La Babylonie à l’époque hellénistique et parthe

Ancient Mesopotamia became part of the Seleucid Empire in the Hellenistic Period (323-30 BCE). The cuneiform writing system, which throughout the ancient Near East had been the main medium for documentation since the fourth millennium BCE, remained in use despite the ongoing process of Hellenization. As a consequence-and unlike what we see happening elsewhere in the Seleucid Empire-a large number of sources bearing on daily life and written by local people have survived. Although far from complete the publication and study of these texts has advanced significantly in recent years. These studies have shown the importance of these documents for the study of Hellenistic Mesopotamia for both scholars of the ancient Near East and historians of the Greco-Roman world. The present volume provides for the first time a systematic overview of current research on Hellenistic Babylon. It presents the broad variety of extant sources-with selected texts in translation-and shows what these texts can tell us about the integration of the region in the Seleucid and later the Parthian Empire.