Priest of Bel at Babylon, who translated into Greek the standard Babylonian work on astrology and astronomy, and compiled (in three books) the history of his country from native documents, which he published in Greek in the reign of Antiochus II. (250 B.C.). His works have perished, but extracts from the history have been preserved by Josephus and Eusebius, the latter of whom probably derived them not directly from Berossus, but through the medium of Alexander Polyhistor and Apollodorus. The extracts containing the Babylonian cosmology, the list of the antediluvian kings of Babylonia, and the Chaldaean story of the Deluge, have been shown by the decipherment of the cuneiform texts to have faithfully reproduced the native legends; we may, therefore, conclude that the rest of the History was equally trustworthy. On the other hand, a list of post-diluvian dynasties, which is quoted by Eusebius and Georgius Syncellus as having been given by Berossus, cannot, in its present form, be reconciled with the monumental facts, though a substratum of historical truth is discoverable in it. As it stands, it is as follows:
1. 86 Chaldaean kings | 34,080 or 33,091 | years | |
2. 8 Median | 224 | | |
3. 11 other kings | no number. | ||
4. 49 Chaldaean | 458 | | |
5. 9 Arabian | 245 | | |
6. 45 Assyrian | 526 | |
See J. P. Cory, Ancient Fragments (1826, ed. by E. R. Hodges, 1876); Fr. Lenormant, Essai de commentaire des fragments cosmogoniques de Bérose (1872); A. von Gutschmid in the Rheinisches Museum (1853); George Smith in T.S.B.A. iii., 1874, pp. 361379; Th. G. Pinches in P.S.B.A., 18801881.