ON THE MYTHOLOGY OF OKEANOS

CATALIN ANGHELINA

There is no doubt that the historical Greeks beginning with Homer viewed Okeanos as a river encircling the earth.1 Okeanos represented this river for the epic tradition as well. This is most obvious in Homeric passages in which the poet talks about the sun or stars ‘setting in Okeanos’.2 Okeanos in these passages cannot be anything other than the river surround- ing the earth at the horizon, where the sky meets the earth. Okeanos, however, is not originally a Greek concept. This is pos- sibly shown by both its unknown, non-Indo-European etymology, and the fact the Greeks themselves could not explain logically what a river surrounding the earth meant.3 The main feature of the mythological aspect of the god Okeanos is its primeval nature. In the Hesiodic tradition, Okeanos is a Titan and the son of Ouranos and Gaia, the latter being born directly from Chaos. In the Orphic tradition, on the other hand, Okeanos came into being even before Ouranos and Gaia. This latter tradition has been connected to the Homeric passages in which Okeanos is viewed as ‘the father of gods’ or ‘the father of all beings’.4 Regardless of how different genealogies belong to dif- ferent traditions, the relation between Okeanos and Ouranos seems to be a close one. For this reason, Berger (1904) 2-3 saw Okeanos as an original sky-god.5 In fact, why would Okeanos represent primeval water, since his descendants are celestial gods?6 It seems

1 F. Gisinger, RE XVII (including etymology); Reinhardt (1971); Lesky (1947); for etymology, see Fauth (1988) 361-79. 2 Pocock (1960) 371 suggests that the use of such phrases is metaphorical only. 3 Herodotus 4.8, 2.21 and 23; cf. Kirk (1957) 12-3. 4 Il. 14.201, 246; cf. West (1983) 118-9, 236. 5 Berger (1904) 2-3. 6 The correspondences with other Near Eastern mythologies are not perfect: e.g., between Okeanos and Tethys, on one side, and the Babylonian Apsu and Tiamat, on the other. Tiamat was split in two by Marduk, her body becoming parts of the sky; Apsu did not encircle the earth. The biblical tehōm, on the other hand, does not have a pair; cf. West (1997) 144-8.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2009 JANER 9.2 Also available online – brill.nl/jane DOI: 10.1163/156921109X12520501747796 144 catalin anghelina more natural to see the Greek celestial gods as having the origin in the sky and not elsewhere. Berger’s suggestion, though quite old, has found only one echo, which has also been long forgotten. In his monumental work about Zeus, Cook (1925) 479-82, building on Berger’s hypothesis, conjec- tured that Okeanos might have been originally not an earthly river, but a celestial one: the Milky Way. Our Galaxy seems, indeed, to be a river of stars, which surrounds the earth. The epithet ἀψόρρ´οος, (apsorrhoos) ‘back-fl owing’ or ‘fl owing in itself ’, which is applied to Okeanos in the epic tradition, seems also appropriate for describ- ing the Milky Way.7 The identifi cation of Okeanos as the Milky Way seems to be a strange hypothesis. There are, however, additional facts that may point in this direction. First, the Milky Way has been seen as a celestial river by people in Australia, Japan, Siberia, Mesopotamia, Arabia and China. Even the Mycenaeans seem to have known it as a celestial river.8 All these facts may be an indication of how common this view was in ancient times. Another issue concerns the Homeric depiction of Okeanos on the shield of Achilles, which would represent the river encircling the earth. On this shield, Okeanos is situated on its extreme rim, surrounding the whole universe, including the sky, which is gener- ally assumed to occupy the central position. If the ordering of the scenes depicted on the shield is indeed logical, then it is hard to see how the river that surrounds the earth can surround the sky as well. The logical construction would have been to arrange the sky scenes and not Okeanos on the extreme rim. It may be then that the sky is not located in the center of the shield, but towards the outer edge of it.9 Under this hypothesis, the sky and Okeanos would be closely associated. It has been long noticed10 that this depiction of Okeanos on the shield of Achilles is similar to the one on a Babylonian world-map inscribed on a tablet in the British Museum.11 The river is called marratum and is depicted as two concentric circles that surround the

7 Th. 776, Od. 20.65; Il. 18. 399; cf. West (1997) 148, Kelly (2007) 280-2, Pocock (1960) 371-4. 8 Cook (1925) 479-80. The Chinese called it the ‘Sky River’ or ‘Silver River’; cf. Schafer (1974) 401-7; for Mycenaean, cf. West (2007) 350-51. 9 Il. 18.607-8; cf. Edwards (1991); Gärtner (1976) 46-65. 10 Cf. Roscher’s Lexicon IV 1448. 11 BM 92687; cf. West (1997) 145; Horowitz (1998) 21 and 406 (Plate 6).