close to the Nabonidus texts in casting Babylon as the submerged centre of imperial succession; whereas Herodotus took Babylon’s exceptional role as a sign of weakness rather than strength. Each author thus added his own distinctive voice to a conversation about imperial history which, like the questions discussed in Chapter 1, was felt to be of global significance, and was therefore widely shared across the ancient world. The ‘invention of the barbarian’, I argued, also developed in dialogue with Near Eastern literary traditions. Far from being a solipsistic creation of ‘the other’, it stemmed from a polemical engagement with a multilayered imperial discourse. In order to trace that discourse, it is necessary to extend our range as readers, to include texts which have often been denied the benefit of literary study. While it is generally assumed that the poems discussed in Chapter 1 reward close and sympathetic reading, such reading is not always routine with Herodotus, and is only just beginning to be granted to Mesopotamian texts such as the Sargon Geography or the Mappa Mundi. Chapter 3 looked at a body of texts that may at first glance seem even less promising for literary investigation. Prior to this book, many scholars expressed doubt as to whether late cuneiform chronicles and royal inscriptions could be regarded as ‘literature’ at all. Berossos has not fared much better: a problematic transmission has often stifled attempts at close engagement with his work. And yet here too, and perhaps especially here, an approach based on close reading is both appropriate and rewarding. Berossos and contemporary Mesopotamian texts may seem ‘dry’ in isolation, but come to life once we see them as the products of a dynamic archival culture. Mesopotamian libraries served not as inert repositories of ancient imperial tradition but rather as arenas for negotiating the transition of the empire into a new era. The need to balance continuity and change underpinned the role play of Seleucid kings such as Antiochus I, who in his Antiochus Cylinder wrote himself into an ancient tradition of kingship, while at the same time reflecting on his marginal place in that tradition. Likewise, the cuneiform chronicles of the time not only provide scripts

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for royal role play but dramatize the very process of scripting the king’s actions. Berossos too takes part in this imperial drama, as I argued in connection with Babyloniaca Book 1, where he introduces himself as a barbarian sage on the model of contemporary Greek philosophers. Elsewhere, he ventriloquizes the inscriptions of his favourite king Nebuchadnezzar only to dress up the king in the orientalizing garb of a romantic Greek tale. In the Babyloniaca, even role models like Nebuchadnezzar are made to play new roles. And that is precisely the point: Berossos was not content with transmitting Mesopotamian historical and cultural traditions. There is room in the Babyloniaca for a creative reading of Enūma eliš, Nebuchadnezzar’s inscriptions and a range of other Mesopotamian literature; but also of Megasthenes, Ctesias and the Alexander historians. The archive could not actually be re-written – but it could be passed on, and re-read. Berossos, the creative (re-)reader, is in many ways the hero of this book. For what ultimately matters to me, in the literary dialogues between Greece and Mesopotamia, are the very real experiences of readers – both in antiquity and today. W. B. Stanford, who gave his name to the Stanford Lectures on which this book is based, believed that literary scholars should stand up for ancient literature and not let it simply be ‘used as material for history’. He urged us ‘to defend fiction in general and poetry in particular in terms of their own aims and methods’.17 I have some sympathy with his position; but I see no sharp dichotomy between literature and history. Committed reading, not just of poetry, but also of historiographical texts, and even of inscriptions, can in fact extend our historical knowledge.18 It can even, it seems to me, help tackle some of the larger historical questions that have so often taken precedence over literary analysis, and inhibited its pursuit: how could Homer allude to Near Eastern epics? How much exactly did Herodotus know about Babylon? Reading closely can help us move beyond the stamp-collecting approach to comparative literature, which lists parallels between Greek and Near Eastern epic, and then leaves them to speak for themselves, because there is no accounting for their existence. Similarly, it can remind us that classical Greeks did not simply invent their barbarian neighbours as foils to themselves; and that those barbarians 17 Stanford 1980: 1. 18 As an increasing number of scholars now recognizes: e.g. Grethlein 2006 and 2010, Osborne 2009, Harrison 2011.

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could write too: Babylon was at the centre of a web of stories. Above all, what transpires from visiting the archives of Mesopotamian and Greek literature is the range and intelligence of readers like Berossos, who would not be limited by constraints of language, culture or geographical distance. This is one reason why I have enjoyed writing this book: I wanted to share the pleasures of reading closely across vast distances.

