For most scholars interested in the history of Babylonia in the Hellenistic and Parthian periods, up till the 1980s the most important source of knowledge on it was the information to be found on the pages of the works of ancient authors – which, of course, are neither particularly abundant nor very detailed – as well as archaeological data. Few referred to the information contained in other types of evidence – the documents in cuneiform writing. Although such documents referring to both the periods have been published since the second half of the 19th century, owing to the fact that their publication did not come with translation into contemporary languages and that there are relatively few of them, they were not observed beyond the circles of Assyriologists. The situation gradually began to change in the 1930s, when for the first time some types of these documents became the object of research. Only then did the historical information they contained attract the attention of scholars dealing with the Hellenistic period.

Large numbers of scholars became aware of the huge significance of cuneiform documents in research on the history of Hellenistic and Parthian Babylonia only after the Austrian Academy of Sciences’ multi-volume publication of Babylonian astronomical diaries. The first volume was published in 1988, followed by the next two in 1989 and 1996. Each of them includes a transcription of the original text and a translation into English furnished with a concise commentary. The oldest of these diaries was produced in 652 BCE, and the entries dated latest come from the first half of the first century BCE. They are unique as they contain, in addition to the results of daily astronomical observations, a number of economic and historical notes. Most entries derive from the period between the Battle of Gaugamela (333 BCE) and the first half of the first century BCE, when the diaries were discontinued. Although the vast majority allude to local events, the details they contain are significant for better understanding of the social, political and economic situation of Babylonia under Seleucid and Arsacid rule.