The cuneiform sources on the Seleucid king: negotiating new narratives on traditional supports

The scope of this paper is to present an overview and brief analysis of the cuneiform sources in which Seleucid ideologies of kingship are expressed and reflected, directly or indirectly. Sources other than written ones will not be considered here, and the analysis will be limited to Akkadian documents from Babylonia. Seleucid imperial image-making can be traced through different types of cuneiform documents, such as royal building inscriptions, administrative texts, and chronographic and literary compositions. The present paper will focus on two kinds of documents as case studies, namely administrative texts and royal inscriptions, and it will examine an additional document that falls somewhat in between the two types, the so-called Lehmann text. We are fully aware that this is a partial approach and that it is difficult to reconstruct the image of the Seleucid king based solely on local texts. However, our interest lies precisely in showing how the Seleucid ruler presented himself to his Babylonian audience, in scrutinizing the techniques and tools he used, and in studying how he combined Oriental tradition and Greco-Macedonian innovations to create a new concept of kingship. Ultimately, our aim is to present evidence of the Babylonian voice of the Seleucid king in order to contribute to the rich debate surrounding Hellenistic kingship