Features
New Light on Ancient Theogonies
In her forthcoming book,
When the Earth Was Born: Greek Cosmogonies and the Near East (Harvard University Press), Assistant Professor of Greek and Latin Carolina López-Ruiz brings the comparative study of Greek and Near Eastern cosmogonies to a different level. Rather than compile more literary parallels from different periods and languages and treat the Near East as a monolithic matrix, she focuses on the motifs specific to the Northwest Semitic tradition, with which the Greeks had the most direct contact. The book analyses cosmogonic themes such as Succession Myths, expressions of poetic inspiration and claims to cosmic knowledge, as well as the role of itinerant specialists in the transmission of theogonies. Sources include Hesiod's
Theogony and Greek Orphic texts, and their Ugaritic, Phoenician, and Hebrew counterparts. Professor López-Ruiz proposes a theory of cultural exchange that avoids traditional diffusionist, text-based approaches and proposes instead a context of
intimate contact between multicultural or bilingual peoples that led to the creative adaptation of mythical and religious narratives along with other aspects of their lives. This had been happening in the Near East for millennia; the Greeks now added their own voice to the tradition. Specifically, extant Greek cosmogonies were more proximately stimulated by the motifs inherited and transformed by their direct Levantine contacts, especially Phoenicians and others from Syro-Palestine and Cilicia in the late Iron and early archaic age. The focus on these specific peoples and their encounters, also documented archaeologically, grounds literary comparison in a historical context of intimate exchange.
