Epilogue

Abstract

AbstractWith the creation of the Hellenistic world, people in a vast region came in contact with the literature and scholarship that had developed previously in Greece and in the Greek language. Those included inhabitants of Babylonia who still maintained the age-old cuneiform heritage, a small but creative group who continued to do so 400 more years. The interactions between the two cultures involved both the adoption of Babylonian practices by Greeks rulers such as Antiochus I Soter and attempts to present them to the new audience in Greek terms by scholars like Berossus. Some members of the Babylonian elites adopted Greek names and may have acted as intermediaries between the two cultures. Babylonian astronomy and astrology radically influenced these sciences throughout the Hellenistic world, something that required individuals with expertise in both Babylonian and Greek practices. The so-called Greco-Babyloniaca tablets suggest that Babylonians literate in cuneiform studied the Greek alphabet, but this was an epistemological dead end. Within this cultural mix Aramaic is often considered to have been a continuation of Babylonian practices, more accessible to people who did not know cuneiform, but we should regard Aramaic and Greek together as a literate tradition distinct from the Babylonian one. Finally a Hellenistic cosmopolis came to dominate, one that in turn was replaced by later multilingual Middle Eastern examples.