Mortuary Ritual and Society in Parthian Babylonia

Despite the increasing interest in the culture and religion of the Parthian or Arsacid state (ca. 250 BC-224 AD), the diversified mortuary rites and the related system of beliefs remain on the fringe of the scholarly discourse. Burials of the so-called late periods in the history of Mesopotamia were found in abundance on many of the ancient sites, especially throughout Babylonia, which was a political centre of the Arsacid monarchy. Although the extent of the published material is far from satisfactory, some of the recent works in a considerable way extend our knowledge of the types of tombs, burial receptacles and grave inventory. A comprehensive interpretation of the mortuary evidence in socio-cultural terms is, however, still lacking. The dissertation aims to resolve this hiatus through a complex investigation of social, cultural and religious aspects of the burial customs and practices that can be traced on the basis of mortuary evidence. The study is not intended to picture the social structures of Parthian Babylonia, but to shed more light on the cross-cultural phenomena resulting from the ethnic diversity of the local population, including native Babylonians, Greeks, Jews and Iranians. The main extent of the study encompasses three major urban centres of the region: Babylon, Seleucia-on-the-Tigris and Coche/Veh-Ardashir-“Ctesiphon” offering vast mortuary evidence, which so far has not been subjected to a detailed scholarly scrutiny. The study involves also comparative considerations in regional scope, including mortuary data from the remaining prominent sites of Babylonia such as Uruk and Nippur, as well as remarks on inter-regional links with the material from other parts of Mesopotamia, western Iran and the region of Syro-Palestine. One of the key aspects of the study is the contextual approach towards the analysis of mortuary evidence focusing on the degree of physical proximity between the grave and the “living society” in terms of settlement patterns and architecture. Through a comprehensive re-evaluation of the available descriptive and stratigraphic data, excavation plans and sections, it was not only possible to provide chronological estimations for some of the tombs, but also to discern between the intramural and the extramural burial sites, and secondly to define a number of intramural contexts e.g., the residential context including the widely-debated issue of in-house versus ruin burials. Socio-cultural dimensions of topographic distribution of burial sites are thoroughly discussed with regards to the suspected preferences of particular ethnic groups. The extensive time-frame of the subject i.e. ca. 350 years of the Parthian rule over Mesopotamia gave possibility to examine the dynamics and variability within the scope of burial forms and tomb structures. During that time, one may observe a discontinuation of some of the earlier Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid forms of burial e.g. the bathtub coffins and anthropoid terracotta coffins, resulting most likely from the profound cultural changes within the Babylonian society. Noticeable is also the opposite trend of continuity expressed in the uninterrupted use jar burials, brick tombs and pit graves. Lastly, the employment of new or re-introduced forms e.g. the so-called slipper coffins and the aulted tombs, may have been connected with the emergence of status groups, such as Hellenistic urban aristocracy and Parthian administrative and military personnel in some of the Babylonian cities. One of the least known elements of the Parthian period burial practices are in fact human remains, as skeletal material was only on rarest occasions subjected to the proper anthropological examination. However, data available for some of the burials involved in the study, allow basic understanding of the collective burial rites and changing patterns in position and orientation of the body, especially the shift from flexed/semi-flexed to extended position, and disarticulation of human remains that may be treated as a potential evidence of the secondary burial and/or reduction processes, related perhaps to Jewish and/or Zoroastrian burial customs. Somewhat more transparent is the issue of grave inventory, whose study lead to a conclusion that the artefacts deposited in tombs were not merely personal belongings of the deceased. Many of them provide valuable insight into the concept of afterlife which in general appears to have comprised of notions deriving from both Greek and Babylonian traditions, blended into one complex system of beliefs. A considerable group of elements of grave inventory testify also to the existence of a diversified but to some extent undoubtedly formalized mortuary rites involving both preparation of the body, a complex funeral ceremony, as well as subsequent commemorative rites connected with the cult of the dead. On the basis of the whole research, the concluding part of the dissertation substantiates the ways in which the mortuary rites reflected social and cultural conditions of Parthian Babylonia. One of the key points is the syncretisation of the mortuary ritual, reflecting the general phenomenon of cultural syncretism, especially in the sphere of religion. The issue is interrelated with the processes of change in cultural identities through acculturation and adaptation, most evident between the Greek and Babylonian populations. Not surprisingly, the mortuary ritual of Parthian Babylonia must have also possessed significant social functions such as display of socio-economic status, creating of social memory and bonds of group identity and membership, particularly through formal cemeteries and collective family or kin-based burial practices. Eventually, the discontinuity of certain mortuary traditions should be perceived as part of the overall decline of the traditional Babylonian culture towards the end of the Parthian period and at the beginning of the subsequent Sasanian times