At a couple of points in this class, we've mentioned that the Greeks
are not sitting in isolation. They're connected to many other cultures
around this wonderfully connective body of water, the Mediterranean Sea. In the case of Homer, sometimes
these connections are hard to find. It's difficult to find direct linkages
between the kinds of themes and subject matter that Homer treats, and other
parallel stories around the Mediterranean. Needless to say, they must have existed, we just don't have a rich enough
evidence base to tell us what they were. When we get to Hesiod the picture's
a little bit different. We actually have connections with
Hesiod's theogony that we can isolate and label in many different traditions around
the ancient Near East, especially. The way that this general pictures goes,
illustrated on the map behind me, we have very,
very old cultures in the fertile crescent. The Sumerians and Babylonians,
who are there for many many millennia and the, before the common era and
much earlier than the Greeks are. There are also literary records
that's survived from these groups some millennia after the fact but the
literary records do survive in cuneiform. And we have some tellings
of poetic stories, with a couple of linkages to things like
the Odyssey or the Iliad but with really striking resemblances to some of
the themes that animate Hesiod's Theogony. Talking about this connection with
these other cultures is a very helpful way to start our
discussion of Hesiod's Theogony. The underline concepts in the theogony
are not at all exclusive to Greek myth, several myths. Several Near Eastern cultures
have their own religions and also their own creation myths. And they have sometimes striking
similarities with Hesiod's Theogony. The Babylonians have their epically
unleash the creation epic. It's a story of the creation of the
universe and serves as a justification for the supremacy of their highest god. Marduk is this person. And Marduk defeats an earlier goddess called Tiamat,oe of two
original divinities in the world. Scholars have long recognized many
similarities between Marduk, and Zeus. Like Zeus, Marduk is a sky god,
he is of a younger generation. He overthrows an older generation and
establishes himself as top dog. Creating order and overthrowing
his parents in order to triumph. The Babylonians intended that the Enuma
Elish should serve as a song of praise for the king of the gods. Similarly in Hesiod's story, we're going to see a kind of triumphant
narrative about the greatness of Zeus. And this is going to serve as
a kind of hymnic praise for Zeus's position in the universe. Also the Sumerians occupying the same,
well for our purposes, fertile crescent. So in that general region. The Sumerians had their own
system of gods and goddesses. Among the principal Sumerian gods were An,
the sky god and the supreme authority, and Inanna, the queen of the gods and
the goddess of sexual love and war. And Enlil, a storm god who was
also active in earthly events. Their myths covered a variety
of topics including creation of the world and of humans. The Sumerian gods also figure prominently
in Gilgamesh, the epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest epic in existence thanks to
the cuneiform that kept that intact. Gilgamesh's story has surprising
similarities to some of the military aspects in the Iliad and in some of
the journey parts of the Odyssey. The culture, the Hittites and the
Hurrians, located there as the cultures in the fertile crescent expand and
move into the Anatolia Plain. Hittites and Hurrians had their own
sets of gods and goddesses with some relationship to what we see in
the Sumerian and Babylonian traditions. There is a kingship in heaven myth for
the Hittites. The complete story is not fully known. But the kingship in heaven bears some
obvious similarities to what we know. Bears obvious similarities to
what's happening in Theology. The first God of heaven Alalu, is over
thrown by Anu who assumes his role. His cup bearer is named Kumarbi. And Kumarbi challenges Anu and eventually
cuts off his genitals and swallows them. Anu then tells Kumarbi that he has become
impregnated with several divinities. Kumarbi then spits out something which
probably included the genitals of Anu. At this point the text breaks off and we're not quite sure where
the rest of it goes. But as we're reading the Theogony, we see
that several of these things, strange and difficult as they seem, are going to bear relationship with themes
that we're going to see in the Theogony. From generations where younger ones
overthrow older ones, to things like castration, to a kind of efficacious power
of the genitals after they're sliced off. And then further leading into some
of the details of Hesiod's story. In the case of Hesiod, we're able to find
these links a little bit more readily. Just so happens that the literary
tradition that preexisted Hesiod, survives a little bit more intact thanresumably the
literary tradition that preceded Homer. We don't have as many connections
that we can draw with Homer, but as I said at the beginning I think we
can be quite sure that they are there. It's just that the historical record in
a way gives Homer a kind of free pass. We can draw connections with others and Homer just kind of seems to sit there
in this magnificent isolated glory. If we didn't have all of these other epics
to compare Hesiod with,we'd probably think the same thing of him. Once these cultures make contact
with one another,and you can see the Overland the possibilities in
our prior map, as cultural forms move from the fertile crescent across
the anitonian plain and into Greece. When contact is made, it leaves a mark. And it helps the Greeks shape their own
ideas about how creation might work as we'll see when we turn to the pages
that open up Hesiod's theogony.