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Near Eastern and Native Traditions in Apol Lodorus’ Account of the Flood

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Near Eastern and Native Traditions in Apol Lodorus’ Account of the Flood CHAPTER SIX NEAR EASTERN AND NATIVE TRADITIONS IN APOL LODORUS’ ACCOUNT OF THE FLOOD On the evening of 3 December 1872 ‘a large and distinguished’ com- pany assembled in the Rooms of the Society of Biblical Archaeology. The keynote speaker for the evening, which was chaired by the famous orientalist Sir Henry Rawlinson (1810–1895), was George Smith, “of the British Museum”, who “was received with cheers”.1 Helped by “Chaldean traditions as narrated by the Greek Berosus”,2 Smith had succeeded in identifying Tablet XI of the Epic of Gilgamesh among the cuneiform fragments from Assurbanipal’s palace library at Nineveh and that evening he lectured on “the Chaldean account of the deluge”.3 The importance of the evening must have been widely known, since the “resolution of thanks” was proposed by Prime Minister William Gladstone (1809–1898), despite the fact that this December was one of the busiest of his political career with no less than ten Cabinet meet- ings. Gladstone’s speech, which was repeatedly interrupted by applause, drew attention to the importance of the songs of Homer but did not discuss Greek parallels to the Flood.4 Understandably, “the meeting was concluded at a late hour”. The next morning, The Times and The Daily 1 For George Smith (1840–1876) see E.A.W. Budge, The Rise and Progress of As syriology (London, 1925) 106–19; R.C. Thompson, A Century of Exploration at Nineveh (London, 1929) 48–54. 2 Berossos FGrH 680 F 4–5, cf. S. Burstein, The Babyloniaca of Berossus (Malibu, 1978); A. Kuhrt, “Berossus’ Babyloniaka and Seleucid Rule in Babylonia,” in eadem and S. Sherwin-White (eds..), Hellenism in the East (London, 1987) 32–56; G.P. Verbrugghe and J.M. Wickersham, Berossos and Manetho introduced and translated. Native traditions in An cient Mesopotamia and Egypt (Ann Arbor, 1996). 3 See his homonymous article in the Transactions of the Society of Biblical Ar chaeology 2 (1873) 213–34 and his The Chaldean Account of Genesis (London, 1875), which in the next year already reached a fourth edition—a sign of the great interest his discovery had aroused. 4 For Gladstone’s busy schedule that month see R. Jenkins, Gladstone (London, 1995) 362; for his interest in Homer, H. Lloyd-Jones, Blood for the Ghosts (London, 1982) 110–25. 102 chapter six Telegraph carried extensive reports of Smith’s paper, the latter even the complete text of his preliminary translation.5 Smith’s discovery stimulated research into the Greek traditions of the Flood, and in 1899 Hermann Usener (1834–1905), the most erudite classicist of his time, produced his Sintfl uthsagen, in which he analysed the Near Eastern, Indian and Greek versions of the Flood.6 Although the book is still valuable for its many interesting observations, Usener was too strongly infl uenced by the Romantic Movement to contemplate historical dependencies: according to him, every country had invented its own version. This belief is no longer tenable. More recent inqui- ries, as this book also tries to show, have demon strated the infl uence of the Ancient Near East on Greek life, religion and literature. The Greek myths of the Flood are just one example of this infl uence, and it is hardly fortuitous that a pupil of Walter Burkert, Gian Caduff, has written the authoritative account of the Greek traditions of the Flood, in which the role of the Ancient Near East is properly acknowledged.7 5 See The Times and The Daily Telegraph of 4 December 1872. I derive the quota- tions from these reports. 6 H. Usener, Die Sintfl uthsagen (Bonn, 1899; repr. Hildesheim, 1972). As often, Usener must have written this study very quickly. In a letter to Hermann Diels of 29 January 1898 he writes: “Inzwischen habe ich einen vortrag über die sintfl utsage in unserer Rhein. alterthumsge sellschaft gehalten, und bin dadurch angeregt die ergeb nisse zu einer kleinen schrift vorlaüfi g zusammenzufassen,” and in a letter of 15 May 1899 Wilamo witz already thanks Usener for the gift of the book; cf. D. Ehlers (ed.), Hermann Diels, Hermann Usener, Eduard Zeller: Briefwechsel, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1992) I, 539 and Usener und Wilamowitz. Ein Briefwechsel 1870–1905. Mit einem Nachwort und Indices von William M. Calder III (Stuttgart and Leipzig, 19942) 59–60, respectively; see also Bremmer, “Hermann Usener,” in W.W. Briggs and W.M. Calder III (eds..), Classi cal Scholars hip. A Bio graphi cal Encyclopedia (New York, 1990) 462–78 at 472. For the Indian and Near Eastern versions of the Flood see now E. Noort, “Stories of the Great Flood,” in F. García Martínez and G.P. Luttikhuizen (eds.), Interpretations of the Flood (Leiden, 1998) 1–38 at 10–14; add R. del Carmen Fernández Ruiz, “El Diluvio: estudio comparativo de las versiones bíblicas y mesopotámicas,” Boletín de la Asocia ción Española de Orientalistas 21 (1985) 93–136. 7 G. Caduff, Antike Sintfl utsa gen (Göttingen, 1986); add W. Heim ke, Die antiken Flutsagen (unpublished Diss. Breslau, 1941: non vidi); L. Robert, Hellenica X (Paris, 1955) 221–2; J. Duche min, Mythes grecques et sources orientales (Paris, 1995) 291–323 (“La Création et le Déluge chez Ovide: recherche sur les sources grec ques et orientales du mythe”); W. Fauth, “Prähellenische Flutna men: Og(es)-Ogen( os)-Ogygos,” Bei träge zur Na mensforschung 23 (1988) 361–79; P. Chuvin, Mythologie et géographie dionysiaques. Recher ches sur l’oeuvre de Nonnos de Panopolis (Clermont-Ferrand, 1992) 127–37 (Phrygian traditions); A. Griffi n, “Ovid’s Universal Flood,” Hermathena 152 (1992) 39–58; M.L. West, The East Face of Helicon (Oxford, 1997) 377–80, 489–93; R. Jiménez Zamudio, “El tema del diluvio en Ovidio y sus precedentes en las literaturas orientales,” Cuad. fi lol. clásica, est. lat. 22 (2002) 399–428..
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