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 cul- ture 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 pas- sages 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 divi- sion of the world through lot (15.189-193).