‘Silver’: A Hurrian Phaethon

Abstract

Abstract It is proposed that the story of the Hurrian deity ‘Silver’, as portrayed in the Late Bronze Age Song of Silver, is a plausible precursor to the classical myth of Phaethon. Shared motifs include the teasing of the young hero, the revelation by his mother of his father’s divine identity, a temporary assumption of power in heaven, a clash with the god of thunder, a disastrous episode involving the Sun and the Moon, and an etymology meaning ‘radiance’. As the Phaethon myth also seems to contain Semitic elements, it is argued that the source of the classical story was the region of northern Phoenicia to Cilicia, or Cyprus.