Myths of Kingship in Greece and the Near East

Christopher Metcalf joins me in the Lesche to discuss his new book Three Myths of Kingship in Early Greece and the Ancient Near East, as well as the potential that Ancient Near Eastern texts and literary traditions have to shed light on early Greek ones -- and vice versa.

Ancient texts

• Gilgamesh
• The Hebrew Bible
• Various Sumerian and Akkadian texts about Sargon, Dumuzi/Tammuz, and Inanna
• Iliad, esp. Book 1
• Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite
• Herodotus Book 1, esp. on Gyges and Cyrus the Great
• Ctesias, Persika
• Sophocles, Oedipus Rex
• Euripides, Ion

The BM text on Inanna that Christopher edited is:

Marie-Christine Ludwig and Christopher Metcalf (2017), "The Song of Innana and Išme-Dagan: An Edition of BM 23820+23831,"  Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und vorderasiatische Archäologie 107: 1-21.

Also mentioned

• Works by Jean Bottéro
• The Electronic Babylonian Library
• George, Andrew (2003) The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Critical Edition and Cuneiform Texts. Oxford.
• West, M. L. (1997) The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry. Oxford.
• Worthington, M. (2010)  Complete Babylonian Beginner to Intermediate Course: A Comprehensive Guide to Reading and Understanding Babylonian, with Original Texts (Teach Yourself).

About our guest

Christopher Metcalf is Associate Professor in Classical Literature at the University of Oxford. He is interested in the languages, literatures and religions of early Greece and the ancient Near East. He grew up in continental Europe, and came to the UK to study first Classics and then Ancient Near Eastern languages. In his research he enjoys combining detailed philological work, such as text editions, with larger-scale comparative studies of literary and religious aspects of the ancient world. He is the author of The Gods Rich in Praise in Early Greek and Mesopotamian Religious Poetry (2015), Gods and Mortals in Early Greek and Near Eastern Mythology (2021), and now Three Myths of Kingship in Early Greek and the Ancient Near East (2024).

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Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!

Podcast art: Daniel Blanco
Theme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using Sibelius

This podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study.

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