BEROSSUS

This article appears in Volume V03, Page 808 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: BEC-BER

BEROSSUS , a priest of Bel at Babylon, who translated into
Greek the standard Babylonian

work

WORK

on astrology and astronomy, and compiled (in three books) the history of his country from native documents, which he published in Greek in the reign of Antiochus II. (25o B.C.). His works have perished, but extracts from the history have been preserved by Josephus and Eusebius, the latter of whom probably derived them not directly from Berossus, but through the medium of Alexander Polyhistor and Apollodorus. The extracts containing the Babylonian cosmology, the

list

LIST (O.E.
lisle
- LISLE, ALICE (c. 1614-1685)
, a Teutonic word, cf. Dut. lust, Ger. Leiste, adapted in Ital. lista and Fr.
lisle
- LISLE, ALICE (c. 1614-1685)
)
LIST, FRIEDRICH (1789-1846)

of the antediluvian kings of Babylonia, and the Chaldaean story of the Deluge, have been shown by the decipherment of the cuneiform texts to have faithfully reproduced the native legends; we may, therefore, conclude that the rest of the History was equally trustworthy. On the other hand, a

list

of post-diluvian dynasties, which is quoted by Eusebius and Georgius Syncellus as having been given by Berossus, cannot, in its present form, be reconciled with the monumental facts, though a substratum of historical truth
is discoverable in it. As it stands, it is as follows:
i. 86 Chaldaean kings 34,080 or 33,091 years
2. 8 Median 224
3. I I other kings no number.
4. 49 Chaldaean 458
5. 9 Arabian ,, 245
6. 45 Assyrian , 526
After these, according to Eusebius, came the reign of Pul. By means of an ingenious chronological combination, the several items of which, however, are very questionable, J. A. Brandis 1
assigned 258 years to the 3rd dynasty; other summations have been proposed with equally little assurance of certainty. If Eusebius can be trusted, the 6th dynasty ended in 729 B.c., the year in which Pul or Tiglath-pileser III. was crowned king of Babylonia. But all attempts to harmonize the

scheme

SCHEME (Lat. schema, Gr. oxfjya, figure, form, from the root axe, seen in exeiv, to have, hold, to be of such shape, form, &c.)

of dynasties thus ascribed to Berossus with the list given us in the so-called dynastic Tablets discovered by Dr Pinches have been failures. The numbers, whether of kings or of years, cannot have been handed down to us correctly by the Greek writers. All that seems certain is that Berossus arranged his history so that it should fill the astronomical period of 36,000 years, beginning with the first man and ending with the con-quest of Babylon by Alexander the

Great

GREAT

.
See J. P.

Cory

CORY, WILLIAM JOHNSON (1823-1892)

, Ancient Fragments (1826, ed. by E. R. Hodges, 1876) ; Fr. Lenormant, Essai de commentaire des fragments cosmogoniques de Berose (1872) ; A. von

Gutschmid

GUTSCHMID, ALFRED, BARON VON (1835-1887)

in the Rheinisches Museum (1853) ; George

Smith

in T.S.B.A. iii., 1874, pp. 361-379; Th. G. Pinches in P.S.B.A., 1880-1881. (A. H. S.)

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