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The Babylonian Chronicles and Berossus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

Robert Drews
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Extract

Students of comparative religion and historians of historiography have for some time now been debating the value, or even the validity, of an “historical outlook”. Within the swamps of this impossibly large debate, one of the few points of seeming bedrock is that the historical outlook which is characteristic of Western civilization was alien to the peoples of the ancient Near East, the Hebrews possibly excepted. One awkward fact which this consensus must leave out of account is that in first-millennium Babylon there was something which looks like historical writing—the chronicles. So far as I know, they have been completely ignored in this debate.

On the other hand, the chronicles have occasionally been singled out for high praise. Students of ancient historiography who, like myself, must depend on translations of the cuneiform texts, have generally supposed that of the many genres represented by these texts the most “historiographic” are the chronicles. One historian concluded that “the great Neo-Babylonian Chronicle” was indeed “the apogee of ancient Near Eastern historiography (exclusive of the Old Testament) and deserves to rank in importance with such milestones as the histories of Thucydides, Orosius and Ranke. Secular history as we know it today here first appeared”.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , Spring 1975 , pp. 39 - 55
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1986

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References

1 The chronicles with which this article is concerned, all of them compiled in the Neo-Babylonian, Persian, or Seleucid periods, are the following:

To this group should be added the text translated by Smith, Sidney, Babylonian Historical Texts (abbr. BHT; London, 1924), 148–149Google Scholar, which refers to the year 345/4 B.C. For the chronicles I have used the following translations: nos. 1, 2, 6 and 13, A. L. Oppenheim in ANET; no. 3, King, L. W., Chronicles Concerning Early Bab. Kings, II (abbr. CCEBK; London, 1907); no. 5Google Scholar, Millard, A. R., “Another Babylonian Chronicle Text,” Iraq 26 (1964), 14–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; nos. 7 and 14, S. Smith, BHT; nos. 8–12, Wiseman, D. J., Chronicles of Chaldaean Kings (abbr. CCK; London, 1956)Google Scholar; for no. 4 Oppenheim's ANET translation of cols, ii, 23–iv, and for cols, i–ii, 23, Winckler, H., ZA 2 (1887)Google Scholar and Delitzsch, F., Die bab. Chronik (1906)Google Scholar. Grayson now publishes a fragment of a chronicle which refers to Xerxes, and three (or possibly four) chronicle-fragments which relate to the Seleucid period. These I have not seen, but have read Grayson's description of their contents.

Chronicles which are not the subject of this article, and to which I shall refer only for comparative purposes, are the so-called “Weidner Chronicle,” the “Religious Chronicle” of tenth-century Akītu-omissions and ominous events, and the Middle Assyrian Chronicle translated by Tadmor, H. in JNES 17 (1958), 133–134Google Scholar.

2 Brundage, Burr C., “The Birth of Clio: A Résumé and Interpretation of Ancient Near Eastern Historiography”, in Teachers of History. Essays in Honor of Laurence Bradford Packard (Ithaca, N.Y., 1954), 221Google Scholar.

3 “Studien und Beiträge zur babylonisch-assyrischen Geschichte,” ZA 2 (1887), 148–149Google Scholar.

4 CCEBK I, 2Google Scholar. Olmstead, A. T., Assyrian Historiography (Columbia, Mo., 1916), 61–62Google Scholar, saw the chronicles as perhaps a history of Assyro-Babylonian relations.

5 CCK 95. For Güterbock's assessment of the “trockener Chronikstil” of the texts see his “Die historische Tradition und ihre literarische Gestaltung bei Babyloniern und Hethitern bis 1200,” ZA 42 (1934), 18Google Scholar. Landsberger, B. and Bauer, T., “Zu neuveröffentlichen Geschichtsquellen aus der Zeit von Asarhaddon bis Nabonid,” ZA 37 (1927), 61–98Google Scholar, categorized the chronicles with the “gelehrter Literatur” of the Babylonians (pp. 61–62), and on that basis argued that all of them belonged to a single, canonized series.

