Introduction: Berossus, between the Babylonians and the Greeks

In the ^3rd century BC, theBabylonian priestBerossus presented the characteristics of Babylonian civilization in Greek in a work known only by quotations, the Babyloniaca. In it, he recounts how a being from the sea named Orannes gave the Babylonians all the elements of their civilization, adding: " From that day on, nothing was invented ". This account is largely consistent with Babylonian data. This is a world to which the idea of progress is radically alien.