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Category: Cos

August 2, 2015

Lenzi: On the Restoration of the Temples

“There is also some evidence that the Seleucids, at least at times, accommodated themselves to Mesopotamian traditions. Perhaps the most famous example of this is Antiochus I’s royal inscription of 268 BCE.

In this archaizing inscription Antiochus I appropriated the traditional language of kingship, utilized throughout earlier Mesopotamian royal inscriptions, in order to present his own rule in the linguistic garb of an indigenous king.

The Cylinder of Antiochus I Soter from the Ezida Temple in Borsippa (Antiochus Cylinder) is an historiographical text from ancient Babylonia. It describes how the Seleucid crown prince Antiochus, the son of king Seleucus Nicator, rebuilt the Ezida Temple. 

The cuneiform text itself (BM 36277) is now in the British Museum.

The document is a barrel-shaped clay cylinder, which was buried in the foundations of the Ezida temple in Borsippa. The script of this cylinder is inscribed in archaic ceremonial Babylonian cuneiform script that was also used in the well-known Codex of Hammurabi and adopted in a number of royal inscriptions of Neo-Babylonian kings, including. Nabopolassar, Nebuchadnezzar and Nabonidus (cf. Berger 1973). The script is quite different from the cuneiform script that was used for chronicles, diaries, rituals, scientific and administrative texts.

 Another late example is the Cyrus Cylinder, commemorating Cyrus' capture of Babylon in 539 BCE (Schaudig 2001: 550-6). This cylinder, however, was written in normal Neo-Babylonian script. The Antiochus Cylinder was found by Hormuzd Rassam in 1880 in Ezida, the temple of the god Nabu in Borsippa, in what must have been its original position, "encased in some kiln-burnt bricks covered over with bitumen" in the "doorway" of Koldewey's Room A1: probably this was built into the eastern section of the wall between A1 and Court A, since the men of Daud Thoma, the chief foreman, seem to have destroyed much of the brickwork at this point. Rassam (1897: 270) mistakenly records this as a cylinder of Nebuchadnezzar II (Reade 1986: 109). The cylinder is now in the British Museum in London.

 (BM 36277). http://www.livius.org/cg-cm/chronicles/antiochus_cylinder/antiochus_cylinder1.html

The Cylinder of Antiochus I Soter from the Ezida Temple in Borsippa (Antiochus Cylinder) is an historiographical text from ancient Babylonia.
It describes how the Seleucid crown prince Antiochus, the son of king Seleucus Nicator, rebuilt the Ezida Temple.


The cuneiform text itself (BM 36277) is now in the British Museum.

 The document is a barrel-shaped clay cylinder, which was buried in the foundations of the Ezida temple in Borsippa.
The script of this cylinder is inscribed in archaic ceremonial Babylonian cuneiform script that was also used in the well-known Codex of Hammurabi and adopted in a number of royal inscriptions of Neo-Babylonian kings, including. Nabopolassar, Nebuchadnezzar and Nabonidus (cf. Berger 1973).
The script is quite different from the cuneiform script that was used for chronicles, diaries, rituals, scientific and administrative texts.


Another late example is the Cyrus Cylinder, commemorating Cyrus’ capture of Babylon in 539 BCE (Schaudig 2001: 550-6). This cylinder, however, was written in normal Neo-Babylonian script.
The Antiochus Cylinder was found by Hormuzd Rassam in 1880 in Ezida, the temple of the god Nabu in Borsippa, in what must have been its original position, “encased in some kiln-burnt bricks covered over with bitumen” in the “doorway” of Koldewey’s Room A1: probably this was built into the eastern section of the wall between A1 and Court A, since the men of Daud Thoma, the chief foreman, seem to have destroyed much of the brickwork at this point.
Rassam (1897: 270) mistakenly records this as a cylinder of Nebuchadnezzar II (Reade 1986: 109). The cylinder is now in the British Museum in London.

 (BM 36277).
http://www.livius.org/cg-cm/chronicles/antiochus_cylinder/antiochus_cylinder1.html

The opening lines read: “I am Antiochus, great king, strong king, king of the inhabited world, king of Babylon, king of the lands, the provider of Esagil and Ezida, foremost son of Seleucus, the king, the Macedonian, king of Babylon.”

Even if we were to interpret all of these Seleucid activities as exploiting indigenous traditions to further their own rule, we should probably only conclude from this that the Seleucids were doing what a long line of earlier Mesopotamian rulers—indigenous or otherwise—had done.

But, we need not imagine the Seleucid appropriation or support of Mesopotamian institutions as a simple one-way, top-down mechanism of exploitation. There may be indications that some of the local elites encouraged the rulers to adopt Mesopotamian ways, either explicitly or implicitly.

For example, several historians have suggested that Berossus’ Babylonaica was explicitly written to encourage the foreign Seleucids, especially Antiochus I, to sympathize with and support Mesopotamian traditions.

The Scheil dynastic tablet or "Kish Tablet" is an ancient Mesopotamian cuneiform text containing a variant form of the Sumerian King List. The Assyriologist Jean-Vincent Scheil purchased the Kish Tablet from a private collection in France in 1911. The tablet is dated to the early 2d millennium BCE. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheil_dynastic_tablet

The Scheil dynastic tablet or “Kish Tablet” is an ancient Mesopotamian cuneiform text containing a variant form of the Sumerian King List.
The Assyriologist Jean-Vincent Scheil purchased the Kish Tablet from a private collection in France in 1911. The tablet is dated to the early 2d millennium BCE.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheil_dynastic_tablet

(See Stanley Mayer Burstein, The Babyloniaca of Berossus (Sources from the Ancient Near East I/5; Malibu: Undena Publications, 1978), 5-6, who believes Berossus’ departure for Cos late in his life may indicate Berossus’ disappointment with the Seleucid policies toward Babylon.

