macedon - Homer between East and West.....with Us

Homer between East and West.....with Us

Friday, 6. February 2009, 04:55:59

There has been a growing trend in Homeric studies to investigate the connections
between Homeric epic and the so-called ‘Ancient Near East’. In this paper I reflect on the
nature of this trend. What is at stake in reading a ‘Near Eastern’ Homer in the current political
and cultural climate? Why are so many scholars of Homer turning to neighbouring disciplines?
What new insights are we hoping to gain and what old certainties are we (not) prepared to
give up? My argument is in three parts. In a first section, I briefly revisit the so-called ‘Troy
debate’ in the German media, a high-profile row over the nature of the city that was excavated
by the late Manfred Korfmann. I argue that the row had little to do with ancient realities and
everything with the cultural and political climate in post-unification Germany. I then turn to
the study of Near Eastern motifs in the Homeric epics as pioneered by Walter Burkert and
Martin West. Once again, I suggest that we are witnessing not so much the disinterested
‘discovery’ of new facts, but a complicated and in many ways contradictory process of
fashioning a new image of Homer, partly at least in response to a gradual change in the
political and cultural climate. In the third and final section of my paper I address some of the
issues raised by my earlier discussion. I ask whether there might be a way of reading Homer
which emphasises continuity between East and West; and if so, what this might mean for the
future of Homeric scholarship.

Between Turkey and Germany
In his recent book entitled ‘Troy and Homer’,1 Joachim Latacz sets out to show that the Trojan
War as described by Homer may well have happened and that the city of Troy, as Homer
describes it, certainly existed. Latacz’s argument draws heavily on recent research in
neighbouring disciplines: Hittite kings of the late Bronze Age were in contact with the kings of
Ahhijawā (Achaean lands); acted as allies of the rulers of Wilusa (Ilios/Troy); and contended for
rule over Millawa(n)da (Miletus). The result, according to Latacz, is (or soon will be) that
“Homer is to be taken seriously”,2 in the sense that major events mentioned in the Iliad and
Odyssey ought henceforth to be treated as historical fact.
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Between East and West
Ever since the discovery and decipherment of major Akkadian and Hittite texts in the late 19th
and early 20th centuries, there has been a growing body of scholarship which studies the
similarities between Greek and non-Greek literatures in the ancient Mediterranean. Much of
this work focuses on epic. Scholars have collected words, passages and entire narratives which
reminded them of Homeric and Hesiodic poetry. Ugaritic Baal ‘who rides upon the clouds’
brought to mind Zeus, the ‘gatherer of clouds’.6 The Sumero-Akkadian Descent of Ishtar read like
a version of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter.7 Egyptian and Mesopotamian wisdom literature
seemed to anticipate the Works and Days.8 Such was the excitement generated by the new
discoveries that few scholars stopped to consider what exactly it was that they had found. All
too often, parallels were left to ‘speak for themselves’, a phrase actually used by West.9 In the
event, they did not always do so. Those readers keen to know what difference the new
research might make to their appreciation of early Greek epic were often disappointed. Thus,
Stephen Halliwell writes in his review of Martin West’s East Face of Helicon:
It is surely surprising that West never broaches the issue of how, if at all, his material
might affect our interpretation of Greek culture.10
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A shared tradition
So far, I have argued that the idea of Homer as a bridge between East and West responds to a
genuine need for reconfiguring the origins of Western literature and culture. I have also
suggested that current scholarship tends to adduce Near Eastern material defensively, in order
to invest Homer with unique qualities, be it in terms of ‘atmosphere’, ‘vividness’, or ‘heroic’
outlook. This last point is of particular interest, for it suggests that what is at stake in the
debates over an ‘Eastern’ Homer is not just short-term political and cultural change, but rather
the much more fundamental problem of how to articulate the Western self as a secular self. It
would be fascinating to see when and where the idea of Western secular heroism surfaces in
current debates about Eastern religious fundamentalism; and what role, if any, the Homeric
poems play in this context. Rather than pursuing this line of enquiry any further, I propose to
embark on a thought experiment: what would happen if we placed less emphasis on Homer’s
uniqueness? Is there scope for discovering genuine common ground between Greek epic
poetry and neighbouring traditions? If so, to what extent would this oblige us to rethink
current assumptions about the nature of Greek epic?
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Conclusion
I started this paper with an apparent paradox: current research on Homer’s sources is clearly
aimed at redefining the roots of Western literature. However, as well as opening up new
perspectives, scholars have also emphasised the difference between Homer and everything
that happened before or elsewhere. As often in the history of classical scholarship, Homer acts
as the vessel into which all myths of cultural origins flow: literature, the alphabet, Western
secularism. ‘Eastern’ literature is left as a foil to the unique achievement of the ‘Western’
master poet, its assorted ‘stories’ giving way to the fully formed heroic art of epic. In response
to this situation, I asked what happens if we place cultural value on what is not uniquely
Homeric. The gods of epic are universal in conception, as is the human condition which they
help to define. It is not surprising to find in early Greek epic the same fundamental grammar of
cosmogonic thought that we see in neighbouring traditions. This does not of course exclude
the possibility that different ideas and motifs may also have travelled between ancient cultures
for different reasons. I simply suggest that Homeric epic may have been international in
conception as well as in ‘fact’. There are reasons for the parallels: they do not just “speak for
themselves”....etc....
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ok..full text it here
Armstrong, Richard and Dué, Casey, eds, Classics@ Issue 3. For the full citation for this article
please consult
www.chs.harvard.edu/publications.sec/classics.ssp.
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my conclusion: