Seleucid Empire

After Alexander’s death in 323 BC his generals divided his empire. Seleucus I Nicator, one of his cavalry commanders, took the eastern share — from Asia Minor to the borders of India — and founded the Seleucid dynasty in 312 BC. From his new capital at Antioch on the Orontes and from Seleucia on the Tigris he ruled the largest of the Hellenistic kingdoms. The dynasty pressed Greek language, Greek city-foundations, and Greek religion on the older civilisations of the Near East. Judea, contested between Seleucid Syria and Ptolemaic Egypt for a century, passed firmly into Seleucid hands in 200 BC after Antiochus III’s victory at Panium. His son Antiochus IV Epiphanes (r. 175–164) attempted to forcibly Hellenise Jerusalem: he plundered the Temple in 169, banned Torah observance, and in December 167 set up an altar of Zeus on the great altar of burnt offering — the "abomination of desolation" of Daniel 11:31 — sparking the Maccabean revolt. The dynasty steadily lost ground to Rome, to the Parthians in the east, and to the Hasmoneans in Judea, until Pompey extinguished the rump Seleucid kingdom in 63 BC.