Case Studies

in Transmission

Edited by
Ilkka Lindstedt, Jaakko Hmeen-Anttila,
Raija Mattila and Robert Rollinger

The Intellectual Heritage

of the Ancient and Mediaeval Near East

Edited by
Jaakko Hmeen-Anttila and Ilkka Lindstedt

Case Studies
in Transmission

Edited by
Ilkka Lindstedt, Jaakko Hmeen-Anttila,
Raija Mattila and Robert Rollinger

2014
Ugarit-Verlag
Mnster

Case Studies in Transmission

Edited by Ilkka Lindstedt, Jaakko Hmeen-Anttila, Raija Mattila and
Robert Rollinger
= The Intellectual Heritage of the Ancient and Mediaeval Near East 1

2014 Ugarit-Verlag, Mnster

www.ugarit-verlag.com
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photo-copying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publisher.
Printed in Germany by Memminger MedienCentrum, Memmingen
ISBN 978-3-86835-124-8

Printed on acid-free paper

Contents
Notes on the Contributors

Preface

Epistle 48 of the Ikhwn al-af and Their Ism li Commitment

Carmela Baffioni

11

Die Erfindung eines Kontinents, oder die vier Sulen Europas

Sebastian Fink

33

Assyro-Arabica: Mesopotamian Literary Influence on the Arabs

Jaakko Hmeen-Anttila

53

Coining Continuity? Hellenistic Legacy

in the Coinage of Arsakid Iran and the
Greco-Bactrian Kingdom (ca. 250 to First Century BCE)
Matthias Hoernes

73

Al-Madins Kitb al-Dawla and the Death of Ibrhm al-Imm

Ilkka Lindstedt

103

Homer and the Ancient Near East: Some Considerations

on Intercultural Affairs
Robert Rollinger

131

Cultural Encounters between Rome and the East: The Role of Trade
Kai Ruffing

143

The Microcosm-Macrocosm Analogy

in Mesopotamian and Mediaeval Arabic History of Science
Saana Svrd & Inka Nokso-Koivisto

159

Karaites and Popular Kabbalah:

Cooperation and Conflict in Poland-Lithuania
Riikka Tuori

189

Index

201

Appendix: Figures to the article of Matthias Hoernes

209

Homer and the Ancient Near East

Some Considerations on Intercultural Affairs
Robert Rollinger

Fr Manfred Schretter zum 25. Februar 2014

Beginning with the Prolegomena ad Homerum of Friedrich August Wolf in 1797,

classicists have been constantly, if with various degrees of intensity, concerned with
the origins of the Homeric epics.1 Periods of particularly intensive and keen debates
have often been triggered by key events that sparked public interest in these matters
and released them from the exclusive attention of classicists and ancient historians.
This was the case with the ground-breaking excavations of Schliemann and Korfmann at Hisarlk but also with the recent German discussion and interpretation of
these archaeological discoveries in and around the publications of Raoul Schrott (cf.
Weber 2011). Notwithstanding an evident and occasionally strenuous excitement
that not only marked the representation in the media but also the scholarly handling
of these discussions, these publications nevertheless present a welcome opportunity
to rethink the various problems associated with Homer and to take stock of recent
developments and main lines of thinking in modern Homeric studies. One particular
issue that has been the subject of an increasingly fierce debate over the last decades
has been the significance of the Ancient Near East in the genesis of the Homeric
epics. If this aspect is the focus of the following considerations, it is because in this
context a series of questions can be raised that can in turn give way to deeper
insights and further research.
The first question we must ask is of a fundamental nature. What is the Ancient
Near East and what does the concept and related synonyms (i.e. Asia, Levant,
Orient) actually mean in our context? Did the idea of the Ancient Near East have
an analytic impact in Homeric times, or really any impact at all? Similarly, did the
antipodes Europe/Occident really matter then? Modern historic research has long
since shown that the concepts of Asia and Europe as ideological counterparts
are a comparatively recent innovation, dating back no further than the time of
the Persian Wars, and that therefore the idea of Homer as influenced by European
ideas or culture is an obvious anachronism (cf. Cobet 2011). This is further reinforced by a near-consensus to locate the creator of the Iliad in the milieu of Asia
Minor (Latacz 2011; West 2011, 1527). But while the notion of Europe is a wellexplored problem, there has been considerably less consideration given to the concept of Asia or the Ancient Near East. Here, old-fashioned ideas of a putatively
1

