ARCH 0412 From to Hektor: Heroes of the Bronze Age

February 1, 2016:

How do We Know What We Know? Written Sources Last Week’s Recap

Who is a Hero? An individual who brings together human and extra-human abilities. A mortal human with weaknesses, but also with extra-human characteristics such as super strength, agility, morality or perseverance.

Common Characteristics: Fighting with mystical forces or extra-human agents, suffering, mortality and death and legacy.

The Hero’s Journey (or the Monomyth) Joseph Campbell (1949)

• Departure • Return 1. The call to adventure 1. Refusal of the Return 2. Supernatural aid 2. Rescue from Without 3. The Crossing of the 3. The Crossing of the First Threshold Return Threshold • Initiation 4. Master of the Two Worlds 1. The Road of Trials 5. Freedom to Live 2. Apotheosis

3. The Ultimate Blessing Texts of the Ancient Near East: Languages, Scripts and Media

Administrative tablet, Administrative tablet, Sumerian Akkadian BM 85273 Old Babylonian period Administrative tablet, (19th-18th century BCE) Hittite BM 2010,6022.1 Empire Period (14th century BCE) The Cuneiform Script Texts of the Ancient Near East: Contexts

A fragment from the Gilgamesh A cache of looted artefacts recovered by epic in Hittite, discovered at the the polica in Baghdad. capital of the Hittite Empire The Epic of Gilgamesh: New Discoveries

A new fragment of Tablet V of Gilgamesh, acquired by the Museum Old Babylonian (c. 2000-1600 BCE). Has 22 new lines of text not preserved in other tablets! The Epic of Gilgamesh and Scribal Education

Fragment of a clay tablet from Relief showing scribes taking notes the Epic of Gilgamesh From the Southwest Palace at Nineveh From the Library of Assurbanipal 7th century BCE 7th century BCE , BM 124955 British Museum, SM. 1040 The Epic of Gilgamesh: Find Spots ‘The Library of Assurbanipal’

Tablet XI, recording the story of the Flood From Assurbanipal’s Library at Nineveh, 7th cent BCE Plan of Nineveh with the two major palaces British Museum K.3375 where the libraries were located marked Texts of Ancient Egypt: Language, Script, Medium

Coffin text, Thebes Third Intermediate Period , 11th cent BCE

Administrative text and the Teaching of Ptahhotep 12th dynasty, 20th-19th cent BCE, An ostracon with a fragment from the British Museum EA10371.7 Prophecy of Neferty Evolution of Hieroglyphs

Tags from Tomb U-j at Abydos Predynastic, c. 3200 BCE Texts of Ancient Egypt: Contexts

New Kingdom tomb at Luxor 18th Dynasty Texts of Ancient Egypt: Scribal Education

Statue of a scribe Old Kingdom, 2400 BCE Scribal equipment: palette and Museum reeds, Middle Kingdom BM 5516 The Tale of Sinuhe

• A 12th dynasty composition (ca. 1985-1773 BCE) • Five manuscripts known from the Middle Kingdom • Found at the ‘school’ or Deir el-Medina Lines from the Tale of Sinuhe, in hieratic script Thebes, 19th Dynasty (New Kingdom) c. 1250 BCE Texts of Ancient Greece: Language, Script, Media

The Venetus A Script of the Iliad Texts of Ancient Greece: Language, Script, Media

Linear B tablet found in Knossos, 1450-1375 BCE Economic tablet The Iliad

• Homer believed to be composing the epics at the end of the ‘Geometric Period’ • Believed to be written down in the 7th century • Continued to be shaped in the 6th century in Athens The Dipylon Krater, Geometric Period c. 750 BCE The Orientalizing Period

The Orientalizing Period (700-600 BCE):

A period of increased interaction and fascination with ‘the East’ Colonization Protocorinthian olpe The Lady of Auxerre c. 650-625 BCE c. 640 BCE 32 cm high Limestone 65 cm high

The Archaic Period The Archaic Period (600-480 BCE):

The rise of the Greek ‘polis’ A period of increased conflict between Greece and Persia (499-449 BCE)

The colorful reconstruction of the eastern Pediment of the Temple of Aphaia at Aegina c. 500 BCE The Homeric Question • The life, origins, exact date or manner of composition of Homer is unknown. • Homeric dialect a combination of Ionian (W Turkey) and Aeolic (NW Turkey)

Roman marble copy of a Hellenistic period statue of Homer, 2nd cent BCE

Homeric Texts and Later Transmission: The Manuscript Tradition (9th-15th cent AD)

The Venetus A Manuscript of the Iliad, 10th cent AD Oldest complete copy of the Iliad Textual Materials: Important Points • Most of our written evidence on Bronze Age heroes comes from the Iron Age and the Medieval Period, i.e. centuries later than the Bronze Age itself (exceptions: Hittite and Egyptian) • Most epics first believed to be oral compositions. Questions of literacy. • These texts are effected by the political contexts of when they were written down

Biases and filters: Contexts (library, archives, burial, medieval monasteries), time gap between composition and recording, later copying and interpretations. Next Class: How do we know what we know?

Texts Art Historical Sources Archaeological Record