See also Paul-Alain Beaulieu, “The Historical Background of the Uruk Prophecy,” in The Tablet and the Scroll: Near Eastern Studies in Honor of William W. Hallo, ed. M. Cohen, D. Snell and D. Weisberg (Bethesda: CDL Press, 1993), 49.

But see Amélie Kuhrt, “Berossus’ Babylonaika and Seleucid Rule in Babylonia,” in Hellenism in the East, 32-56, who contends Berossus may have written in order to provide the Seleucids with local ideological support for their regime, especially in order for them to rebut claims made by Ptolemaic authors such as Manetho and Hecataeus (55-56)).

And recently Paul-Alain Beaulieu has set the Uruk Prophecy within a larger religious agenda and interpreted the enigmatic text as an implicit attempt to persuade Antiochus I to support the Uruk temple, thereby furthering the newly revived cult of Anu and Antu.

(He writes, “The Uruk Prophecy is therefore a rewriting of historical material with the purpose of vindicating the establishment (presented as the reestablishment) of a new cult (i.e. the cult of Anu as reorganized in the third century by the priesthood of the Bīt Rēs), to present the ruler who will foster this cultic revival (i.e. one of the contemporary Seleucid rulers [which Beaulieu later identifies as Antiochus I]) as a new Nebuchadnezzar, to obliquely suggest that his father was a neglectful, and therefore malevolent, ruler (as Nabopolassar had been), and to predict an everlasting rule for his dynasty, even a rule of divine character” (Beaulieu, “Uruk Prophecy,” 49).”

Alan Lenzi, The Uruk List of Kings and Sages and Late Mesopotamian Scholarship, JANER 8.2, Brill, Leiden, 2008. pp. 155-7.

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June 5, 2015

Berossus and a Sibyl

“Since these fragments do not express Babylonian astronomical or astrological doctrines, the obvious conclusion is that their attribution to Berossos is not genuine. In a way, this as­tronomical / astrological material can be compared with the work which Annius of Viterbo fabricated under the name of Berosus Chaldaeus.

Since these fragments are not genuine, I assume that the testimonies describing Berossos as an ‘internationally’ renowned astro­loger are also fabricated. The creation of a ‘Berossos the astrologer’ is not a unique case in Greek and Roman literature. The aforementioned Egyptians, pharaoh Nechepso and his sage Petosiris, under whose names several works circulated, are merely Hellenistic creations.

Likewise, the life of the famous philosopher Pythagoras was quickly surrounded by legends: he travelled across the Orient and was taught by native sages. A Roman tradition even held that he taught the Roman king Numa Pompilius, who is traditionally dated some 150 years before the historical Pythagoras, at the end of the 8th c. BC.

The character of ‘Berossos the astrologer’ was very likely created in order to give astronomical / astrological doctrines a Babylonian origin. The story of his school on Cos might have been invented in order to explain how ‘Chaldaean’ lore reached the Greek world.

For later generations Berossos the historian and the astrologer were obviously one and the same person. This explains why Josephus mentions Berossos’ role in transmitting Babylonian as­tronomical and philosophical lore and continues by paraphrasing and citing from his history (BNJ 680 T 3, F 8a and F 9a).

The reason why Berossos was chosen to become an astrologer is easy to find: he was a ‘Chaldaean’, a Babylonian priest himself, for Greeks and Romans great experts in astronomy and astrology. Moreover, he had written a history based on arcane native sources.

Some testimonies, finally, report that Berossos was the father of the Hebrew-Babylonian Sibyl called Sabbe (BNJT 7a-c, In the Suda this Sibyl is called “Sambethe,” Σ 361 s.v. Chaldaean Sibyl). This is undoubtedly a legend.

Its origin may be connected to the insertion of a story ascribed to the Sibyl in the epitome which Alexander Polyhistor made of Berossos’ work (BNJ 680 F4a-b). That Sibyl too can very likely be identified as the Hebrew-Babylonian one. The inserted paraphrase in Polyhistor’s epitome derives from the Third Sibylline Book, which implies that the Sibyl in Polyhistor is the same as the pseudepigraphic Sibylline author of this book.

The latter can be labelled as ‘Hebrew-Babylonian’, as she is said to be a relative of Noah and to have dwelt in Babylon after the Flood. Berossos’ fatherhood of a prophetess might also be related, in one way or another, with Pliny’s testi­mony that he made divine predictions (BNJ 680 T 6).”

Geert de Breucker, “Berossos: His Life and Work,” from Johannes Haubold, Giovanni B. Lanfranchi, Robert Rollinger, John Steele (eds.), The World of Berossos, Proceedings of the 4th International Colloquium on the Ancient Near East Between Classical and Ancient Oriental Traditions, Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden, 2013, p. 20.

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June 5, 2015

The Historicity of Berossus

“Some sources suggest that Berossos had, as it were, an international career as an astronomer. According to those sources, he left Babylon and migrated to the Greek world after the publi­cation of his history.

Vitruvius states that he moved to the island of Cos and opened a school there (BNJ T 5a-b). Vitruvius also ascribes the invention of a specific type of sundial to Berossos (BNJ 680 T 5c).