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Index

Abydos, 112 Achaean wall, 67–8 Achaemenid Empire control of languages, 102, 117 control of the sea, 102–17 and local culture, 120–1 as social space, 102–3 Achilles, 20, 21 on the human condition, 44–5, 46–7, 49 and kleos, 68–70 and Patroclus, 23 and Priam, 42–4 sings of Gilgamesh, 20–1, 72 Achilles Tatius, 28 Adalı, S., 84 Adapa, 147, see also Oannes Aegean, 23 Aelian, 92 Aeschylus, 99, 117 Persae, 125 vv. 424–8, 114 vv. 744–51, 115–16 Aesop, 25, 26, 27, 30 African epic controversy, 19 Agamemnon, 20, 21 Aigaleos, Mount, 113 akītu, 82 Akitu Programme ll. 423–8 (Linssen), 164 Akkad (empire), 13, 84, 103, 182 Akkadian (language), 1, 2, 15, 27, 133, 141, 144, 155 Achaemenid, 108–9, 110, 111 Hellenistic, 155 Alcaeus fr. 350 L-P, 74–5 Alexander Polyhistor, 148, 149, 150, 153, 180 Alexander the Great, i, 8, 14, 127, 128, 142, 143, 163 Alexandria, 14, 24, 178 allegory, 150–1

Aloros, 143 Amel-Marduk, 82, 137 Amytis, 174–6 daughter of Astyages, 173, 174 married to Cyrus, 174–5 married to Nebuchadnezzar, 173, 176 Anakyndaraxos, 170 Anatolia, 6, 24 as contact zone, 23 narrative traditions of, 52 Anchiale, 170 Annio da Viterbo, 127, 180 Antimenidas, 74, 75 Antioch, 129 Antiochus Cylinder, 15–16, 127, 135–41, 142, 147, 154, 155, 165, 173, 174, 177, 182 col. i.13–16 (van der Spek and Stol), 136–7 col. i.6–13 (van der Spek and Stol), 138–9 col. ii.17–21 (van der Spek and Stol), 139–40 Antiochus I, 15, 127, 129, 133, 135–42, 177, 182 and Berossos, 143 and local experts, 142 and Nabû, 135–6, 137, 138, 140–1 and Nebuchadnezzar, 135–7, 155, 165 patron of Mesopotamian temples, 132–3, 139–41 and Stratonice, 174 as world ruler, 137, 140, 141, 147 Antiochus III, 131–2 Antiochus IV, 132 Anu, 149 Anzu Epic, 57 Apadana relief, 120 Apollo, 67 and Achilles, 69 ancestor of the Seleucids, 137 and Nabû, 137 Apollonius of Rhodes, 14, 153 Apsu, 149, 150 Apter, E., 4

213

214

Index

Aramaic as language of diplomacy, 118 in Mesopotamia, 9, 155, 169 Arbaces, 92 Archedemus of Tarsos, 180 archive, 10, 15, 155, 184 as contact zone, 15, 127, 154, 166–7, 177 and desire, 154, 176–7 and empire, 15, 130, 154, 155, 172 Greek, 154 Mesopotamian, 10, 15, 127, 130, 142, 144, 154, 155, 166, 172, 183 transmission of, 153–63 universal, 16, 153–63, 176–7 Argoste, dream of, 93 Aristarchus of Samothrace, 14, 55, 178, 179 Aristoboulos, 170 Aristophanes (comic poet), 117 Aristophanes of Byzantium, 14 Aristotle, 96, 148, 149, 153 on barbarians, 145 on purpose in nature, 153 Armenia, 107 site of landfall after the deluge, 158, 160 Armenian (language), 160, 171 Asia, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 97, 102 history of, 78–98, 175 invention of, 73, 126 Assurbanipal, Aššur-bāni-apli, 108, 169 consults antediluvian texts, 159 control of languages, 117 knows cuneiform, 9 as Sardanapallos, 168 Assyria end of, 80–6, 90, 91, 94, 169–70 heritage of, 87, 90, 176 and the origins of fable, 25–6 relationship with Greeks, 99–102 and the succession of empires, see succession of empires and Syria, 25, 122 and world rule, 83–4, 102, 103–4, 105–6, 118–19, 121, 122–3 Assyriology, 2, 3, 19, 21, 127, 154, 170 astrology, 92, 180 Astronomical Diaries, 132 astronomy, 142, 144, 146 Astyages, 87, 90, 91, 173, 174, 175, 176 Athena, 49, 124 Athenaeus, 170, 178 Athenians culturally distinctive, 125 defeat Persia, 121–5 Athos, canal through, 112 Atrahasis (flood hero), 160, see also Utanapishti; Xisouthros; Zi(u)sudra

