For some context, in 1997 Martin Litchfield West, a classicist by trade, and a genius in my eyes, published a book, building, in a fashion fit for Babel, on earlier, rather earth-shattering discoveries of his on Hesiod, called “The East Face of Helicon” (henceforth “EFH”), wherein he detailed a colossal number of correspondences, both in language and theme, between Near-Eastern poetics, eg. Hittite, Akkadian etc., and those of the archaic and classical Greeks, eg. Homer, Hesiod, the lyric poets, and even the Tragedians. Unlike those building the tower of Babel, he was largely successful in demonstrating an irrefutable current of influence, flowing from the old literature of the Near East into the new literature of the Greeks, as if the Tigris and Euphrates themselves had turned back on their heels, flooded up and over the highlands of eastern Anatolia, and washed over the great saline plains of central Anatolia, and finally joined with the Gediz, emptying out into the Aegean with all their rich jetsam.

The question I have asked myself, and the question many others have asked themselves, ever since I acquainted myself with his work and subsequent studies by others in the same vein, is “how did this happen?"

Various theories have been proposed, of course. West himself suggests a true smorgasbord of options, though he favors a Phoenician intermediary.1 Mary Bachvarova has, more recently, suggested Anatolian bards.2 I myself have vacillated in what seems most plausible, and likewise have attempted to make my own Westian comparisons where I have seen some sort of affinity between East and West.

In the Bronze Age Aegean, however, nothing is ever simple or easy. For example, when West composed EFH, it was not yet clear that, for example, we had an apparently Greek polity in southeastern Anatolia, probably set up by some form of Greek pirates, which later came to write its inscriptions in Luwian, an Anatolian language, and Phoenician.3 This again would add another possible route of transmission, for even Herodotus tells us that even in the time of the Persian Wars, the Cilicians, ie. the people of this very region, had taken after Phoenician customs and name but were previously known as “Hypachaeans,”4 that is, “Sub-Achaeans”.

And interesting problems are presented here too. For this state was named “Hiyawa”, on the basis of all available evidence, by an aphaeresis of “Ahhiyawa”, the Hittite term for “Achaea.”5 In Herodotus, this “hypo" might simply mean that we should understand these people as having their ethnogenesis by way of the Achaeans, but it occurs to me that there could quite plausibly, though it is somewhat less likely, be formed from folk-etymological reanalysis within Greek of some later, inherited form of “Hiyawa.”

Folk etymology is the process, in this case, where an obscure or foreign word is re-analyzed in terms of more familiar terms or morphemes in use in the language in question. A decent example might be the spelling liquorice for licorice. This is actually a folk etymologizing which perhaps goes back to (Late) Latin, which borrowed Greek γλυκύρριζα (glukurrhiza, i.e. ‘sweet-root’), but re-analyzed it according to the Latin word liquor ‘fluidity’, and thus the spelling was changed. Of course, even in this case it is probably more complicated than that. The spelling in question may just as easily have been a scribal aberration, and the influence of French orthographic practices and of course the English term “liquor” have all contributed at various stages. Indeed, this helps illustrate the sort of headaches we might encounter with such problems.

This is contrast to the “Neogrammarian” theory (a theory like gravity is a theory) of “exceptionless sound change”, that is, that sounds change across time in a language consistently, across all words, all at roughly the same time, at least where words have been inherited. Here, we are dealing with borrowings — which complicates the picture somewhat, but as we will see, even in deeply ancient borrowings, consistency prevails.

Folk etymologizing is quite a common theme, particularly in onomastics, that is, the study of names. Toponyms in particular are vulnerable for all the reasons one might expect: for one reason or another, the common language of some town or places changes, and yet the old name for the town remains. Yet, at a certain point, no longer does any resident or local speak the language whence that toponym came and people, especially if they are not literate although that is hardly a requirement, start to get funny ideas about what that place’s name actually is, or perhaps what words it comes from. There are some great examples of this in American toponyms. For instance, “Key West”, originally in its Spanish colonial period, but even today in Spanish, is Cayo Hueso “Bone Cay.” It was, however, re-analyzed as “Key West” in English, because Hueso bore a resemblance to “West”, and indeed, it lies on the western extreme of the Florida Keys.6 A much more arbitrary example would be that the Purgatoire River of Colorado, so named by French trappers, was known by the locals in more recent times as the “Picketwire.”7

The reason for such emphasis on this concept of reanalysis is that the turn-of-the-millennium Aegean, and especially Anatolia, were not terribly different from colonial North America. There was an abundance of languages active in both places, some more transient than others. And yet, to build any coherent bridge between the literature of the Near East and received Greek mythology, one must connect names like Ahhiyawa and Achaea, or Ilion and Wilusa.

But these are relatively easy. Not every phoneme lines up perfectly, but they’re quite explainable. There are slightly more difficult equations which are now largely accepted, such as Asia=Assuwa, which are less clear8 — how does one explain, if Mycenaean Greek here borrowed from Hittite, the change of u > i? One can really only guess. Since we have Mycenaean a-si-wi-ja, perhaps the vocalism changed to better accommodate the very common Greek suffix -ia (to be written i-ja in Mycenaean), but then this doesn’t quite explain why a-si- and not a-so- or similar. Perhaps it was a matter of orthography, since the Linear B writing system was limited to open syllables, sometimes where a consonant cluster existed, the “vowel” would be duplicated in the writing, so we would have /aswija/.9 One might think this gets us closer, but intervocalic -sw- is regularly lost in Greek, so if this were the case, we would call our largest continent “Aia” instead of “Asia”. Of course, one then thinks of the mythical island of Circe in the Odyssey, Aiaia, and her brother, king Aiētēs, and his kingdom Aia, which is interesting, though probably coincidental — but now we are far from the matter at hand. Luckily, the loss of sibilants, that is, s-sounds, almost certainly predates Mycenaean Greek. So, if the term was borrowed after this sound change, we should never have needed to bother with Aia for even a moment. However, we have, at this point, forgotten where we even began or what problems we set out to solve.

Let’s look at this from another angle. To return to reanalysis, perhaps Assuwa was reanalyzed in light of Greek asis ‘mud.’ To think of “Asia” (properly at this time, merely Western Anatolia), as the “muddy land” seems like a more reasonable misunderstanding than the “Picketwire River”. We might say “but even asis is not clearly inherited, and may have an Asiatic source and it’s not clear why we’d get a-si-wi-, but OK.” Then we go on and think a little more, and stupidly, for we realize “now a synonym for āsis is īlūs…” And now, we take note, after some research, of the vowel length there, “Now that’s very interesting, the initial i is long, that would be a regular outcome of something like wil-… like Wilusa? Could this have influenced the outcome of ‘Asia?’”

And now you’ve gone completely insane. Because there are decent cognates in other Indo-European languages both for Aiaia (not to mention that here any such connection was spurious from the outset) and īlūs. And those of īlūs contain no /w/ to speak of. “And yet”, you might even think to yourself, “these might only be chance.”

It is at precisely this point that you should be institutionalized. Furthermore, they should throw away the key, for your inversion of the principle of parsimony is now outrageous to public morality at best, and violently dangerous at worst. And you haven’t even finished explaining a basic equation, hardly controversial, though its motivations remain unclear, such as Assuwa > Asia, a safe assumption we can make on the basis of geographical, archaeological, comparative, and indeed, supplied with the right chronology of sound change and Mycenaean onomastics, linguistic evidence.10

Then there are more controversial problems. Mount Sipylus appears to be in the same area as the the Hittite Mount Zippasla (probably realized /tsipasla/). There is a resemblance here which is impossible to ignore, and yet the possible equation is controversial. One might at first think that the regular change of -sl- to -ll- intervocalically in Greek should help bring us closer, but Lejeune believes such a change occurred before Mycenaean,11 so a borrowing at that the stage of Mycenaean may not have obeyed such a sound law. Yet, as he points out,12 any such cluster of a sibilant and liquid would be impossible to express in Linear B, and the same goes for gemination, as the script, as we have already mentioned, with very limited exceptions, only had the capacity to express, again, open syllables of the type CV.

In fact, Neogrammarian exceptionless sound laws cannot get us terribly far in this matter, because, while it could be a complete coincidence that Sipylus and Zippasla happen to be in the same area but are either slightly different mountain peaks or indeed refer to the same mountain accidentally, Sipylus is not exactly clear in etymology either. To add to our headaches, we find it difficult to escape the problem because Zippasla was the seat of a Hittite province or vassal state, and Sipylus is where Tantalus is said to have ruled (more on this later).

There is, however, the fact that the second component in the Greek looks like a Greek placename, Pylos. Pylos is derived from pulē ‘gate’ (though even this word has an unclear etymology), and we know it was quite the place-to-be in the Mycenaean period. Whether from Pylos or pulē, one explanation is that Greek speakers, once they had arrived in the area, at some point came to call the mountain Sipylus. Perhaps the -sl- cluster evaporated first, as it would have been an unfamiliar cluster to these Greeks, and perhaps the vocalism changed by folk etymology as time went on. It’s hard to say, but it leaves us rather more satisfied than considering the matter coincidental.

What of Tantalus then? Well, West suggests, tentatively though tantalizingly, that we might derive his name from the name of various Hittite kings named “Tuthaliyas”.13 Plato in the Cratylus suggests that Tantalus’ name is to be derived from the adjective talās (superlative: talāntatos) “wretched”, but of course one can be quite sure that an unexplained metathesis whereby talāntatos > Tantalos (n.b.: there is no long a in the latter term) is quite unlikely. Yet, on the other hand, we are presented with very many problems with the derivation from Tuthaliyas (perhaps pronounced something like /Tɔtɣalijas/). On the whole however, it is not even clear that the tool of re-analysis can help us much here, as, as far as I am aware, there is no Greek lexeme besides perhaps the one Plato adduced (which only clumsily resembles Tantalos), which could explain fully the transformation. However we can be quite sure that a cluster like /tɣ/ would be fairly unfamiliar to the Greek-speakers of this time. Furthermore, [ɣ] is the sort of phoneme which could easily be left unnoticed by a non-native speaker in a cluster such as this. It is quite subtle and historically in other languages frequently is weakened to a glide of some sort (compare English yield with German geld or yellow with gelb.)

To return to re-analyzed rivers, we can confidently adduce the modern Sakarya river as a comparandum, which in Greek was apparently Σαγγάριος (Sangarios), and in Latin, curiously, Sagaris. The Latin is curious because it is much closer to the Hittite Saḫiriya (pronounced /saɣirija/), without the intrusive nasal, and one does wonder if this preserves an older form. However, given that this spelling with the nasal is already there in Homer, unless we are to suppose that this nasal is somehow an interpolation, it would seem extremely unlikely that the Latin is preserving anything here. Greek orthography stipulates that a doubled gamma is to be read as a voiced velar nasal, but one wonders if there is some funny business here. In any case, if West’s etymology is correct, we of course do see an intrusive nasal in Tantalus, much like Sangarios, which is interesting. At the same time, the very few unambiguously borrowed toponyms with the -h- have a gamma replacing it.14 For the Turkish, I am no expert but sakar in Turkish is an adjective meaning unlucky or clumsy, which may have been applied to the Sakarya by reanalysis, especially since it is a river which makes a huge pair of >180 degree turns in its course from the Bayat Plateau to the Black Sea. At the same time, sakar has a dialectical meaning of ‘cliff’ which is perhaps even better fitting, so at least in the Turkish case, we have some idea of what was going on.15

One wonders whether much of a science can be made out of this whole business at all. The ghost of reanalysis reduces our historical linguistics at times here to a folk etymology of its own sort. “Tuthaliya vaguely looks like Tantalus and sort of vaguely semantically works so perhaps they’re related” — is this really any better than Plato’s etymology? Perhaps, though only because we know that this is how other names of this sort are transmitted, and there’s no real precedent for the transformation which Plato would ask us to believe. Yet, in Plato’s own time, there may well have seemed precedent, since, as we’ve just alluded to, the process of finding etymologies was hardly distinguishable from our own etymological practice of assuming folk etymology. That is, folk etymology as an explanation for how folk etymologizing can change (qualified in our time by borrowed) words can become in and of itself a sort of folk etymology.

