This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Surpassing All Other Kings Mesopotamian kingship ideology in the Gilgamesh tradition and the Alexander the Great narratives Ryan, James Richard Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). 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Sep. 2021 PhD Classics Research Dr James Ryan King’s College London Surpassing All Other Kings: Mesopotamian kingship ideology in the Gilgamesh tradition and the Alexander the Great narratives By Dr James Richard Ryan PhD Classics Research 2017 An AHRC funded project 1 PhD Classics Research Dr James Ryan King’s College London Dedication For Claire 2 PhD Classics Research Dr James Ryan King’s College London Acknowledgements I am extremely grateful to Dr Lindsay Allen and Prof Hugh Bowden, my doctoral supervisors, for their patience, counsel, and insight. They gave both myself and the project the space to grow organically, but were also there, as was necessary, to keep me on track and to force me to consider my arguments with the detail and a depth required to make them robust. I wholeheartedly believe that the strength of the relationship was that we did not always agree, leading to some incredibly enjoyable debates. Thank you both. In addition to this, special thanks should go to Dr Irene Polinskaya, Prof Lynette Mitchell, and Prof Andrew George. Their feedback and challenging of the project’s arguments and findings strengthened the outcome, and helped to develop both the thesis and myself as an academic. To cite the expected cliché, but with absolute sincerity, any errors remaining are entirely my own. The debt I owe my students at both King’s College London and the City Literary Institute, as well as colleagues at and the organisers of the various conferences, seminars, and workshops, where I was afforded the opportunity to present my thoughts and refine the ideas of the thesis, should not pass without comment. Finally, thanks must go to my family and friends. Their tolerance concerning my absence in times when the project consumed, as well as suffering through my rants on Alexander and Gilgamesh are things for which I will forever be grateful. There are no two greater in this regard than Sandra and Gabriel, my family, and by far my greatest achievement. 3 PhD Classics Research Dr James Ryan King’s College London Abstract This thesis identifies and elucidates a common engagement with Mesopotamian kingship ideology in the Gilgamesh and the Alexander the Great narrative traditions. As both archetypal monarchs are understood to have ruled as kings in Mesopotamia, this is a much more secure context for comparison. The result of this contextualisation is that the identified parallels are better supported and more clearly understood. Although the study is rendered in comparison, the exegesis of the episodes is not strictly bound by parallels between the traditions. The primary concern is a comparable engagement with Mesopotamian kingship ideology. This enables the thesis to contribute uniquely to the study of each figure’s kingship, as well as their comparative dynamic. Mesopotamian kingship was a contest, and our two subject kings represent rivals for the pinnacle in this arena. Therefore, the identification and presentation of a king to surpass all others is argued for both in presented deeds and persevering legends. Chapter one outlines the premise of the thesis, addresses previous comparisons made in scholarship between the subject kings, and discusses the evidence. Specifically, this is the network of narratives utilised by the study. For the Gilgamesh tradition, these are the Akkadian language manuscripts of the Gilgamesh Epic and the Sumerian Gilgamesh poems concerning the death of Gilgamesh and his campaign against Huwawa. For the Alexander tradition, the study is limited to the Alexander narratives that share a relative geographically congruence with the Gilgamesh narratives. These are the canonical Graeco-Roman Alexander narratives by Diodorus, Curtius, Plutarch, Arrian, and Justin, as well as the Pseudo-Callisthenes narratives, the Syriac Alexander Legend and the Syriac Metric Homily. Chapter two outlines the methodology. Chapter three contextualises Gilgamesh’s campaign against Humbaba in Mesopotamian kingly action. Chapter four argues for a comparative understanding of Alexander’s siege of Tyre. Chapter five then compares the death of a king in each tradition, and chapter six the subsequent mythical wanderings of our protagonist kings. Chapter seven provides the thesis’ conclusion. The overarching themes are the legitimisation of one’s kingship and the transfer of power in the Mesopotamian royal tradition. 4 PhD Classics Research Dr James Ryan King’s College London Contents 1. Introduction 6 2. Methodology 24 3. A king to surpass all others: the acquisition of supreme kingship through the conquest of an undefeatable enemy 37 4. Alexander the Great and the slaying of Humbaba: a Mesopotamian contextualisation of the battle for hegemony 104 5. The death of the king: the primary episode for the mythical wanderings of accession 149 6. The mythical wanderings of accession: the maturation of the successor to kingly knowledge 194 7. Conclusion 257 8. Appendix A (Figures) 264 9. Appendix B (The institutionalised narrative structure for the death of the Mesopotamian monarch continued: the deaths of Alexander and Cyrus) 271 10. Bibliography 281 List of figures 1. Balawat Gates. British Museum (4 images). 2. Sennacherib at Lachish. Relief from SW Palace, Nineveh. 3. Achaemenid audience scene. Apadana, North Facade, Persepolis. 4. Late Uruk period seal. 5. Victory stele of Naram-Sin (2 images). 6. Stele of Hammurabi. 7. Quarry-scene, Sennacherib’s ‘unrivalled palace’. SW Palace, Nineveh. 8. The ‘garden scene’. North Palace, Nineveh. 9. Bronze Age layers of archaeological trench on Tyre. 10. The Babylonian Map of the World (3 images). 5 PhD Classics Research Dr James Ryan King’s College London Chapter One Introduction 1.1 Outline This study investigates the Mesopotamian influence upon the Alexander narratives. This is approached through the encoding of Mesopotamian kingship in narrative, as comparative aspects, developments, and parallel functions are elucidated. Specifically, it compares the function and content of parallel episodes in the narratives of Alexander and cuneiform narratives identifiable as the Gilgamesh tradition. This study does not attempt to render definitive readings of the episodes in the narratives, but instead presents a credible contextualisation of episodes within the Gilgamesh tradition that can also be applied to comparable episodes in the Alexander narratives. It should be understood from the outset that it is not direct intertextuality between manuscripts that is detected, but the transmission of ideas and ideals concerned with what it meant to be the king in Mesopotamia. Note that this does not preclude the direct emulation. The analysis begins with Gilgamesh’s campaign against Humbaba and the comparable episode detailing Alexander’s siege of Tyre. These episodes are contextualised as campaigns which represent the transfer of hegemonic kingship on earth. The study then advances onto a comparable engagement with the death of the king in each tradition, demonstrating how this ignited the respective mythical wanderings of our protagonist kings. Specifically, these are the deaths of Enkidu and Darius III. Finally, with the structural relationship with the death of the king established and the ideology articulated, I go on to present a recontextualisation of these mythical wanderings in the accession to hegemonic kingship in Mesopotamia. This will all become clearer as the analysis progresses, but it is important to understand from the start that overarching themes concerned with the legitimisation of one’s kingship and the transfer of hegemonic royal power in Mesopotamian tradition are intrinsic to the subject episodes in both traditions. 6 PhD Classics Research Dr James Ryan King’s College London Thus outlined the above is advanced across seven chapters for clarity, reasons of method, and to aid digestion. The present chapter, chapter one, introduces the study and outlines the premise of the thesis. It will briefly address previous comparisons made in scholarship between the subject kings, and presents the network of narratives