Time and Its Adversaries in the Seleucid Empire

by: Kosmin, P.J.

Price: 30,90 EURO

(in stock)

“Tells the story of how the Seleucid Empire revolutionized chronology by picking a Year One and counting from there, rather than starting a new count, as other states did, each time a new monarch was crowned…Fascinating.”—Harper?s

“Without Paul Kosmin?s meticulous investigation of what Seleucus achieved in creating his calendar without end we would never have been able to comprehend the traces of it that appear in late antiquity…A magisterial contribution to this hitherto obscure but clearly important restructuring of time in the ancient Mediterranean world.”—G. W. Bowersock, New York Review of Books

“With erudition, theoretical sophistication, and meticulous discussion of the sources, Paul Kosmin sheds new light on the meaning of time, memory, and identity in a multicultural setting.”—Angelos Chaniotis, author of Age of Conquests

In the aftermath of Alexander the Great?s conquests, his successors, the Seleucid kings, ruled a vast territory stretching from Central Asia and Anatolia to the Persian Gulf. In 305 BCE, in a radical move to impose unity and regulate behavior, Seleucis I introduced a linear conception of time. Time would no longer restart with each new monarch. Instead, progressively numbered years—continuous and irreversible—became the de facto measure of historical duration. This new temporality, propagated throughout the empire and identical to the system we use today, changed how people did business, recorded events, and oriented themselves to the larger world.

Some rebellious subjects, eager to resurrect their pre-Hellenic past, rejected this new approach and created apocalyptic time frames, predicting the total end of history. In this magisterial work, Paul Kosmin shows how the Seleucid Empire?s invention of a new kind of time—and the rebellions against this worldview—had far reaching political and religious consequences, transforming the way we organize our thoughts about the past, present, and future.

Preface
Introduction
I. Imperial Present
1. The Seleucid Era and Its Epoch
2. A Government of Dating
3. Dynastic Time
II. Indigenous Past and Future
4. Total History 1: Rupture and Historiography
5. Total History 2: Periodization and Apocalypse
6. Altneuland: Resistance and the Resurrected State
Conclusion
Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
List of Maps, Illustrations, and Tables*
Index
* Maps, Illustrations, and Tables
Maps
Map 1. The geography and topography of the Seleucid empire
Map 2. Babylonia and western Iran
Map 3. Southern Levant
Map 4. Western Asia Minor
Map 5. Greater Armenia
Illustrations
Figure 1. The house of Seleucus (simplified)
Figure 2. Saros Tablet
Figure 3. Tax bulla from Seleucia-on-the-Tigris
Figure 4. Plan of the Dura-Europus archive complex
Figure 5. Excavated depot (Room A3) of the Dura-Europus archive
Figure 6. Seleucia-on-the-Tigris agora
Figure 7. Plan of Kedesh administrative building
Figure 8. Interred child, Kedesh archive
Figure 9. Stone sekōma, Maresha
Figure 10. Handle of a jar, Tel Aviv
Figure 11. Lead weight, Demetrias-by-the-Sea
Figure 12. Bronze coin of Alexander I Balas, Apamea-on-the-Axios
Figure 13. Heliodorus inscription, Maresha
Figure 14. Cut-up σε᾽ lead weight, Maresha
Figure 15. Tetradrachm of Diodotus Tryphon
Figure 16. Palace of Adad-nādin-aḥḥē, Girsu
Figure 17. Stamped brick of Adad-nādin-aḥḥē
Figure 18. Statue B of Gudea
Figure 19. Statue B of Gudea, detail with architectural plan
Figure 20. Coins of (a) Ardaxšīr I, (b) Vadfradad I, (c) Vahbarz, (d) Baydād, and (e) Seleucus I
Figure 21. Tomb of Darius I, Naqš-i Rustam
Figure 22. Throne bas-relief, Persepolis
Figure 23. Palace H, Persepolis, with reused staircase facade of Artaxerxes III
Figure 24. Reconstructed plan of Palace H, Persepolis
Figure 25. Plan of Artaxata citadel area, Armenia
Figure 26. Rebuilt Urartian wall, Artaxata
Figure 27. Boundary stone of Artaxias I
Tables
Table 1. Saros Tablet
Table 2. Year-date formulae at Babylon, from Alexander?s death to the Seleucid Era
Table 3. Comparison of the Seleucid Era (Babylonian) and Seleucid Era (Macedonian) dating of the death of Antiochus IV Epiphanes
Table 4. Greek alphabetic numbers
Table 5. The Dynastic Prophecy

Time and Its Adversaries in the Seleucid Empire

by: Kosmin, P.J.

• ISBN-13: 9780674271227 / 978-0-674-27122-7
• ISBN-03: 067427122X / 0-674-27122-X
• Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2022

Price: 30,90 EURO

(in stock)