“Hard to put down!” “Exciting interpretations of cosmogonic texts from Chaos to Russell Crowe!” “Don’t wait for the movie!” These are some of the blurbs I might have offered OUP for this insightful and elegantly written book, had I been asked.
Carolina López-Ruiz’s latest work, Greek Mythology: From Creation to First Humans, constitutes the third installment of the new Oxford series World Mythology in Theory and Everyday Life, edited by Tok Thompson and Robert W. Guyker Jr., whose goal is to offer “an innovative and accessible overview of the world’s mythological traditions” (p. ii). As such, the project under consideration achieves the goal of the series with considerable success. In fact, so much so that the title of the book somewhat undersells its content and might well have been called something like Creation Myths from the Ancient Mediterranean World (based on a phrase with which the “Conclusion” concludes, p. 216); for López-Ruiz rightly and expertly provides considerable space for parallel stories from the eastern Mediterranean and their far-reaching influence on Greek mythology. Map 1 on p. 9 visually illustrates the scope of this outstanding contribution to the broad aim of the series.
The publication, apart from the bibliography and index, consists of seven sections: a succinct introduction, four substantial chapters, a short conclusion and a shorter final note on further reading. The introduction, which provides a brief and engaging survey of the transmission and interpretation of mythological texts, begins appropriately from a place of wonder: “We can imagine our sedentary ancestors thousands of years ago thirsty for answers, as they sat in front of the fire or peered into the stary sky from a mountain peak or in the middle of the sea. How far does our universe reach? How did it begin, and when or how will it end? And what is our place in the vast continuum? This curiosity is wired into our human brains. Ancient Greek and Near Eastern texts open the first window into these inquiries in the Western world.” (p. 1).
When I used to give the occasional guest lecture in an astronomy class on the origin of the universe at the University of Washington, I too proceeded from this place of wonder. I asked the students to visualize Fred and Wilma Flintstone some ten months into their marriage at the birth of their daughter Pebbles. They were two, and all of a sudden the stone age couple from Bedrock observed the seemingly miraculous addition of a third. Aha! There emerged a theoretical model for creation. As Fred and neighbor Barney Rubble sat on lounge chairs in the backyard, sipping on brontosaurus beer and staring into the sky one evening, I imagined out loud Fred posing a question: “Barney, do you know how the universe came about?” “No, how Fred?” “Couples having sex. I call it the Big Bang theory. What do you think, Barn?” “I think you might be on to something, Fred.” No wonder, then, that many of their real-life descendants visualized the coupling of Sky and Earth and other primordial beings as a hypothetical explanation for the origin of everything. Continuing to use this anthropomorphic model, they foisted upon their cosmic ancestors the same sort of dysfunctionality they observed in themselves: jealousy, the urge to replace parents (Oh that Freud!) and even divine grouchiness at the inability to sleep because of human noise pollution, as we find in the 18th century BCE Akkadian epic Atrahasis. Creation myths turn out not to be as fantastic as they seem upon our first encounters. If we learn to slow down in our reading, the stories can reveal the humanity of their creators, and the quasi-scientific origins of their narratives insofar as they based them on observation. As López-Ruiz notes, the various tales belong to and reflect the distinct cultures that gave them birth (p. 3), and yet, despite the idiosyncrasies we observe in the multifarious beings set forth in texts of different languages, places of origin, writing systems, and religions, we find natural, monstrous, divine and heroic versions of ourselves. “These stories are timeless precisely because they contain multiple layers that speak to their audiences at different times…” (p. 15).