Atrahasis, Atra-hasīs (poem), see Poem of the Flood (Atrahasis) Attalids literary culture of, 178–9 Attalus I, 178 Auerbach, E., 34, 37 Mimesis, 33–4 Aurobindo, S., 10 Babrius, 25, 26, 27 fable of bull and mosquito, 28, 30 Mythiambi Aesopei, Prologue to Part II, 1–5, 25 on the origins of the fable, 25 Babylon and Alexander the Great, 128 capital of Assyria, 90 city walls, 94, 96–7, 132, 163–4 destruction in, 689 B C , 82, 83 and gender, 91 Greek views of, 12, 74–8, 94, 98 Hanging Garden, 173–4 Persian conquests of, 95–7 relationship with the gods, 46, 87, 88, 93, 96–7 role in history, 90, 91–3, 94, 96, 97 temples, 94, 133, 135, 142 and the succession of empires, see succession of empires Babylon Stele, 87, 90 col, I I (Schaudig), 80–6 Babylonian Epic of Creation, see Enūma eliš Babylonian Theodicy, 56, 57 Babylonian World Map, 107–8, 110, 182 Babylonian-Greek literature, 8, 15, 129, 135 Bactria, 128 Bakker, E., 34, 39 barbarian, 14, 16, 84, 145 invention of, 8, 13, 98–9, 117–21, 126, 182, 183–4 wisdom of, 153, 183 Beaulieu, P.-A., 81, 82, 87 Behistun inscription, see royal inscriptions Behistun relief, 121 Bel (god), 142, 148, 150, 153, 157, 164, 165 champions Cyrus, 95 identified with Zeus, 53 relationship with Babylon, 93 see also Marduk Belesys, 91, 92–3, 96 Bēlet-Ilī, 63 Belos (god), see Bel (god) Belos (king), 25, 92 Bernal, M. Black Athena, 6 Bernheimer Report, 4

Index Bernheimer, C., 4 Bernstein, L., 71 Berossos, 53, 56, 127–8, 142–3 and Antiochus I, 137 astronomical fragments, 143–4 and the Babylon Stele, 82 on the Chaldaeans, 156, 160–3 and Ctesias, 166, 167–8, 169 on Nebuchadnezzar, 16, 137, 165–6, 172–6 passages discussed F 1b (1) 680 BNJ, 156 F 1b (5) 680 BNJ, 156–7 F 1b (6) 680 BNJ, 152–3 F 4b (14–17) 680 BNJ, 158–63 F 7c 680 BNJ, 170–2 F 8 (137) 680 BNJ, 161–3 F 8 (138) 680 BNJ, 162 F 8a (139–41) 680 BNJ, 165–6 F 8a 680 BNJ, 167–8 F 9a (152) 680 BNJ, 163–4 as philosopher-priest, 16, 146, 148–53 as reader, 3, 15–16, 183, 184 reception of, 127–8 sources of, 143, 144 on the succession of empires, 16, 176, 177 Bible, 33, 34, 180, see also Book of Daniel; Genesis Bitter River, 13, 108–9, 110, 111–12, see also Bosporus; Hellespont Black Sea, 111 Book of Daniel, 78 Borsippa, 135, 136, 139, 140, 142, 163 Borsippa Cylinder, see Antiochus Cylinder Bosporus, bridging of, 106, 107, 110, see also Bitter River Boyd, T., 70 Bronze Age, 6, 24, 52 Bull of Heaven, 31, 41 Burkert, W., 3, 8, 21, 31 Burstein, S. M., 174 Burton, A., 15 Byzantium, 24 Callatiae, 120 Callimachus, 14, 154 Lock of Berenice, 174 Cambyses, 103, 155 as conqueror of the sea, 106 Cartledge, P., 77 Cawkwell, G., 112, 113 Cecrops, 124 Certamen Homeri et Hesiodi, see Contest of Homer and Hesiod Césaire, A., 99 Chaldaeans, 16, 93, 144, 145–6, 156, 160–3, 177, see also Berossos; Homer Chandragupta Maurya, 131

