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 [ul ú-ḫa-a]l-liq Eki ul aq-ta-bi BIR-šú

 [ul ú-ri]b-bi É.SAG.GÍL ul ú-ma-áš-<ši> ME-šú

 [ul am-da]ḫ-ḫa-aṣ TE lúṣab-bi ki-din-nu

 ...[ul] áš-kun qa-lal-šú-nu

 [ú-pa-a]q ana Eki ul a-bu-ut šal-ḫu-šú

 [I have not sin]ned, lord of the lands, I have not neglected your godhead.

 [I have not dest]royed Babylon, I have not ordered it to be dispersed.

 [I have not made] Esagila tremble, I have not forgotten its rites.

 [I have not st]ruck the people of the kidinnu in the face.

 […] I have [not] humiliated them.

 [I have paid attenti]on to Babylon, I have not destroyed its (outer) walls.

At the New Year’s festival, the Babylonians confirmed their king in office, provided he accounted for his past actions, and renewed his commitment toward the city, its élites, and its major buildings. Acording to Berossos, Cyrus would not have passed this test. By destroying the city’s outer walls he did what no Babylonian king should do, his acknowledged capacity for philanthropia notwithstanding. Here, as already in his account of the Hanging Garden, Berossos mixes Greek and Babylonian registers to achieve a strikingly didactic effect: his work taught King Antiochus and his Seleucid Greek élites where to look for positive role models but also how to learn from past failures. For that, Berossos relied on bona fide Mesopotamian sources, but he could do so effectively only because he knew how to manipulate the relevant Greek cultural codes.