The Politics of Beginnings: Hesiod and the Assyrian Ideological Appropriation ofEnuma Eliš

Abstract

AbstractThis article proposes a new way to understand Near Eastern literary and mythological parallels in Hesiod’sTheogonyby focusing on the meaning of these parallels for a contemporary Greek audience. In particular, a case study analyzing a parallel shared by theTheogonyandEnuma elišis pursued here to illustrate this approach’s utility. This new approach draws partly on methodologies borrowed from the study of globalization and combines these methodologies with recent insights into the ideological motivations for Greeks’ deployment of Oriental(izing) art in the Orientalizing Period (ca. 750 – 650 BCE). Rather than focusing on individual parallels out of context or on diachronically stable elements that creation stories around the eastern Mediterranean shared, this article instead reconstructs a contemporary ideological background with the Neo-Assyrian Empire at the center of a globalizing Mediterranean. Because the Assyrians investedEnuma elišwith new ideological meaning at this time and broadcast this through their propaganda, the Akkadian creation epic could take on new meaning in an international context. It is consequently possible that specific correspondencesEnuma elišand theTheogonyshare show Hesiod subverting Assyrian ideological discourses. The subjects discussed here have implications for our broader understanding of Greek-Near Eastern interactions of the Orientalizing Period.