The Bull of Heaven, Taurus, is drawn on an "esoteric tablet" dated to the Seleucid era. See Textes cuneiform du Louvre by Francois Thureau-Dangin, Tome VI (Tablets d'Uruk, a la usage des pretres du temple d'Anu au temps des Seleucides), (Plate 91), 1922. The same plate is reproduced in Astrological Reports to Assyrian Kings, Herman Hunger, 1992, p. 40. http://members.westnet.com.au/gary-david-thompson/page11-10.html

The Bull of Heaven, Taurus, is drawn on an “esoteric tablet” dated to the Seleucid era. See Textes cuneiform du Louvre by Francois Thureau-Dangin, Tome VI (Tablets d’Uruk, a la usage des pretres du temple d’Anu au temps des Seleucides), (Plate 91), 1922. The same plate is reproduced in Astrological Reports to Assyrian Kings, Herman Hunger, 1992, p. 40.
http://members.westnet.com.au/gary-david-thompson/page11-10.html

Josephus agrees with the Roman architect that Berossos propagated Babylonian lore: he says that the Chaldaean was famed among those who were engaged in learning, because he published for the Greeks works on astronomy and on the philosophy of the Chaldaeans (BNJ 680 T3).

Pliny the Elder presents Berossos as the most important scholar of astronomy/astrology and adds that the Athenians honoured him with a statue with a gilded tongue because of his divine predictions (BNJ 680 T 6).

The historicity of these biographical data is subject to debate. Burstein and Verbrugghe / Wickersham accept the ‘second’ life of Berossos as historical. Schwartz rejects the testimony according to which Berossos opened a school on Cos, because he thinks it unlikely that the Babylonian priest would have abandoned his prebendary income in Babylon.

Leo with Corvus standing on Hydra (VAT 7847 (= VAN 784 Staatliche Museen zu Berlin) VAT 7847, Obverse. A Seleucid era astrological tablet. Two astrological texts from Uruk, VAT 7847 and Louvre Museum's AO 6448, have long been recognized as two pieces of one large tablet (zodiac compilation tablet). The tablet deals with the division of Zodiac into subzodiacs, and the connection of these subzodiacs to different cities/towns, temples plants, trees and stones. (In tabular form, for each constellation of the zodiac, a tradition of the connection of each constellation of the zodiac with a certain city, temple name, and the designations for wood and stones are dealt with.) AO6448 has drawings of the constellations Corvus and Virgo with the planet Mercury in attendance. VAT 7847 (= VAN 784 Staatliche Museen zu Berlin) contains drawings with names of stars/constellations. VAT 7847, Obverse. Constellation depiction on a Seleucid astrological tablet (from 2nd-century BCE Uruk). The depiction shows a lion standing on the back of a winged serpent. The two constellations depicted are Hydra and Leo. (They are shown "from the other side" - facing left instead of right.) The eight-pointed star to the left is captioned dingirSAG.ME.GAR (Jupiter). (However, some persons have mistakenly identified the bright star as Procyon.) VAT 7847 is a part of a larger tablet that had broken into two parts. The join for VAT 7847 appeared in Textes cunéiformes du Louvre by François Thureau-Dangin, Tome XII (Tablettes d'Uruk, à l'usage des prêtres du temple d'Anu au temps des Séleucides), 1922, catalogued as AO 6448. VAT 7847 is in the State Museum, Berlin, and AO 6448 is in the Louvre Museum, Paris. Both sides show in their upper part drawings of labelled drawings of constellations. As a completed tablet VAT 7847 and AO 6448 form an astrological calendar. The text contains omens and hemerological predictions. The tablet deals with the Babylonian zodiac and depicts 12 divisions corresponding to the months and the signs of the zodiac and is concerned with lunar eclipses near zodiacal constellations. The tablet is dated to the Hellenistic period circa 200 BCE by one source and circa 323-363 by Klaus Wagensonner, University of Oxford, and originates from Uruk (modern Warka). http://members.westnet.com.au/gary-david-thompson/page11-10.html

Leo with Corvus standing on Hydra (VAT 7847 (= VAN 784 Staatliche Museen zu Berlin)
VAT 7847, Obverse.
A Seleucid era astrological tablet. Two astrological texts from Uruk, VAT 7847 and Louvre Museum’s AO 6448, have long been recognized as two pieces of one large tablet (zodiac compilation tablet). The tablet deals with the division of Zodiac into subzodiacs, and the connection of these subzodiacs to different cities/towns, temples plants, trees and stones. (In tabular form, for each constellation of the zodiac, a tradition of the connection of each constellation of the zodiac with a certain city, temple name, and the designations for wood and stones are dealt with.) AO6448 has drawings of the constellations Corvus and Virgo with the planet Mercury in attendance.
VAT 7847 (= VAN 784 Staatliche Museen zu Berlin) contains drawings with names of stars/constellations. VAT 7847, Obverse. Constellation depiction on a Seleucid astrological tablet (from 2nd-century BCE Uruk). The depiction shows a lion standing on the back of a winged serpent. The two constellations depicted are Hydra and Leo. (They are shown “from the other side” – facing left instead of right.) The eight-pointed star to the left is captioned dingir SAG.ME.GAR (Jupiter). (However, some persons have mistakenly identified the bright star as Procyon.)
VAT 7847 is a part of a larger tablet that had broken into two parts. The join for VAT 7847 appeared in Textes cunéiformes du Louvre by François Thureau-Dangin, Tome XII (Tablettes d’Uruk, à l’usage des prêtres du temple d’Anu au temps des Séleucides), 1922, catalogued as AO 6448. VAT 7847 is in the State Museum, Berlin, and AO 6448 is in the Louvre Museum, Paris. Both sides show in their upper part drawings of labelled drawings of constellations. As a completed tablet VAT 7847 and AO 6448 form an astrological calendar. The text contains omens and hemerological predictions. The tablet deals with the Babylonian zodiac and depicts 12 divisions corresponding to the months and the signs of the zodiac and is concerned with lunar eclipses near zodiacal constellations. The tablet is dated to the Hellenistic period circa 200 BCE by one source and circa 323-363 by Klaus Wagensonner, University of Oxford, and originates from Uruk (modern Warka).
http://members.westnet.com.au/gary-david-thompson/page11-10.html

Some judge it impossible that Berossos would have migrated to an island that was under control of the Ptolemies, bitter enemies of the Seleucids. These are not convincing arguments to discard the historicity of the biographical information. In itself, it is not impossible that Berossos migrated to the west and taught Babylonian astronomy / astrology.

