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Berossos was an extraordinary figure, and the Babyloniaca is an exceptionally interesting text. It is not sufficient to describe it as a typical product of the Hellenistic imagination, as has sometimes been suggested, nor should we content ourselves with saying that Berossos advertised Babylonian culture to his Greek masters. He did that too, as has transpired, but he also had a more interesting project: I have argued that he proposed a specifically Seleucid framework of concepts, institutions, and ideas to which Greek and Babylonian élites contributed, each in their own way. The (Greco-Macedonian) friends of the king expanded and defended the empire; and the (Babylonian-based) Chaldaeans guarded a tradition of kingship that went back to the very beginnings of the world. Berossos knew, and accepted, that Greco-Macedonian élites had all the power in the Seleucid Empire: as friends of the king, they were in control of the army and could even overthrow the incumbent monarch and install a new one. Yet, they could not uphold kingship as an institution or ensure the empire’s stability in the long term. For that, Berossos suggests, the Seleucids had to rely on the Chaldaeans, who guarded an archive of antediluvian wisdom, and with it the key to stable and universal kingship.