This is an updated and slightly revised version of a paper originally published in German:
Rollinger 2011a.

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Robert Rollinger

uniform cultural block, vaguely outlined by bywords such as despotism, monarchy, or bondage, are still pervasive. This facile point of view has proven itself to
be remarkably resilient in the face of contemporary research and a certain ideological motive is undeniable. In any case there can be no question of a monolithic, culturally determined Ancient Near East. On closer inspection, even the supposed characteristic of bondage as a cultural paradigm proves to be fictitious (cf. Barjamovic
2004; Flemming 2004; Rollinger 2010a, 619622).
There are other aspects of the first half of the 1st millennium BCE that are far
more germane to our purposes and indeed generally to the context of Homeric
tradition. As concerns historical developments, pride of place must certainly go to
the genesis in the 9th century BCE of the Neo-Assyrian kingdom that might justly be
called the first Near Eastern empire (Lanfranchi/Fales 2006). At the heights of its
power and territorial expansion in the first half of the 7th century BCE, that is precisely during that time frame commonly thought to have witnessed the formation of
the Homeric epics (cf. Grethlein 2012, 23f.), it encompassed an area from southern
Cappadocia, Cilicia, the Levant, and (for a time) Egypt in the west to the Iranian
plateau in the east. However, this considerably large empire was no unified or selfcontained entity even though much of the conquered territory was organized into
provinces, more than a hundred of which are known to us by name (Radner 2006).
Parallel to this provincial structure there existed shifting hierarchies and incremental
stages of fiefdoms, dependencies and indirect rule (cf. Lanfranchi 2011). On both
sides of the borders, nuanced and complex cultural and political biotopes must be
assumed that were involved in active and multi-layered communication processes
with each other, with the centres of imperial rule, and with political entities beyond
the borders of the empire. The political and cultural exchange processes that resulted
are now only dimly apparent to us (for the east cf. Lanfranchi/Roaf/Rollinger 2003).
Evidence for these exchange processes can nevertheless be seen in the diverging forms of written records. The empire itself was a core centre of cuneiform culture. Slightly varying forms of cuneiform script based mainly on a syllabic principle
were used to write both the Assyrian and the Babylonian dialects of the Akkadian
language. Outside the empire, this script was only used in Urartu in eastern Anatolia
and in Elam (and probably Anshan) in south-western Iran, where written Akkadian
was more or less the exception, preference being given to the local Urartian and
Elamite languages respectively (cf. Salvini 2012; Basello 2011; Waters 2011).
Further mention should also be made of Cyprus in the west, where the Assyrian king
Sargon II (721705) erected a stele covered in Akkadian script (cf. Mehl 2011).
There is no consensus as to whether parts or the whole of the island were part of the
Assyrian dominion (cf. Smith 2008; Radner 2010; Rollinger 2013).
However, the assumed homogeneity associated with the common usage of
cuneiform script within the Assyrian empire is deceptive. At least from the 8th
century onwards, imperial chancelleries increasingly adopted the Aramaic language
and its distinctive alphabetic script. There must have been a considerable literary
production that, due to the ephemeral nature of writing materials and surfaces such
as papyrus, leather, or wood, is unfortunately lost to us. The cultural diversity evident in the different scripts and languages used within the empire increases yet more
in the western regions and was projected beyond the borders of the empire itself into
the western world. It is here that we find other languages that used their own,