Why not, then, also connect a name like Tuthaliya with others. For instance, Teucer (Teukros), the legendary king of Dardania in the Troad, might we not make a similar argument for him, perhaps even more cleanly? We might speculate that in some intermediary, the l/r distinction was weak, stress dragged the latter vowels into the abyss of syncope, and here the semantics are quite strong. It is from the union of Teucer’s daughter Batea and Dardanus that the entire Trojan (and thus, perhaps, Anatolian, as far as the Greeks of this time knew) race sprung. His name has been associated with the Anatolian storm god Tarhunt via some language (my money would be on Lycian trqqas), but still we’d need some sort of metathesis. Or we might even be bold enough to bring Deucalion, the survivor of “The Deluge” in Greek mythology, into the mix. His name’s phonology is nigh a perfect match for Tūthaliyas, especially if we handwave a bit on the voicing since it’s quite unclear what exactly was happening there in Hittite, anyway. All we need is the quite justifiable assimilation of *-tg- > -kk- or some such, and it all becomes quite manageable. The only problem there is the semantics. Was Tuthaliya’s name linked with Deucalion because this was the oldest name people could remember? Was the flood story transmitted from Hittite and thus carried Hittite names? The latter seems more likely, and I have some additional notes I’ll share in the future on this.

Nonetheless, it is clear that there are plenty of onomastic equations which are now more or less a matter of consensus, even where phonology is not immensely favorable. For such examples, we might consider Apasa=Ephesus and Miletus=Millawanda,16 while Lazpa = Lesbos is not even necessarily straightforward, and yet is quite accepted indeed.17 Then there are the examples where a sound knowledge of the corpora and phonological development yields quite perfect correspondences. Asia=Assuwa is one we’ve already discussed, but there is also the satisfying Mopsus=Muksu- (via Myc. Greek /⁠mokʷsos⁠/) and Pegasos=pihassi-.18 I could extend this list for some time. Yet, across all of these, the similarities far outweigh the differences, and we seem to be able to observe some sort of a/e alternation for some, for example. It’s not even particularly clear what role folk etymology or reanalysis actually plays in the most secure of our examples. One desires to make a science out of the whole thing, and accordingly, one must either reject or bring overwhelming evidence to the table when it comes to more exotic formulations. Yet, we occasionally arrive at a name like Sangarios=Saḫiriya which entirely defies the usual explanations. Zippasla is another, where I am quite convinced it can only refer to Sipylus. This is all quite frustrating, and yet, of great importance to our understanding of history.

Which makes it all the more frustrating indeed.

Bibliography

AhT = Beckman, Gary M., Trevor R. Bryce, and Eric H. Cline. The Ahhiyawa Texts. Writings from the Ancient World 28. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011.

AIHG = Collins, Billie Jean, Mary R. Bachvarova, and Ian C. Rutherford (eds.). Anatolian Interfaces: Hittites, Greeks and Their Neighbours. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2008.

EFH = West, M. L. The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997.

PH = Lejeune, Michel. Phonétique historique du mycénien et du grec ancien. Paris: Klincksieck, 1972.

Bachvarova, Mary R. From Hittite to Homer: The Anatolian Background of Ancient Greek Epic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.

Cline, Eric H. “Aššuwa and the Achaeans: The ‘Mycenaean’ Sword at Hattušas and Its Possible Implications.” Annual of the British School at Athens 91 (1996): 137–151.

Hawkins, J. David. “Tarkasnawa King of Mira: ‘Tarkondemos,’ Boğazköy Sealings, and Karabel.” Anatolian Studies 48 (1998): 1–31.

Mason, Hugh J. “Hittite Lesbos?” In AIHG, 57–62.

Nikoloudis, Stavroula. “Multiculturalism in the Mycenaean World.” In AIHG, 45–56.

Oettinger, Norbert. “The Seer Mopsos (Muksas) as a Historical Figure.” In AIHG, 63–66.

Yakubovich, Ilya. Sociolinguistics of the Luvian Language. PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2008.

I have also in the more distant past published a piece with the following conclusionː

This neurosis of classical philology can be found in many different places […]. For every Latin poem, there is a scholar (or two) waiting to tell you what lost Greek poem was its model, and what miserly scrap of Greek papyrus proves this. Granted, there has been a degree of genius invested in these exercises, and where genius is applied, success often follows. But one must recognize that there has been a degree of mass romance (some would say hysteria) in some of these claims, and especially in the thinly-veiled and widely-held belief of Greek supremacy over Latin (take for instance the prejudices of Basil Gildersleeve, founder of the American Philological Society, on ethnonationalist grounds, as described in Habinek 1998), for reasons which are hardly philological or even vaguely scientific.

It was on the issue of Petronius and his influence where I found what must be filed among the absolute worst of the above-described sins. In a paper published in 1977 entitled Petronius, P. Oxy. 3010, and Menippean Satire, Raymond Astbury concludes the following about a certain scrap of Papyrus of fifty partial lines (my emphasis and translation of Knoche’s German):

The arguments presented so far, if accepted, leave us at last with the use of prosimetrum as the only remaining link between Petronius and Menippean satire, and many scholars in the past have reluctantly accepted this matter of external form as the extent of Petronius' debt to Varro and Seneca. Some, it is true, have attempted to break the link by suggesting that other literary influences inspired Petronius' use of prosimetrum, such as the Milesian tale and the mime. However, the evidence for the mixture of prose and verse in these forms is slight, and suggestions based on it have not carried conviction. Ulrich Knoche, with his usual percipience, commented: 'Der Form nach kann man und muss man wahrscheinlich Petrons Roman mit der Menippeischen Satire verbinden, obwohl auch im hellenistischen Roman wahrscheinlich schon hie und da die Erzahlung auch ausserhalb der Reden in Verse iibergehen konnte. Wir sehen das z.B. im Alexander- roman, in der Historia Apollonii, auch ein Vorlaufer Charitons hat es vielleicht so gehalten.' [In terms of form, one can and probably must connect Petronius's novel with the Menippean satire, although even in the Hellenistic novel, the narrative could probably already occasionally transition into verse outside of the speeches. We see this, for example, in the Alexander Romance, in the Historia Apollonii; a forerunner of Chariton may also have done so.] The new papyrus enormously strengthens the case for believing that prosimetrum was not alien to the Greek romance. It is of the second century after Christ, so it is necessary to hypothesize from it the use of prosimetrum in romances earlier than Petronius. This does not appear to be an insuperable obstacle, especially if we recall that. when Richard Heinze first suggested the romance as an influence on Petronius, he was unaware of the evidence for the existence of the romance before Petronius' time: it was only when his article was in the proof stage that he learned of the discovery of the Ninos romance which supported his hypothesis. If we are prepared to accept that prosimetrum was probably found in Greek romances before Petronius, we are then faced with two possible sources for the use of the form by Petronius — the romance and Menippean satire. I suggest that, at the very least. it is more economical to find the source in the romance, which, it is clear, influenced Petronius in other respects, than in Menippean satire, with which he has nothing in common other than prosimetrum.

It may seem unfair for me to respond to this without itemizing Astbury’s arguments which “if accepted” would lead to this appalling conclusion. But I would like to argue that there are no arguments which could ever lead to such a conclusion, because the question itself is ridiculous.

First, let’s address the assumptions he wishes us to make. Most comically, we are to assume, on the basis of this papyrus, which postdates (we are told) Petronius by some hundred years, that prosimetrum (that is, prose interpunctuated by verse), was not alien to Greek Romance at the time when Petronius conceived his Satyricon. Greek Romance, it must be said, was only coming into being in the 1st century AD, while Petronius was executed in 66. Given the apparent extent of Satyricon prior to its demolishment by time, it surely could not have been conceived of any later than 64 or indeed earlier, depending on how much industriousness we are willing to grant Petronius. The Ninus Romance, also only attested by virtue of a group of bemaggotted papyri (if indeed it was a ‘romance’ at all — there is little reason it could not have been a rather florid proto-romantic history), is usually dated to about the turn of the millennium.2 Are we to believe that just as soon as Romance as a form was being breathed life, prosimetrum was already being experimented with thereon?

Astbury then adduces this example wherein Heinze, apparently, prior to the publication of his article, was validated by the discovery of this Ninus romance and its papyrological dating, which, as we will discuss below, can hardly be said to be secure. The difference between Heinze and Astbury is that Heinze only published his article after this papyrological discovery was made public: Astbury asks us to suspend our disbelief in the blind expectation that a prosimetric romance dateable to a period earlier than Petronius, based upon Heinze’s ‘precedent’. This of course is absurd, and, to date, nearly 50 years thence, no such papyrus has been found.

The second assumption we are to make, which is the most tragic, is an assumption which it would seem even Astbury did not conceive of as an assumption, for it is the fundamental problem with the question itself: that Petronius had a singular model, or, that it is ‘most economical’ to assume he had a singular model.

It is true that genre could be quite limiting in antiquity. But if we are already assuming a rapid, unseen development in what was still a “brand-new” genre, that is, prosimetrum, then we can assume just as easily (if not much easier), that what Petronius was doing transcended the rigidity of genre altogether.

We don’t really know much about Varronian satire. We know that it was prosimetric, and we know that they were satirical. We do not know if they had anything to do with Romance. This is another assumption we are being asked to make, that there was nothing in Varro which could have the essential quality of a Romance, that is, two lovers in idyllic bliss, suddenly separated or foiled and in need of reunion. I am preparing many thoughts on Varro presently, but I can say confidently that, as with all fragmentary literature, there are cases to be made in Varro containing everything or nothing.

Returning the the problem with the question itself, we must face a very inconvenient truth: classicists are hideously poor at understanding probabilities. With all the assumptions we are being asked to make, wherewithout this conclusion would disintegrate, it is not in fact at all economical to see Petronius’ as having a singular model in hypothetical antepetronian prosimetric Greek romance. Physicists only have the audacity to propose one kind of dark matter; classicists have the shamelessness to propose a new species of dark matter for every god-forsaken text.

To indict all of classics on account of a single article would seem unfair, were it not the case that this very article was republished as recently as 1999 as an example of the state-of-the-science with respect to Roman Novel in Harrison’s “Oxford Readings in the Roman Novel”. And, as we shall see below in another example of unscience in classics, even the basis upon which this article stands is questionable.

Papyrology, the study of papyrus fragments, in particular of those found fortunately preserved in the aridity of Egypt, and weighs heavily on the dating of Hellenistic romantic material, since we know virtually nothing about the authors of such works (whereas we know much about the authors of Latin Romance). Indeed, most romances, it would appear, have been entirely lost in the paucity of hands available to copy texts.

