Taphoi wrote:I don't really disagree with most of Paralus' remarks. I too regard the tablet as an important source despite its brevity and imprecision.
Brevity certainly; imprecision is too strong. The tablets are very precise – astronomically speaking. The notes attached, too, can be detailed (commodity prices, the level of the Euphrates for example). Those notations that we consider “historical” – such as this one – are often as dry as a fossil. For instance we have the not too well preserved tablet (330 I think) which preserves details of what would seem to be Alexander’s negotiations with certain Babylonians wherein he promises to restore the temples and Esagila. This presumably led to the surrender of Babylon without bloodshed.
In the instance under discussion the Chaldeans simply noted the death of the king: this was the king of Babylon (Alexander) and needed little elaboration. They were finicky buggers and I doubt they'd have the date incorrect.
Taphoi wrote:Paralus: you might like to note that the mention of Serapis is not necessarily anachronistic. The name is a contraction of Osiris-Apis, which is the divine manifestation of the Egyptian Apis bull after its death. Alexander sacrificed to the Apis bull at Memphis and the temple of Osiris-Apis (usually known as the Serapeum) had existed at Saqqara since at least the New Kingdom of the pharaohs. Hence Marduk, the bull-god of Babylon, might have been referred to as Serapis by Eumenes.
The Serapeum was above the burial catacombs that stored the interred remains of the Apis bulls. It was from here that the bull made the occasional public “appearance” (for want of a better word). The actual cult to “Serapis” – as a discrete cult with its own temples and later to flourish under Rome – began later under Ptolemy Soter.
I’m not at all certain that we could describe Marduk as a “bull-god”. His name is translated as “the son of the sun” or, sometimes, the “bull calf of the son”. Any representation I’ve seen of this deity is human in form (large) though he has four eyes and four ears. I’ve not seen him rendered as a bull though his temple was guarded by winged bull “cherubs”
Marduk (or “Bel-Marduk”) was the principal god of the Assyrio-Babylonian pantheon – certainly after the Babylonian rise to principal near eastern power. Marduk was, in fact, the patron god of the city of Babylon. The precinct – the Esagila – where Marduk’s temple resided was in the centre of the city and
the religious shrine. Hence Alexander’s promised restoration in the vein of Cyrus and Assurbanipal before him.
I don’t think that Eumenes would have confused Marduk and the Apis bull.
Taphoi wrote: Personally, I think it is more likely that an Alexandrian scribe translated the name of the healing bull-god of Babylon into the name of the healing bull-god of Alexandria, in the context of one of the inevitable transcriptions of the document.
In either case, this detail does not detract from the authority of the document - its author had presumably encountered a healing bull-god in Babylon, which we know is correct.
That first is a possibility though I don’t know that Marduk was widely known as a “healing bull god”. More likely as the principal of the gods – a Zeus like figure.
The other possibility is that the document’s author may well have encountered a “healing bull-god” – Serapis – in Babylon (or elsewhere) just not at the time of Alexander’s death. It is possible that this document – like the
Leber de Morte was composed at a later date.