215

Chronicle Concerning Antiochus and the Sîn Temple obverse ll. 8–12 (van der Spek and Finkel), 141–2 Chronicle of Ptolemy III obverse ll. 6’-8’ (van der Spek and Finkel), 134–5 chronicles, 127, 139, 154, 170, 182, see also Chronicle Concerning Antiochus and the Sîn Temple; Chronicle of Ptolemy III; Fall of Nineveh Chronicle; Ruin of Esagila Chronicle; Nabopolassar and the Fall of the Assyrian Empire; Weidner Chronicle Cilicia, 23, 24, 80, 101, 170, 171 Circe, 153 Cithaeron, 124 Classics and comparative literature, 3, 4–5 definition of, 5 history of, 2, 5 clay, 63, 65, 66 Clay, J. S., 34 Clitarchus, 174 commitment (in reading), 4–5, 7, 10, 19, 32, 33, 34, 79 comparative literature, 3–4 contact zone, 10, 15, 154, 167, 177 Contest of Homer and Hesiod chs. 12–3 (West), 37–8 cosmogony, 56–7, 58–61, 64, 66, 149, 181 Crates of Mallos, 178, 180 creation-flood epic, 11, 54, 55, 56, 58, 59, 61, 70, 156, 160 Ctesias affinity with Mesopotamian texts, 97, 182 on Amytis, see Amytis passages discussed F 1b 24 (Lenfant), 92–3 F 9, 1–2 (Lenfant), 174–5 F 13b (Lenfant), 91–2 on Sardanapallos, 169 on Semiramis, see Semiramis on the succession of empires, 91–4, 166, 169 cuneiform script, 9 Curtius, 173 Cuthean Legend of Narām-Sîn, 84–6 Cypria, 63 Cyprus, 23 Cyrus and Amytis, see Amytis and Babylon, 88, 90–1, 93, 95, 163–4 and Nebuchadnezzar, 130 and Sargon of Akkad, 103 as world ruler, 104 Cyrus Cylinder, 88, 90, 95, 97, 104 K2.1 29 (Schaudig), 104 K2.1 7–14 (Schaudig), 88

216 Dalley, S., 171 Damrosch, D., 11, 54, 55, 56, 58, 61, 70, 156 Darius, 13, 95, 96, 109, 110, 117, 121, 130 conducts ethnographic experiment, 120 as conqueror of the sea, 106–7 as world ruler, 110 De Breucker, G., 144–5, 148, 159 Delphic oracle, 122 deluge, 54, 63, 64, 66, 83–4, 85, 159, 160, 162, 181, see also flood myth; Poem of the Flood Demodamas, 129 Demodocus, 51 Derketo, 167 Derrida, J., 154 Descent of Ištar, 57 Dialogue of Pessimism, 35 ll. 76–8 (Lambert), 35 Diodorus, 174 Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 78 dreams, 35–7, 82, 93 Ea, 53, 62, 63 identified with Kronos, 53, 157 see also Kronos Ea-bēl-ilī, 107 Eagleton, T., 7, 19 Eanna, 155 Ebeling, E., 27 Egypt, 14, 78, 80, 109, 111, 132 and conquest of the sea, 106 in the late period, 77 Ehulhul Cylinder, 90 1 I .7–29 (Schaudig), 86–7 Elamite, 109, 110 Empedocles, 153 Fr 61 DK, 152–3 emplotment, 73, 74, 85 enargeia, 37, 39, 42 Enkidu, 23, 39, 65 Enlil, 63 Ennius, 31 Enūma Anu Ellil, 147 Enūma eliš canonical status of, 18, 147 on creation and procreation, 59–60 on the human condition, 46 and the myth of succession in heaven, 52–4 passages discussed I V .129–38 (Talon), 59 V I .7–8 (Talon), 46 reception in Berossos, 148–53, 183 epic African, 19 as genre, 19, 51–8, 70–1

Index Greek, 19, 30–1 Mesopotamian, 19 see also African epic controversy; Enūma eliš; Epic of Gilgamesh; Hesiod Epic of Creation, see Enūma eliš Epic of Erra, 57 Epic of Gilgamesh canonical status of, 18 date of composition, 8 on dreams, see dreams on the flood, 61–3, 66–7, see also flood myth on the human condition, 47–9 passages discussed I .18–28, 32–3 I V .99–107 (George), 36 V I I I .61–2 (George), 22–3 X .184–6 and 191–3 (George), 40–1 X .301–22 (George), 47–9 X .304–5 (George), 40 X I .1–7 (George), 41–2 X I .8–10 (George), 50–1 X I .117–22 (George), 62–3 X I .134–5 (George), 66 X I .136 (George), 66 X I .181–95 (George), 61–2 prologue, 32–3 reception of (modern), 5–6, 11 and silence, 66, 67, 71 simile of the lioness, 22–3 visualization in, 34–6, 39 Epicureans, 153 Erickson, K., 137 Erra, 62 Esagila, 133, 138, 139, 140, 141, 143, 146 Esarhaddon, 113, 121, 124 essentialism, 14, 125 ethnography, 15, 144–5, 147, 148 Eudemos of Rhodes fr. 150 (Wehrli), 149–50 eurocentrism, 3, 4 Eusebius of Caesarea, 148, 149, 170, 180 Ezida, 135, 138, 139, 140, 141 meaning of name, 140 fable, 25–30 bull and mosquito, 1, 26 elephant and mosquito, 26, 27–8 elephant and wren, 26–7 Fall of Nineveh Chronicle, 80 fishing (as imperial metaphor), 101, 112, 114 flood myth, 11 in Berossos, 54, 156–63 in the Epic of Gilgamesh, 61–3, 66–7, 71 in Greece, 65–6 in Mesopotamia, 54