One fantastic thing about papyrus, when preserved, is that it gives us a sort of insight into the classical world which we typically would only associate with the Classical Near East and its non-biodegradable clay tablets and stone inscriptions. Papyrus fragments have preserved numerous exemplars of various administrative documents from the Roman period, for instance, without which we would be blind to many details of the operation of the Roman state and its various local governments. Papyrus has also preserved numerous literary works.

In turn, one fantastic thing about administrative documents, is that they are very often precisely dateable. The governor or consuls or some other circumstances are recorded along with the document, and can be correlated with other records, for example histories or, perhaps better yet, epigraphy. This can be useful for dating literature, as occasionally we will find literary papyri which were later repurposed for administrative matters. In such a case, it may be relatively safely supposed that the literature preceded the record, giving us a terminus ante quem, a latest possible date, for that text. While it should not at all be deemed impossible that the reverse happened in cases where the flip side of a papyrus was reused (in such cases it is impossible to scientifically surmise which was first), this would seem more or less acceptable to me as admissible dating evidence3, barring any other material complications.

This said, there is one dark art of papyrology which I would suggest to be much further from unimpeachability: paleographical dating.

Paleographical dating is the dating of a particular manuscript of a text on the basis of paleography, that is, the study of handwriting. It has its more secure roots in the study of medieval manuscripts, where the practice of writing was very often only learned by the scribe at the monastery in which he lived. As such, consistent traditions and manners and trends of writing are identifiable. Further, the comparative age of a Medieval manuscript shunted away in some library or monastery shows rather more clearly than the ages of any two scraps of papyri which have been laying in the dirt together for 1-2 millennia.

But as concerns papyri, I would suggest that paleography cannot be so reliable an assistant whatsoever. Personally, my handwriting changes day-to-day. Some days, I write with my “natural” hand, that is, the chickenscratch I picked up (much to the chagrin of my teachers) as a young student; other days, I use a much more affected handwriting which follows a personally adapted ductus of Carolingian manuscripts. Sometimes I mix the two. Sometimes I use a capital script in imitation of my father, hoping to write most clearly. Once I start writing a document or a note with a certain ductus, I rarely switch.

Furthermore, the conditions in which an administrator or a “scribe” (whatever that was: a classical copyist could be a slave, freeman, schoolteacher, student or any combination of the above) learned how to write, or set about stylizing their hand, is more or less completely opaque to us. Individuals may have learned at school, or in some sort of slave-training bootcamp, or indeed even were self-taught by mimicking things they saw, such as epigraphy or documents. Literacy in the classical period, arguably especially in Roman Egypt, was (probably) a much more dizzying spectral expanse than was the case in the Medieval period.

Regardless, paleography has been used, and is being used to this very day, to date papyri not to the span of a century or two (as would probably be the limit of confidence of a medieval paleographer) not even to the span of 50 years. Quite to the contrary, it has become rather common to see papyri dated to a span of just 25 years4 or less.

This is absurd and unscientific. I don’t believe there is any room for equivocation here: it is common quackery. To confidently date a document to such a minute span of time is hardly more scientific than palmistry or tarot. Worse, this is being done through a pseudoscientific slight of hand in which a literary papyrus will be dated by comparison to an administrative exemplar. Is it not inevitable that a person or persons copying a literary text would use quite a different (and probably archaizing) hand from that of an administrator? If a manuscript is being produced at the behest of some highly literate patron, is it not inevitable that such a manuscript be expected to look a little different from some receipt or horrible legal document?5

Lengthy tracts have been composed to try and make some science out of all of this, but there is no real reliable science that can be found here. People are unreliable — especially outside the confines of a monastery. Their hands are even more unreliable, and adminstrative documents are incomparable with literary. Even if we may make some very broad generalizations and periodizations of handwritings, based upon some vague correlations which may be available to our meager sight, I very much doubt that the chaos of a place like Roman Egypt renders these correlations any more than factoidal. The world is far too random for all of this, especially a world we very poorly understand.

Worst of all of this is that, clearly, this unscience is already doing damage. Take for instance this barely coherent line of reasoning for some inscrutable reason, as of today, still on the Wikipedia page6 for Leucippe and Clitophon:

“…if this date is accepted, …”. No. I do not accept this implausibly precise date. Now shut up.

I have examined the original dates provided by Parsons, Cavallo, and Del Corso. Del Corso has already appeared in our footnotes as an example of the very worst of the excesses of papyrology. In all cases, this date is determined purely by paleography, purely by comparison with administrative documents.7 In this case, whoever wrote this along with, apparently, Cavallo and Del Corso, is willing to dismiss out of hand the possibility that an episode in the Romance is historical allusion purely on the authority of papyrologists. The editor here, who is quite obviously familiar with the literature, does not even for a moment question the paleographical dates in light of the possibility of historical allusion, arguably a more secure evidence. Given the author’s ‘erudition’, it would seem, horrifyingly, that surely this is a graduate student of some sort, or worse, a professor, who has rambled on so. Shamefully, they have also violated many stylistic standards of Wikipedia in doing so.

It is astounding that papyrologists feel apparently confident enough to date to within a quarter-century but not even medieval paleographers would have this much confidence despite much better understood circumstances of composition. In Assyriology, one would never find arguments for dating a manuscript on the grounds of the "proportionality of the 2nd and 3rd wedges of the 'a' sign", while adductions of this sort form the basis of classical paleography.

Once again, Classicists are not good at statistics. Nowhere in Cavallo or Del Corso have I yet found an even pretended statistical analysis of a papyrus whereby the relative ‘prominence’ of various features is indexed in relation to other securely dated texts. We are only left to trust that they know their papyri so extremely, divinely well that they almost can tell us when a papyrus was written, by whom, and whether he wiped his ass and/or picked his nose that day. There is hardly a pretense of science in any of this, but where there is, it’s by comparison with some other text. We’re never given any sort of analysis on how likely it is that a 1st century text would look like a 2nd. A true scientist, without knowing a thing about papyrology, would correctly be able to tell you that the probability of such is not zero; a papyrologist won’t even entertain the idea. Certainly, if they would, they don’t write as if it’s a real possibility. Their determinations are proclaimed as fact. As is the case all too often elsewhere in classics, they do not stop even for a second to curb the inevitable gullibility of the student who might encounter them.

Indeed, this problem appears everywhere in classics. Textual criticism in particular has been prone to a pseudoscientism which only in recent years has been at all recognized within academia. Nonetheless, in the blossoming field of papyrology, the last place where there is anything new to be read, this mildew would seem to be growing ever more, completely compromising the literary critical field by corrupting every last date with false evidence and astrological prognostications. As we have seen, with Romance in particular, consequently, we can’t make heads or tails of the dating evidence. Hubris and vanity, supported, funded and reinforced by a blind and misguided hope that we can know what is very likely unknowable, have distorted and corrupted any and all open questions of literary dating, influence and connection.

There can be no science, no reasoning, no truth found in this. If we are to make any suppositions of this sort with any sort of hope of being right, this cancerous quackery must be excised and treated expeditiously with the most aggressive regimens available. Radiation, chemotherapy, amputation: without these, classics stands to to die sickly by a pseudoscientific malignancy of its own making.

It also has a curious story of authorship. There exists another work, in Greek, probably authored by a pseudo-Lucian (ie. someone other than Lucian — we will discuss this later), known as “Lucius or The Ass”.

Regarding the authorship of this work, Photios, the 9th century master scholar of Greek literature, tell us of another work by a so-called “Lucius of Patrae” which is either derivative of “Lucian’s” work, or vice versa (Photios says that he can only conjecture). It has long been assumed, on this evidence, that this now lost original work was the basis for the two works which have survived. Apuleius’ version is much more detailed and sophisticated than “The Ass”, so it is assumed that “The Ass” is an abridgement of this Greek original, whereas Apuleius’ work is either a translation and/or an expansion of the original.

This theory, however, has never quite sat right with me. Apuleius’ work is a Latin masterpiece, it is the type of work which you really benefit from reading in the original. It is full of assonance, rhyming, pleasing rhetoric and style, and its vignettes are greatly evocative, most of all that of “Cupid and Psyche”. If it was a translation, it was a laborious one, as by no means could Apuleius have simply glossed each word from Greek or translated in any mechanical way. Synoptic comparison of his work with “The Ass” demonstrates that while there are a few passages with extremely close wording, Apuleius’ version is far more rich, stylized, and well-wrought — and always involving elegant Latin wordplay which would require the wholesale reworking of passages in Greek to achieve.

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Lucian lived more or less contemporaneously with Apuleius. If we attribute any of these works to him, we must imagine quite a tight timeline for Apuleius to then have received the work, and then translate it so carefully, and publish a finished product (with no mention of Lucian or anyone else) before his death. He then would have to become wildly popular, as Augustine explains he was among the most well-known North Africans by the turn of the 4th century. Indeed, his likeness (and name) even found its way onto commemorative medallions which have been archaeologically recovered. In an imperial building of Constantine excavated in Trier, his likeness along with Cupid and Psyche putti seems to appear in apposition to Virgil, and around the same time a statue of him was erected at Constantinople. Constantine the Great, it would seem, was no casual fan of Apuleius.1

Lucian has long been assumed not to be the author of “The Ass” despite his attribution on our manuscripts for a couple of reasons, chief among which is the rather sloppy Greek of “The Ass”. Scholars arguing for Lucianic scholarship (which seems very unlikely to me in light of the already discussed necessary timing with Apuleius) have said that he was certainly capable of imitating this sort of vulgar style. But if an earlier version had existed, many other scholars rightly point out that it would seem beneath Lucian to produce a shoddy abridgment of some other assumedly marvelous Greek work.2

I do not think it likely or chronologically probable that Lucian could have been the original author, as it would seem improbable for Apuleius to so swiftly translate him so elegantly and for it to never be mentioned that he did so in any of our sources. Likewise, I do not think Lucian could be the author of the abridgment because why scandalize himself with such shoddy, apparently derivative work?

Evidently, Photios was not aware of Apuleius’ work. This should raise some eyebrows, and rather hints at the stark disconnect which existed between the Greek and Latin worlds in the Early Medieval, for Apuleius was clearly of considerable fame and popularity among Latins.

The idea that Apuleius could not have written the original hinges on essentially two things which cannot be easily explained by an alternative theory: Photios’ testimony of some original, and the fact that Apuleius introduces his tale as a fabula graecanica. Nota bene this adjective graecanica. It will be helpful to bring two highly-visible (albeit one with casual readers, the other in the academe, respectively) ‘summations’ of this line of argument into view…

The first is from the introduction to M. D. McLeod’s translation and edition Lucius or The Ass in the Loeb Classical Library.

It is generally agreed that both The Ass and Apuleius’ Metamorphoses are derived from the lost work3 for the following reasons:

(1) The narratives of The Ass and of Apuleius not only are the same in outline, but have numerous verbal parallels. (Apuleius’ version differs in being fuller, digressing to tell many other tales, and by introducing autobiographical elements and favourable references to Isis and Osiris into his final chapters)

(2) Apuleius tells us (1.1) “Fabulam Graecanicam incipimus” (Attempts to show that this earlier Greek version was also by Apuleius have proved unconvincing.)

