The Greeks in Bactria and India c9.s2.141

c9.s2.141

But this was only on the surface; beneath it the Babylonian kept his civilisation and his religion unaltered and untouched by Greece. That civilisation was too ancient and had set too hard to be modified: for unnumbered centuries Babylonia had been the home of the highest culture in Asia, and Babylon had been to an older world what Rome was to become to a newer one. Babylonian law was the one law in Western Asia which was untouched by Greek law,⁴ and that law still governed her commercial transactions; no Greek word so far has been found in the mass of Babylonian commercial documents of the Hellenistic period,⁵ though the Greek system of registration of documents⁶ was imposed upon or adopted by Babylonians.⁷ The cuneiforms lasted till 7 B.C. in spite of Greek and Aramaic writing;⁸ there is even a case in the Seleucid period of Aramaic being written in cuneiform.¹ Documents from Uruk have shown that the ritual of the old gods continued unmodified in all its complexity.² Even in astronomy itself, though the Babylonian gladly gave to Greece, it is not actually known (on the assumption that Seleucus the astronomer was a Greek) that he took anything from her. It was not Greece that affected Babylonia but Babylonia that affected the Greeks, perhaps the only Asiatic civilisation which did, if religion be put aside. The total effect was not great, save for astrology; but the unique phenomenon is interesting, and merits a few words.