Making Priest and Temple in Late Achaemenid and Hellenistic Babylon (484–60 BCE)

Making Priest and Temple in Late Achaemenid and Hellenistic Babylon (484–60 BCE)

Céline Debourse (Hebrew University)

Tuesday, February 28, at 4:30 in SML 323

In 484 BCE, Xerxes crushed several Babylonian revolts against his rule. One of the results was an almost complete disruption of Babylonian temple life as it had existed up until that point. While in most places the cult never resumed, in the city of Babylon the worship of the gods was eventually reinstated and even flourished again. In this talk, I ask how Babylon’s community undertook this process of rebuilding the temple, both in terms of how the worship of the gods was actually organized and how the rebuilding process was envisioned and legitimized.