The 3rd reason given deals with how Apuleius’ work cannot be an expansion of The Ass. It is also a poorly presented argument but irrelevant for our purposes. It is worth including this bit from McLeod,

The question of the additional stories found in Apuleius is a difficult one. A few scholars allow him no originality at all except perhaps in the ending of his work, though a rather more popular view is that all the additional material came from Apuleius.

He does not specify who believes this, but the idea that we should allow Apuleius no originality at all ‘except maybe in the ending of his work’ is preposterous on its face in the absence of additional evidence. The fact that this can be put at all into print should suggest to us epistemological failure in the scholarship of “The Ass Story”.

The second is from a footnote on the second page of B.E Perry’s incredibly influential and (in)exhaustive work on the identity of Photios’ Lucius of Patrae and his relation to The Ass (in particular what work was first and by who), which makes it all the more ludicrous.

Apuleius tells us he is relating a Greek story (Met. I.1), his version, therefore, could not have been the original; so unless we assume the possibility of a fourth version, it follows that the two Greek versions could not have been derived independently from a common source.4

This statement is equally fallacious and borders on academic malpractice. Apuleius’ Lucius, after all, is a Greek in Greece. It is far from satisfactory to simply dismiss the possibility of Apuleian priority out of hand by the report of a “fabula graecanica”, in a footnote, with no elaboration or citation of any supporting work, especially given the fact that this interpretation is hardly secure, as we will explore below. Further, the deduction or “assumption” of a “fourth version” should hardly have seemed outlandish to the later Ben Edwin Perry, colossus of Aesopic Scholarship and inventor of the “Perry Index” by which all Aesopic fables are indexed. That is, Aesop, the very name which assuredly owes much to oral tradition: id est, an independent, earlier, fourth (and fifth and sixth and seventh etc.) version(s). It is difficult for me to move past such sloppy work, but this was his PhD thesis, and it is therefore forgivable — though had I been Perry’s advisor, I would not have let this footnote as is see the light of day.

Let us discuss more in detail the phrase fabula graecanica. So the passage goes,

… in urbe Latia advena studiorum Quiritium indigenam sermonem aerumnabili labore, nullo magistro praeeunte, aggressus excolui. En ecce praefamur veniam, siquid exotici ac forensis sermonis rudis locutor offendero. Iam haec equidem ipsa vocis immutatio desultoriae scientiae stilo quem accessimus respondet.5 Fabulam graecanicam incipimus; lector intende: laetaberis

[When] in the Latin City (ie. Rome), with no teacher leading the way, I solicitously cultivated the native language of Roman education with a toilsome labor. And so I truly apologize if I should offend as a crude speaker of this exotic language of the forum. Indeed, this change of speech itself corresponds to the style of “desultory science” which we are approaching. We begin a Greekish tale. Reader, pay attention and you will delight.

Woah! “This change of speech itself”? Why has anybody been paying attention to “Greekish”? Surely haec immutatio vocis ipsa is much better evidence of Apuleius translating than Fabulam graecanicam incipimus… Of course, one must contextualize this phrase also:

Hanson translates desultoriae scientiae as “which is like the skill of a rider jumping from one horse to another”. A desultor was a sort of vaulter or circus rider who would jump from one horse to another while the horse was in motion. However, the term desultor also comes to mean ‘a fickle person’ and the much rarer desultorius appears to gain a meaning similar to English’s desultory in Martial.6 It is attested only 5 times in Classical or Late Latin. In Cicero and Suetonius it refers to a vaulter’s horse. The fifth usage we will discuss below. In any case, Hanson’s literal translation of this section would certainly seem to reinforce the idea that it is a translation, right?

Now, there is actually some reason why men from the great Perry to the obscure M.D. MacLeod (not to be confused with C.W MacLeod) might need recourse to fabulam graecanicam, and that is because the traditional understanding of scientiae desultoriae is with relation to garrulousness & discursivity.7 Alternatively, some translators make little attempt to understand it at all. Take for example Adlington’s translation:

And verily this new alteration of speech doth correspond to the enterprised matter whereof I purpose to entreat, I will set forth unto you a pleasant Grecian feast. Whereunto gentle Reader if thou wilt give attendant eare, it will minister unto thee such delectable matter as thou shalt be contented withall.

or Graves’

…after all, this story with its temperamental shifts and changes is so Greek in character that I should have done wrong to write it in academic Latin. Now read on and enjoy yourself!

It is understandable that it is a difficult phrase to translate. Desultorius is not a common word, and what is the ‘desultory science’? I believe Hanson is close in understanding the sense here, but I must propose that he is missing something.

The title of a Menippean Satire by Varro, the 1st century polymath and genius, is the aforementioned fifth usage of desultorius. We know little of this satire except that when it was received by Nonius Marcellus, the fourth century lexicographer and grammarian, it had the subtitle περί τοῦ γράφειν8 “about writing”.9 To use such a rare word, in a relatively forced manner, in the proem of a satirical text which was surely very much inspired by the Menippean Satire genre, of which was Varro’s work, is very unlikely to be a mistake. Whether it was a nod to Varro in general or this particular work, we cannot say, but we know that Apuleius claimed not only to have read Varro extensively but to have been a great admirer, saying in his Apologia

…memini me apud Varronem philosophum, virum accuratissime doctum atque eruditum…

…I remember in the [writings of the] philosopher Varro, a man very precisely educated and well-spoken too,…

I find it very unlikely that stilo desultoriae scientiae in the first section of what can only be described as a prosified Mennipean or Varronian satire could be a coincidence, given Varro produced a satire entitled Desultorius: On Writing.

In my view, this is suggestive of the fact that the overall sense of immutatio vocis is, in a very Apuleian, dare I say, desultory, fashion, a way of bringing reference to the Varronian work and of preparing us for the burgeoning neologism and lexical creativity which is about to take place in his own work. Apuleius is asking us to forgive him for this progressive style of writing and focus and his excuse is his narrator’s crudely acquired Latinity.10

As for fabula graecanica, Apuleius is always looking for an occasion to neologize or use rather recherché language, and based on the incredibly decisive statements found above, we would expect a “Greek Story” to be written as some variation of fabula graeca. This already should make us suspicious of the idea that this necessarily means Apuleius is simply translating some Greek romance. Hanson translates the phrase best, as “Greekish” ie. “kinda Greek”, “half-Greek”, or, most charitably, “adapted from Greek”. The story is, after all, a romance — a Hellenistic form which had become popular in the 1st-2nd centuries AD. Additionally, it is possible that the story of a man foolishly being transformed into an Ass existed as a bit of Greek folklore. Or that the term merely refers to the fact that the story mostly takes place in Greece with Greek characters, which is typical for Romance (even the characters in the certainly Latin original Satyricon have Greek names). In any case, this choice of “Greekish” seems rather odd if we are expecting Apuleius to be introducing a translation of an original Greek work. The tale itself must take place in Greece, in particular Thessaly, for Thessalian women were famed for their magic,11 in particular, the character of the witch in these tales is based upon Chrysame of Thessaly, a priestess who used magical mastery over herbs to defeat the Ionians.

Even this term graecanicus would seem to call back to good old Varro. A search of The Latin Library12 reveals that the adjective graecanicus occurs nine times in Classical or pre-Classical Latin. One usage is from Cato, trochileas graecanicas13 “Grecian systems of pulleys” another is in Pliny graecanica pavimenta14 “Greek-style pavement”, then Suetonius toga graecanica15 “Greek-style toga”, then Tertullian gentilitati graecanicae aut barbaricae16 “hellenistic or barbarian paganism” , which all but in Tertullian17 would seem to imply a meaning of “Greek-style”. The remaining 5 are either from Varro18 (in two places in three instances) or Apuleius (used thrice, elsewhere as graecanico cingulo19 “Greek-style belt”, and graecanicam pyrricam20: “the Greek-style pyrrhic dance”). Indeed, it is from Varro that we are given our only real elucidation of what graecanicus means, at least in grammatical terms. According to his authority, it refers to a Greek word which is no longer declined like a Greek word but acquires Latin inflection by analogy. Specifically, to Varro it is a category of nothus a “bastardization” or “counterfeit”.

What are we to make of these the close proximity of these two potential Varronian connections? This is a question I would prefer to defer to future research (we have only inspected the Proem here!) or the reader, but having no confidence in the Academy’s curiosity hereof, I will venture to suggest that Varro was very much at the top of Apuleius’ mind in the Proemium of Metamorphoses.21 Given the importance of oral narratives in the Metamorphoses itself, I am even tempted to conjecture that Apuleius intends to tell us that, in this case, the fabula graecanica is the bastardization of various Greek oral22 tales, rendered into an eloquent Latin, perhaps inspired by Varro’s satires.

Whereas there is no evidence of Apuleius being aware of Lucian whatsoever, this Varronian connection would seem to be, if not clear, definitely translucent. And while it is true that the Onos has many similarities in text to Metamorphoses, sometimes with something additional, though more often with less, this alone is not nearly sufficient evidence to decide the relationship between the two texts. Again, on the other hand, Apuleius is clearly trying to obliquely tell us something in his Proem, and I feel that history has misunderstood it.

Why is it not possible to imagine Apuleius’ work as the original, or at least, more original than has been previously understood, followed by a faithful translation by second author, perhaps making some changes such as introducing Lucius’ place of residence in Patrae, or making Lucius a Roman23 rather than a Greek? Why could this then not be finally epitomized in the late period as a form of comical smut, removing much of the exposition and all the vignettes and reducing it to the bawdy and profane? Indeed, the second author here may have been Apuleius himself: this might make some sense of this fact that in the Latin work, the risible narrator is a Greek, while in the Greek work, the narrator is apparently a Roman.

Indeed, Apuleius took particular notice of the requirements of tailoring speech for a Latin and Greek audience respectively, so the fifth “orphan chapter” of Florida or De Deo Socratis24

Iamdudum scio quid hoc significatu flagitetis: ut cetera Latine materiae persequamur. Nam et in principio vobis diversa tendentibus ita memini polliceri, ut neutra pars vestrum, nec qui Graece nec qui Latine petebatis, dictionis huius expertes abiretis.

I have long intuited what you politely demand: that I pursue the rest of this material in Latin. For I remember in the beginning, with you all pulling in different directions, promising that neither part of you all, whether asking for Latin or Greek, would depart deprived of this speech.

And in Florida XVIII, 38-39

Eius dei hymnum Graeco et Latino carmine vobis ecce iam canam illi a me dedicatum […] ita ut etiam nunc hymnum eius utraque lingua canam, cui dialogum similiter Graecum et Latinum praetexui

I will now sing this god’s [Aesculapius] hymn to you all with a composition in Greek and Latin, dedicated to him by myself… And so now, just as I will sing this his hymn in both languages, I have prefaced it with a dialogue similarly in Greek and Latin.

Might this suggest that Apuleius in fact wrote the so-called Metamorphoses of “Lucius of Patrae”? As noted above, that the farcical narrator of the Latin Metamorphoses is Greek, while he is apparently a Roman transplant living in Patrae in The Ass, could simply be a fact of Apuleius tailoring two versions of his tale for his respective audiences. A Roman may laugh at the foolishness and humiliation of a Greek, and a Greek may laugh at the foolishness and humiliation of a Roman. That the ending of the Latin Metamorphoses is so different from the Greek epitome we have needn’t concern us. Indeed, even that Photios makes no mention of any Isiac material needn’t concern us. The tone of the last chapter of Metamorphoses is so different that it’s entirely conceivable that it was at some point detached in the Greek tradition before the epitome was produced (and the epitomist contrived an ending) — or that Apuleius chose to simplify the story in Greek for fear of religious offense or really any other reason which would now be obscure to us.

