This chapter explores connections between early Greek and Near Eastern narrative poetry and demonstrates how the Eastern Mediterranean context can help situate early Greek epic in an ancient cross-cultural framework. The chapter addresses methodological questions about how Near Eastern poetry has been related to Homer and Hesiod, and provides the literary-historical coordinates of the relevant Sumero-Akkadian, Hurro-Hittite and Ugaritic corpora. Given its particular closeness to Homer, the chapter discusses the Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic among other works, as part of a broader thematic comparison of poetic composition and concepts of the cosmos and heroism. Ballesteros carefully outlines the various factors that may explain similarities and considers directions for future comparisons involving work on literary criticism, oral tradition, scribal culture and world mythology.

Nabopolassar fought with an Assyrian-style army and took the throne of Babylon. Thirteen years later, Nineveh fell despite Egyptian help. Babylon took over much of the Assyrian empire. Later he defeated the last Assyrian king at Harran. His success was seen as Marduk’s revenge. Captured wealth from Assyrian royal cities allowed major building work at Babylon, which was continued by Nabopolassar’s son Nebuchadnezzar II. Neither king left statues of themselves, and cylinder seals represent gods by their symbols. Major subsidence in the citadel required frequent rebuilding on the Southern Palace. The names of temples and gates were compiled on to a clay tablet as a literary work. Colour-glazed bricks adorned the Processional Way leading to the temple of the New Year festival outside the citadel walls. That festival is described. Some of his creations Nebuchadnezzar described as a Wonder, but he made no mention of the Hanging Garden. In a separate part of the citadel, Nebuchadnezzar built a Summer Palace. His conquests included Tyre and Ashkelon but not Egypt or Lydia. He sacked the Temple in Jerusalem and deported its royal family to Babylon. Other captives settled on land nearby. Business archives of long duration continue into the Achaemenid period.

Darius I overcame rebellions and seized the throne of Babylon, but cuneiform scholarship continued and developed; religious practices did not change, nor did the great buildings on the citadel. The zodiac scheme came into use. The Achaemenid king took Babylonian royal titles and promoted the worship of Marduk for local purposes. Xerxes broke the continuity. Following an uprising, a purge led to the ending of many archives. The province of Babylon was divided in two. Subsequent Achaemenid kings continued to treat Babylon with reverence. Alexander the Great defeated Darius III, entered Babylon, retained the Persian satrap, and moved treasure from Susa and Ecbatana to Babylon. He was recognized as a god. Lack of sons at his premature death precipitated a civil war from which Alexander’s commander Seleucus emerged to take the throne jointly with his son Antiochus. The derelict ziggurat was demolished, but temples and rituals, chronicles and astronomical diaries, continued as before. Aramaic was widely used, and fewer texts were inscribed in cuneiform. Interest in the fall of Assyria and of the Babylonian empire is apparent in Greek literature. Famous scholars include Berossus and named astronomers. Parthians invaded and eventually ended the dynasty.

Following unsuccessful attempts to keep the descendants of Nebuchadnezzar II on the throne, the usurper Nabonidus became king. Persian tribes had moved into Elamite lands, and the Medes made Harran a dangerous city; Nabonidus‘ mother, an aged acolyte of Ashurbanipal, resided there. His lengthy inscriptions are informative about his deeds and his character. He dedicated his daughter to the Moon-god at Ur according to precedent, and spent ten years in Arabia, leaving his son Belshazzar in charge in Babylon. He returned and restored the temple in Harran. Cyrus the Great brought his rule to an end, but continued to employ some high officials. Cyrus was probably of mixed Elamite and Persian descent. The Cyrus Cylinder, inscribed in Babylonian cuneiform for a Babylonian audience, used traditional denigration of the previous king Nabonidus, and acknowledged Marduk as Babylon’s god. In another cuneiform text, Nabonidus was mocked for his scholarly pretensions and for sacrilegious acts. Babylon continued to be the centre where all subsequent kings felt obliged to celebrate the New Year festival to be accepted as legitimate rulers. Old monuments were not defaced. Cyrus may have been responsible for an imitation of Babylon’s glazed bricks at Persepolis. He made his son Cambyses co-regent.

Hard times for Babylon followed the end of the First Dynasty; but records of two Sealand kings, and the account of magnificent rebuilding of Marduk’s temple by a Kassite king imply wealth and energy. Glass production brought a new source of wealth, and horses were bred for chariots. Marduk was still the supreme god. The top status of the Kassite kings in Babylon was recognized by the pharaohs in Egypt. There cuneiform was used for international correspondence and Babylonian literature used to train local scribes. Foreign wives were taken from Elamite, Assyrian, and Hittite royalty. A top scribe from Babylon served in Assyria, and literature flourished. Boulders recording donations of land were carved with texts and celestial motifs. The office of eunuch is discussed. The Assyrian king raided Babylon, looting literary tablets among other valuables. He took over rule of Bahrain to access Gulf trade. The Kassite kings soon resumed the dynasty but the Elamite king raided and in turn took huge amounts of booty. In the next dynasty, the great Nebuchadnezzar I defeated Elam and wrote a heroic account. As a result of tribal incursions by Arameans, the Aramaic language began to spread, and camels trained for transport opened up desert trade. A library already existed in Babylon.

This chapter directly addresses a popular literary-historical comparison between two well-known scenes, the encounter of Gilgameš and Ištar in the Epic of Gilgameš VI, and the encounter of Diomedes and Aphrodite in Iliad 5, but draws attention to possible links between the Gilgameš episode and the Mesopotamian lexical tradition. These links suggest that the episode may have emerged from a specifically Mesopotamian scholarly or didactic background, which, the author argues, makes scenarios of oral transmission of Gilgameš to the Greek world seem questionable. As in the case of Enūma eliš, the immediate Mesopotamian context of Gilgameš will have to be taken into account in any comparative effort to situate the literary texts in an even broader context.

Warfare and violence were central to the identity and experience of early states in the ancient Near East. This chapter focuses on the earliest historical records documenting the rise of kingdoms in early Mesopotamia and their relationship with violence and warfare. It argues that a rhetoric of state-sponsored violence developed in Mesopotamia that guided countless generations of behaviour. The only violence that was legitimate was state sponsored and divinely sanctioned. Kings promised to banish violence at home, except when performed under their auspices, and they pledged to bring the outside world to battle in a muscular extension of power over that world. The chapter is divided into three basic parts: first it introduces a series of related topics about how violence and warfare were imagined and understood in early Mesopotamia; second, it discusses violence in its early historical context by examining cycles of violence related to the growth of the state; and finally it will briefly examine the later development of these kingdoms of violence and the royal rhetoric that accompanied their creation and expansion.

Human sacrifice was a rare practice among the cultures of ancient Mesopotamia. Our best-sourced occurrences are the archaeological remains from the royal death pits at Early Dynastic Ur (c. 2600–2450 BCE) and textual records of the substitute king ritual that was practised at least from the early second millennium BCE down to the time of Alexander the Great. Such sporadic occurrences of ritual human sacrifice require an investigation as to why it happened at all. This chapter examines the practice of human sacrifice in the light of its respective historical and cultural contexts to better understand this extreme form of ritual violence. It finds that while there are rather different contexts, in both instances it is clear that the office of kingship held absolute power over the subjects who were disposed of for the sake of the ruler.