Translating the Seleucid Βασιλισσα: Notes on the Titulature of Stratonice in the Borsippa Cylinder

Abstract

Until the end of the twentieth century, the study of Hellenistic Babylonia appealed mostly to researchers trained in Classics. When J. G. Droysen published Geschichte des Hellenismus between 1836 and 1843, Akkadian had in fact not yet been deciphered. Classical texts therefore provided the only way in which scholars could understand Babylonia. When Assyriology developed as a field on its own, researchers focused on Sumero-Akkadian culture; they considered the Hellenistic period to be a decadent time in which Greek culture had infiltrated the native one, to its detriment. With these two perspectives combined, the Hellenocentric understanding of Hellenistic Babylonia was strengthened. In the early 1990s, however, Susan Sherwin-White and Amelie Kuhrt vigorously upended this view. They focused on non-classical texts and documents and thereby stressed the vitality of Near Eastern cultural traditions. Their challenging work paved the way for intercultural reflection on Hellenistic Babylonia. In effect, the interactions between Babylon and Greece could therefore be developed, by a new generation of researchers, as cross-cultural, meaning that it is likely that mutual impact was felt in both cultures. Among them, Stephanie M. Langin-Hooper offers, in the field of archaeology, a useful interpretative model which analyses cultural interactions in their diachronic and multi-directional dimensions. She assumes the existence of cultural mediators who stimulate interactions between people of two cultural backgrounds sharing a common space. Over time, the facilitation of exchange may affect the nature of social relationships, so much so that they no longer develop in accordance with cultural factors but rather with social class, age, gender, or profession. This implies numerous combinations which vary depending on the sociocultural background of each participant in a given social interaction.