Homer and the Ancient Near East

133

distinct alphabetic systems, as for instance the West-Semitic Phoenician and Hebrew
languages, to name but two examples. Phoenician in particular found wide distribution beyond the Assyrian empire. It is from the Phoenician matrix that other alphabetic scripts developed in the 9th and 8th centuries BCE that permitted written
communications in the Greek dialects of the Aegean and of western Anatolia (cf.
Krebernik 2007). Cyprus is the exception: here the Cypriot syllabary was used to
write the local Greek dialect. In the northern Syrian and Cilician regions Hieroglyphic Luwian enjoyed limited use (cf. Rllig 2011; van den Hout 2011; Aro 2013).
We can thus observe a highly complex process of cultural interaction and
intercultural diffusion encompassing many individual way stations that may
profitably be imagined as a sort of cascading waterfall whose waters flew far beyond
the borders of the Assyrian empire itself. An analogous cultural dynamic, evident
across a wide selection of languages and scripts in the West, does not seem to have
existed in the eastern territories. Though, as we now know, Aramaic had enjoyed a
limited use in western Iran already in Neo-Assyrian times (Fales 2003), this use did
not lead to the development of niche cultures, as it did in the west, that revolved
around their own form of written records. Even so, highly dynamic processes of
change and evolution must be assumed for both the western and the eastern frontier
provinces. This is shown most evidently by the fact that it was precisely in these
border territories that there frequently emerged new powerful political centres that in
the final account not only managed to overthrow the Assyrian empire, but also its
successors. This development can be traced across the longue dure from the tribal
confederation of the Medes up to and including the Macedonian state of Philip II
and Alexander III (cf. Rollinger 2010b; Mller 2014).
In all these cases, the alleged uniformity of the Orient proves fictitious. In its
place, a large number of inter-connected cultural regions emerge, with those regions
on the borders of a given imperial presence typically being especially dynamic.
From the point of view of the imperial centre, these regions might be classified
according to various degrees of distance and closeness. Whereas the Aegean might
justly be said to have been at the extreme periphery, the different cultural regions of
the Levant were noticeably closer. Though the cuneiform script of the East was not
adopted in the Aegean, local forms of writing and literacy developed in parallel with
it, in the form of an alphabetic script adapted from the East that was subsequently
modified for local usage. Cultural impulses and stimuli radiated outwards from the
centre in both directions, but were individually and differently received and recoded
(cf. Rpke 2001 who established the term Recodierung). Let us now look at those
cultural influences.
There is now an established consensus in modern scholarship that the author of
the Iliad has woven cultural influences from those regions under the Neo-Assyrian
empires direct or indirect rule into his narrative (Rollinger 2011c). Beyond this,
there is considerable dissent. The following aspects are of particular interest for our
argumentation:

How should the cultural transfer in the 1st millennium BCE be compared
against similar processes in the preceding millennium?
Which regions should be seen as the key links in cultural exchanges?
What specific form did processes of intermediation assume?

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Robert Rollinger

Finally: How might eastern cultural influences be weighted in a complete

review of the Homeric epics and what are the consequences for a general
assessment of the Iliad (and the Odyssey).