The question of historicity should, however, be connected with the question of whether the astronomical / astrological fragments transmitted under the name of Berossos are authentic (BNJ 680 F 15-22). As Kuhrt and the present author have shown, these fragments reflect Greek, not Babylonian doctrines and are, therefore, not authentic.

Babylonians believed that gods grouped the stars into constellations and gave them names, not men, as BNJ 680 F 17 states. There are no indications that they believed in a cyclical destruction of the universe by fire or water (BNJ 680 F21), whereas this was a popular doctrine of the Stoics.

A drawing of VAT 7847 (= VAN 784 Staatliche Museen zu Berlin).

A drawing of VAT 7847 (= VAN 784 Staatliche Museen zu Berlin).

Several ancient authors ascribe a lunar theory to Berossos that explains the lunar phases and lunar eclipses (BNJ 680 F 18-20). In short, this theory asserts that the moon has its own light and consists of a luminous hemisphere and a dark one. It rotates around its own axis. The lunar phases are the result of the attraction of the moon’s luminous hemisphere by the sun, which depends on the distance between both celestial bodies.

The closer the moon is to the sun, the more the fiery hemisphere is attracted by the latter and is turned toward it. The moon’s dark side is correspondingly turned towards the earth. So far, there is no evidence in the cunei­form sources that this theory, which other classical authors attribute to the Babylonians in general (Lucretius, De rerum natura, 720-7 and Apuleius, De deo Socratis, 1.1), has a Babylonian background; it seems that it is a Greco-Roman creation.

Finally, no astrological cuneiform texts have been preserved that determine the maximum lifetime of a human being by calculating the sum of the rising times of the zodiacal sign in which that person was born, and of the two subsequent signs (BNJ 680 F22).

On the other hand, it was a popular doctrine in Greek and Roman astrology. Pliny the Elder, who mentions Berossos’ calculation (BNJ 680 F22a), ascribes the origin of this theory not to the Babylonians, but to two Egyptians Nechepso and Petosiris, themselves fictitious characters.”

Geert de Breucker, “Berossos: His Life and Work,” from Johannes Haubold, Giovanni B. Lanfranchi, Robert Rollinger, John Steele (eds.), The World of Berossos, Proceedings of the 4th International Colloquium on the Ancient Near East Between Classical and Ancient Oriental Traditions, Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden, 2013, 19-20.

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June 1, 2015

Who Was Berossus?

“This volume is devoted to a man whose work is largely lost, whose life is shrouded in mys­tery, and whose real name we do not know.

(‘Berossos’ is a Greek rendering of an Akkadian name. Our best guess at the moment is that his fellow Babylonians would have known him as Bēl-rē ‘ûšunu (‘Bel is their shepherd’), but this is not certain; see further De Breucker’s contribution to this volume.)

What we do know is that ‘Berossos’ of Babylon was a contemporary of Alexander the Great and the first two Seleucid kings, Seleucus I and Antiochus I, and that he wrote a work about Babylonian history and culture, the Babyloniaca.

He describes himself as a Babylonian and a priest of Bel-Marduk, the national god of Babylon, though in practice this may mean no more than that he was in some way attached to the main temple of Babylon, the Esagila.

According to Vitruvius, Berossos later moved to the Greek island of Cos to open a school of astronomy.

Pliny mentions a statue which the Athenians set up to celebrate his powers of prophecy; and Pausanias makes him the father of the Sibyl. With Pausanias we are plainly in the realm of mythmaking.

Whether Vitruvius or Pliny are any more trustworthy has been debated. 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, because he dedicated his Babyloniaca to Antiochus I.

We know from a cuneiform chronicle that Babylonian religious experts acted as advisors to Antiochus I.

(R. J. van der Spek, Chronicle concerning Antiochus and the Sin temple: preliminary edition and translation, 1997.

A similar encounter is reported by Diodorus Siculus, 17.112: when Alexander returned to Babylon from India, an astronomer of the Esagila temple called Belephantes (Akkadian Bēl-apla-iddin?), advised Alexander not to enter the city.)

Excerpt from Diodorus follows.

“17.112.1: After the conclusion of his war with the Cossaeans, Alexander set his army in motion and marched towards Babylon in easy stages, interrupting the march frequently and resting the army.

17.112.2: While he was still three hundred furlongs from the city, the scholars called Chaldaeans, who have gained a great reputation in astrology and are accustomed to predict future events by a method based on age-long observations, chose from their number the eldest and most experienced.

By the configuration of the stars they had learned of the coming death of the king in Babylon, and they instructed their representatives to report to the king the danger which threatened. They told their envoys also to urge upon the king that he must under no circumstances make his entry into the city; 

17.112.3: that he could escape the danger if he re-erected the tomb of Belus which had been demolished by the Persians, but he must abandon his intended route and pass the city by.

The leader of the Chaldaean envoys, whose name was Belephantes, was not bold enough to address the king directly but secured a private audience with Nearchus, one of Alexander’s Friends, and told him everything in detail, requesting him to make it known to the king.