The first chapter, “From Chaos to Olympos,” offers a wide-ranging account of Greek creation myths enlivened by ancient Near Eastern parallels including the Epic of Gilgamesh, Enuma Elish, Atrahasis, and Genesis narratives, all of which makes a coherent and inclusive summary of the chapter more than challenging.[1] I will thus primarily focus on some of the ANE connections López-Ruiz presents. Hesiod, a veritable Moses, declares upon a mountain top in prophetic style the origin of the world from Chaos to the establishment of Zeus as king of the universe, a move leading from cosmogony to theogony. Kronos’ castration of Ouranos has its origin in the Hurro-Hittite cosmic conflict (discussed at greater length later in the book), while Aphrodite’s title “Kythereia” might originate in the name Kothar, the Semitic equivalent of Hephaestus, Aphrodite’s erstwhile husband. This goddess’ representation as “Mistress of the Animals” in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite associates her with ANE analogues Isis, Hathor, Ishtar and Ashtart. On pp. 45-46, López-Ruiz questions the reason why Gaia would create the serpentine Typhon as a destructive threat to her own offspring. Her question could well be posed to Yahweh, who placed the serpent in the Garden of Eden. In the Iliad (14.201, 302), Hera refers to Ocean and Tethys as the primordial parents. As others have suggested, Tethys appears likely to have originated in the goddess Tiamat (salt water) of the Babylonian creation myth Enuma Elish (incorrectly identified as Atrahasis on p. 51) as well as the Ugaritic and Hebrew tehum (“deep sea”). The Iliadic passage thus hints at an ANE connection not present in Hesiod. The chapter concludes with an extended discussion of Orphic cosmogony and the emergence of Dionysus’ importance in myth and cult, to which the author also returns later in the text.
Chapter 2, “First Humans and their Gods,” focuses more on Greek myths, noting that, different from the Hebrew Genesis, humans are not “central to the creation narrative” (p. 72) and, of particular interest and importance, that Greek accounts of human creation tend to be local and for this reason eschewed in Hesiod’s primarily Panhellenic composition. In her discussion of Prometheus’ deceit of Zeus and the creation of Pandora, López-Ruiz offers the enticing notion that “Pandora perfectly mirror’s both Prometheus’ sacrifice, since she is a deceitful offering attractively wrapped up, and the stolen fire, since she is at once necessary and desirable but also burning, unpredictable, and destructive” (p. 76), “a feminine ‘Trojan Horse’” (p. 77). Human devolution as observed in Hesiod’s “Ages of Man” model, paralleled in Persian, Hebrew and Indian stories and evocative of the divine “succession myth,” provided audiences with a vaunted connection with the Heroes of the previous race, with whom historical kings associated their family lines, and consequently with links to a golden age and ultimately the origin of the world. In López-Ruiz’s reading, the Flood Story constitutes a moment in time when an earlier era of divinely born heroes came to an end.
Human creation narratives among Greeks, as López-Ruiz observes, reflect local products largely by way of autochthony (e.g., Theban Spartoi and Athenian Erichthonius), often combining foreign elements, such as the Phoenician Kadmos in Thebes. Orphic mysteries, on the other hand, offer an account of human genesis that transcends such parochial traditions: humans were created from the residue of the Titans who had consumed Dionysus and were then blasted by Zeus. Since in some sources Prometheus created humans, the Orphic myth similarly underscores our Titanic origin. The chapter concludes with a discussion of Hesiod’s story of Pandora’s pithos and its surprising inclusion of hope among the evils. As the story has its origin in sacrifice and marriage, López-Ruiz finds therein two critical needs: food and sex. Both are critical for the survival of the race, not to mention the raison d’être of the gods who rely on our worship (p. 105). In 1967, the original Star Trek series explored this very topic in Who Mourns for Adonais (sic)” (Season 2.2). In that episode a rejected Apollo ultimately joins the other gods who had left earth eons before because mortals no longer needed or wanted to worship them, a possibility hinted at in the conclusion of Ray Harryhausen’s Clash of the Titans (1981), as poignantly discussed by Hera and Zeus (Claire Bloom and Lawrence Olivier respectively). López-Ruiz discusses the descendent of the latter in the final chapter.
The third chapter, “Facing East,” whose title nods to Martin West’s seminal The East Face of Helicon (1979), daunts the attempt by any would-be reviewer to summarize its wealth of information about ANE myths, both those long familiar, such as in the Hebrew Bible, and those only rediscovered at the beginning of the 20th century. As noted, “(t)hese recovered narratives have given us access to new universes of literature and mythology, and it is fascinating to uncover the ways in which Greek myth-telling, knowingly or not, interacted with these contiguous traditions” (p. 114). Near the end of the chapter, López-Ruiz suggests that festivals and rituals, such as the Greek Panhellenic venues and their ANE analogues, might have generated the opportunity for such cultural, literary and religious exchanges. Regardless of how this transpired, the material cited in the chapter makes it clear that these exchanges doubtlessly occurred. The more familiar account of creation in Genesis provides an apt point of departure, as the prominence of water parallels the same in the Babylonian Enuma Elish, with each storm god, Yahweh and Marduk, establishing components of time. Even though Egyptian myth is different in so many ways, especially given their geographical location and environmental realities, the resurrection of the sun every day from his nightly battle with his serpentine nemesis, Apep, underscores its focus on the measurement of time (p. 137). López-Ruiz’s lively discussion of the Hurro-Hittite myth “Song of Birth” definitively establishes Hesiod’s debt to this tradition in his succession myth in the Theogony. The handy table on p. 128 catalogues the parallelisms between these texts and includes related items in the Enuma Elish. All three accounts describe the emergence of a storm god who represents “a new cosmic order” (p. 130).
The rediscovered Ugaritic Baal Cycle also focuses on an emergent storm god who defeats a serpentine monster on the same mountain on which Zeus had defeated Typhon, Saphon/Zaphon, and to whom López-Ruiz compares the Hebrew Leviathan (p. 135). Though there is much more to this chapter, I would be remiss in not calling attention to the outstanding comparison between the Sumerian/Babylonian accounts of the Flood Story that survives in Atrahasis (mentioned above) and the Epic of Gilgamesh. Not dissimilar to what we observe in Orphic myth, humans represent a combination of clay and the blood of a sacrificed god, the latter of which provided intelligence for the new creation. Divine desire to destroy human overpopulation by way of a cataclysmic flood was thwarted by the wise god Ea, who instructed Atrahasis to build a boat. In the earlier Sumerian version, its Noah, Ut-Napishtim, even sent out birds to ascertain a time to disembark. López-Ruiz’s chapter manages to account for the major surviving ANE myths of creation, each of which possesses its own complexity of content and transmission, with remarkable clarity and, what is more, in a relaxed style that makes reading such seemingly disparate material a pleasant romp of discovery for those unfamiliar with the material.
In the fourth and final chapter, “Resilient Myth,” López-Ruiz explores the reception of Greek and ANE creation and related stories beyond the strictly mythopoeic era along two paths: literary (e.g., Apollonius of Rhodes) and philosophical (e.g., pre-Socratic philosophers and those who later interpreted the myths by way of allegorical and/or Euhemeristic interpretations). A comment I found especially interesting describes the literary project of Greeks and Romans vis à vis the ancient myths: “What the Hellenistic centers and later the Romans were doing with earlier Greek literature—learning it, copying it, rewriting it, translating it—was already done by the Akkadians from Babylon with the earlier Sumerian language and literature, and by the Assyrians with older Akkadian literature from Babylon, as exemplified in their long relationship with the epic Enuma Elish” (p. 169). Such reverence and perseverance secured an extended shelf-life for age-old stories at risk of being lost. López-Ruiz offers brief descriptions of a variety of individuals who engaged these tales with various approaches: Berossos, Manetho, Lucian, Philo of Alexandria, Philo of Byblos, Josephus, Plato, Vergil, Ovid, Porphyry, the Byzantines, and Michaelangelo in the Sistine Chapel. The final section of the chapter looks at renditions of cosmogonic accounts in film, graphic novels and video games. Above I alluded to the fact that the author included a discussion of the epigonal Clash of the Titans (2010), but I found far more engaging López-Ruiz’s description of Noah (2014), a film starring Russell Crowe (misspelled as Crow, including in the index). The cinematic narrative includes an orally transmitted account of creation imagined as a big bang leading to an evolutionary process à la Darwin culminating in the world as we know it. “The Creator,” from Noah’s understanding of the impending flood, wants to rid the world of humans who have caused planetary devastation. And Noah was about to … no spoilers here! López-Ruiz makes it clear that myths of, and associated with, creation lived on beyond their original compositions in the literary, philosophical and theological works of writers and artists of all epochs and still now in the imagination of cinematographers, gamers and graphic artists.
The book contains a small number of misprints, none of which detract in the slightest from the substantial contribution that Greek Mythology: From Creation to First Humans makes in support of our appreciation of the critical role that ANE mythology played in the evolution of Greco-Roman wonderment about the origins of the cosmos and the presence of humanity within. My recommendation: don’t wait for the movie!
Notes
[1] At note 1 on p. 112, López-Ruiz states that she uses the term “Near East” out of simplicity, appropriately observing that this represents a Eurocentric combination of Middle East, West Asia and North Africa. With the same proviso I will employ her terminology moving forward in this review, abbreviating ancient Near East as ANE.