There may be a hint in section 55 of The Ass

And so I said, “My father is [omitted!], my name is Lucius, and my brother is Gaius. We hold our remaining two names in common. I write prose treatises and other works. He writes elegiac poetry and is a good soothsayer. Our native city is Patrae of Achaea.

There is no better description of Apuleius than the consolidation of the character of Lucius and Gaius25, we in fact possess elegiac poetry of his, preserved in the Apologia, and of course he was a prodigious producer of all manner of prose works, especially historiae, that is, investigatory treatises or narratives. Apuleius was similarly no stranger to magic or soothsaying or astrology, and was held by the 5th century as a magician with powers approximating those of Apollonius of Tyana.26

The association with Patras is curious. Apuleius in the Latin Metamorphoses is at once speaking autobiographically (particularly in the 11th book), yet also distancing himself from the narrator, making the narrator a Greek with perennial ties to Thessaly,27 yet studied in Athens just as Apuleius.28 Apuleius would be using a similar effect in his Greek Metamorphoses.

On this question, I will (perhaps hazardously) conjecture the following:

The Isiac 11th book was early detached from the Greek Metamorphoses manuscript tradition. The epitomizer, however, knew that the work was of Apuleius, and added an abrupt ending thereto which hints at the original authorship, but “preserved” (or rather conjectured) the fact that the narrator came from Patras as could be implied29 by section 2 of The Ass, as the home city of the narrator would need be stated in their formulaic proof of citizenship.30 Apuleius would have conceived a slightly different sort of character for his Greek work, and thus his narrator in the Greek Metamorphoses is delivering a scholarly letter as opposed to merely being “on business”.

Metamorphoses was Apuleius’ Magnum Opus, at least that would appear to be the case by the 4th and 5th centuries. It certainly would seem to have been his most well-wrought work. Is it realistic to assume that a Sophist so concerned with pleasing both a Greek and Latin audience would choose to sequester his greatest work to the (generally) less prestigious of these two?

A theory of Apuleian priority would explain the very problematic fact that nowhere in all the discussion of Apuleius is it mentioned that he would be famous in no small part for an adaptation of a Greek work. It would also explain the fact that Apuleius makes no reference whatsoever to Lucian, but certainly was at a minimum aware of Varro and would seem to pay homage to him, and not any Greek satirist.

It would also explain another thing which we have touched on: that events in Apuleius’ life known from his Apologia (which was delivered in court in a capital case and must consequently be taken as verifiable biographical information) very much mirrored a number of scenarios common to both versions of this tale. Apuleius began life with a great inheritance and went to Greece to study rhetoric. He soon wandered throughout that country (and thence through Asia Minor, Egypt, and Rome), all the while investigating and taking fantastic interest in magic. Lucius in The Ass is getting into trouble all the time in the story on account of his excessive interest in magic, and excessive lust for women. Mirroring this is Apuleius, who was charged with several capital crimes in connection with his wife, whose family accused him of using magic to convince her to marry so that he may funnel away their wealth. Throughout this court case, it is mentioned that Apuleius knew and possessed simply too much on magic, and Apuleius all the while hints at his knowledge thereof as well.

That the work is autofictional is in fact the position of Augustine, who took for granted the fact that the Golden Ass (the title by which he knew this work) was a work of autobiography or autofiction. So in Book 18, xviii of Civitate Dei

Nam et nos cum essemus in Italia audiebamus … stabularias mulieres inbutas his malis artibus in caseo dare solere … viatoribus, unde in iumenta ilico verterentur et necessaria quaeque portarent postque perfuncta opera iterum ad se redirent; nec tamen in eis mentem bestialem, sed rationalem humanamque servari, sicut Apuleius in libris, quos Asini Aurei titulo inscripsit, sibi ipsi accidisse ut accepto veneno humano animo permanente asinus fieret, aut indicavit aut finxit

When I was in Italy I heard [that] innkeeping women initiated in these wicked arts were in the habit of giving something to travelers in a piece of cheese whereby they were at once turned into a draft animal and would carry whatever was necessary and after the work was done would again return to normal — but did not in any case take to a bestial mind but remained soberminded, just like Apuleius in his book, which he wrote under the title ‘The Golden Ass’, said or dissembled to have happened to him, whereby having taken a poison he became an ass with his human mind remaining.

I’ve included almost the entire passage here on account of it’s vivacity and Apuleian language,31 which is, it must be said, suggestive towards Augustine’s good knowledge of Apuleius.

Of course, it is impossible on the evidences we have to prove any way or another. Were we to have the longer Greek work, it would probably be easier. My objective in writing this is to show that there are good arguments for Apuleian priority, and that simply reshuffling the order in which we imagine these three works to be written can explain all the textual evidence which is suggested as proof of this other work being first.

This is certainly a minority view. But as I have written about in previous posts here, often classicists are so blinded by the ubiquity of the fact that most Latin works are adapted from Greek that one runs into all manner of misconceptions about what the Romans were actually doing. What often seems like a scientific study of recension and synopsis, is of faulty methodology and thinking, because we hope against all odds that our wits can tell us decisive facts about texts which have been utterly lost; but our wits, it would seem, also deceive us, and imbued with the delusion of rhetoric, we convince one another that our methods are sound and scientific. This article, I must admit, I can hardly prove to be an exception — but nonetheless I believe it most sensible, most curious, and most grounded in the limitations of our texts of all these arguments. I vainly hope some will be persuaded to agree.

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I will not be spending much time on comparisons of this Psalm with Enuma Elish, for there is an arguably a far more convincing parallel, also a product of Babylonian monolatry of Marduk, which I believe deserves far more comparison in this discussion. This is known in Foster as “The Great Hymn to Marduk”, elsewhere simply as “Marduk 2”.

This is a more promising comparison on account of the obvious fact that the two works, Psalm 89 and Marduk 2, are cut from vaguely the same literary and poetic cloth. While evaluating and taxonomizing varieties of Near-Eastern poetry is never easy, and always subject to controversy, we may safely place Enuma Elish into the category of “Narrative Poetry” whereas both the Psalm and Marduk 2 may be placed approximately in the category of “Literary Supplicatory Prayer” or “Supplicatory Hymns” if we’d like to be especially ambitious. I use supplicatory because both the psalm and the “hymn” mix a great deal of praise with calls for justice, deliverance, and forgiveness, such that “praise”, in my own opinion, does not adequately sustain the type of Psalm 89 and ‘The Great Hymn’. I caveat all of this with the suggestion to refer to Lenzi’s typology more generally. I may nevertheless refer to it as ‘the hymn’ or ‘the prayer’ for the sake of convention and convenience.

What I believe is proven in the hereafter-provided evidence is not necessarily that the Psalmist had this particular Hymn in mind when composing his psalm (though, as we will see, there is ample historical evidence to suggest this possibility), but that the two prayers operate in a distinctly similar manner, dissimilar in many respects to many of their companions, which hints at some connection — whether by proxy or direct.

One last note is required before we properly begin: this was at first intended to be a brief comparison, but intentions do not always equate with results. As such, this has become a rather lengthy exposition on these two works. Typically, such an analysis would begin to beg its own translations — but I am eager to share this comparison and do not wish to rush any translation whereby my confidence is still waxing. All of this said, I do intend to publish a translation of Marduk 2 up until the first major lacuna sometime in the next months. As far as the translations provided go, I have typically used Oshima unless otherwise noted. Where I have modified translations for any reason of Marduk 2, I have also noted. With respect to translations from the Old Testament, I have been quite a bit more loose, typically using the ESV or KJV but also often supplying my own translation, though never departing far from any canonical reading, unless such a departure is discussed at some length.

Marduk 2 was once dated to the Cassite period (16th to 12th c. BC) by Lambert in 1960, and there would seem to be no good reason to controvert that; this was one of the most productive times for Babylonian literature. While we might expect such a hymn, with its elevation of Marduk and syncretism, to necessarily postdate the monolatry of Marduk at Babylon and Enuma Elish, other syncretistic prayers to Marduk, as well as the first Marduk prayer, have been dated to the Old Babylonian period.

Jimenez has, in my view, convincingly placed the bounds of our dating of Enuma Elish between the reigns of the Cassite Meli-Shipak (1186-1172 BCE) to Marduk-nadin-ahhe (1099-1082 BCE). The exact dating of this prayer in relation to Enuma Elish is outside the scope of this study, but it seems relatively safe to assume Marduk 2 was produced no later than the 2nd Isin dynasty (late 11th c. BC) on the very same stylistic, linguistic, and historical grounds which led Lambert to conclude it Cassite.

As for the Psalm, even if we take the superscription thereof at face value, that it was written by Ethan the Ezrahite, a courtier of David, and therefore date it to the 9th c., it would be unproblematic for the purposes of this analysis. However, it is quite a bit easier on linguistic, textual, historical, and archaeological grounds to date this to sometime during, the Babylonian Captivity. The Psalm is a lament, seeming to accuse God of breaking his covenant with David and the Davidic Kingdom, a dramatic gesture very much suggestive of the shock which must have been felt at the time of the fall of the Kingdom of Judah and the woe of exile.

Structurally, the Psalm and Marduk 22 are composed as will follow here. I have bolded areas of particular interest and comparability, and provided numbering for those sections which clearly align in sequencing between the two works. It is this sequence which I believe makes the strongest case for a relation in addition to all the other evidence. Additionally, for comparable areas which may be however somewhat “displaced” from one another, I have provided a lettering scheme for comparison and interest.

Marduk 2

1-4 Introduction (1)
5-10 Summary of creation and domain over weather
11-31 Benevolences & blessings of Marduk
32-36 Marduk's primacy at the council (2)
36-41 Syncretic catalog of gods donating power to Marduk (a)
41-42 The fearfulness of Marduk (3)
43 Domain over sea (4)
43-48 Destruction of evildoers, monsters of Tiamat (5)
49-65 Marduk’s Justice “you cause the upright to prosper…”  (b)
65-68 Marduk the redeemer
69-75 Petition for absolution (c)
76-83 The Caprice of Marduk (d)
84-99 Marduk and the River Ordeal
100-109 That prayer to Marduk may bring the dead back to life (6)

The Hymn is divided into couplets on our best witnesses, but the transitions between sections are often neatly linked with a single couplet linking the two chains of thought, and thusly have I divided it.3

This is probably not the whole of the so-called Prayer to Marduk no. 2. There is a lacuna after line 109, but another set of tablets was found which, while not being able to be ‘joined’ with the first section, probably are part of the same work and indeed same tablet or set of tablets. I have left these out of this analysis as there is less comparable material after this disjunction. The focus here is really on the first 50 or so lines, with some linguistic interest further afield. It seems unproblematic to imagine the psalmist would abridge things significantly if influenced by this quite long prayer. As we will see, this prayer may have been recited publicly. Perhaps a listener’s attention would have wained anyway. It may nevertheless be fruitful in the future to examine this material more closely with this psalm and others.

