Divine Assemblies in Early Greek and Babylonian Epic

This book is the first to chart divine assembly scenes in ancient Babylonian and early Greek epic. It asks why similarities between the two corpora exist, and exploits those similarities to enhance understanding of Mesopotamian and early Greek literature and religion. The book discusses Sumerian narrative poems, the Akkadian works Atra-ḫasīs, Anzû, Enūma eliš, Erra and Išum and the Epic of Gilgameš; Homer's Iliad, the Odyssey, Hesiod's Theogony and some Homeric Hymns. It studies poetic technique and probes further comparisons with Sanskrit, Old Norse, Polynesian, and Aztec mythology. It argues that Greek speakers are unlikely to have inherited the divine assembly from the Near East. Still, one can posit a long-term process of oral contact and communication fostered by common poetic structures and religious affinities. In a second part pursuing a mythological and religious comparison, the book concentrates on ideas about the cosmos and humankind, and on power dynamics within the pantheon as well as between gods and mortals. A focus on the head of the pantheon and on concepts of divine prerogatives illuminates culture-specific differences which can be related to historical socio-political discourses.
The book develops a systematic approach to questions of cross-cultural literary comparison in the ancient world.


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