Index Ford, A., 39 Foster, B., 138 Foucault, M., 154 Gallagher, W., 82 Galter, H., 103 Gaugamela, battle of, 128 genealogy, 56–7, 66, 150 Genesis, 54 Gilgamesh (king), 20, 21 and Achilles, see Achilles dreams of, see dreams and Enkidu, 39–40 as model human being, 39 as riddle, 40–2 gods carefree, 44–6 fight among themselves, 52 philosophical interpretation of, 148–51 relationship with humans, see humans secrets of, 50–1 universal power of, 46, 53–4 Gracia, C, 6 Graeco-Babyloniaca, 180 Greek literature performance of, 10 reception of, 4–5 uniqueness of, 5 Greekness, 14, 30, 98–9 definition of, 117–18 Greeks, 8 and Assyria, see Assyria and barbarians, see barbarian culturally marginal, 120 and Hanaeans, 125 as imperial test case, 112, 113 interest in Mesopotamia, 9, 174 invade Assyria, 99–101, 172 as ocean dwellers, 101–2, 111, 112, 113, 114, 119 uniqueness of, 3, 77–9, 112 see also Yaunā(ya) Greenwood, E., 21 Gutaeans, 134 Gutium, 86 Hall, E., 77, 114 Hall, J., 98–9 Hanaeans, 134–5 Hanging Garden of Babylon, see Babylon Harran, 81, 82, 86 Hartog, F., 30, 77, 116 Hatti, 139, see also Syria Heaven, 58, 176, see also Anu; Ouranos; Sky Hector, 43, 65, 69 Hellanicus, 170

217

Hellespont, 74, 119, 126 bridging of, 14, 115–17 Heracles, 131 Herodicus of Babylon, 180 SH 494 = Athenaeus, Deipnosophists 5.222a, 178–9 Herodotus accuracy of, 12, 75–6 and Berossos, 166 on Babylon, 90–1, 94–8, 182 and Ctesias, 13, 79, 97 on culture and empire, 120, 121–5 on Greek identity, 118 on Homer and Hesiod, 50 offers no theory of imperial succession, 90 on the Medes, 79–80 and Mesopotamian sources, 76–7, 89 and Nebuchadnezzar, 131 on the oracle of the wooden wall, 121–5 passages discussed Hdt. 1.191.5–6, 95 Hdt. 3.151, 96 Hdt. 7.35, 116–17 Hdt. 7.140, 122–3 Hdt. 7.141, 123–5 Hdt. 8.144.2, 118 on priests of Bel, 146 on Xerxes at the Hellespont, 97–8 and the succession of empires, see succession of empires heroes, 55, 67 end of, 11, 54, 57, 61, 63, 67 and gender, 67 and kleos, 68 relationship with gods, 42, 65, 67 Hesiod, 55, 57, 119 and birth narratives, 58, 60, 61 canonical status of, 18, 30, 50 Catalogue of Women, 56–7, 61 and creation-flood epic, 52–8 on the creation of woman, 60–1 philosophical interpretation of, 151 relationship with Homer, 54–5 Theogony, 11, 58–61 Th. 570–2, 60–1 Hisarlık, 6 Hittite, 1, 6, 52, 53 Homer, 11, 55, 57, 119, 134, 179, 183 Athenian, 178 Babylonian, 25 canonical status of, 18, 30, 50 Chaldaean, 25, 178 and creation-flood epic, 52–8 on dreams, see dreams Greek patriot, 30

218 Homer (cont.) on the human condition, 44–5, 46–7, 49 Iliad, 42–4, 46–7, 64, 66, 67–70 Il. 7.454–63, 67–8 Il. 16.384–92, 64 Il. 18.318–23, 22–3 Il. 21.273–83, 68–9 Il. 21.313–23, 69–70 Il. 24.477–84, 42–3 Il. 24.525–6, 44–5 Il. 24.527–48, 46–7 Il. 24.628–34, 43–4 on kleos, see kleos master of decorum, 30 Mesopotamian scribe, 6 Odyssey, 42, 66 Od. 3.43–8, 49–50 Od. 23.93–5, 42 poet of war, 65 predilection for minor warriors, 66 reception of (modern), 11, 20–1, 32 relationship with Hesiod, 54–5 relationship with Mesopotamian literature, 11, 24–5 similes, see similes traditional poetics of, 30–1 visualization in, 37–9 Homeric Hymns, 55, 57 humanism, 33, 34 humans contrasted with gods, 44–51 do the work of the gods, 45–6 need the gods, 49–50 shared experience of, 44, 46–9 suffer old age, 45 Humbaba, 41 hybridity, 8, 15 Iamblichus, 180 Ibn Battuta, 2 India, 120, 129 Indian Ocean, 13, 104, see also Lower Sea Ishtar, 31 Ishtar Gate, 82 Israel, 71 Issuru, 107 Ives, C., 71 Josephus, 168 Katz, D., 46 Kelly, A., 31–2 kleos, 20 and water, 11, 68–70