Let us first consider the chronology of cultural transfers. Implied in this is the search
for the how and when of the formation of the Homeric epics. Most scholars would
agree that the Iliad and the Odyssey came into being at the end of the 8th and the
beginning of the 7th century BCE (Kullmann 2011, 114f.; Rengakos 2011, 144146;
West 2011, 1527; Grethlein 2012, 23f.; cf. also Raaflaub 2011). There are still
those, however, who would see the formation and the establishment of the final
versions of both epics as the culminating point of a process reaching back into the
Bronze Age, whereby literary content and poetic form were passed on exclusively
by word of mouth (cf. Danek 2011; see also Rsler 2011). If this scenario is plausible, it presupposes cultural transfer and conversion processes in the 2nd millennium
BCE, including the integration of extra-Aegean cultural properties into the Aegean
tradition. By way of explanation, an important role is given to the Hittite territorial
state in the transmission of literary motifs into western regions. This Hittite state in
central Anatolia developed during the 16th century BCE at the latest, expanded into
western Anatolia and northern Syria in the 14th century and entertained active
diplomatic relations with other contemporary empires (Breyer 2010; Breyer 2011;
Klengel 2011). The written fixation of the Hittite language was accomplished by
using a Babylonian form of cuneiform script, which brought with it the adoption of a
considerable Babylonian scholarship by way of cultural centres in Syria. In addition,
literary motifs and religious texts in the Hurrian language, originating from this
region, reached central Anatolia by way of Cilicia and were fixed in writing using
cuneiform script. Other languages, particularly those related to Hittite, such as
Palaic and Luwian, were also given written form, such as Hieroglyphic Luwian
(Yakubovich 2008; van den Hout 2011). Since there is some circumstantial evidence
for a wide diffusion of elements of the Luwian language in western and southern
Anatolia at this time, there is a certain tendency to impart great meaning to those
language carriers in dispersing literary motifs. This even goes so far as to postulate
an Anatolian monopoly on cultural transmission to the regions in the west for the
closing centuries of the 2nd millennium BCE. This poses a number of problems. Not
only does the fundamental question of how literary motifs in the Aegean region
would have been transmitted across half a millennium to the author of the Homeric
epics after the collapse of Bronze Age civilizations and the loss of literacy that
accompanied it remain, but there is also a further problem: the economic and
cultural ties of the Hittite state to western Anatolia and beyond that to the Aegean do
not seem to have been especially close (Steiner 2011; but see also de Martino 2011;
and now Oreshko 2013). Trade routes appear to have been confined to the southern
approaches of the Near Eastern coastline, with Cilicia and northern Syria being of
particular significance (cf. Singer 2006; Taracha 2006). These contacts cannot
however have been of the same intensity as those attested from the 8th century BCE,
when maritime trade routes grew to be the most important link between east and
west (cf. Rollinger 2007 [2008]).
This in turn leads us to another problem, namely that of possible paths of contact. Though one should not entirely discount land routes across Anatolia, maritime

Homer and the Ancient Near East

135

routes were certainly of greater importance. This conclusion is valid for both the 2nd
millennium2 and the first half of the 1st millennium (Wiesehfer 2011).3 Because of
the fragmentary condition of our sources, we cannot establish with any degree of
certainty which regions were connected to each other to what degree, although, as
has already been pointed out, there is no doubt that the border regions were of
paramount importance in this context. As far as contacts to the West are concerned,
northern Syria and Cilicia were focal points, with the island of Cyprus being
another. This is implied by the testimony of surviving cuneiform tablets in which the
greater region delineated by these territories appears as a zone of heightened
interaction (Rollinger 2007; 2008; 2008 [2009]; 2011b). Further confirmation can be
found in a new interpretation of a small corpus of long-known cuneiform tablets
from Tarsus that attest to the presence of several named Greeks in Cilicia during the
first half of the 7th century BCE (Schmitz 2009a; see also Schmitz 2009b). This
region also demands our attention as being one of the few areas where continuities
from the Bronze to the Iron Age can reasonably be inferred (Rollinger 2004), and it
is precisely in these areas that literacy was preserved to such a degree as to permit us
to postulate the transmission of fixed literary texts (cf. de Martino 2011).4 This is
improbable in the case of western Anatolia and of the Aegean as such. However, the
special role played by Cilicia, northern Syria and Cyprus in transmitting cultural
assets and techniques must not be exaggerated. On the contrary, we should suppose
a large number of channels and a similarly large degree of change. Contacts
certainly not only existed in the border regions, but also within and without the
Assyrian empire itself, on an individual as well as on a collective level. Different
professions will have played their part; traders must have engaged in different forms
of cultural exchange than did mercenaries or practitioners of religious or magical
crafts.5 Simple translation or transposition cannot have been the norm (Patzek 2011;
Rollinger 2014). Rather, we must imagine a considerable number of indefinable
factors influencing the transmission, with oral and written literary motifs bound in a
complex interplay. It is perhaps helpful to imagine a large pool of motifs and narratives, formed by texts and accounts in a plethora of different languages, transmitted
both orally and by written word, and of which we only know random fragments. It is
only the written texts that have been preserved for us; individually and together they
2

