Eastern Myths for Western Lies Allusions to Near Eastern Mythology in Homer’S Iliad

Mnemosyne 71 (2018) 895-919 brill.com/mnem Eastern Myths for Western Lies Allusions to Near Eastern Mythology in Homer’s Iliad André Lardinois Radbout Universiteit Nijmegen [email protected] Received October 2016 | Accepted August 2017 Abstract That the great cultures of the Near East influenced Mycenaean and Archaic Greek culture has been amply demonstrated by the archaeological record. But did this influence extend to Greek literature? And was it recognized by the ancient Greeks themselves? In this paper I answer these two questions in the affirmative after examining two passages from Homer’s Iliad: Hera’s identification of Oceanus and Tethys as the parents of the gods (14.201) and Poseidon’s account of the division of the world through lot (15.189-193).The analysis of these passages is preceded by a methodological section on how literary parallels between these cultures can be evaluated. Keywords Homer – Iliad – Hera – Poseidon – Ancient Near East – cultural interaction – allusion – orientalism 1 Introduction That the great cultures of the Near East influenced Mycenaean and Archaic Greek culture has been amply demonstrated by the archaeological record.1 But how did this influence manifest itself? Did it extend to Greek literature? And 1 E.g. Morris 1992. Oral versions of this paper were delivered at the universities of Helsinki, Reading, Oxford, Ghent and Nijmegen. I would like to thank the different audiences, in par- ticular Bruno Currie, Adrian Kelly, Irad Malkin and Ian Rutherford, and the two anonymous © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017 | doi:10.1163/1568525X-12342384Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 09:13:13PM via free access 896 Lardinois was this influence recognized by the ancient Greeks themselves? These are some of the questions I would like to address in this article and for which I will present two test cases from Homer’s Iliad: Hera’s identification of Oceanus and Tethys as the parents of the gods (14.201) and Poseidon’s account of the division of the world through lot (15.189-193). It has been argued, most elaborately by Martin West in his monumental book The East Face of Helicon,2 that not only the material culture of archaic Greece was permeated with Near Eastern elements, but so was its literature. However, material borrowings are, generally speaking, easier to recognize than literary adaptations. Some Near Eastern artefacts were imported into Greece in their original form: one can literally trace the metals or clay out of which they were fashioned. Literary themes on the other hand have to be turned into Greek and are subsequently adapted to fit their new contexts, so that it is often hard to say whether a similarity between a Greek and an oriental text is due to: 1) the sharing of a common humanity, 2) the sharing of a common Mediterranean culture, 3) the independent development of a similar idea, or 4) an adaptation. To give an example of a shared common humanity: when in Greek literature the sun is said to rise in the East, as in Mesopotamian or Egyptian literature, the similarity probably results from the fact that these peoples lived in the same world and not from any literary borrowing. By a shared Mediterranean culture I mean that these peoples have lived for millennia close to one another and must have shared practices and ideas over a long period of time.3 As a possible example of an independent development we may cite the story of the Flood, which is found not only in ancient Greece or Asia, but in many parts of the world.4 It is unlikely that these places all adopted the story from one another. Floods happen everywhere on the planet and it must have referees for their valuable comments and suggestions. The fact that I did not follow all their advice makes me solely responsible for the remaining flaws in my argument. 2 West 1997. 3 This is basically the position which Haubold 2013 adopts with regard to the similarities between ancient Greek and Near Eastern literature. He sees two “parallel worlds” (ch. 2), in which early Greek and Mesopotamian epic “drew on a broadly shared repertoire of ideas and narrative forms” (p. 44). He does not exclude the possibility that some features of Mesopotamian literature found their way into Greek epic, but he sees no proof of it (p. 23). 