This volume centres on one of the most important questions in the study of antiquity – the interaction between Greece and the Ancient Near East, from the Mycenaean to the Hellenistic periods. Focusing on the stories that the peoples of the eastern Mediterranean told about the gods and their relationships with humankind, the individual treatments draw together specialists from both fields, creating for the first time a truly interdisciplinary synthesis. Old cases are re-examined, new examples discussed, and the whole range of scholarly opinions, past and present, are analysed, critiqued, and contextualised. While direct textual comparisons still have something to show us, the methodologies advanced here turn their attention to deeper structures and wider dynamics of interaction and influence that respect the cultural autonomy and integrity of all the ancient participants.
Edited by:
Adrian Kelly (University of Oxford),
Christopher Metcalf (University of Oxford)
Imprint: Cambridge University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
Spine: 19mm
Weight: 512g
ISBN: 9781108727174
ISBN 10: 1108727174
Pages: 353
Publication Date: 30 March 2023
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Introduction Adrian Kelly and Christopher Metcalf; Part I. Contexts: 1. 'Let Those Important Primeval Deities Listen': The Social Setting of the Hurro-Hittite Song of Emergence Amir Gilan; 2. Siting the Gods: Narrative, Cult, and Hybrid Communities in the Iron Age Mediterranean Carolina López-Ruiz; 3. Politics, Cult, and Scholarship: Aspects of the Transmission History of Marduk and Tiʾamat's Battle Frances Reynolds; 4. The Scholar and the Poet: Standard Babylonian Gilgameš VI vs. Iliad 5 Mark Weeden; Part II. Influence: 5. Playing with Traditions: Deliberate Allusions to Near Eastern Myth in Hesiod's Story of the Five Human Races André Lardinois; 6. Etana in Greece Bruno Currie; 7. The World of Gods and Men: Animal and Plant Disputation Poems and Fables in Babylonia, Persia, and Greece Yoram Cohen; 8. Tales of Kings and Cup-bearers in History and Myth Christopher Metcalf; 9. There Were Nephilim Ruth Scodel; 10. Mythical Time in Mesopotamia Andrew George; Part III. Difference: 11. Borrowing, Dialogue and Rejection: Intertextual Interfaces in the Late Bronze Age Ian Rutherford; 12. Divine Labour Johannes Haubold; 13. Comparison: Relevance and Significance of Linguistic Features Sylvie Vanséveren; 14. Fate and Authority in Mesopotamian Literature and the Iliad Angus Bowie; 15. Fashioning Pandora: Ancient Near Eastern Creation Scenes and Hesiod Bernardo Ballesteros Petrella; 16. Sexing and Gendering the Succession Myth in Ancient Greece and the Near East Adrian Kelly.
Adrian Kelly is Tutorial Fellow in Ancient Greek Language and Literature at Balliol College, Oxford, and Associate Professor & Clarendon University Lecturer in Classics at the University of Oxford. He is the author of A Referential Commentary and Lexicon to Homer, Iliad VIII (2007) and Sophocles: Oedipus at Colonus (2009), and co-editor (with P. J. Finglass) of Stesichorus in Context (Cambridge, 2015). He is completing a Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics commentary on Homer, Iliad XXIII (Cambridge, forthcoming) and co-editing (with Henry Spelman) Text and Intertext in Archaic and Classical Greece (Cambridge, 2021) and (with Bill Beck and Tom Phillips) The Ancient Scholia to Homer's Iliad: Exegesis and Interpretation (2021). CHRISTOPHER METCALF is Official Fellow of The Queen's College, Oxford, and Associate Professor in Classical Languages and Literature at the University of Oxford. He is also the author of The Gods Rich in Praise: Early Greek and Mesopotamian Religious Poetry (2015) and Sumerian Literary Texts in the Schoyen Collection. Volume I: Literary Sources on Old Babylonian Religion (2019).
Reviews for Gods and Mortals in Early Greek and Near Eastern Mythology
'... this volume will be essential reading for scholars concerned with East-West cultural interactions.' Jenny Strauss Clay, Religious Studies Review 'The volume is a welcome contribution to our understanding of the relationship between the ancient Near East and Greece. It provides fascinating, often compelling perspectives that significantly refine approaches to these difficult questions. Perhaps most importantly, it will offer encouragement and a surer methodological footing to those wishing to explore an area of study that has remained relatively marginal, but is of defining importance for the field of classical studies as its exclusive focus on Greece and Rome (and its relationship with 'Western' culture) comes under ever closer scrutiny.' Alexandre Johnston, The Classical Review
