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      A Greek and Babylonian History

      Berossos’s negotiations between Babylonian and Greek traditions need careful tracing. A passage from Book 3 of the Babyloniaca illustrates some of the difficulties. Berossos describes how Nebuchadnezzar builds a new palace in Babylon (BNJ 680 F 8a (140)):

      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.

      And having fortified the city in a noteworthy fashion, and equipped the gates in such a way as befitted their sanctity, he built another palace next to that of his father. It would perhaps lead too far to describe its height and general opulence here, except to say that, despite its enormous size and grandeur, it was completed in just fifteen days.

This part of Berossos’s account looks entirely Babylonian. Indeed, as van der Spek and Rollinger have shown (Van der Spek 2008; Rollinger 2013), it is lifted almost verbatim from one of Nebuchadnezzar’s own accounts of his building work in the so-called East India House Inscription (Nebukadnezar Nr. 15, cols XIII.54–IX.2 (Langdon)):

      i-na ri-e-ši-šú ku-um-mu ra-ba-a a-na šú-ba-at ša-ar-ru-ti-ia i-na ku-up-ri ù a-gur-ri šá-ḳi-iš e-pú-uš-ma it-ti è-gal abi ú-ra-ad-di-ma in araḫ šá-al-mu i-na û-um magir i-šid-sa i-na i-ra-at ki-gal-lu ú-šá-ar-ši-id-ma ri-e-ši-šá ú-za-aḳ-ḳi-ir ḫu-ùr-sa-ni-iš i-na 15 û-um ši-bi-ir-šá ú-šá-ak-li-il-ma ú-šá-pa-a šú-bat be-lu-ti

      On top I built with baked bricks and bitumen a great hall to be the lofty seat of my kingship, and I joined it to the palace of my father. In a favorable month, on a suitable day, I laid its foundations on the base of the underworld and raised its top high up like a mountain range. I completed the work on the fifteenth day and perfected the seat of my rule.

      There are unmistakable echoes between this account and that of Berossos: both emphasize the height and general opulence of Nebuchadnezzar’s palace, point out that it adjoins that of Nebuchadnezzar’s father, and claim that the building work was completed in precisely 15 days. Berossos evidently knew Nebuchadnezzar’s inscription and followed it faithfully. He did, however, introduce some new elements. Here is how his text continues (BNJ 680 F 8a (141)):

      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, <ὡς> τεθραμμένην ἐν τοῖς κατὰ τὴν Μηδίαν τόποις.

      In this palace, Nebuchadnezzar built high stone terraces and made them look very similar in appearance to mountain ranges. And planting them with various different kinds of trees he built and equipped the so-called Hanging Garden because his wife had grown up in Media and was longing for a mountainous scenery.

      This section of Berossos’s account departs from his Babylonian source text in spectacular fashion. True, Nebuchadnezzar himself reported that he used stone to build his palace, and he also claimed to have erected a building “like a mountain” (Nebukadnezar Nr. 15 col. IX.22–28, with discussion in Rollinger 2013: 151–155). But Nebuchadnezzar said nothing about a Hanging Garden, and indeed no such structure can be found anywhere in cuneiform literature, or in the archaeological record. Some scholars have therefore dismissed this part of Berossos’s description as a later interpolation, added by a Greek reader keen to make the connection with a popular orientalizing myth (Dalley 1994; Dalley 2013a: 35–36).

      The case for interpolation, however, is weak. Nebuchadnezzar’s Iranian wife Amyitis is mentioned elsewhere in the Babyloniaca (BNJ 680 F 7d), which makes it difficult to remove her and her garden from Berossos’s account of Nebuchadnezzar’s building works. Moreover, Josephus, who quotes the decisive passage, had no obvious interest in connecting Nebuchadnezzar with the Hanging Garden. Stephanie Dalley therefore introduces an unknown intermediary whom she thinks responsible for the interpolation (Dalley 2013a: 36). However, we have no evidence that such a figure ever existed. In order to tackle the issue of the Hanging Garden, and indeed other issues of interpretation, we need to broaden the framework of analysis, and ask how Berossos operated.

The Greek historians Herodotus and Ctesias cast world history as a succession of three major empires, those of the Assyrians, the Medes, and the Persians (Haubold 2013a: 78–98). This scheme became popular among Greek readers, thanks in large measure to the success of Ctesias’s Persica. One consequence was that the Neo-Babylonian Empire of Nebuchadnezzar disappeared from the historical record: it did not feature in Herodotus or Ctesias, and classical Greeks were hardly aware of it. For Berossos that was a problem, as indeed it was for his Seleucid patrons: we know that the Seleucid kings claimed Nebuchadnezzar as an important forerunner.⁵ The work of introducing him to the Greeks had started as soon as the empire was formed, with the Greek historian Megasthenes (BNJ 715 F 1a). However, it was Berossos who properly established Nebuchadnezzar in the Greek historical imagination, and in so doing replaced the inherited succession of Assyrians, Medes, and Persians, with the sequence Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians. And this is where Queen Amyitis and her Hanging Garden becomes important.

      In Ctesias, the Iranian princess Amytis, daughter of Astyages, secures the transition from the Median to the Persian world empire. She marries Cyrus, reconciles him with her father, and secures the eastern half of his empire for him (Haubold 2013a: 174–176). This powerful woman reappears in Berossos’s account as the wife of Nebuchadnezzar and recipient of the Hanging Garden. The point of the reshuffle seems clear: by marrying Amyitis just before the sack of Nineveh, Nebuchadnezzar becomes the legitimate heir of the Assyrian Empire, replacing the Medes, or rather incorporating them into his realm. Berossos overwrites the Ctesianic myth of a succession of empires while preserving some of its constituent parts. Moreover, he feeds Greek fantasies about Babylon as a source of oriental wonders, and advertises Nebuchadnezzar as a suitably romantic role model for the Seleucid kings. The legend of an Assyrian king presenting his Iranian wife with a special garden was probably older than Berossos, and seems to have been popular with the Alexander historians (Bichler and Rollinger 2005; Rollinger 2013: 151; Haubold 2013a: 173–174). By attaching it to Nebuchadnezzar, Berossos secured a central place for him in the Greek imagination: from now on, Nebuchadnezzar was not just a great conqueror king but also a devoted husband. Like his Seleucid patrons, he combined world rule with domestic romance. The story of the Hanging Garden thus illustrates how Berossos combined Greek and Mesopotamian historical registers to connect to, and educate, his Greek readers. Far from betraying the hand of an interpolator, it illustrates his approach throughout the Babyloniaca.

      Equally instructive is his account of Cyrus the Great, slightly later in Book 3. Cyrus had long served as a model СКАЧАТЬ