Babyloniaca (Berossus)

The Babyloniaca is a history of the Babylonian civilization. It was written in the Hellenistic age in the 3rd century BC, by the historian and Babylonian priest, Berossus.

The Babyloniaca was written in three books. The first book describes Babylonian geography and cosmology (a version that resembles the cosmology of the famous Enūma Eliš), and then explains the transition of mankind before and after the revelation of divine law. The second and third books focus on the genealogy of the kings of Babylon and presents an account of the Mesopotamian flood myth.^[1]

Although the work is now lost, it survives in substantial fragments from subsequent authors, especially in the works of the fourth-century CE Christian author and bishop Eusebius,^[2] and was known to a limited extent in learned circles as late as late antiquity.^[3] Substantial sections, including one on the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II, are also preserved in the writings of the Jewish historian Josephus, especially in his Antiquities of the Jews and Against Apion.^[4]

Until the rediscovery of cuneiform texts in the 19th century (which, for a while, drew attention away from the study of the works of Berossus), the fragments of the works of Berossus were the only genuine surviving literary material known from Mesopotamian civilization.^[5] During the 1970s, a German archaeological expedition discovered cuneiform texts with a regnal list (king-list) in Uruk similar to what is recorded in the second book of the Babyloniaca. This discovery bolstered scholars' confidence that the Babyloniaca could attest to genuine material from earlier periods, which, in turn, revived the scholarship addressing this work.^[6]

Scholarship on the Babyloniaca has produced an English translation,^[1] a collection and translation of all surviving fragments of the Babyloniaca in ancient sources,^[4] and studies on the sources used by Berossus in writing his account.^[7]^[8]

Content

The Babyloniaca was written as three books. For Berossus, history was primarily driven by divine forces and intervention, a view that follows Mesopotamian tradition as opposed to the Greek tradition which explained history as the unravelling of human activity over the course of time. The structure and progression of the three books reflects this viewpoint of Berossus.^[9]

According to Book One, a sea creature and god called Oannes gives humans all the culture that is important for them to have. Oannes then tells humanity a cosmogony, or an explanation about how the world and its creatures originated. At first, the world was only sea and darkness. The darkness was the god Thalatth (Tiamat), and in the darkness was many creatures, who began to hybridize to form more creatures. Then, there is an account of the rebellion of the god Bel (Marduk) against Tiamat. Two versions of the story appear in the Babyloniaca, although it is not clear whether the second account was added later or was also included by Berossus. In both accounts, Bel defeats Thalatth and severs her in half. One half of her body is used to create the earth, and the other half is used for creating the heavens. One of the gods cuts off his own head, and his blood is mixed with earth to create humanity.^[10]

The first book ends with the rebellion of Bel, and the second book begins with a list of ten antediluvian kings (kings who reigned in the 432,000 years prior to the flood of the world before the global flood), whose names were Aloros, Alaparos, Amelon, Ammenon, Amegalaros, Daonos, Eudorachos, Amempsinos, Opartos, and Xisuthros. Oannes, a creature that is half-animal and half-fish and who emerged in the Persian Gulf in the first year of creation, later encountered the early Babylonians. Seeing that they lacked civilization, he taught it to them:

"This monster spent its days with men, never eating anything, but teaching men the skills necessary for writing and for doing mathematics and for all sorts of knowledge: how to build cities, found temples, and make laws. It taught men how to determine borders and divide land, also how to plant seeds and then to harvest their fruits and vegetables. In short, it taught men all those things conducive to a settled and civilized life. Since that time nothing further has been discovered. At the end of the day, this monster Oannes went back to the sea and spent the night. It was amphibious, able to live both on land and in the sea."^[11]