6 Iraq 26 (1964), 35Google Scholar.

7 The older theories went back to two of the most distinguished classical scholars, Mommsen and Wilamowitz. Gelzer, M., “Der Anfang römischer Geschichtschreibung,” Hermes 69 (1934), 46–55Google Scholar, showed that the first Roman historian, Fabius Pictor, wrote entirely within the Hellenistic tradition, and got nothing from the Pontifical Tables. On the Greek side, Jacoby, F., Atthis: The Local Chronicles of Ancient Athens (Oxford, 1949), concluded (p. 60)Google Scholar “that there did not exist in Greece chronicles kept by priests such as Wilamowitz assumed.”

8 Finkelstein, J. J., “Mesopotamian Historiography,” PAPS 107 (1963), 461–472Google Scholar, makes excellent observations about the historical material in the omen-literature and establishes the priority of that material over the chronicles. But despite his own good warnings on pp. 461–462, Finkelstein seems to present the chronicles as a step toward historiography, and not as a phenomenon which must have its own raison d'être.

9 ZA 42 (1934) 18Google Scholar.

10 BM 27859, line 13, refers to the construction of a throne in a temple; lines 9–11, obv., of the “Diadochic Chronicle” seem to refer to some building activity (although this is uncertain; see Smith, , BHT, 130Google Scholar). In neither case, however, can we say that the chronicler's purpose was to account for the existence of a present phenomenon.

11 Gallie, W. B., Philosophy and the Historical Understanding (London, 1964)Google Scholar.

12 Brundage, op. cit., 221.

13 On this point I find myself in disagreement with Grayson, although I must add that the subject is discussed only tangentially in chapter 2 of his Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles. Other commentators, of course, have also attributed the chronicles to an intellectual or antiquarian interest in the past. Cf. Albright, W. F., “The Nebuchadnezzar and Neriglissar Chronicles”, BASOR 143 (1956), 33, n. 23Google Scholar. Against Millard's proposal (Iraq 26 (1964), 35Google Scholar) that his chronicle was compiled as an aid to “private historical research”, and that Nabu-kaṣir, the scribe who compiled it, may have been an “academic and maybe a teacher at the same time,” I would urge that one simply dare not postulate such activities for the scribe or his patron without establishing that in 6th-century Babylon people engaged in private historical research, or taught history. So far as I know, there is no evidence that they did, and a good deal of evidence that they did not.

14 The average Babylonian's ignorance of history is reflected in the Greek historians' failure to learn anything about Mesopotamian history other than the tales of Sardanapalus and Semiramis. Even in the fifth century, it seems, none of Herodotus' or Ctesias' informants knew anything about Nebuchadnezzar (to say nothing about Nabopolassar) or the Neo-Babylonian empire. I have discussed this more fully in The Greek Accounts of Eastern History (Washington, D.C., 1973), 79–80Google Scholar; and in “Sargon, Cyrus and Mesopotamian Folk History,” JNES 33 (1974), 387–393Google Scholar.

15 Brundage, op. cit., 209.

16 CCK, 95. The mobilization of the army, as we shall see, was also of interest to the Astronomical Diarist; cf. note 24.

17 The inscription is given in F. Jacoby, DieFragmente der griechischen Historiker (abbr. FGrH) no. 239.

18 The Akītu-festival was of great interest to the compilers of the “Esarhaddon Chronicle”, the “Nabonidus Chronicle”, Millard's new chronicle, and BM 27859. It was the sole item of interest for the scribe of BM 86379. In tne “Babylonian Chronicle” the Akītu is not mentioned, but the scribe was careful to note the years in which Šamaš did not leave the Ebabbar in Sippar. On the price of grain see “Diadochic Chronicle”, rev. 5 and 31; cf. also “King Chronicle I,” obv. 21.

19 In his commentary on Vergil, , Aeneid I, 373Google Scholar, Servius says: “This is the way in which the annals were composed: every year the Pontifex Maximus kept a whitened board, on which, after putting down the names of the consuls and other officials as a heading, he customarily noted what was worthy of being remembered, that which was done day-by-day at home and on the battlefield, on land and sea. By such diligence our ancestors compiled eighty books of year-by-year diaries (annuos commentaries)”. Co-incidentally, at least the last two items entered on BM 96273 were copied from a “writing board”. See Millard's comments on line 23 of the tablet, and his suggestions, Iraq 26 (1964), 34Google Scholar.

