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The "gymnasium inscription"
Coin of Mithradates II.
Mithradates II
(parthia.com; ©!!)
 The Gymnasium Inscription is in fact not an inscription written on a stone, but a clay tablet written in Greek that is now in the Louvre, Paris. It gives a list of winners at an athletic contest and shows that the Greek community of Babylon was still very much alive in the late second century BCE.
  1. In the reign [the great] king Arsaces [1],
  2. Epiphanes and Philhellene.[2] [In the year] 
  3. 137 according to the king's reckoning [but according to the old reckoning]
  4. 202 [3], when Pe[l....] was gymnasiarch. [These]
  5. are the winners in the entire [year],
  6. for which the money was furnished by Di[ogenes son of]
  7. Artemidoros, who has become pay[master in the]
  8. year 192. 
  9. Of the ephebes:
  10. with the bow: Dikaios, son of Diodoros,
  11. with the javelin: Artemidoros, son of Andronikos,
  12. with the hollow shield: Kastyrides, son of Kephalon,
  13. with the oblong shield: Demetrios, son of Athenoenes,
  14. in the long course: Aristides, son of Artemidoros,
  15. in the short-course: Nikanor, son of Hermolaos.
  16. Of the neoi:
  17. with the bow: Dikaios, son of Nikostratos,
  18. with the javelin: Herakleon, son of Herakleon,
  19. [with the hollow shield: ……]s, son of Apollodoros,
  20. [with the oblong shield: ………, son of …..o]genes.
[1]
All Parthian kings called themselves Arsaces. Before adopting the title "king of kings" in 109 BCE, Mithradates II styled himself "the great king Arsaces".

[2]
Epiphanes: God Manifest. Philhellene: Friend of the Greeks.

[3]
The year 137 of the Arsacid era and the year 202 of the Seleucid era correspond to 6 October 111 - 30 March 110 BCE.

Note that all these names are purely Greek, but also note the preponderant position of the theophoric names with Dio- = Bêl, Apollo = Nabû, Artemis = Nanaia, Herakles = Nergal. The element –doros may well represent the Babylonian iddin "he/she gave". These people with pure Greek names may have been Babylonians with Babylonian names and have had a "multiple ethnic identity". Cf. Artemidoros, son of Diogenes, who is also called Minnanaios, son of Touphaios in a Greek inscription from Uruk dated to 110 CE.
 

Literature

  • Assar, F. 2003, "Parthian Calendars at Babylon and Seleucia on the Tigris", in: IRAN, 41 p.77.
  • Haussoulier, B. 1903, "Inscriptions grecques de l’extrême-orient grec" in:  Mélanges Perrot: receuil de mémoires concernant l’archéologie classique, la littérature et l’histoire anciennes dédié à Georges Perrot, Paris, p.159 no. 4; 
  • Haussoulier, B. 1903, "Inscriptions grecques de Babylone", in: Klio 9, pp. 352-3, no. 1; 
  • Schmidt, E. 1941, "Die Griechen in Babylon und das Weiterleben ihrer Kultur", Archäologische Anzeiger 56, pp. 816f, no. 5; 
  • SEG VII 39. 
  • Van der Spek, R.J. 2005, "Ethnic segregation in Hellenistic Babylon." in: W.H. van Soldt, R Kalvelagen, D. Katz eds., Ethnicity in Ancient Mesopotamia. Papers read at the 48th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Leiden, 1-4 July 2002. (Leiden), nr. 8 (page 406-407).
  • Cf. Sherwin-White, S., Kuhrt, A. 1993, From Samarkhand to Sardis. A new approach to the Seleucid empire (London), pp.157-8.
Thanks to Farhad Assar for clarifying the king's title's.
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