Psalm 89

1-2 Introduction (1)
3-4 God’s covenant with David
5 That the wonders of the Lord are praised even among "the saints" (qadoshim) (a)
6-8 Primacy of God in the council (2)
    7 The fearfulness of God (3)
9 God's domain over the sea (4)
10 The crushing of Rahab (perhaps analogous to Tiamat) and other ‘enemies’ (5)
11-12 Recollection of creation
13 God’s might
14-18 God’s justice and protection over Israel “blessed is the people that know the joyful sound…” (b)
19-37 God’s covenant with David (in detail) 
38-45 God's seeming abandonment of his covenant (d)
45-51 Appeal for absolution (c)
    47 Who is the man that lives and does not see death? Can he deliver his life from the hand of the grave? (6)

While the traditional line divisions here do not betray couplets, the actual content of the lines rather do (and very often this is how this Psalm is translated).

Starting with the very first line, in Psalm 89 we have: “I will sing of the lovingkindness of YHWH for ever, with my mouth I will proclaim your faithfulness to all generations”, while in the first two lines of the Great Marduk Hymn we have “Lord, sage of the Igigi, I shall praise your utterance / Remembrance of you is pleasant …”.

Both begin with the wonderful and enduring beginning to all great songs, that is, some variation of “I shall praise” or “I shall sing”. This alone is nothing particularly unique, and we find such a formula famously as far and as wide as even Homer, so its appearance in a Psalm cannot be extraordinarily shocking. However, it does not appear as the first line in any of the other ‘great’ (ie. longer, literary) ‘hymns’ as presented by Foster. The verb ‘sing’ does appear in some shorter hymns, for example Ammiditana’s Royal Hymn to Ishtar. Of the Psalms, I counted only 5 which begin with some variation of “I will sing” or “I will praise” (or indeed “I will sing praises”, as in Psalm 101 and 138 with z-m-r, the very same root as used in Ammiditana’s Hymn).

Additionally, the psalmist is not singing of Yahweh himself, he is singing “of the lovingkindness of YHWH” and “your faithfulness” (emunateka). The Akkadian supplicant sings not of Marduk himself but “your utterance” (seqarka), probably more or less synonymous with the subject in the subsequent line, which begins (literally) “pleasant is your mention” (ṭabat hissatka). By contrast, the aforementioned “Royal Hymn to Ishtar” begins instead “Sing ye praises of the Goddess, the most awesome of the goddesses”; Psalm 9 and Psalm 111 begin “I will praise YHWH with my whole heart”, and Psalm 138 “Before the gods (!) I will sing praises to (or of) you”, indeed, Psalm 101 is the only psalm besides eighty-nine in which the object of the praise is not God himself but “lovingkindness and justice”, and there neither term is in a possessed state, unlike Psalm 89. It is thus significant that the object of the praise & song is not the god himself but some aspect of his in both Psalm 89 and Marduk 2.

Lines 3 and 4 of the Marduk 2 repeat lines 1 and 2. Thereafter, Lambert translates “who directs the rivers inside the hills / who opens the bowls of the springs inside mountains / who lets loose a bounteous flood for absolutely all the inhabitants…”4. Lines 5-30 are a summary of the blessings and bounties of Marduk.

Lines 3 and 4 in the psalm recapitulate God’s covenant with his chosen David, a theme which will become much more salient later in this psalm. The next comparandum then is the psalm’s fifth line.

It may be argued that 89:5 may stand-in for the whole of lines 5-30 of Marduk 2: “And the heavens will praise your wonders, YHWH, your faithfulness too, in the assembly of the saints”. ‘Saints’ here is the polysemous qadosh, sometimes an epithet for the God of Israel, sometimes an epithet for prophets and the like. However, the exact expression “the assembly of the saints” (qahal qadoshim) occurs nowhere else in the Old Testament. On line 7 we have a near synonym “the assembly of the saints” (sod qadoshim), also occurring nowhere else. Typically in the Psalms, qahal refers to a governmental body, often as the qahal rav “great assembly”.

Lines 17-18 of Marduk 2 may help us contextualize this: “The one who sends […] goodness to the Annunaki, the whole creation of Enanki5 / Until what sunrise will your help not come”

What immediately comes to mind when I consider the “assembly of the saints” is the ‘Divine Council’ we find all about the religious literature of the Near East. What exactly this meant and the words used to describe it in Akkadian differ: usually either “the assembly” (puhru) or “the great gods” (ilu rabutu) or both or indeed something else. While these were not fixed terms, and could refer to different gods at different times to different people, the Igigi and Annunaki were more often than not representative of this very council.

Some psalms are known for being particularly willing to shed the pretension of strict monotheism in preference of some manner of monolatry.6 Indeed, the ‘Divine Council’ seemingly makes an appearance in several psalms, famously in Psalm 82, where the RSV so translates 82:1 “God has taken his place in the divine council (‘adat el), in the midst of the gods (elohim) he holds judgement” and 82:6 “You are gods (elohim) sons of the Most High (‘elyon), all of you”.

As for ‘qadoshim’, the biblical Aramaic Book of Daniel may give us a (late) clue. When Belshazzar’s wife suggests that Belshazzar consult Daniel regarding the omen of the ‘writing on the wall’, Daniel 5:11 reads “There is a man in your kingdom in whom is the spirit of the holy gods (elahin qaddishin)”. This certainly seems to me to be a sort of gloss of the extraordinarily common Babylonian term ‘the great gods’ ilu rabutu, that is, the gods of the divine council.

On the other hand, 89:18 has “For our shield is YHWH’s and that of the holy one (ie. qadosh) of Israel, our king”,7 so one should not be led to believe that any reception of this Psalm with the expressions qahal or sod qadoshim would be immediately understood as the divine council.

It is therefore more likely that this psalmist has for some reason purposely avoided the direct notion of the divine council as understood in another psalm, whereas a redactor’s hand seems an unlikely interloper (here) on account of so many other psalms not shying from this idea. In my view, this rather reinforces the idea that the author had perhaps some polytheistic or monolatrous prayer in mind; there would be no reason, otherwise, to avoid with such uncommon language an idea inalien to some of the psalms which must have been in circulation. Alternatively, the Sitz im Leben of this particular psalmist could have resisted the addition of any newly problematic work into a corpus which may have already made some uneasy. We will see other places where this sort of ‘encryption’ of polytheism may have left a similar trace.

In the psalm, we then have a couplet affirming God’s primacy, but its sequence and place within the text is quite relevant for us.

6 For who in the heavens may compare unto YHWH
Or is like unto him among the sons of gods (or: God)?

And once our Akkadian continues after the praises of lines 5-31 at about line 32, we have:

32 There is [none] in the totality of the Igigi who boasts before you
33 You have [no] rival above or below.

The locative expression in 89:6b and line 32 of the Marduk prayer are worth briefly remarking upon: both involve a preposition preceding a genitival phrase, ina gimir igigi and bibne elim, where the construct package apparently refers to the divine council.

Traditionally, ‘gods’ as here printed has been translated as ‘mighty’. The Hebrew (as we’ve now seen) is elim. Such a translation here is, given the context, a superstitious circumlocution.8 Indeed, ‘mighty’ as a gloss for el only occurs as an epithet for God, who very often is simply called el anyway. The word is cognate with Akkadian ilu, ‘god’. Indeed, the Septuagint and Vulgate have “the sons of God” here — either this (after all, even elohim is plural) or ‘gods’ is the correct sense: but we cannot in good conscience accept ‘mighty’. “The sons of God” is certainly vague on its own, but given the preceding and succeeding lines (see below, with the aforediscussed sod qadoshim), once again the divine council may be safely inferred.

The lines which follow in this Marduk prayer are syncretic in nature. A list of gods are given from the Mesopotamian pantheon with the traits they have donated to Marduk.9 If the psalmist did, in fact, have the hymn in mind, it is not unsurprising that he would have seen fit to abridge here.

However how this list of gods closes is of great interest. We have

42 Your dread, Lord, is feared (palhat) by the gods (eli ili) [So Lambert, whereas Oshima : “brings fear over”]

Then line 7 of Psalm 89

God (’el) is trembled at (na‘araṣ) in the assembly of the saints (sod qadoshim) greatly,
and is feared (nowra) by all (‘al-kal) those around him

The construction “palahu … eli” is, as far as I can tell, quite rare. A search of the (admittedly somewhat limited) electronic Babylonian Library database results in no single line with both any form of palahu with eli. A cursory search through the Old Testament yields the Niphal of the verb y-r-’ with ’al, the cognate of Akkadian eli, only a limited number of times: Zephaniah 2:11, Psalm 96:4 (in the context of gods), and 1 Chronicles 16:25. The verses of Psalm 96:4 and 1 Chronicles 16:25 are virtually identical with the exception of an added conjunction, the phrase being traditionally translated as “He [YHWH] is … to be feared above all the gods” ([wə]nowra hu ‘al-kal elohim). That is to say, feared more than all the other gods. I suspect that this how we should understand Psalm 89, indeed as well as this incredibly rare construction in the Marduk prayer, which would be far more congruous with our understanding of both the Hebrew and Akkadian preposition.

The usage in Zephaniah 2:11 somewhat confounds this, although also occurs in the immediate proximity of God’s relationship with other gods, traditionally translated something like the following:

“The LORD shall be terrifying unto them (traditionally understood as the Moabites and the Ammonites); for he will famish all the gods of the earth, and they [KJV: the people10] shall bow down to him, each one from this place, all the shores11 of the nations12”.

What we appear to have here is an understanding of nowra ‘al very similar to that in Psalm 89 (ie. “feared by” and “terrifying to” are virtually identical in meaning13) in this specific case.14 It is tempting to wish to reinterpret this line such that some sort of cataphora is used with “unto them”, then referring to the gods. But such an understanding would not simplify our grammatical understanding but confound it further. It is not impossible, nevertheless, to conceive the purpose of this passage to warn that YHWH is to be feared more than the Moabites or Ammonites, for their gods are powerless.15 It is, in any case, very curious that the only other place where this construction occurs is in a verse which refers to other gods, especially when this is true of all other instances of the same construction.

It would, then, seem to me that they all must be connected (to say nothing of the obvious case of the several identical lines between Psalm 96 and 1 Chr 16), and they must all involve some awareness of the other, either directly or by proxy. I would extend this logic to Marduk 2. Indeed, however these lines are to be understood, these ideas of god being ‘feared by’ or ‘fearful over’ or ‘to be feared more than’ either other gods or other nations and the gods thereof should, in my view, be understood as cognate.

The very next line in Marduk 2 deals with the sea:

43 Like the high wave of the battle of the sea, you make a roar in the swells

Line 8 in the Psalm more or less summarizes lines 5-7 and God’s total superiority.

8 YHWH, God of the hosts, who is as mighty as you, YH? Your faithfulness surrounds you.

But then comes the very next line, requiring no comment on my behalf in light of line 43 of Marduk 2.

