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When the Assyrian Empire was destroyed in 612 BC, the political and cultural focus of Mesopotamia shifted to the south once more and the city of Babylon in particular. During the Neo-Babylonian Dynasty – which lasted from the reign of Nabopolassar (ruled 626-605 BC) until the Achaemenid Persian conquest in 539 BC – a series of historical texts known as the “Babylonian Chronicle” were written in the city. The Babylonian Chronicle was clearly influenced by the Assyrian annals as well as earlier forms of Mesopotamian historical writing, but was far less theological and therefore “represents the highest achievement of Babylonian historians with regard to the writing of history in a reliable and objective manner.” <ref> Grayson, A. Kirk, trans. <i> Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles.</i> (Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 2000), p. 8</ref> The Chronicle continued to be compiled after the Achaemenid Persian and Macedonian Greek conquests of Mesopotamia and provided inspiration for the Hellenized Babylonian historian, Berossos.
In many ways, Berossos’ life in Mesopotamia mirrored that of Manetho’s in Egypt. Berossos was a native Babylonian priest who lived in the third century BC under the Greek Seleucid Dynasty, dividing his time between the Greek and native Mesopotamian worlds. He was commissioned by the king Antiochus I (281-261 BC) to write a history of Babylon in Greek, which he did using native sources, much as Manetho had done in Egypt around the same time. <ref> Verbrugghe, Gerald P., and John M. Wickersham, eds. and trans. <i>Berossos and Manetho, Introduced and Translated: Native Traditions in Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt.</i> (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001), p. 26</ref> Although both Berossos’ and Manetho’s works have only survived in fragments often transmitted by later historians, they represent the intellectual juncture where the older forms of Near Eastern historiography merged with the new, narrative form of historical writing that was formulated by the Greeks.
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