Index Knox, B., 4 Komunyakaa, Y., 6 Konuk, K., 33 Korfmann, M. O., 6 Kosmin, P., 129, 135 Kronos, 53, 157, 159, 160, see also Ea Kuhrt, A., 14, 76–7 Kumarbi Cycle, 52, 53 Kurke, L., 76, 94, 96 Lā-abâš-Marduk, 82 Lanfranchi, G. B., 145 Lefebvre, H., 74 Levant, 21, 24, 64, 65, 79 literature, definition of, 7 Logue, C., 20–1, 32, 72 López-Ruiz, C., 52 Lower Sea, 13, 104, 105, see also Indian Ocean; Persian Gulf; Upper Sea Lucian, 25, 178 Lydians, 120 Ma, J., 15, 129 Macedonia, 129 Macedonians as Hanaeans, 134–5 Manetho, 145 Mappa Mundi, see Babylonian World Map Marco Polo, 2 Marduk, 53, 84, 133, 139, 146, 149 controls world history, 86–7, 88, 90 as creator god, 11, 46, 58, 59 ruler of the gods, 52 sexual abstinence of, 59–60 see also Bel (god) Medes and the sack of Nineveh, 80–3 sphere of influence, 79 in the succession of empires, see succession of empires as Ummān-manda, see Ummān-manda Megasthenes, 129, 131, 132, 135, 145, 165, 166, 183 F 1a 715 FGrHist, 131 Meltzl, H., 3 Mesomedes, 26, 27, 29 11 (Heitsch), 27–8 Mesopotamian literature, 9–10 Akkadian, 9 Aramaic, 9 history of, 7 Sumerian, 9 Mitchell, L., 99 Momigliano, A., 12, 78–9, 89–91, 93, 97

Index Momos, 63 Moretti, F., 180 Morgan, T, 29 Morris, S., 52 Most, G. W., 11 Moyer, I., 13, 77, 78 Murray, D., 109 Muse, Muses, 30, 39, 42, 44, 55 Museum, 14 myth of succession in heaven, 52–4 Nabonassaros, Nabû-naşir, 143 Nabonidus, 88, 90, 93, 97, 130, 142, 143, 171, 182 and Narām-Sîn, 85 and Nebuchadnezzar, 130 and Oannes/Adapa, 147–8 and Sargon of Akkad, 103 and the succession of empires, 80–4, 86–7, 89, 182 Nabonidus texts, 90, 93, 95, 96, 97 Nabopolassar, 80, 91, 93, 161 and the sack of Nineveh, 80, 83, 86 Nabopolassar and the Fall of the Assyrian Empire, 169 Nabû, 60, 135, 139 and Antiochus I, see Antiochus I and Apollo, see Apollo and Nebuchadnezzar, see Nebuchadnezzar nagû, 108 Nannaros, 91 Narām-Sîn, 8, 74, 84, 85, 86, 103, 166, 182 as warning example, 85 Nebuchadnezzar, 75, 79, 82, 143, 146 and Amyitis, 174–6 in Berossos, 161–2, 164–6, 172–6, 183 builder king, 132, 164–6, 168, 172 changing perceptions of, 167, 172–3 conqueror king, 108, 131, 132 and the Hanging Garden of Babylon, 173–4 model king, 16, 130–2, 137, 164–6, 172–6 piety of, 132 relationship with Nabû, 135–6 ruled for 43 years, 136–7 négritude, 99 Nestor, 49, 50 New Year’s Festival, see akītu Nimrud Letters L X I X (Saggs), 99–101 Nineveh, 170 foundation of, 91 sack of, 82, 83, 84, 86, 90, 169, 176 Ninos, 25, 91, 167 Nitocris, 94, 97 Noegel, S., 35