9 You rule the raging of the sea: when its waves arise, you still them.

Then in 89:10 we have:

10 You have broken in pieces Rahab as a corpse with your mighty arm. You have scattered your enemies.

In the very next lines of Marduk 2 (44-47) (so Oshima, though I have printed zairi consistently here as ‘hatred’)

44 Like the furious fire god, you burn up hatred
45 The Ushumgallu-dragon is your rage, you overcome the malevolent
46 You capture the rebellious one, the one who plots and carries out a revolt
47 You burn the evil one, the one who passes through the midst of the uncleanness of hatred

We will return to line 44 in a moment, but first line 10 of the psalm and 45-47 deserve some comment. The meaning of the term Rahab (especially here in the context of the sea) is best explained through the following occurrences:

First, Isaiah 51:9-10. The ESV translates:

9 Awake, awake, put on strength,
O arm of the Lord;
awake, as in days of old,
the generations of long ago.
Was it not you who cut Rahab in pieces,
who pierced the dragon (tannin)?
10 Was it not you who dried up the sea,
the waters of the great deep (tehom),
who made the depths of the sea a way
for the redeemed to pass over?

Rahab in apposition to Tehom is extremely relevant for us, for tehom is a term cognate with Tiamat, the Babylonian primordial goddess immortalized in Enuma Elish, whom was slain by Marduk, who made her corpse and various viscera thereof into the world. It is also the term used in Genesis 1:2 “…and darkness was upon the face of [the] deep…”, indeed ‘the’ is bracketed here for there is no definite article in the Hebrew here. Her name is further cognate with Akkadian t(i)amtu(m) “the sea”, a word which is written with the Sumerograms A.ABBA, which happens to be exactly how “the sea” is written on line 43. Whether Tiamat herself was a dragon or serpent is unclear, but certainly many of her offspring were, including Ushumgallu (ušum.gal meaning “great serpent” in Sumerian)

Also relevant is Job 26:12

By his power he brought to rest the sea, and by his understanding he broke up Rahab

Rahab is then, some character, probably similar to tehom in polysemy (that is, possibly translated inanimate, perhaps in this case as ‘storm’, but found usually without an article), who certainly is associated with a dragon or serpent of some kind, associated with the sea.

Genesis’ connection with Enuma Elish is a vast topic hardly worth much discussion here, but it clear that either we are talking about some incredibly old Semitic folklore which has arrived to us via Genesis, Enuma Elish, and the Baal Cycle, or there has been some sort of horizontal transference. Enuma Elish was read in public as a matter of tradition during the Akitu new years festival in Babylon each year. It has been proposed that this would have then inevitably come to the attention of at least the elite of the Israelites in captivity in Babylon. Importantly, Oshima has the following remarks about Marduk 2:

According to this ritual instruction, [a Šuila-prayer with the same incipit at Marduk 2] was recited after the recitation of Enūma Eliš on the fourth day of the month Kislīmu. Although there is no conclusive evidence, it is very probable that this Šuila-prayer of the Akītu-festival of the month Kislīmu is indeed our prayer to Marduk. In fact, as discussed above, The Prayer to Marduk no. 2 alludes several times to a festival (e.g., lines 22; 40; 28''; and 32'') and, in line 72, it requests absolution of the sins of a certain ‘Adapa’. It is very likely that ‘Adapa’ here is not a reference to the legendary sage of that name from Eridu but is probably used as an epithet for a wise man or a sage such as mār rēšti ummân, ‘the chief scholar’, who is instructed to recite this prayer in the ritual instruction of the Akītu-festival of Kislīmu discussed above

If some Hebrews may have heard Enuma Elish in Babylon at Akitu, then it’s entirely conceivable they also would have heard this very prayer, assuming there was not some other Shuila prayer with the exact same incipit in circulation at the time.

Thus far, I have proceeded sequentially through each prayer, and compared some lines. We have seen so far that a great deal of the chain of thought is identical in sequence and sometimes language, with the Marduk prayer occasionally retaining something which the psalm has apparently dropped. I have generally strived not to pick and choose from all about each prayer as it is my belief that it is their very structure and sequencing which gives away their relation most conclusively, rather than the overall themes. The strongest evidences for this may be found above.

As I proceed from here, more focus will be placed on comparable phrasing, as we are fast approaching the recapitulation of God’s covenant with David’s people, which will have little direct sequential significance to Marduk 2. However, as we will see, there are many turns of phrase which may be related, and, as we will also see, there remain yet items of sequential significance worth note.

Returning to line 44, a note on the diction is warranted.
In line 46 of the Psalm, we have:

46 How long, YHWH, will you hide yourself? forever? [How long] will your wrath burn like fire?

I will print again line 44 of Marduk 2 for convenience…

44 Like the furious fire god, you burn up hatred

The Hebrew is tib‘ar kəmow ’eš ḥamateka.16 The Akkadian text for Marduk 2:44 is, normalizing the edition of Oshima: ki giri ({d}GIŠ.BAR) ezzi zairi tašarrap. The semantics of these two lines are strikingly similar, the only differences being that the ‘fire-god’ of Marduk 2 is ‘rageful’, whereas it is YHWH’s wrath that burns, and that we have an object ‘enemies’ in Marduk 2. The assonance between Hebrew ’eš and Akkadian ezzu (“furious, angry” — modifying giru) is also curious, though the terms are not cognate or semantically similar.

In any case, returning to the above-cut section, what appears to be being referenced in the hymn’s lines 43-47 is Marduk’s triumph over Tiamat and thus his act of creation. In line of 11 of Psalm 89 we have (my translation):

11 The heavens are yours, and yours too is the earth; the dry land17 and all its abundance, you have established.

Again jumping around, line 7 of Marduk 2:

7 You pour out a flood of abundance to the entirety of the world.

Line 12 of the Psalm may be compared with line 37 of Marduk 2

12 The north (ṣapown) and the south (yamin) you have created, Tabor and Hermon rejoice in your name

37 Nunamnir (ie. Enlil), father of the gods, calls upon your name

Enlil’s name was traditionally understood as “lord wind”.18 The verse in the psalm prima facie has nothing to do with wind, but see Canticles 4:16 “Awake, north [wind] and come, south [wind]” the north wind being ṣapown and the south teman, which is cognate with the yamin of Psalm 89. Tabor and Hermon are each mountains associated with the north and south respectively.

Then there is the wonderfully curious wordplay of Proverbs 27:16 ṣopeneha ṣapown ruaḥ wəšemen yəminow yiqra (of a contentious woman) “Whoever restrains her restrains the (north?) wind and grasps oil with his right hand”. The Septuagint has an entirely different reading, “The north wind (boreas) is harsh by name, but fittingly is called iron”, seemingly a matter of whether the nun of šemen should be read instead as a waw, and requiring this verse to run over into the first word of the next. In any case, it does seem with all the play with ṣ-p-n, the north wind is to be understood in this verse of Proverbs.

Should we understand 89:12 as dealing in winds or merely cardinal directions? It is unclear, but certainly the cardinal directions and the words thereof would have come to the mind of any scribe who may have had Enlil, ‘the lord of the wind’, in mind.

The lines which follow 43 in Marduk 2 must be compared with a few from the psalm. To recapitulate for the sake of convenience once more… (I have supplied my own translation of 49 to capture a bit of playful poetic nuance uncaptured in Oshima)

45 The Ushumgallu-dragon is your rage, you overcome the malevolent
46 You capture the rebellious one, the one who plots and carries out a revolt
47 You burn the evil one, the one who passes through the midst of the uncleanness of hatred
48 You choose the fine ones, you make the one who is not loved propitious
49 You straighten out the righteous man, you flatten out the wicked one

Lines 22-24 in the psalm, during the detailed summary of God’s covenant with David

22 The enemy shall not outwit him; nor shall ‘the son of wickedness’ (ie. the wicked) humble him.
23 I will shatter before him his foes; hating him are those whom I shall smite
24 My faithfulness and my mercy shall be with him; and in my name his horn shall be exalted

These lines, while themselves displaced from one another in the structure of their respective prayer, show the following sequence:

1. That the god will crush the king’s enemies (either at home or abroad)

2. Apposition of hate, evil and enemies

3. Return to the god’s good and his partnership with the petitioner

Another interesting place of comparison are verses 89:25-26 and Marduk 2 96-97. Here the prayer deals with Marduk’s assistance to a petitioner during the ‘river ordeal’ wherein the truth of a Babylonians testimony might be tested by their being thrown in the river and seeing if they survive. The Psalm has:

25 And I will set his [left] hand over the sea, and his right over the rivers
26 He shall cry to me “you are my father, my God, and the rock of my salvation”

Oshima translated lines 96-97 of the hymn as

96 … Lord, in the high wave of a scream
97 You take the hand of the one who cannot (rise to the surface) during a river-ordeal19

The meaning of the word ‘scream’ above, malitû is a bit uncertain, but it appears in the Neo-Assyrian Anzu with apparently a similar meaning (so Jimenez). It in any case appears to be a shout or lament or some such.

We see here (albeit reversed), a petitioner’s shout and God giving that petitioner’s hand mastery of water in apposition. Another question is raised here: traditionally the ubiquitous phrase ‘rock of salvation’ is associated with the idea of a fortress, and internally this is rather sound, but might it also have something to do with the river ordeal? Brought to mind are those children’s cartoons where someone has fallen in a rapid and must grab a rock or branch to be saved.

The next line in the prayer is also curious.

98 The one who is cast into the bed of Namtar, you raise up

ie. the one who has died, Marduk makes live.

Compare with 48 of the psalm

48 Who is the man that lives and does not see death? Can he deliver his life from the hand of the grave?

We have now seen an abundance of evidence, both historical and textual, which seems to correlate Marduk 2 with Psalm 89. We have examined the psalm and the hymns shared unique diction, at times lockstep with one another in the flow of ideas, and other times merely seeming to share a love for the same poetics. If Marduk 2 was truly recited at Akitu, then we can account for it’s presence in the very same place and time which likely lead to some of the influences of Enuma Elish on the Old Testament. Indeed, there is every indication based on the content of the psalm to place it precisely in the Babylonian captivity.

One thing has stood out to me, as far as their differences go: they share an absolute minimum of actually cognate words. Akkadian and Biblical Hebrew do have quite a different lexicon, despite both being Semitic languages, and the roots which they do share are often semantically distinct — but I have to say that I ordinarily would have expected more. I lack any statistics to back this up at this stage, but perhaps this relates to the curious language about the “council of saints”. Could it be that the psalmist had this very prayer in mind, but sought to differentiate as much as possible? And what would be the cause for the psalmist to model his psalm after the prayer? Surely it was not a lack of creativity, we find plenty of that in the Old Testament regardless of the Sitz im Leben.

The main idea of Psalm 89 is actually quite in contrast to Marduk 2. In fact, this is what makes the shared sequencing so striking: Psalm 89 is a lament over God’s covenant seemingly being shattered with the Israelites, whereas Marduk 2 is very much a hopeful prayer of redemption and justice. Perhaps this was the idea: the psalmist in Jobian fashion sought to compose a prayer which semantically would play off the orgiastic hopefulness of Marduk 2, but praising YHWH despite his people’s accursedness, indeed with an entirely different sort of hope. Marduk 2 hopes for the continuation of Marduk’s blessings over Babylon, while Psalm 89 hopes against all hope for the deliverance of the Israelites from an impossible situation. The psalmist, perhaps, sought to show the Babylonians as only ‘fair-weather friends’ of Marduk, in apposing his psalm with Marduk 2.

Bibliography

Cumming, C. G. (1966). The Assyrian and Hebrew Hymns of Praise. AMS Press.

