From Kizzuwatna to Troy? Puduḫepa, Piyamaradu, and Anatolian Ritual in Homer*
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
From Kizzuwatna to Troy? Puduḫepa, Piyamaradu, and Anatolian Ritual in Homer* SARAH MORRIS University of California, Los Angeles The sixth book of Homer’s Iliad has long attracted attention for its embedded narratives, including traditions that sound native to Anatolia. When Glaukos of Lycia meets Diomedes in battle, their family histories prevent them from engag- ing as enemies, once they recognize each other as guest-friends (Il. 6.119–236). A long digression on Glaukos’s ancestors recounts the stirring story of his grand- father, the hero Bellerophon, and the monster Chimaera, set in Lycia in clearly Hellenized tales of a “snake-slayer” (slayer of the illuyankas-serpent) long native to Anatolia.1 Like the death and transport to Lycia of Sarpedon in Iliad 16, nar- rated in Anatolian language, or the funeral of Patroklos with its close conver- gences with Hittite royal burials, this passage reveals how Greek epic poetry can incorporate foreign traditions for ritual procedures set on Anatolian soil.2 Another Iliad 6 episode long seen as Hellenic—the Trojan propitiation of Athena—allows us to unpack its connections with Bronze Age ritual in Anatolia, in tribute to the model of “demic diffusion” articulated so well by the late Calvert Watkins. For in addition to teaching us how to kill a dragon, and how to be a dragon, this book of the Iliad teaches Hellenic heroes and poets how to stop an enemy in Anatolian fashion. The propitiation of Athena by the women of Troy is an episode long suspect to Hellenists for its highly Athenian details of cult. In this essay, I will try to demonstrate that the motivation for this special prayer, its su- pervision by the queen, performance by a priestess, assistance by female elders, and special phrases all shadow closely patterns in Anatolian royal and ritual pro- cedures, seen in both text and art, in both East and West. 1. Trojan prayers in Homer To recall the action and setting: the rampage of Diomedes in Iliad 5 sends one Trojan back to their citadel for a special plea to their gods; this unites Hector with his mother, wife, son, brother, and brother-in-law, in intimate family scenes that * This effort is dedicated with affection and gratitude to the memory of Calvert Watkins. 1 Watkins 1995 (especially 404, 444, 448ff. on the illuyankas-myths), Katz 1998. 2 Watkins 2008, Högemann and Oettinger 2008. Stephanie W. Jamison, H. Craig Melchert, and Brent Vine (eds.). 2013. Proceedings of the 24th Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference. Bremen: Hempen. 151–67. 152 Sarah Morris prove to be his final, living moments with them in the poem. How this action is initiated is telling: the seer Helenos (son of Priam, first introduced here in the Iliad) urges his brother Hektor to return to the city for a special appeal to Athena (6.73–118). The Trojan prince is to bid their mother, Hekabe, to gather the “old women,” ascend to the acropolis, unlock the doors of the hieron and offer her finest peplos to Athena by placing it on her knees. This offering is intended to accompany and enforce a vow: twelve cattle will be sacrificed, if the goddess takes pity on Troy and holds back Diomedes (86–97). These instructions (deliv- ered in a single long sentence) are repeated by Hektor to his mother (269–78), but carried out by the priestess Theano with a prayer to the goddess in direct speech, after Hekabe chooses a fine cloth to offer Athena (286–310). Alas, the goddess hears their prayer but refuses it (311), one of many signs of divine favor towards the Greeks in their war against Troy. This passage harbors distinctively Anatolian features, beginning with the role of the queen in propitiating on behalf of her people. In Greek myth and cult, women serve as priestesses, either as a term of youthful service, or in lifetime offices tied to leading families and/or local politics (e.g., the Pythia).3 But to in- volve the wife of the king in such a role seems to be a specific reflection of the kind of role played in Hittite Anatolia by a number of royal women, in particular by Puduḫepa, wife of Ḫattušili III (1267–1237 BC) as well as daughter of the priest of Ishtar in Kizzuwatna.4 The Hittite queen, just like the king, was the chief celebrant in the Hittite state cult (there being no separate high priest or priestess).5 We shall see how Puduḫepa in particular may have shaped the epic role of wom- en in cult: for the moment, the way male members of the royal family at Troy involve the queen in cult seems to reflect such an ancient practice, or more perti- nently, the way a Greek poet imagined that a royal family in Anatolia should be- have in terms of cult practices and practitioners. As in other Homerica, this role of queen as priestess also has Aegean prece- dents. Independently, Margalit Finkelberg and Kenneth Atchity with Elizabeth Barber argued that aspects of royal succession in Greek mythology capture pat- 3 Connelly 2007. 