Reversing and reinventing the Centre of the World. Iranian and Zoroastrian perception of the Old Babylon

From the earliest times, the intercourse between Mesopotamia and the Iranian plateau was ceaseless, constituting a complex network of cross-cultural interactions. Meanwhile the dissemination of the prestige of Babylon and its ideal image as the foremost centre of enlightenment and wisdom soon exerted a captivating influence even eastward. Furthermore, all the three great Iranian dynasties of the pre-Islamic period, the Achaemenid, Arsacid, and Sasanian, exploited the leading role of the deeply urbanized region between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, making of it the most bustling centre for political, economic, and trading affairs of their kingdoms. These tight bonds triggered several phenomena of acculturation that reverberated transversely within each level of Iranian society; the encounter with the old Babylonian tradition as well as with different ethno-religious communities living in that region must have fostered a broad range of confrontations and intellectual responses. Unfortunately, due to the paucity of direct sources, these dynamics are not always clear to the modern scholar. Through the examination of consistent accounts occurring in Middle Persian texts and in other sources related to the Arsacid-Sasanian period, the present paper aims to investigate how the Iranians, and more specifically the Zoroastrian doctors, reinterpreted the image of Babylon within their own tradition, shaping it according to the dualistic tenets characterizing both their religious system and world view.