Beyond Greece and Babylonia. Global and Local at Seleucia on the Tigris

In this contribution different types of documents and classes of materials from Seleucia on the Tigris are presented and discussed with the purpose of identifying global and local trends in both their production and meaning Subsequently, this paper explores how these trends coexisted, interacted and affected the city and its society In many instances, materials that are deemed as ‘local’ at Seleucia have been considered part of a globalizing process; however, this paper addresses this issue by proposing that fully developed global systems, like those that came into being in the Hellenistic world, were in fact fostered by globalizing processes that had already been underway The aim of this essay is to show that global and local trends at Seleucia appear to go beyond their characterization as ensembles of exclusively Greek and Babylonian origin As in Hellenistic Commagene, we seem to be dealing here with ‘cultural scenarios’ that acquired very different meanings over time In particular, the use of Greek elements, which I will define as ‘Hellenistic mainstream’, in Seleucia on the Tigris, appears to be potentially comparable to what was happening in Commagene at the Euphrates simultaneously.