20 Brundage, op. cit., 209.

21 This would be in accord with the thesis of Albrektson, B., History and the Gods (Lund, 1967)Google Scholar. The doctrine of divine direction of history, according to Lambert, W. G., Babylonian Wisdom Literature (Oxford, 1960), 15Google Scholar, “is not questioned in any known cuneiform text”.

22 F. Delitzsch, Die babylonische Chronik, translated the colophon: “Erster Teil. Gleich seinem Original geschrieben, baru und uppuš. Tafel des Ana-Bêl-eris, Sohnes des Liblut, Sohnes des Avêl-Nannar, Handschrift (wörtlich, Hand) des Êa-iddina, Sohnes des Ana-Bêl-eris, Sohnes des Avêl-Nannar. Babil, den 5. ?, XXII Jahr des Darius, Königs von Babil und der Länder”. In other words, this chronicle, which can only be described as a catalogue of disasters, was prepared by a son for his father. One senses that these chronicles were not bureaucratic or scholarly exercises, but valuable documents. The colophon of the “Babylonian Chronicle” is paralleled exactly by the colophons of the astronomical texts from Seleucid Uruk. According to Neugebauer, O., The Exact Sciences in Antiquity (Providence, 1957), 136Google Scholar, “these colophons follow more or less the following pattern: ‘Tablet of A, son of B, son of C, descendant of M; hand of R, son of S, son of T, descendant of N. Uruk, month of m, day d, year y, X being king’.” Neugebauer adds that “occasionally we read that ‘the informed may show the tablet to the informed, but not to the uninformed’.”

23 Iraq 26 (1964), 35Google Scholar. Millard saw as an objection to such a possibility the fact that the scribe, Nabu-kaṣir, “has no priestly title,” and “if identical with the writer of the Borsippa contracts, was a secular scribe, or at least employed to write the deeds and documents of everyday life”. Yet if Millard (p. 32) is correct in identifying Nabu-kaṣir with a famous scribal family which “may have been among the literati whose libraries Aššurbanipal ordered to be searched for books he lacked”, then it is not unlikely that he was among the “informed” who had access to mantic texts. Oppenheim, A. L., “Divination and Celestial Observation in the Last Assyrian Empire”, Centaurus 14 (1969), 97 and n. 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar, supports Landsberger's request that diviners of all sorts be referred to as “scholars” rather than “priests”.

24 BHT, 156. Note the mustering of the army in line 13.

25 Ibid., 151.

26 CCK, 4.

27 See note 23, fin.

28 Berossus (F. Jacoby, FGrH, no. 680), Frag. 16, as Grayson notes, indicates not only that in the third century detailed historical and astronomical information was available for the period c. 750 B.C. onwards, but also that it was in Nabonassar's reign that such information was first recorded in detail.

One might also compare Berossus, Frag. 3a. This fragment, from the German translation of the Armenian version of Eusebius' Chron., is badly garbled: “Im zweiten Buch hat Berosos die Könige, einen nach dem andern darstellend, beschrieben † wie er sagt: Nabonassaros war zu jener Zeit König,† Der Könige Namen nur tut er sammelnd aufschichten, ihre etwaigen Taten jedoch erzählt er keineswegs genau.” As A. von Gutschmid suggested a century ago, the garble must have resulted from the Armenian's mistaking Eusebius' ἕως for ὥς. The fragment may be translated: “In the second book Berossus presented the kings, as he (i.e. Alexander Polyhistor, Eusebius' source) says, one after another until the time when Nabonassar was king. He has gathered and put in order only the names of the kings, and says nothing specific about their various deeds”.

Sachs, A., “Naissance de l'astrologie horoscopique en Babylonie”, Archaeologia 15 (1967), 15Google Scholar, places the beginning of Diary-keeping c. 750 B.C. See also van der Waerden, B. L., Die Anfänge der Astronomie (Groningen, c. 1969), 98 ffGoogle Scholar. On p. 99 van der Waerden translates two of the twelve monthly sections of the earliest extant Diary, that of the year 567 B.C. The next earliest Diary is that of 453 B.C.

29 For Sachs' discussion of the Diaries see “A Classification of the Babylonian Astronomical Tablets of the Seleucid Period”, JCS 2 (1948) 285–6Google Scholar.

30 Van der Waerden, , Anfänge, 103Google Scholar.

31 JOS 2 (1948), 288Google Scholar.

32 Anfänge, especially 103 ff., and 250–251. Van der Waerden's terminus post quem is 700 B.C., the date of the mulAPIN text, and his terminus ante quem 500 B.C., to which he dates a teaching-manual which presents the planetary periods (pp. 108–9).

33 Jones, Tom, AHR 76 (1971), 1137Google Scholar, in review of Dicks, D., Early Greek Astronomy (London, 1970)Google Scholar.

34 Biggs, R. D., “More Babylonian Prophecies”, Iraq 29 (1967), 128CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Goetze, A., “Historical Allusions in Old Babylonian Omen Texts”, JCS 1 (1947), 256, no. 13Google Scholar; see also Wiseman, D.J., Iraq 36 (1974), 254CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 “Babylonian Chronicle”, col. iii, ll. 30–1. For the sake of comparison, note an omen from the Enūma Arm Enlil quoted by van der Waerden, , Anfänge, 33Google Scholar: “Wenn Venus im Monat Airu im Osten erscheint und die grossen und kleinen Zwillinge sie alle vier umgeben und sie dunkel ist, so wird der König von Elam erkranken und nicht am Leben bleiben”. Since the second-millennium scholars did not know that such a Venus-phenomenon occurs in cycles, they could not predict the date on which an Elamite king would die.

37 This division is first attested in two texts from the late second millennium. See van der Waerden, , Anfänge, 61–2Google Scholar, where it is suggested “dass die Liste angibt, auf welche Länder sich die Bedeutung gewisser Omina erstrecken soll.”

38 “Akkadian Prophecies”, JCS 18 (1964), 7–30Google Scholar.

39 See note 34.

40 Biggs' translation, ANET 2, 606

41 AfO 13 (1939–1940), 235–236Google Scholar.

42 “Akkadian Apocalypses”, IEJ 16 (1966), 231–242Google Scholar.

43 Ibid., 235. Biggs and Lambert, at least, do not share this “unanimous opinion”.

44 Ibid., 240.

45 Grayson, and Lambert, , JCS 18 (1964), 7Google Scholar.

46 Cf. however, Lambert's reservations, expressed in a review-article (Orientalia 39 (1970), 176Google Scholar) on Albrektson, History and the Gods.

47 Lambert, ibid., 177: “The Babylonian predictions do not lead up to a grand climax, or indeed to any climax at all”.

48 “Prophecy B,” lines 26–27 (Biggs, , Iraq 29 (1967), 123CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

49 “Prophecy A” presented a forecast of at least eleven successive reigns.

50 The only items which Millard's scribe certainly took from a “writing-board” were two miscellaneous items placed at the end of the chronicle, but referring to c. 996 and 757–6 B.C.: “For three months Shiriqti-Shuqamunu … exercised the kingship of Babylon,” and “In year five, in year six of Nabu-shum-ishkun Nabu did not go to the ‘coming out’ of Bel.”

51 For these see F. Jacoby, FGrH, no. 680.

52 Berossus, Test. 2 (Tatian, , To the Greeks, 36Google Scholar).

53 Frag. 1, 9Google Scholar.

54 Frag. 3a; see note 28.

55 Frags. 15–22.

56 Against Apion I 128Google Scholar (= Ber., Test. 3).

57 Vitruvius 9, 6, 2 (= Ber., Test. 5a).

58 Nat. Quaest. 3, 29Google Scholar. The translation is that of T. Corcoran's 1971 Loeb Library edition. The phrase, “qui Belum interpretatus est,” I would prefer to translate “who explained the doctrines concerning Belus.” It might also be pointed out that in the last sentence Seneca uses the words solstitium and bruma—June 21 and December 21. Jacoby labels this quotation (“Pseudo-)Berossus, Frag. 21.”

59 Cf. the dismay voiced by Brinkman, J., A Political History of Post-Kassite Babylonia (Rome, 1968), 35, n. 158Google Scholar.

60 Müller, C., Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum II, 509–510Google Scholar.

61 “Berossos”, Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyc. III, col. 316Google Scholar.

62 Ibid.: “Für die Mischung der Gedanken ist bezeichnend, dass Berossos die ekpyrosis der griechischen Philosophie auf astrologischem Wege berechnete”.

63 “Berossos”, RIA II (1938), 1–17Google Scholar.

64 Test. 3, 4–6, 7, 9–11. Test. 1, 2, 8 and part of 3 are left to the real Berossus.

65 See critical apparatus to Test. 3.

66 All fragments dealing with history come from either Josephus or the Christian writers. The classical authors who transmit fragments dealing with astronomy and astrology are Aerius, Censorinus, the elder Pliny (two fragments), Seneca and Vitruvius.

67 Berossos und die babylonisch-hellenistische Literatur (Leipzig, 1923), 182 ffGoogle Scholar.

68 Except by occasional cranks, Eastern influences on Greek thought are usually ignored. This state of affairs has most recently been deprecated by West, M. L., Early Greek Philosophy and the Orient (Oxford, 1970)Google Scholar.

69 van der Waerden, B. L., “Das grosse Jahr und die ewige Wiederkehr,” Hermes 80 (1952), 129–155Google Scholar, stated the arguments at length; he has summarized them in Anfänge, 116 ff. Guthrie, W. K. C., A History of Greek Philosophy I (Cambridge, 1967), 282Google Scholar, cites van der Waerden's article without comment, and nowhere discusses the origins of the notion of a Great Year, although it is reflected in the teachings of at least three pre-Socratic philosophers.

70 Cf. Schnabel, , Berossos, 17–22Google Scholar.

71 Frag. 6 (Josephus, , Ant. Jud. I, 158Google Scholar).

72 Frag. 8 = Josephus, , Against Apion I, 134–141Google Scholar. Although in paragraph 142 Josephus says that “this and much besides” is what Berossus had to say about Nebuchadnezzar, the direct quotation had pretty much exhausted Nebuchadnezzar's accomplishments: settlement of the “rebellion” in Egypt (sic), Syria and Phoenicia, return to Babylon at his father's death, building of walls, rebuilding of temples, etc. Frag. 9 = paragraphs 146–154 of the same work, again a direct quotation. This quotation carries us from the death of Nebuchadnezzar to the deposition of Nabonidus.

73 Against Apion I, 142Google Scholar. Berossus claimed for Nebuchadnezzar what the Greeks had attributed to Semiramis.

74 Frag. 10.

75 Birt, T., Antikes Buchwesen (Berlin, 1882), 309Google Scholar, found 2000 lines (each line approximately as long as an hexameter) average for a book of prose. What Josephus gives us of Berossus' account of the Neo-Babylonian kings comes to less than 100 such lines.

76 We see the tendency already in Tatian, , To the Greeks 36Google Scholar (Test. 2), where Berossus is described as an historian. But Tatian apparently knew of Berossus' work only what Juba had cited from it.

77 Book One did not get beyond the creation of the world, and the narrative in Book Two was limited to the ante-diluvian kings and the Flood episode.

78 Mat. Hist. 7, 123Google Scholar (Test. 6).

79 Pausanias io, 12, 9 (Test. 7).

80 Frag. 1, 1.

81 “Dass er überall Keilschriftberichte, vor allem Chroniken, benutzt hat, merkt man auf Schritt und Tritt. Einzelheiten zu besprechen, würde hier zu weit führen, das ist Aufgabe des Kommentars der Fragmente” (Schnabel, , Berossos, 184Google Scholar). Unfortunately, although both Schnabel and Jacoby edited the fragments, neither completed a commentary.

82 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. 7Google Scholar): “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.