17.112.4: When Alexander, accordingly, learned from Nearchus about the Chaldaeans’ prophecy, he was alarmed and more and more disturbed, the more he reflected upon the ability and high reputation of these people.

After some hesitation, he sent most of his Friends into Babylon, but altered his own route so as to avoid the city and set up his headquarters in a camp at a distance of two hundred furlongs. 

This act caused general astonishment and many of the Greeks came to see him, notably among the philosophers Anaxarchus.

17.112.5: When they discovered the reason for his action, they plied him with arguments drawn from philosophy and changed him to the degree that he came to despise all prophetic arts, and especially that which was held in high regard by the Chaldaeans. 

It was as if the king had been wounded in his soul and then healed by the words of the philosophers, so that he now entered Babylon with his army. 

17.112.6: As on the previous occasion, the population received the troops hospitably, and all turned their attention to relaxation and pleasure, since everything necessary was available in profusion.

These were the events of this year.”

Diodorus Siculus, 17.112.

Berossos may well have been one of them, or in any case have worked in a similar milieu.”

Johannes Haubold, “The World of Berossos: Introduction,” from Johannes Haubold, Giovanni B. Lanfranchi, Robert Rollinger, John Steele (eds.), The World of Berossos, Proceedings of the 4th International Colloquium on the Ancient Near East Between Classical and Ancient Oriental Traditions, Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden, 2013, p. 3.

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May 30, 2015

Epigenes and Berosus

“Like Aristarchus, Berosus was interested in sundials. His dial is said to have been semicircular, hollowed out of a square block, and cut under to correspond to the polar altitude. The Babylonian was also interested in astrology, for Vitruvius (Vitruvius, The Ten Books on Architecture, 9.8.1) declares that Berosus founded an astrological school in Cos, and a remark by Pliny (Natural History, 7.160) confirms that he had a knowledge of technical astrology. According to Pliny, Epigenes held that a man could not live as long as 112 years, but Berosus claimed that a man could not live more than 116.

We have here an allusion to the astrological doctrine that the number of years in a human life can never exceed the maximal possible number of degrees which is necessary for one quarter of the ecliptic to rise.

As Neugebauer has shown, Epigenes’s remark applies to the latitude of Alexandria, but Berosus is speaking of Babylon. It is just, I think, to regard Berosus as an astrologer who brought his doctrines to Cos, but there is no sign that he helped to advance the study of astronomy amongst the Greeks.

He belongs rather to the genethlialogists at Babylon, whom, Strabo reports, the geniune astronomers did not admit to their number. Yet there may still be some truth in the statement of Josephus that Berosus introduced astronomical doctrines of the Chaldaeans to the Greeks, as well as their philosophical doctrines; just as there is perhaps a sound basis for the remark of Moses of Chorene that Ptolemy II Philadelphus (in whose empire Cos lay) incited Berosus to translate Chaldaean records into Greek.

By Georgios Synkellos also the same Ptolemy, who reigned from 283 to 247 B.C., is said to have had Chaldaean works collected for his library and to have had them translated.

If Berosus was not the bringer of Chaldaean astronomical knowledge to Aristarchus, then a possible intermediary is Epigenes. This scholar, who came from Byzantium, is almost certainly a near contemporary of Aristarchus and Berosus, though various views about his date have been held.

His views are twice mentioned next to those of Berosus, once on the antiquity of Babylonian astronomical records and once on the greatest length of human life. His remark that a man could not live more than 112 years applies to the latitude of Alexandria, and shows that Epigenes had worked there.

From Seneca we learn also that he and Apollonius of Myndus had studied amongst the Chaldaeans, in Babylon itself presumably, as Epigenes’s reference to astronomical cuneiform texts–observationes siderum coctilibus laterculis inscriptas–suggests.

His statement that the astronomical records went back 720 years, not 480, looks like an attempt to correct Berosus. When we add that Epigenes believed that children could be born in the seventh month, a view also held by Strata, Aristarchus’s teacher; and find that Epigenes was, like Strata, interested in comets, the case for dating him early in the third century looks strong, if not conclusive.

But it is pointless to speculate about any ties he may have had with Aristarchus.”

George Huxley, Aristarchus of Samos and Graeco-Babylonian Astronomy, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, Duke University, Vol 5, No 2 (1964), pp. 127-9.

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May 30, 2015

Tracing the Doctrine of Cataclysms of Berossus

“The context in Censorinus shows that the interval of 2434 years was in Aristarchus’s opinion the interval between alternate conflagrations and inundations of the world when the sun, moon, and stars all return to the same zodiacal sign.

It is very difficult to trace exactly the adoption of Babylonian ideas by the Greek astronomers. An active part in the diffusion of Babylonian astronomy is often ascribed to Berosus the Chaldaean, who was a contemporary of Aristarchus, and had a doctrine of cataclysms similar to his; for Berosus claimed that when all the planets were in Cancer the earth would be burned, and when they were in Capricorn there would be a flood.

But an examination of the astronomical fragments of Berosus suggests that he had a very inadequate knowledge of the subject. His views on the moon’s phases are reported by Vitruvius, who contrasts them with the explanation given by Aristarchus.

It looks indeed as though Aristarchus set out deliberately to refute the views of his Babylonian contemporary, who settled in Cos, not far from Samos, the home of Aristarchus. Berosus supposed that the moon had light of her own, one half of her orb being luminous and the rest of a blue colour. The moon’s phases thus in his view were caused by her luminous half being turned towards or away from the earth.

Aristarchus, however, maintained that the moon receives her light from the sun, so that on the fourteenth day of the month when she is in opposition to the sun, she is full and rises when the sun is setting.