According to Simon (2009, 265) the end of the Hittite Empire was directly triggered by the
loss of Cilicia (Hiyawas) and Northern Syria (Karkemish) when the empire lost its access to
the sea.
3
A further very important, but so far entirely neglected source for the prevalence of the
maritime routes linking Lydia with the east is Xen. Cyr. 6,2,22, where the Persian Chrysantas
explicitly states, that the majority of foreign commodities reach Lydia via the sea. Needless to
say that Chrysantas perspective is those of Xenophons own time.
4
Hittite cuneiform writing did not disappear all of a sudden, as has been surmised (Hawkins
2008), but gradually. It appears that during the 14th and 13th centuries the elites of the Hittite
empire were bilingual to a high degree, using Hittite as well as Luwian. At any rate, Luwian
becomes more and more important in the Late Bronze Age (Hawkins 2013; Durnford 2013);
yet, although there was some kind of continuity from the Bronze to the Iron Age, as the usage
of Hieroglyphic Luwian exhibits, knowledge about the empire and its history was mainly lost
(Simon 2009, 258261, 264f.).
5
For the importance of the merchants in this respect cf. also Ruffings contribution in this
volume.

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Robert Rollinger

represent a snapshot of a lively and productive literary creative process. We have

thus but a very limited conception of the starting points of intercultural transfer,
while individual links remain severely obscured. The end product, on the other hand,
is well known to us as the final sum of an indeterminable number of individual
influences. It is a commonality of all forms of transfer, regardless of whether we are
dealing with material or immaterial cultural assets, that transferral also means
transformation: being involved in transfer processes also means transformation, the
adoption of new substance and content (Ulf 2009 [2010]; cf. also Rollinger /
Schnegg 2014). It is not least this complex process of transformation that makes it
difficult to pinpoint specific transferrals.6
Some transfer processes can be reconstructed because better documentation is
available to us. The transfer of literary motifs from Babylonia to Syria and onwards
to central Anatolia in the 2nd millennium BCE shows us the selective character of
these processes (Dietrich 1992), while at the same time revealing that oral and
written transmission should not be seen as mutually exclusive principles but rather
as interconnected ones. The oldest literary remains in cuneiform script from the
middle-3rd millennium BCE already show a form of oral recitation being imitated in
writing (Wilcke 2006). We have already mentioned textual remains of Hurrian
literacy; they exhibit similar features in that previously orally transmitted content
was written down and the oral form preserved (Archi 2009). When such texts were
transmitted into the Hittite language, word-for-word translation was the exception,
preference being given to far-reaching revisions that nevertheless often still retained
the original oral form. Consequently, when analysing the production of literary
texts, a difference must be made between textualization as a simple change of
medium and textualization associated with conceptual change (see Rpke 2004, 44
with n. 12). The latter has been described as secondary textualization (Ulf 2008;
Ulf 2010).
It seems a compelling argument that some form of literacy and textualization
would have been an indispensable requirement for the creation of highly complex
texts such as the Homeric epics (cf. West 2011, 10f., 4868). This process might
best be defined as a form of literary productiveness used to compose a text
(Produktionsschriftlichkeit), as has been suggested in the case of Latin epics. It is
probable that in both cases texts were conceived and drafted in writing but that oral
presentation continued to be an important aspect. The reasons for this change in
medium may have been an attempt at creating connectedness (Netzanschluss), as
Jrg Rpke has said in view of the development of Latin epic, by which he means a
self-placement of ones own society and history within the international tradition of
the Mediterranean world (Verortung der eigenen Gesellschaft und Geschichte in
den internationalen Traditionen der Mittelmeerwelt) (Rpke 2001, 53f.). Such a
wish for self-placement (Verortung) is apparent in the Latin west of the 3rd and
in the Aegean of the 8th and 7th century BCE. There are, however, differences to be
taken into account. In both cases, outside contact set off processes of self-reflection,
which took different forms. The Latin-speaking West, influenced by its close contact
with the Greek world and the adoption of imported Greek literary motifs, sought a
direct link-up (Anschluss), akin to reactions to the Assyrian expansion attested
6

