CLT 3378: Ancient Mythology: East and West

Spring 2019

Lecture Outline: Creation in Berossos’ Babyloniaca

Culture: Babylonian (or more broadly Mesopotamian)

Work read: Berossos’ Babyloniaca

Type of work: prose

Date of work: ca. 300 BCE

Language of work: Greek

I. Marduk

a) patron god of Babylon

b) over time, called simply Bēlu

1. Akkadian for “lord”

2. = Greek Bēlos

c) aka Bel or Bel-Marduk

II. Berossos (ca. 300 BCE)

a) Babylonian priest of Bel-Marduk

b) at time of Macedonian conquest of Persian Empire under Alexander the Great

(king of Macedon, 336-323)

c) wrote Babyloniaca, a history in Greek for Macedonian overlords

1. covers creation of world up to Berossos’ own time

2. only exists in a few fragments quoted by later authors

3. adapts Greek historiography to Babylonian historical traditions

4. sections 2-3: starts with geography and customs (i.e., ethnography)

of Babylon (as a Greek historian would)

III. Oannes (Babyloniaca, sections 4-5)

a) Oannes = Greek for Akkadian Uan(na)

b) an antediluvian (before Flood) sage (= Akkadian apkallu)

c) seven antediluvian sages = apkallū (plural)

d) Oannes = first apkallu; Adapa = another apkallu

e) apkallū = often, fish men

1. human head and body underneath

2. fish head on top; fish body hanging behind

3. as Berossos describes Oannes (section 4)

4. servants of god Enki/Ea; associated with apsu

5. statues of seven apkallū = buried in building foundations

6. fish-garbed figures in Mesopotamian art = human priests or divine

apkallū?

f) acc. to Berossos, Oannes emerges from Persian Gulf

g) teaches humans all arts of civilization (writing, agriculture, architecture, etc.)

h) = culture hero

i) in Babyloniaca 6-9: Oannes narrates to humans creation myth