4 Leering 2005, 138. For examples, see Frazer 1919; Dundes 1988. MnemosyneDownloaded from71 (2018) Brill.com09/28/2021 895-919 09:13:13PM via free access Eastern Myths for Western Lies 897 occurred to more than one people that this is a convenient way for a god to get rid of a great number of them. This is not to deny, of course, that within a certain region flood stories may affect one another, as seems to be the case with the Mesopotamian flood story influencing the account in Genesis (see below), and probably the Greek story about the flood as well.5 Most of the debate in the last thirty years or more has centred around the question whether or not there existed demonstrable adaptations: by an adaptation I mean a story or theme in Greek literature for which a Near Eastern story or theme is the most likely source, even if we have to postulate several intermediaries. But before I present my examples of what I will argue to be adaptations of Near Eastern themes in Homer’s Iliad, I have to address some further methodological questions. 2 Methodology When we say that the Greeks were influenced by peoples from the Near East we should specify which peoples we mean. Most likely these would have been the peoples living on the Eastern borders of the Mediterranean, such as the Phoenicians or the Anatolians.6 There was little direct contact between the Greeks and the peoples living in Mesopotamia, yet this is where most of the ancient Near Eastern literature is found. It is not enough, however, to differentiate between the different peoples of the ancient Near East: it is also necessary to define what we mean by ‘the Greeks’. It is clear that we cannot speak of a unified Greek nation or even culture, especially in the earlier periods of Greek history.7 By ‘Greeks’ I therefore mean ‘Greek-speaking people’ (and, similarly, by Phoenicians ‘Phoenician- speaking’ people). But even if there did not exist a sense of ‘Greekness’ or a unified idea of what the Near East consisted, these Greek-speaking peoples must have been able to distinguish between traditions that were familiar to them and those that were not, even when they could not pinpoint exactly where these strange traditions came from. 5 West 1997, 489-493; Bremmer 2008, 101-116; López-Ruiz 2014, 174. 6 López-Ruiz 2010 has recently argued for a strong influence of the Syro-Phoenicians, or their predecessors the Canaanites, on Greek culture, Bachvarova 2016 for that of the Anatolians. We don’t have to choose between these two options, however. All these peoples probably played a role in passing on Near Eastern stories and themes to Greece. 7 Hall 2002, esp. 47-55 and 90-124. Mnemosyne 71 (2018) 895-919 Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 09:13:13PM via free access 898 Lardinois One should also try to determine in which period the adaptation is most likely to have occurred. Ancient Greece was in constant contact with the Near East from the second millennium onwards. Even in the so-called Dark Ages did Greek communities maintain contact with peoples of the Near East, as archaeological finds at the site of Lefkandi in Boeotia have shown.8 It is never- theless worthwhile to try to determine whether certain literary themes reached Greece in the Bronze Age already, in which case they had more time to be as- similated to their Greek context, or whether they reached Greece around the same time they were adapted. Next, we should ask ourselves through what channels Near Eastern stories could have been transmitted to Greece. One way for literature to cross the lan- guage barrier, is when different peoples live in close proximity to one another, so they are motivated to learn each other’s languages. This was the case in trad- ing posts such as Al Mina, on the south coast of Turkey, or on Cyprus, where Greeks, Anatolians and Phoenicians lived together. Foreign slaves may have been another conduit for Near Eastern tales and the knowledge of other languages. Aphrodite in the Hymn to Aphrodite presents herself as a Phrygian girl who was raised by a Greek nurse and therefore can speak Greek. Eumaeus tells Odysseus in Odyssey 15 that there was a Phoenician slave in the household in which he grew up. Such slaves could have told stories from their homeland not only to Greek children, but also to adults.9 We have to assume that Greeks got to know Near Eastern stories main- ly through oral performances or retellings.10 Very few people living in Mesopotamia or the Levant were able to read texts written in cuneiform, let alone that foreign Greeks could read such texts. If one wants to use these cuneiform texts as sources for parallels found in Greek literature, one has to posit a relatively close correspondence, at least in content, between these texts and oral tales that were told in Anatolia or the Levant.11 8 Penglase 1994, 5-6 and López-Ruiz 2010, 28-29 with bibliography. 9 Od. 15.417-418, h.Ven. 113-116. On these and other modes of transmission, see West 1997, 606-630; López-Ruiz 2010, 28-38 and Bachvarova 2016, 199-265, who points to healers, ex- changes between royal courts, and religious festivals as likely conduits of epic stories and cosmological myths.

Load more