Brave New Scriptworld
Transliteration, Medium, and Renaissance in Late Babylonian Culture
In: Journal of World LiteratureSearch for other papers by Ben Gregson in
Current site
Google Scholar
Abstract
This article offers a new story of the Graeco-Babyloniaca, a corpus of clay tablets which feature cuneiform Sumerian and Akkadian texts on one side, transliterated into the Greek alphabet on the other. Stories traditionally told about the Graeco-Babyloniaca are invested in the pathos of ruin, focusing on defeat, decline, and obsolescence. This essay celebrates survival, finding in these texts indications of defiance, desire, and cultural renaissance. By situating the tablets in their historical context and placing them in dialogue with Damrosch’s theory of the “scriptworld,” this essay proposes that the corpus represents a genuinely innovative, if eventually abandoned, effort by Babylonian priestly elites to systematically adapt the newly cosmopolitan Greek alphabet to express the Babylonian languages. The goal was to preserve their own formerly cosmopolitan culture in the face of foreign occupation, rather than assimilate to that of their invaders, while retaining their traditional medium for such texts: clay.
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Brave New Scriptworld
Transliteration, Medium, and Renaissance in Late Babylonian Culture
In: Journal of World LiteratureSearch for other papers by Ben Gregson in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Abstract
This article offers a new story of the Graeco-Babyloniaca, a corpus of clay tablets which feature cuneiform Sumerian and Akkadian texts on one side, transliterated into the Greek alphabet on the other. Stories traditionally told about the Graeco-Babyloniaca are invested in the pathos of ruin, focusing on defeat, decline, and obsolescence. This essay celebrates survival, finding in these texts indications of defiance, desire, and cultural renaissance. By situating the tablets in their historical context and placing them in dialogue with Damrosch’s theory of the “scriptworld,” this essay proposes that the corpus represents a genuinely innovative, if eventually abandoned, effort by Babylonian priestly elites to systematically adapt the newly cosmopolitan Greek alphabet to express the Babylonian languages. The goal was to preserve their own formerly cosmopolitan culture in the face of foreign occupation, rather than assimilate to that of their invaders, while retaining their traditional medium for such texts: clay.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 213 | 213 | 25 |
| Full Text Views | 11 | 11 | 2 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 27 | 27 | 4 |