Cf. generally also Hmeen-Anttilas contribution in this volume.

Homer and the Ancient Near East

137

in the Old Testament. With the Homeric epics, however, we find a much more
remote link-up, dictated by a certain cultural distance. Here, there are no direct connections to Ancient Near Eastern mythology and still less a deliberate incorporation
of its heroes into the narrative fabric. What does happen is the adoption of literary
motifs as well as cultural techniques and their conjunction with actors stemming
from local tradition. The potency and large number of contacts with the NeoAssyrian world and the role these impulses played in the self-reflection and selfplacement evident in the Homeric epics can nevertheless be dimly perceived: the
fact that the Homeric narratives encompass (or try to encompass) the whole of the
Greek-speaking world (cf. Danek 2011) and that their geographic perception of the
East, in the case of the Iliad, reaches the very fringes of the Assyrian empire (cf.
Haubold 2011) is of considerable importanceas is the fact that the empire itself is
ignored.
It is thus that we reach our final problem, namely the significance of eastern
contacts for the formation of the Homeric epics. It has already been mentioned that
there is considerable dissent on this point. The more one is inclined to attribute the
genesis of the Homeric texts to a mainly orally transmitted Aegean tradition, the
greater is the tendency to minimize the possible influence of non-Aegean literary
traditions. This tendency is connected to only recently discredited efforts to stress
the singularity of the Homeric tradition and, by implication, of Greek culture and
spirit. This explanation, based as it is on an essentialist notion of nation and
culture, has lost much of its attraction. It is superseded nowadays by explicatory
models that stress the comparability of cultural developments and ask questions
about the preconditions of such processes. This is not to deny their differences and
intrinsic characteristics. No cuneiform text can compare with the enormous scope of
the Homeric epicscompare for instance the epic story of Gilgamesh in its XIItablet form (3000 verses) with the textual body of the Iliad (15,693 verses) or the
Odyssey (12,109 verses). There is still no reasonable explanation for this sudden and
gigantic accumulation of text, though to simply attribute it to ethnic or regionally
distinct cultural patterns is certainly far too simplistic.7 On the contrary, this is a
problem for future, interdisciplinary research, a demand frequently expressed by
scholars: Homer is too important to be left to single-track hellenists (Puhvel 1991,
29), or The problem is too important to be left to single-track Aegeanists or Hittitologists.8
Homer certainly was no Assyrian scribeor eunuchwho translated wellknown texts of cuneiform literature into what is now known as the Iliad. WesternSemitic literature probably acted as a vital link in the transmission chain, but much
if not most of it is forever lost to us, provided that it was ever written down in the
first place. Consequently, Homers secret it not yet discovered and probably never
will be. But critical research can continue to approach these problems and contribute
to a deeper understanding of the nascence of one of the most fascinating examples of
world literature.
7

Concerning its size and range, early Latin epic appears to exhibit the same scope as
cuneiform literature does: Odusia and Bellum Punicum about 1,850 verse lines, Annales
perhaps 18 700 verse lines (Rpke 2001, 52f.).
8
Taracha 2006, 143.

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Robert Rollinger

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