The Greeks in Bactria and India c9.s2.149

c9.s2.149

That the Greeks of Seleuceia, though they kept the megaron type of house, built it to face north like a Babylonian house instead of south like a Greek one³ would probably have happened anyhow in that climate, but that they should bury their dead in the walls or under the floors of their houses was simply a copy of Babylonian practice;⁴ it is believed that Babylonians did this because the arable land was too valuable to be used for cemeteries, but this could hardly apply to Seleuceia, which must in any case have imported, and could easily import, food for some part of its enormous population. The Greeks adopted the Babylonian system of the double document, with the original sealed up in a clay cylinder for reference if required and the duplicate outside the cylinder for current use,⁵ though in Babylonia itself the double document in this form had been extinct for some three centuries;⁶ they met it somewhere else, perhaps in Syria, brought it back to Babylonia, and proceeded to spread it in some form or other all over the East. Though Babylonian law was not affected by Greek law, it is a matter of discussion whether Greek law was not affected by Babylonian; a mortgage deed from Doura,⁷ which provides for the enslavement of the debtor if in default, has been pronounced to be an example of Graeco-Hellenistic law taking up into itself its Oriental parallel and moulding it to its own forms of thought.¹ Babylonian gods travelled far, and entered Greek cities like Doura. It has been claimed that the architecture of the temple of Anu at Uruk, built under Antiochus III, shows the influence of Babylonia upon Greece,² but it seems to be only the ordinary case of Oriental architecture adopting some Greek forms; however, a Greek at Uruk did imitate Babylonian practice by dedicating a girl-child in a native temple that she might learn a handicraft.³ It does not appear, however, that any Hellenistic Greek became acquainted with Babylonian history or literature; normally Greeks took little account of the literatures of Asiatic peoples, and Berossus was as unable to interest them in the older history of Babylon as was Manetho in that of Egypt. Callimachus knew of one Babylonian fable, though probably not at first hand;⁴ but the earliest trace of any Greek knowledge of the Gilgamesh epic seems to be the use which was made of one or two episodes by the Alexander-Romance, and that belongs to a later time.