Vitruvius shows that Aristarchus explained the first and last quarters and the new moons as well; and it is obvious from Aristarchus’s book on the sizes and distances of the sun and moon that Berosus had nothing to teach the Samian about the phases of the moon.

No doubt Aristarchus applied what he had learned from Strato and his own theory about light and shadow to the moon’s phases and to eclipses also. The most obvious objection to Berosus’s doctrine was that it failed to explain lunar eclipses, as Cleomedes [2.4] pointed out.

It is most unlikely that Berosus had anything worth while to teach the Greeks about theoretical astronomy, though he did have a cursory interest in the subject, having treated it in the first book of the Babyloniaca (P. Schnabel, Berossos und die babylonisch-hellenistische Literatur, Leipzig 1923, p. 19.)

We are told also that he maintained that Babylonian astronomical records did not go back before the time of Nabonasar, that king having destroyed the earlier ones. In view of this clear statement it is surprising to find that according to our texts of Pliny, Berosus held that observations of the stars had been inscribed on baked tablets for 480,000 (!) years (490,000 in some copies).

If we read CCCCLXXX for CCCCLXXX we can reduce the period to 480 years. Now Berosus dedicated his Babyloniaca to Antiochus I Soter, who reigned from 281/0 to 262/1 B.C., and if we add 480 to a year in the reign of that king we are brought close to the epoch of Nabonasar.

I think it likely therefore that Berosus stated that accurate observations had been made in Babylonia for 480 years from the time of Nabonasar, and that earlier observations were not available to him. This suggestion is supported by the failure of Ptolemy in the Almagest to cite any Chaldaean observations earlier than the time of Nabonasar.

If Ptolemy’s dating of the first year of Nabonasar to 747 B.C. was the same as Berosus’s, then we have a date for the publication of the Babyloniaca, 480 years after 747 B.C. or 267 B.C., a year well within the reign of Antiochus I to whom the work was dedicated.”

George Huxley, “Aristarchus of Samos and Graeco-Babylonian Astronomy,” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, Duke University, Vol 5, No 2 (1964), pp. 125-7.

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May 18, 2015

End of the Digression on Berossus and the Babyloniaca

“Can the Babyloniaca tell us anything about the chronicles? It is the one work which demonstrably made use of them. We have Berossus‘ own word that he transcribed “the records which had been kept with great care by the priests in Babylon for a long time, embracing more than 2,150,000 (var. 150,000) years, and that these records contain the history of the sky and sea, and the first creation, and of the kings, and of the deeds done under them”.

That the chronicles were among these records cannot be doubted …

Surely the chronicles were not compiled to be published in a work like the Babyloniaca. In fact, Berossus‘ publication may have been looked upon with disfavour by his fellow-scholars, and it may be that Berossus did indeed end his days on the island of Cos.

But Berossus‘ presentation of their contents in the Babyloniaca increases rather than diminishes the probability that they were drawn up in the service of astrology.

Both the chronicles and the Babyloniaca, I would suggest, were based on the presupposition that since what had happened in the past would happen again, it would be useful to have compiled a record of the past.”

This illustration is cited as appearing as Figure 446 in “Cook (1964 Vol. 1 p.576-7),” which I take to refer to Cook H. J., “Pekah," Vetus Testamentum 14 1964, figure 446, "Ramman the Bellowing One,” pp. 576-7. I have not been able to confirm this. It allegedly portrays Ramman, “The Bellowing One,”or Adad, who is “commonly represented on the cylinders as standing on the back of a bull (Figure 446) or as planting one foot on a bull.” To my eye, this illustration portrays the Moon God, Sin, whose inverted crescent appears above his head. The Assyrian national god Ashur appears in his winged conveyance, next to the seven celestial bodies of Babylonian cosmogony. The goddess Ishtar appears at far right, her eight-pointed star at her head, and her typical warlike regalia on her back. Before her is a tree of life, or a tree of knowledge. I do not know who the figure at the center of this illustration portrays.

This illustration is cited as appearing as Figure 446 in “Cook (1964 Vol. 1 p.576-7),” which I take to refer to Cook H. J., “Pekah,” Vetus Testamentum 14 1964, figure 446, “Ramman the Bellowing One,” pp. 576-7. I have not been able to confirm this.
It allegedly portrays Ramman, “The Bellowing One,”or Adad, who is “commonly represented on the cylinders as standing on the back of a bull (Figure 446) or as planting one foot on a bull.”
To my eye, this illustration portrays the Moon God, Sin, whose inverted crescent appears above his head. The Assyrian national god Ashur appears in his winged conveyance, next to the seven celestial bodies of Babylonian cosmogony.
The goddess Ishtar appears at far right, her eight-pointed star at her head, and her typical warlike regalia on her back. Before her is a tree of life, or a tree of knowledge. I do not know who the figure at the center of this illustration portrays. I note that she stands on the ground, she is not elevated as the deities are, and she has no regalia or insignia of divinity. She is not a goddess. 

(Editorial Note: Here is a long footnote, with which Robert Drews ends his article. I include it for obvious reasons).

“W. G. Lambert, whose insights I have long admired, and on whose Assyriological expertise I have so often depended in this article, recently wrote (Orientalia 39 (1970), 175, n. 7): “The reviewer would like to take this opportunity to say that he does not and has never accepted the idea that the Babylonians conceived history cyclically.”

In making this statement Lambert relied on Jacoby’s well-founded authority on historiographical fragments. For on p. 177 he writes, “The only evidence for any Babylonian concept to an end to history occurs in a quotation ascribed to Berossus by Seneca, where it was taught that the world would end in a cosmic cataclysm when the stars all converged on Cancer.