According to historian William McCants, while it is not explicit, it is likely that Berossus intended this event as happening during the reign of the first king of Babylon, Aloros (equivalent to the primordial ruler Alulim in Mesopotamian mythology). Berossus explains that several sea creatures after Oannes continued to come to humanity and explain again to them what was taught by Oannes, up until the reign of the seventh king, but they never added to the culture that Oannes taught.^[12] After narrating a flood myth, Berossus continues with the kings who reigned after the flood, up until the reign of Nabu-Naṣir (Nabonassar) in 787 BC.^[9]

The third book continues with the more recent succession of kings, from Nabu-Naṣir down to the reign of Alexander the Great, although the extant sections of the text do not allow us to know the degree to which Berossus merely listed this succession as opposed to providing more detailed commentary. According to Polyhistor, commentary was mostly lacking from the chain of dynastic succession contained in the second book. However, it is apparent that the period of the Achaemenid Empire (Persian rule) was treated briefly and that the reigns of Sennacherib and Nebuchadnezzar II were treated at more length.^[1]

Historical context

After the conquests of Alexander the Great, the response of the newly conquered local populations was largely that of despair. However, some of the cultural and religious elite embraced the new leadership and attempted to educate their Hellenistic overlords on Mesopotamian traditions. The first known example of such a text written in Greek was the Babyloniaca, composed by Berossus in 281 BC, in dedication to the ascent of Antiochus I Soter to the throne of the Seleucid Empire.^[13] This work can be thought of as emerging out of the cultural and scientific milieu fostered by the Esagila Temple.^[14] In the preface, Berossus states his intent in writing the Babyloniaca, identifying himself as both a contemporary of Alexander and a Chaldean priest of Bel.^[15]

Preservation

Most readers of the Babyloniaca in classical and late antiquity did not read the original, but rather an epitome, or abridgement, of it found in a work by the first century AD writer Alexander Polyhistor. This text consisted of a history of Babylonia (relying mostly on Berossus) followed by a history of Assyria. This work is also lost, but yet another epitome was made of the work of Polyhistor by Eusebius in the fourth century, in the first book of his Chronicon. Finally, this work of Eusebius is extant in its Armenian translation as well as from excerpts of the original Greek in the Ecloga Chronographica of the Byzantine monk George Syncellus.^[16] The Armenian translation was edited by Josef Karst in 1911^[17] and the Greek excerpts of Syncellus were edited by Felix Jacoby in 1958.^[18] Fortunately for contemporary historians, both Polyhistor and Eusebius appear to have preserved the basic organization of the texts they were working with.^[19]^[20]

Cosmology

The first book of the Babyloniaca offers a variant (or, perhaps, an interpretation) of the cosmogony of the Enuma Elish. This work is not extant but survives in later quotations and epitomes. Berossus' account begins with a primeval ocean. Unlike in the Enuma Elish, where sea monsters are generated for combat with other gods, in Berossus' account, they emerge by spontaneous generation and are described in a different manner to the 11 monsters of the Enuma Elish, as it expands beyond the purely mythical creatures of that account in a potential case of influence from Greek zoology.^[21] The fragments of Berossus by Syncellus and the Armenian on his cosmogony are as follows^[22]^[23]:

Syncellus: There was a time, he says, when everything was [darkness and] water and that 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 ... [a list of monstrous beings follows]. Over all these a woman ruled named Omorka. This means in Chaldaean Thalatth, in Greek it is translated as ‘Sea’ (Thalassa) ... When everything was arranged in this way, Belos rose up and split the woman in two. Of one half of her he made earth, of the other half sky; and he destroyed all creatures in her ... For when everything was moist, and creatures had come into being in it, this god took off his own head and the other gods mixed the blood that flowed out with earth and formed men. For this reason they are intelligent and share in divine wisdom. Belos, whom they translate as Zeus, cut the darkness in half and separated earth and sky from each other and ordered the universe. The creatures could not endure the power of the light and were destroyed. When Belos saw the land empty and barren, he ordered one of the gods to cut off his own head and to mix the blood that flowed out with earth and to form men and wild animals that were capable of enduring the air. Belos also completed the stars and the sun and the moon and the five planets. Alexander Polyhistor says that Berossus asserts these things in his first book.
Syncellus: They say that in the beginning all was water, which was called Sea (Thalassa). Bel made this one by assigning a place to each, and he surrounded Babylon with a wall.
Armenian: All, he said, was from the start water, which was called Sea. And Bel placed limits on them (the waters) and assigned a place to each, allocated their lands, and fortified Babylon with an enclosing wall.

