Gods and Mortals in Early Greek and Near Eastern Mythology

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 Schøyen Collection. Volume I: Literary Sources on Old Babylonian Religion (2019).

• 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.

'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