Ritual and Theatre: Political Performance in Seleucid Babylonia. Abstract In Seleucid Babylonia, performance was politics. In this colonial state, the temple, theatre and ritual were established as a middle ground between the different populations. Greek theatres were constructed to look like Babylonian temples, and both institutions served as loci of civil authority. Moreover, the staging of the Babylonian Akitu influenced the mise-en-scène of the Greek pompe (parade) at Daphne, and exposure to Greek drama shaped audience response to religious ceremonies. State rituals were more than occasions for kings to assert their legitimacy, they were also spaces in which the Babylonian priesthood, Greek politai (citizens) and Babylonian citizens could debate Seleucid hegemony and imagine an alternative to the empire. Theatre, temple and politics in Seleucid/Parthian Babylonia Hellenistic theatres and Babylonian temples were places where certain political and ritual traditions converged, which can be ascertained through the archaeological and epigraphical evidence for these buildings. Seleucid populations manipulated the similarities between these institutions to establish a middle ground for the Seleucid crown, Babylonian priesthood and ordinary people. Theatres and temples played parallel roles in Seleucid political life for the politai, Greek citizens and the mārē Bābili, their Babylonian counterparts. Moreover, the construction of Seleucid theatres cited Babylonian religious architecture, while Babylonian temples probably acquired some theatrical characteristics. This is clearest in Babylon, where a text dated to 2 July 141 BC notes that ‘a parchment letter concerning the pahatu (governor) of Babylon and the politai … was read in the bīt tāmartu’ (Sachs and Hunger 1996, 134 – 135, no. 140 A. rev. 6; Potts 2011; Van der Spek 2001). Van der Spek has demonstrated that bīt tāmartu, literally the house of observation, was the Akkadian translation of the Greek θέατρον (theatron), and designated Babylon’s theatre. He argues that other references in Akkadian texts demonstrate that the assembly of Greek citizens met here regularly (Van der Spek 2001, 447 – 448). Robert Koldewey’s excavations revealed several phases of a theatre dating to c. 300 BC – AD 200 (Koldewey 1914). The two earliest phases consist of a simple stage-building with associated seating and probably housed these Seleucid (and later Parthian) political performances. Other sources show that the temple played a parallel role for the Babylonian community and that ‘[letters of the king, which] were written to the šatammu of Esagila and the mārē Bābili, were read in the house of deliberation in the Juniper Garden’, part of the main temple of Babylon (Sachs and Hunger 1996, 431, no. 93 A, rev. 25; Boiy 2004, 84). The šatammu served as head of both the temple and the Babylonian citizenry, the mārē Bābili (Van der Spek 2009). Here political performance among this community echoes the assembly of the politai. Theatres and temples had been political spaces in earlier periods in both Greece and Mesopotamia. In fith- and fourth-century Athens, theatres and dramatic festivals (which were also religious affairs) were intimately connected with democracy and civic identity (Goldhill1987; Goldhill and Osborne 1999; Roselli 2011). Seating in the theatre also provided a map of social and political divisions in the polis, particularly in the fourth century and later (Roselli 2011). Theatres in Hellenistic Greece, Asia Minor and the East remained political spaces where dramas educated citizens and civic honours were declaimed (Le Guen 2011; Le Guen-Pollet 1995).Similarly, the šatammu and the kiništu, the priesthood, had also represented the Babylonians vis-à-vis the Neo-Assyrian kings during the seventh century (Nielsen 2011). Nonetheless, the overlap between royal, temple and urban administration in the Hellenistic period was unprecedented. The Seleucid administration probably chose the temple as an institution to work though, benefiting the kings and the mārē Bābili who served as priests and made up the council. Both the priesthood and the Seleucid kings may have conspired in this state of affairs, with the former positioning themselves as intermediaries, a role for which they were well-suited (Clancier 2011, 758– 762). Between Ritual and Theatre: Political Performance in Seleucid Babylonia, by Lauren Ristvet, is available here: http://www.academia.edu/6383776/Between_ritual_and_theatre_political_performance_in_Seleucid_Babylonia Track: Walk With Me Artist: Life Beyond Earth Album: Playground Label: Needwant Release Date: 20 October, 2014 More here: http://www.needwant.co.uk/life-beyond-earth-playground-ep Photograph: the theatre of Babylon, Period 1.

• published: 22 Mar 2015
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