Fadhil, A. A., & Jiménez, E. (2019). Literary Texts from the Sippar Library I: Two Babylonian Classics. Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und vorderasiatische Archäologie, 109(2), 155-176. https://doi.org/10.1515/za-2019-0012

Foster, B. R. (2005). Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature (3rd ed.). CDL Press.

Haubold, J., Helle, S., Jiménez, E., & Wisnom, S. (Eds.). (2024). Enuma Elish: The Babylonian Epic of Creation. The Library of Babylonian Literature. Bloomsbury Academic. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350297425

Heinrich, A. C. (2022). Anzû Chapter Neo-Assyrian. With contributions by E. Jiménez and T. D. N. Mitto. Translated by Enrique Jiménez. electronic Babylonian Library. https://doi.org/10.5282/ebl/l/1/10

Knife, D. W. (1973). Psalm 89 and the Ancient Near East [ThD dissertation, Grace Theological Seminary]. Digitized by Ted Hildebrandt, Gordon College.

Lambert, W. G. (1959). Three Literary Prayers of the Babylonians. Archiv Für Orientforschung, 19, 47-66. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41637089

Lenzi, A. (Ed.). (2011). Reading Akkadian Prayers and Hymns: An Introduction. Ancient Near East Monographs 3. Society of Biblical Literature.

Oshima, T. (2011). Babylonian Prayers to Marduk. Orientalische Religionen in der Antike. Mohr Siebeck.

Seux, M.-J. (1976). Hymnes et prières aux dieux de Babylonie et d'Assyrie. Les Éditions du Cerf.

Worthington, M. (2012). Principles of Akkadian Textual Criticism. De Gruyter.

As may be obvious, texts written down on paper require continuous copying (for the moths and worms too must eat), consequently, a delicate and comely parchment-Venus is sure to meet the ire of the first beholding prude. As such, it is to no benefit of ours that virtually all such texts were solely reproduced by monks and other sorts inclined towards such a reaction, and thus are we poorer.

The Mesopotamians, in all their genius and serenity, while also writing on paper (none of which survives), produced a fantastic volume of witnesses of clay (which is even less biodegradable than plastic) and stone (rather bringing to mind the šut abni ‘the stone ones’ of Ur-Shanabi in Gilgamesh), and as such, their literature suffered no great casualties of the above variety. By this miracle alone are we given an image of the culture of Mesopotamia utterly unadulterated by the curious mixture of vanity and modesty endemic to the four quarters of the world today. Mesopotamian epic poetry, wisdom literature, correspondence and even hymns are often unashamed in making reference to carnal delights and beauty. In every major Mesopotamian Epic work it seems, a reader may stretch themselves for a slow sprig dangling lagging summer bunches from a cuneiform pergola, and sate themselves with primordial beauty plainly in words.

It is not a fruit enjoyed by everyone, sweet as it is, though neither are the mustard panels of a Roman villa; we have become cowards in our austerity.

Indeed, it has become clear that in the internet’s maturity, and perhaps more alarming, in Silicon Valley’s maturity, what once was thought to be everlasting is now nothing. So quatrained the Chaldaean Noah in the first “information age”:

im-matī-ma nāru iššâm-ma mīla ubla
At some time the river rose and brought the flood,
kulīlu iqqeleppâ ina nāri
the mayfly floating on the river.
pānūša inaṭṭalū pān šamši
Its countenance was gazing on the face of the sun,
ultu ullânum-ma ul ibašši mimma
then all of a sudden nothing was there!1

How many mayflies have perished yet in the “information age” presaged to give us all immortality? I would wager, surveying the present situation, that the median unit of thought on the internet has rather more slim chances of survival than the median cuneiform receipt did. After all, we’ve excavated as many as 2 million such tablets, with many more surely yet to be found beneath all that bomb-blasted mud and sand between Cyprus and Shush — an area which at any given time could not have hosted more than a couple dozen million at most, and far fewer who were literate. In our world, with its Billions, in our Internet, with its Billions — it is now clear a relative nothing will remain in 3000-4000 years. It costs nothing to drop a piece of clay in a gutter. Not unlike the manuscripts of Europe, there is a running cost associated with every letter digitally stored.

As such, what remains is sure to be selective, and some may say, “Very well, may it be so! Let our waste slip into the deep as our milky mire slips from the privies of men into the ocean!”, but it is now, more than ever, I argue, sure as the sewer to be more disastrous than any loss of knowledge and thought as has ever occurred.

Medieval copyists redacted and censored often far too strictly, but given the circumstances, could be quite forgiving if they felt a work was important enough. Some, however, clearly delighted in the bright colors of the pagan corpse, were faithful and wise adjuvants in the transmission of these texts to our time. Their motives, in any case, for failing to copy all literature was mostly a matter of resources, not unlike today, and where hard decisions were to be made, they discerned according to spiritual reason.

In actual fact, my only complaint with losing decadent literature is precisely that a corpus devoid of extremity stifles the gradient-thriving creative genius, and indeed the soul as a whole. And, though the medieval scribal complex may have balanced heavily on the austere, their purpose to the soul was as the farmer to his land.

Today, it is not a monastery which determines worthiness of eternal salvation, but a corporation, a spiritual abomination whose purpose is extraction and security. A large corporation is far less risk prone than a scribe who takes it upon himself to copy Apuleius. Such a thing seeks attention, and chiefly, money, but seeks no controversy. The convergence of these constraints is the eventual preservation of the vapid, the pacifying, the apolitical, the areligious, the Potteresque only.

Anyone who has used an “AI” surely has seen this. We are promised a world-changing technology — and a third information age — that cannot say “pussy” “pot” or “piss”: I can think of simply nothing more horrifying.

It’s hardly worth saying that music was an important component of Roman society. All manner of music could be heard in the temples, especially when ritual sacrifice was taking place, and sycophants of various “eastern” (though the easternness of their Roman cults may be easily called into question) gods (ie. Isis, Cybele etc., cf. Apuleius Metamorphoses  VIII.24-27ff, also XI.10f) , would march through the streets with small cymbals or flutes. It has been proven that in Roman comedy, a flutist would be playing for the vast majority of scenes, keeping the actors in rhythm and setting the light mood. "Exibo, non ero vobis morae; / tibicen vos interibi hic delectaverit" (Plautus, Pseudolus 573-573a [Lindsay] "I will leave the stage. For you, I will not be long. In the meantime, this piper will have entertained you."). Horace devotes ll. 202-219 of his Ars Poetica towards music. I could of course go on, but I think the point is adequately demonstrated for our purposes.

How can it be, then, that far too frequently we find an ignorance of these things among those who claim to study classics? Anyone who has explored this territory knows that the blogger here is not alone in their confusion. The answer is quite clear when we consider the history of the study of classics itself, and especially its development as Greek learning became an essential of a proper education. Homer’s folk history and Hesiod’s hymns, exploding out of the darkness of sub-historic Hellas, excited with their mystery and archaism. They were “first” (or the first that we may hope to have) in endless modes, as were a great deal of other Greek grammata, such as Attica’s fine tragedies or the didactics of the colonies.

The reintegration of Greek literature into the European canon required the reconstitution of the study of all ancient literature, which then was in all cases Latin. Once known dimly from internal Latin sources, suddenly known in color through bilingual critique: much Latin literature was inspired, more often directly than indirectly, by some earlier Greek text. The originality and poetically sudden appearance of Homer from (what was thought to be) a brutal primitivism fascinated as the Renaissance elapsed. In phases, Ancient Greek literature (and culture) accreted mystical and mythical connotation as being uniquely proximate to that primitive age before letters, and therefore nearest to Nature and those natural country Gods, to the seeds of Civilization, and all other such elements of Eden.

While such a connotation was almost predictable purely from within Latin alone (the Romans seemed to hold the same romances of Greek. Eg. Lucretius’ patrii sermonis egestas), it grew monstrously in the Romantic period with the notion of an exclusive proximity to Nature and the Universal possessed by Greek (eg. Shelley’s “We are all Greeks”), and surprisingly, maintained momentum well into the Modern, a time when we ought to have known better. This notion existed almost purely in contrast to Latin; A student of both may daily compare the strict legalism of Cicero with the enigmatic wisdom of Plato. We soon would find W. B. Yeats writing to his son’s teacher “My son is now between nine and ten and should begin Greek at once[.] … Do not teach him a word of Latin. The Roman people were the classic decadence.” and Virginia Woolf writing an essay entitled “The Perfect Language” about Greek. Farrell (who I am relying on heavily here, especially 2001) attributes this phenomenon to the fact that Greek was more inaccessible and less well known than Latin, creating something of a mystique and indeed an alluring opacity: the unfamiliar script (untainted by the fonts of modern typesetting), the unfamiliar words – far more unfamiliar than wide-contaminating Latin, which might be seen to have spread over the lexicons of Europe like the Black Death...

What was lost in all of this were the unseen elements of Romanity. That, which, well-sewn by the Italo-Etruscan Villanova Kulturbund, persisted even under the heaviest of Hellenistic pressures. The “ramshackle” religion of Rome and the Roman state did not grow out of nothing, and was certainly not seeded by mimicry alone (Feeney 1998 esp. the introduction). One is reminded of Italic deities such as Minerva or Faunus, who, without an immediate Greek counterpart, were made by Imperial literature or earlier to fit the form and spirit of something Greek: in this case, respectively Athena and the satyr.

The satyr comes up again, in a similar function, when we examine the word “satire”. The lanx satura (“richly fed platter”, sometimes translated “medley”), or according to Ullman (1913), just satura (same meaning) was a form of strictly Italic literature characterized by, earlier, saturnine, and, later, dactylic hexameter, humorous verse on any topic or topics. The very earliest known Latin authors, such as Ennius and especially Lucilius, are known to have produced some of these, and surviving are the later saturae of Horace, Perius, and Juvenal. Some conjecture links them to an Italic spoken form, the “Fescennina Carmina”, though any such relationship is hard to prove. In any case, this was certainly a strictly Roman form, and yet by the Late Latin and Early Medieval periods, we find the spelling “satyra”, by a perceived link between these saturae and the satyr plays of Greek drama. It was only until in the 17th century Casaubon’s genius and tenacity restored the true etymology. Indeed, even today, the paranoiac tendency to seek for a Greek origin in all things Latin has now produced tenuous claims that in fact these saturae are imitative of or may be grouped with Sophocles and the old comedy. Their metrical constraints and composition, however, are not at all comparable, and despite Quintillian’s slavish worship of Greek, even he places satura as a firmly Roman form, “satura quidem tota nostra est” (Quint. Inst. 10 1.93). It is tempting to attempt to interpret this passage with a post-classical conception of what “satire” might be. G. L. Hendrickson produced a great discussion (1927) of this passage, but made this very mistake – he asks what we would consider satire, while acknowledging that Quintillian must have had a quite different conception.

This neurosis of classical philology can be found in many different places other than those which I have already excoriated. For every Latin poem, there is a scholar (or two) waiting to tell you what lost Greek poem was its model, and what miserly scrap of Greek papyrus proves this. Granted, there has been a degree of genius invested in these exercises, and where genius is applied, success often follows. But one must recognize that there has been a degree of mass romance (some would say hysteria) in some of these claims, and especially in the thinly-veiled and widely-held belief of Greek supremacy over Latin (take for instance the prejudices of Basil Gildersleeve, founder of the American Philological Society, on ethnonationalist grounds, as described in Habinek 1998), for reasons which are hardly philological or even vaguely scientific.

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