219

Oannes amphibious, 157 as author, 147, 156–7, 177 as culture hero, 146, 147, 148 and Mesopotamian kingship, 147–8 Old Babylonian, 45, 49, 84, 104 omen literature, 84, 147 omens, 81, 85, 103, 133, 178 oracles, see Delphic oracle orientalizing revolution(s), 8, 21 Ouranos, 56, see also Anu; Heaven; Sky Paeonians, 125 Panhellenic, 30 parallels, 1, 3, 11 between Greek and Mesopotamian epic, 56, 181 between Greek and Mesopotamian historiography, 93 methodological problems with, 11, 183 reception approach to, 10 between unrelated literatures, 51 Paris (Trojan prince), 100 Parysatis, 91 Patrocles, 129 Patroclus, 69, see also Achilles Pausanias, 143 Pergamon, 178 Persepolis, 109 Persian (language), 109–10 Persian Empire, see Achaemenid Empire Persian Gulf, 103, 104, 107, see also Lower Sea Persian Verse Account, 132 P1 col. V I .8’–11’ (Schaudig), 130 Persian Wars, 8, 73, 98, 99, 101, 118, 126 Persians adopt Mesopotamian scripts of empire, 74, 123 cannot speak Greek, 117 as instruments of the Babylonian gods, 87 and the invention of the barbarian, see barbarian land-lubbers, 14, 114 and Nebuchadnezzar, 130–1 and the succession of empires, see succession of empires twice conquer Babylon, 95–7 Phaeacians, 51 Phoenicia, 23 Phthie, 19 Pindar, 44, 120 Pisistratus (son of Nestor), 50 Plato, 107 Pliny the Elder, 143

220

Index

Poem of the Flood (Atrahasis, Atra-hasīs), 11, 46, 51, 56, 57 on human creation, 45–6 OB Atra-hasīs I .1–4 (Lambert and Millard), 45–6 reception in Enūma eliš, 65 reception in Epic of Gilgamesh, 50, 51 Poem of the Righteous Sufferer (Ludlul bēl nēmeqi), 57, 82 Polybius, 78 Pongratz-Leisten, B., 147 Popular Sayings VAT 8807 rev. I I I .50–4 (Lambert), 26–7 Porter, J., 33 Poseidon, 49, 67, 68, 115 Priam, 44, 46, 47, 112 and Achilles, 42–4 Ptolemies culture of, 14 invade Babylonia, 150 and pharaonic tradition, 130 Ptolemy III, 135 Pylos, 49 Pythia, 122, 123, 124 Qingu, 53, 60 Qurdi-Aššur-lāmur, 100, 101 Red Sea Canal, 106, 107 Res Gestae Sargonis 121–3 (Westenholz), 105–6 Richards, T., 155 Rilke, R. M., 11 role play, 15, 16, 129, 131, 133, 137, 139, 141, 145, 168, 174, 182, 183 Rollinger, R., 76, 101–2 Roman epic, 24, 31 Rome, 5, 14, 29, 132 royal inscriptions Achaemenid, 106, 109–10, 111–12 DPg, Section 2 (Weissbach), 109–10 XPh, Akkadian version, Section 3 (Herzfeld, modified), 111–12 Assyrian, 83, 101, 122–3, 136 Esarhaddon 1, col. v.15–25 (Leichty), 121 Esarhaddon 1, cols. iv.82–v.2 (Leichty), 113 Sargon Zyl. 21 (Fuchs), 101–2 Babylonian, 81–2, 136 see also Babylon Stele; Ehulhul Cylinder Old Akkadian Sargon E.2.1.1.2, 71–81 (Frayne), 104 Seleucid, see Antiochus Cylinder Ruin of Esagila Chronicle ll. 4’–8’ (van der Spek and Finkel), 132–4 Rushdie, S., 117

Sahlins, M., 78 Salamis, 112, 124 battle of, 112–13, 114, 121, 125 in Greek literature, 114–15, 117–18 Šamaš, 103 Sarakos, Sîn-šarra-iškun, 169, 170 Sardanapallos, 168, 170, 171, 172 builds Tarsos, 170 in Greek tradition, 168–9 on the pyre, 169 see also Assurbanipal, Aššur-bāni-apli Sargon Geography, 182 and local culture, 118–19 passages discussed ll. 41–4 (Horowitz), 105 ll. 57–60 (Horowitz), 118–19 and world conquest, 105 Sargon II of Assyria, 13 emulates Sargon of Akkad, 103 and the Greeks, 101 as royal fisherman, 112 Sargon of Akkad, 8, 74, 108, 110, 119, 124, 166 changing perceptions of, 166–7 model king, 13, 103, 105–6 and the sea, 13, 103, 104–5 as world ruler, 103 Saronic Gulf, 112 Sarpanitum, 60 šatammu, 146 Scaliger, J. J., 128 Scamander, 68 Schaudig, H., 81 Schliemann, H., 6 scholia, 24, 63 Schol. bT ad Il. 6.467, (Erbse), 37 Schrott, R., 6 Scodel, R., 57, 65, 67 Scot, Michael, 2 Scythia, 106, 111 Scythians, 112 across the Bitter River, 110 across the sea, 106–7 culture of, 120–1 Seleucia-on-Tigris, 129 Seleucid Empire shape of, 128–9 Seleucid era, 128, 136 Seleucids and Achaemenids, 130 city foundation, 172 and imperial role play, 129, 131, 133, 135, 141 literature and culture, 14–15 and Mesopotamian kingship, 163 and Nebuchadnezzar, 130, 131–2, 176 and religion, 133–5