Jacoby attributed this to Pseudo-Berossus, and certainly there were faked versions of Berossus in the ancient world.”

To these statements I would offer three objections:

(1) Frag. 21 does not, strictly speaking, teach that the “world would end” in a cosmic conflagration, but only that cosmic conflagrations and deluges do occur; the world, the passage assumes, went on.

(2) There is evidence only for interpolations (by a Jew or a Christian, in Berossus‘ account of creation) and not for “faked versions” in the sense that Jacoby implies with his “Pseudo-Berossus“. And, of course, a Jewish or Christian interpolator was not the source of Seneca’s quotation.

(3) If by “cyclical” one means what the fourth-century Greek, Eudoxus, attributed to the Pythagoreans (a belief that in the Eternal Return of things I will once again be writing this article, and you–God help us all–will again be reading it), then the Babylonians did not have a “cyclical” view of history.

If, on the other hand, the term means only that what happened to x under such and such celestial circumstances will happen to y when those circumstances again obtain, and that those circumstances will obtain in regular periods, then I would not consider “cyclical” a misleading description of the Babylonian scholars’ view of history.”

Robert Drews, “The Babylonian Chronicles and Berossus,” Iraq, Vol. 37, No. 1 (Spring, 1975), pp. 54-5.

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May 18, 2015

Digression on Berossus and the Babyloniaca, Continued

“Finally, there was no justification for Schwartz’ assumption that Berossus borrowed the doctrine of the Great Year from Greek philosophy. As P. Schnabel protested in 1923, Berossus‘ belief in a coming conflagration corresponded exactly to his lengthy account of a past Deluge, the two catastrophes marking the Great Year’s solstices in Cancer and Capricorn. There is to-date no evidence that the Great Year originated in Greek philosophy, and so no reason why it should be denied to the scholars of Babylon.

I do not know where Berossus published his statements about the Great Year and other astrological and astronomical matters. Since, however, no work other than his Babyloniaca is attested, it was most likely in one of the three books of that work that these subjects were discussed.

Berossus could have touched on these matters in Book Two. He did say that “in the tenth generation after the Deluge there was among the Chaldaeans a great and just man, skilled in celestial matters”, and the likely provenance of that Fragmentum is Book Two.

I have been unable to source the origin of this illustration, which resembles the Boundary Stone of Ritti-Marduk, British Museum No. 90,858, in so many details. It is possible that the illustration is a modern artifice, integrating components from the Boundary Stone, which is dated to the reign of Nebuchadnezzar I, circa 1120 BCE. The subject matter is obviously of the Babylonian zodiac. If you locate the source of this illustration, please advise me so that I may update this page. Along the top is stretched a serpent, signifying a particular constellation. Beneath its tail is the inverted crescent of the Moon God Sin, the Four-Pointed Star or rosette of Shamash, the Sun God, and the Eight-Pointed Star of Ishtar. Celestial figures, seven in number, perhaps illustrating the cosmos as understood by the Babylonians of that era, are followed by the Scorpion, which is opposite the Zodiacal Bull in Taurus, not depicted. The remaining features in the lower register exceed my scholarship, which is meager. If you can interpret them, I would be grateful for assistance. I observe that the composite creatures in the lower register are seven in number, perhaps corresponding to the chthonic creatures associated with Tiamat. It also occurs to me that they may portray the great temples of the gods in their various cities and cult centers. I found this illustration on this page: http://www.google.co.th/imgres?imgurl=http://www.redicecreations.com/specialreports/2006/01jan/annunaki10.jpg&imgrefurl=http://pixshark.com/babylonian-zodiac.htm&h=206&w=480&tbnid=UtiwYm8SfNjwcM:&zoom=1&docid=BJ1iXAxTrNnHSM&ei=mTA9VbaUIILJuATc7YBA&tbm=isch&ved=0CCgQMygJMAk The link below is to the Boundary Stone of Ritti-Marduk. http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details/collection_image_gallery.aspx?partid=1&assetid=135127&objectid=369364

I have been unable to source the origin of this illustration, which resembles the Boundary Stone of Ritti-Marduk, British Museum No. 90,858, in so many details. It is possible that the illustration is a modern artifice, integrating components from the Boundary Stone, which is dated to the reign of Nebuchadnezzar I, circa 1120 BCE. The subject matter is obviously the Babylonian zodiac.
If you locate the source of this illustration, please advise me so that I may update this page.
Along the top is stretched a serpent, signifying the constellation Hydra. Beneath its tail is the inverted crescent of the Moon God Sin, the Four-Pointed Star or rosette of Shamash, the Sun God, and the Eight-Pointed Star of Ishtar. Celestial figures, seven in number, perhaps illustrating the cosmos as understood by the Babylonians of that era, are followed by the Scorpion, which is opposite the Zodiacal Bull in Taurus, not depicted.
The remaining features in the lower register exceed my scholarship, which is meager. If you can interpret them, I would be grateful for assistance. I observe that the composite creatures in the lower register are seven in number, perhaps corresponding to the chthonic creatures associated with Tiamat. It also occurs to me that they may portray the great temples of the gods in their various cities and cult centers.
I found this illustration on this page:
http://www.google.co.th/imgres?imgurl=http://www.redicecreations.com/specialreports/2006/01jan/annunaki10.jpg&imgrefurl=http://pixshark.com/babylonian-zodiac.htm&h=206&w=480&tbnid=UtiwYm8SfNjwcM:&zoom=1&docid=BJ1iXAxTrNnHSM&ei=mTA9VbaUIILJuATc7YBA&tbm=isch&ved=0CCgQMygJMAk
The link below is to the Boundary Stone of Ritti-Marduk.
http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details/collection_image_gallery.aspx?partid=1&assetid=135127&objectid=369364

But I think it even more likely that the astrological doctrines came at the end of the third book. Berossus disposed of the last four kings of the Neo-Babylonian dynasty in a few paragraphs, and did not allot much more than that to Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar. One wonders what filled the rest of Book Three.

