Lucinda Dirven discussed a “Prophet of Nanāya” attested from texts in this discipline, whose disruption of the religious status quo illustrated the tumultuous Seleucid-to-Parthian transition. For 10 points each:
[10e] Identify this discipline that names a series of Babylonian “diaries” ranging from the Neo-Assyrian to the Parthian period. Texts in this discipline include ephemerides (“eh-fem-EH-rid-eez”) tables and Ptolemy’s Almagest.
ANSWER: astronomy [accept answers like celestial observation or observing the skies; accept star catalogues; accept astrology; accept Babylonian Astronomical Diaries; prompt on science; prompt on mathematics; prompt on divination or equivalents]
[10h] Eleanor Robson has posited that appeasing “cuneiform-literate intelligentsia” may have been why diarists like Itti-Marduk-balaṭu were patronised by Hyspaosines (“his-PAO-sin-eez”), a brief Hellenistic-era ruler of Babylon who founded this marshland kingdom in southern Mesopotamia.
ANSWER: Characene (“ka-ra-SEE-nee”) [or Charax or Mesene or Mēšān or Mēšūn or Maysān or Mayšān]
[10m] Non-cuneiform languages like Greek were used for Babylonian historical texts much earlier, such as by this 3rd-century BC priest who wrote the lost Babyloniaca.
ANSWER: Berossus [or Bēl-reʾû-šunu]
<AT, Ancient History>