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27 results

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  • Chapter 8 - Tales of Kings and Cup-Bearers in History and Myth
  • from Part II - Influence
  • Edited by Adrian Kelly, University of Oxford, Christopher Metcalf, University of Oxford
  • Book: Gods and Mortals in Early Greek and Near Eastern Mythology
  • Published online: 27 March 2021
  • Print publication: 06 May 2021, pp 154-168
  • View extract

    Summary

    This chapter argues that a motif in the mythological prologue to the Hurro-Hittite Song of Emergence, according to which the early divine rulers Anu and Kumarbi are each said to have served as cup-bearer to the previous ruler before taking power, is likely to derive from older Mesopotamian legends revolving around the historical king Sargon of Akkad. While the Song of Emergence adapts the Sargonic motif to a narrative on the earliest divine kings, the same motif later emerges in connection with a human ruler, Cyrus the Great, in Persian legends that were known to the Greek writer Ctesias; Herodotus avoided the motif in his account of Cyrus, perhaps because he appears to have adopted it at an earlier point of the Histories, in the Lydian tale of Candaules and Gyges. In all instances the motif of the cup-bearer served to explain the emergence of a powerful human or divine dynasty seemingly from nowhere, but with much scope for local adaption.

Gods and Mortals in Early Greek and Near Eastern Mythology
  • Gods and Mortals in Early Greek and Near Eastern Mythology
  • Edited by Adrian Kelly, Christopher Metcalf
  • Published online: 27 March 2021
  • Print publication: 06 May 2021
  • View description
    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.

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