The conclusion of the account states that Belus then created the stars, sun, moon, and five planets. The account of Berossus agrees largely with the Enuma Elish, such as its reference to the splitting of the woman whose halves are used to create heaven and earth, but also contain a number of differences, such as the statement about allegorical exegesis, the self-decapitation of Bel in order to create humans, and the statement that it is the divine blood which has made humans intelligent. Some debate has ensued about which elements of these may or may not go back to the original account of Berossus.^[24] Some of the information Berossus got for his account of the creation myth may have come from the Enuma Elish and the Babylonian Dynastic Chronicle.^[25]

Editions and translations

Burstein, Stanley Mayer. The Babyloniaca of Berossus, Undena Publications, 1978.^[26]
Verbrugghe, Gerald; Wickersham, John Moore (2001). Berossos and Manetho, Introduced and Translated: Native Traditions in Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. University of Michigan Press.
De Breucker, Geert. "Berossos of Babylon (680)" in Brill's New Jacoby, Brill, 2015.

References

Citations

^ ^a ^b ^c Burstein 1978, p. 8.
^ Talon 2001, p. 270–274.
^ Decharneux 2023, p. 116n381.
^ ^a ^b Verbrugghe & Wickersham 2001.
^ Beaulieu 2006, p. 117–118.
^ Beaulieu 2006, p. 118.
^ Beaulieu 2006.
^ Beaulieu 2021.
^ ^a ^b Burstein 1978, p. 6–8.
^ McCants 2012, p. 92–93.
^ McCants 2012, p. 93.
^ McCants 2012, p. 93–94.
^ Burstein 1978, p. 4.
^ Beaulieu 2006, p. 119.
^ Burstein 1978, p. 5.
^ George 2021, p. 186.
^ Karst, J. 1911. Eusebius Werke, fünfter Band. Die Chronik aus dem Armenischen übersetzt. Leipzig.
^ Jacoby, F. 1958. Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker (FGrH), III Geschichte von Staedten und Voelkern, C Autoren über einzelne Laender, I Aegypten–Geten. Leiden.
^ Burstein 1978, p. 6.
^ Beaulieu 2021, p. 147–148.
^ Beaulieu 2021, p. 152–156.
^ George 2021, p. 186–187.
^ Beaulieu 2021, p. 156.
^ Beaulieu 2021, p. 157–161.
^ George 2021, p. 187–189.
^ Burstein 1978.

Sources

Beaulieu, Paul-Alian (2006). Berossus on late Babylonian History. Special Issue of Oriental Studies.
Beaulieu, Paul-Alain (2021). "Berossus and the Creation Story". Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History. 8 (1–2): 147–170. doi:10.1515/janeh-2020-0012.
Burstein, Stanley Mayer (1978). The Babyloniaca of Berossus (PDF). Undena Publications.
Decharneux, Julien (2023). Creation and Contemplation The Cosmology of the Qur'ān and Its Late Antique Background. De Gruyter.
George, Andrew (2021). "Berossus and Babylonian Cosmogony". In Kelly, Adrian; Metcalf, Christopher (eds.). Gods and Mortals in Early Greek and Near Eastern Mythology. Cambridge University Press. pp. 185–198.
McCants, William (2012). Founding Gods, Inventing Nations: Conquest and Culture Myths from Antiquity to Islam. Princeton University Press.
Talon, Philippe (2001). "Enūma Eliš and the Transmission of Babylonian Cosmology to the West". Melammu. 2: 265–278.