4 Darga 1974; Otten 1975; Bin-Nun 1975; Taggar-Cohen 2006: 380–92, 444–5 (royal priest- hood). 5 The queen could hold the title of šiwanzanna-, written logographically as (MUNUS)AMA .DINGIR-LIM (literally ‘mother of god’), but there is no indication that this was a regular part of her office or that the šiwanzanna- had a unique role as high priestess. On this word see now CHD Š: 489–92. From Kizzuwatna to Troy? 153 terns of descent from a king through his daughter, and that such patterns are rein- forced by the hereditary role of priestess retained since the Aegean Bronze Age.6 Comparison of this kinship line with the peculiar institution of the tawananna in Hittite (or even Hattian) Anatolia may even bring this Aegean pattern into closer relation with those of Anatolia.7 These patterns survive in Greek myth, on the one hand, in the strong line of descent via daughter of the king (thus Helen is heir to the kingdom of Sparta), whose exogamy brings in a foreign-born prince as the next king (Menelaos from Argos; more distantly in other cities, Pelops from Lyd- ia, Kadmos of Phoenicia, etc.). On the other hand, this descent survives in cult in various forms of hereditary priestess-hood retained by noble families in the Iron Age, which may preserve Bronze Age privileges. In the Odyssey, Penelope prays to Athena for the safe return of her son (4.759–67), and the wife of Nestor pre- sides at a sacrifice to Poseidon at Pylos (3.450–2). Whether shadowy or strong in early Greece, memories of such patterns and/or familiarity with living examples may have helped make Hekabe a priestess, as well as a queen. However appropriate her role in Anatolia, Hekabe as queen is displaced by an actual priestess, Theano, never invoked by Helenos or Hektor in the initial instructions but introduced in line 304, as the one who bears the key and opens the temple door. It seems that an Anatolian, Aegean tradition (queen as priestess) has been updated, and the queen upstaged, to foreground the role of an actual priestess, Theano, a type of figure familiar to a Greek audience since the Bronze Age (cf. the priestess E-ri-ta, PY Ep 704). For as holder of the keys to a sanctu- ary, Theano also incorporates a proper Bronze Age functionary in Mycenaean Greece, listed in addition to the priestess in the Mycenaean Greek text just re- ferred to (PY Ep 704.7 ka-ra-wi-po-ro /klāwiphoros/ ‘key-bearer’). It is signifi- cant that the poet adds an extra line (300) to explain how the Trojans made her (ἔθηκαν) priestess (ἱέρεια) of Athena, as if to justify her intrusion into the royal propitiation. And clearly, as a wife and mother, she serves as priestess under cir- cumstances unusual in later Greek terms. Thus her appearance in the Iliad is intrusive: as Kirk notes in his commen- tary, “Theano, then, is a curious innovation”; in fact, “No other priestess is men- tioned in Homer.”8 Priam’s daughter, Kassandra, is a marriageable bride in the Iliad (13.365) and a sister mourning her brother (24.699), rather than a virgin or 6 Finkelberg 1991, Atchity and Barber 1987. 7 Finkelberg 1997, Uchitel 2007. 8 Kirk 1990:165. 154 Sarah Morris priestess of Apollo as in later narrative; thus Theano’s appearance in Bronze Age epic is striking, if not anomalous. The next priestess in Greek literature occupies a throne in Athena’s temple on the archaic Acropolis (Hdt. 5.72), while in art, the figure of a priestess (e.g., the Pythia at Delphi) is often identified by her age and/or the temple key she wields. In western Greek art, Theano sometimes ap- pears in scenes of Ajax assaulting Kassandra at the statue of Athena, in her Ho- meric role at Athena’s sanctuary.9 But Theano first appears on an early Greek (Corinthian) vase, the so-called Astarita krater in the Vatican, the only depiction of the Greek embassy sent to request the return of Helen early in the Trojan war, from the lost epic poem, the Cypria.10 Mentioned briefly in the Iliad (11.138–42), the visit is recalled by Theano’s husband, Antenor, who tells Helen herself, in the Teichoscopia (Il. 3.205–24), of receiving these Greek guests. A fuller version of the episode in a lost poem by Bacchylides (“Sons of Antenor” or the Request for Helen) gives Theano a prominent role, as priestess of Athena, along with fifty sons (some on this vase).