Index the royal couple, 174 Seleucus I, 15, 127, 128, 142 return to Macedonia, 129 Semiramis, 91, 167–8, 169 Senghor, L., 99 Sennacherib, 81, 83, 84 Annals of, 122–3 as Babylonian hate figure, 171, 172 and Sardanapallos, 170–2 Servius, 24 Sherwin-White, S., 14 Sibyl, 143 Sidon, 100 Siduri, 41 similes, 1, 22–3 in the Epic of Gilgamesh, 66 in Homer, 37, 43, 63–4 Sîn, 81, 82, 87, 142 Sippar, 103, 159 Skunka, 121 Sky, 52, 53 social space, 74, 101, 102, 118, 124 Soyinka, W., 99 Sparta as foil for Athens, 125 Spivak, G., 125 Standard Babylonian, 8, 49, 55, 81, 85 Stanford, W. B., 183 Stevens, K., 138 Stoic philosophy, 148–9, 150–1 Strootman, R., 161 succession myth, see myth of succession in heaven succession of empires, 12–13, 78–98, 166, 176, 177, 181–2 Sudines, 178 Sumerian (language), 1, 140, 143, 144 Sumerian Flood Story, 157 Sumerian Proverbs 2.65 and 8B 19 (Alster), 29–30 Susa, 102, 108 Suteans, 121 Synkellos, 156 Syria, 23, 80, 122, 129, 139 Tale of the Heike, 51 Tarsos, 169, 170 building of, 171, 172 Telemachus, 49–50 Teššub, 52, 53 The Marriage of Mardu, 119 Themistocles, 124–5 Theocritus, 14 Thermopylae, 125 Thomas, R., 76

Tiamat, 53, 148, 149, 150, 151 army of, 151–2 as cosmic matter, 58, 148 as cosmic mother, 59 killed, 59 philosophical interpretation of, 150 Tiglath-Pileser III, 100, 143 Timotheus Persae 145–50 (Hordern), 117–18 Titans, 53, 58 Trojan War, 55 and flood narrative, 63, 65–6 and Persian Wars, 112 Troy, 64, 67, 69 ‘holy’, 75 Troy debate, 6 Tuplin, C., 80 Typhoeus, 53 Ugaritic (language), 1 Ulf, C., 110 Ullikummi, 53 Ummān-manda, 83–6, 87, 88 universal history, 73, 90–1 Upper Sea, 13, 104, 105 Urshanabi, 41 Uruk, 19, 33, 34, 155 Utanapishti, 40, 49, 160 and Gilgamesh, 40–2 on the human condition, 47–9 meaning of name, 161 retells the flood story, 51, 66–7 see also Atrahasis; Xisouthros; Zi(u)sudra Utarapashtim, 108 van der Spek, R., 172 Van Nortwick, T., 39–40 Vasunia, P., 73 Virgil, 24, 29, 31 Vitruvius, 142, 143 Weidner Chronicle, 86 West, M. L., 3, 5, 10, 27, 28 White, H., 12, 77 Whitmarsh, T., 28, 154 Wilusa, 6 see also Troy Xenophon, Cyropaedia, 164 Xerxes, 13, 102 as conqueror of the sea, 110–14 and Darius, 110–11 Greek campaign, 110–14, 119 Greek views of, 115–17 and the invention of Greece, 126

221

222 Xerxes (cont.) at the tomb of Belos/Belitanas, 91–2 as world ruler, 14, 117 Xisouthros, 157, 162, 163 disappearance of, 160–1 flood hero, 157–8 friends of, 161–2 saves the writings, 158–60 see also Atrahasis; Utanapishti; Zi(u)sudra Yatsuhashi, A., 179 Yaunā(ya), 8, 100–2, 117 as ocean dwellers, 125 see also Greeks

Index Zeno of Citium, 148–9 SVF I 103, 151 SVF I 104, 151 Zenodotus of Ephesus, 14 Zenodotus of Mallos, 24, 178 Zeus, 47, 49, 53, 60, 61, 67, 157 father of gods and men, 61, 64–5 identified with Bel, see Bel (god) oversees the creation of woman, 60–1 ruler of the gods, 52 sends floods, 64, 67 sends war, 63 Zi(u)sudra, 157 see also Atrahasis; Utanapishti; Xisouthros Zopyrus, 97