Divine Assemblies in Early Greek and Babylonian Epic: (Oxford Classical Monographs)

In early Greek and Near Eastern myth and religion, the gods govern the cosmos. In narrative poetry, they are frequently portrayed through scenes of divine assembly. Did Homer and early Greek poets inherit this feature from their more ancient neighbours? And what can comparison tell us besides? 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 eli%s, Erra and I%sum and the Epic of Gilgame%s; 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.

Table of Contents:
Introduction 1: Poems 2: Structuring the Narrative 3: Comparing Conventions 4: Morphology 5: Diffusion 6: Divine Assemblies and Cosmic History 7: Distance and Proximity 8: Enemies of the Assembly 9: Divine Power: Atra-uhas=is and the Gods' Kingship 10: Cosmic Order: Homer's Zeus and Divine Offices 11: Divine Counsel Conclusion

About the Author :
Bernardo Ballesteros is Assistant Professor in Early Greek Literature and Language at the Institut für Klassische Philologie, University of Vienna. After obtaining his doctorate at Oxford, he held postdoctoral positions at LMU Munich, the Warburg Institute, and the Faculty of Classics and Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford.

Review :
All scholars of ancient literature should take note of this book. Classes are taught, papers written, conferences organized on "Greek" literature around the world, and it is books such as Ballesteros' that force us to ask what exactly, beyond the mere linguistic designation, is meant by that term, interrogate how useful it is as a modern analytical category, and lead us, hopefully, to a more inclusive understanding of ancient world literature.