Semiramis‘ importance was denied. We shall presently see what Berossus had to say about Sennacherib and his successors, and here note only that it was not much; and Frag. 10 suggests that he did little more than list the regnal periods of the Persian rulers of Babylon.

If, like most, a book of the Babyloniaca ran to c. 2000 lines, almost two thirds of the book remains unaccounted for. I suggest that here, constituting about a quarter of the whole work, was to be found the “astronomy and philosophical doctrines of the Chaldaeans”, the presentation of which secured for Berossus whatever reputation he did enjoy in the classical world.

Such, I would argue, was the nature of the Babyloniaca. It has been customarily considered a work of history, and I do not doubt that it was presented as such: if they do not refer to it as the Babyloniaca, ancient authors call it the Chaldiaca, the Chaldaean History, or the History of the Chaldaeans.

The only thing in it which was of value to Josephus and Eusebius was what Berossus had to say about the history and chronology of Babylon in post-diluvian times, and it is as an historian that Berossus has been classified for the last 1500 years.

But in Hellenistic and Roman times, when his work was still known, the subjects with which Berossus was identified were “astronomy and the philosophical doctrines of the Chaldaeans”.

No matter how his work is reconstructed, what is conventionally called history can be made to fill little more than a third of it. It is no wonder that Pliny the Elder reports that the Athenians set up a statue of Berossus “ob divinas praedicationes“; and that in Judaea there grew a legend that the name of the Sibyl’s father was Berossus, a legend no more improbable than its modern equivalent, that of “Pseudo-Berossus of Cos”.”

Robert Drews, “The Babylonian Chronicles and Berossus,” Iraq, Vol. 37, No. 1 (Spring, 1975), pp. 52-4.

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May 18, 2015

A Digression on Berossus and the Babyloniaca

“The books written by Berossus, priest of Marduk at Babylon in the early third century B.C., have been lost, and all that we know about them comes from the twenty-two quotations or paraphrases of his work by other ancient writers (so-called Fragmenta), and eleven statements about Berossus (Testimonia) made by classical, Jewish and Christian writers.

We learn that he wrote for Antiochus I (280-261 B.C.) a work generally referred to as the Babyloniaca, a work divided into three rolls, or books, of papyrus.

Ea, or Oannes, depicted as a fish-man.

Ea, or Oannes, depicted as a fish-man.

In the first book he told how a fish-like creature named Oannes came up from the Persian Gulf, delivered to mankind the arts of civilization, and left with them a written record of how their world had come into existence; according to this record, Berossus went on, Bel had created the world out of the body of a primeval female deity. This story of the creation of the world and mankind, otherwise familiar from Enūma eliš, filled out the first book of the Babyloniaca and ended with the statement that Bel established the stars, sun, moon and the five planets.

In book two Berossus (Frag. 3) described the 120-sar (432,000-year) rule of the ten antediluvian kings, and then the Deluge itself, with some detail on the survival of Xisuthros. The postdiluvian dynasties down to Nabonassar were baldly listed in the remainder of book two.

A prism containing the Sumerian King List. Borossus cites ten antediluvian rulers.

A prism containing the Sumerian King List. Borossus cites ten antediluvian rulers.

The third book, apparently beginning with Tiglath-Pileser III, presented the Late Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian and Persian kings of Babylon, and ended with Alexander the Great.

And that, according to Felix Jacoby’s edition of the Fragmenta and Testimonia is in sum what the Babyloniaca contained. There are eight quotations dealing with astronomical and astrological matters, but these he attributed not to our Berossus, but to Pseudo-Berossus of Cos.

It was to the latter, according to Jacoby, that Josephus referred as “well known to educators, since it was he who published for the Greeks the written accounts of astronomy and the philosophical doctrines of the Chaldaeans”; or who claimed, said Vitruvius, that by study of the zodiacal signs, the planets, sun and moon, the Chaldaeans could predict what the future held in store for man.

And it was Pseudo-Berossus, according to Jacoby, to whom Seneca referred in his discussion of world-floods:

“Berosos, who translated Belus (qui Belum interpretatus est), says that these catastrophes occur with the movement of the planets. Indeed, he is so certain that he assigns a date for the conflagration and the deluge. For earthly things will burn, he contends, when all the planets which now maintain different orbits come together in the sign of Cancer, and are so arranged in the same path that a straight line can pass through the spheres of all of them. The deluge will occur when the same group of planets meets in the sign of Capricorn. The solstice is caused by Cancer, winter by Capricorn; they are signs of great power since they are the turning-points in the very change of the year.”

“Pseudo-Berossus of Cos”, I believe, is not only an inconvenient but an utterly improbable scholarly creation. A century ago all of our fragments were assigned to one and the same Berossus, although those dealing with the stars were segregated from those of a mythological or historical characters.

Thus the notion was fostered that Berossus wrote two works, one on Babylonian history, another on astrology. By the turn of the century E. Schwartz found unlikely Vitruvius‘ statement that Berossus eventually settled on the Aegean island of Cos, where he taught the Chaldaean disciplina.”

Robert Drews, “The Babylonian Chronicles and Berossus,” Iraq, Vol. 37, No. 1 (Spring, 1975), pp. 50-2.

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