Pharaoh Akhenaten, the Aten, and the History of Ideas (II)

[Mail sent to a specialist in ancient astronomy on February 15, 2019. It is a response to a mail of the 28th January, 2019.]

[...]

I was a bit coy about Akhenaten - there are still things turning up. And some things need more thought. However, the 400 sacrificial tables at Akhenaten’s new city foundation at Akhetaten (the ‘horizon of the Aten’) isn’t new information, but often it is a detail which isn’t mentioned in discussions.

Unlike most Egyptian temple complexes, the temple is open to the sky. As you are probably aware, Akhenaten, at least towards the end, was in conflict with various priesthoods, possibly because his new religious dispensation made himself and his family the sole conduit to the bounty of the gods. Hence the hacking out of references to Amun by his followers, and the hacking out of representations of Akhenaten and the Aten by those whose hegemony was being threatened.

I think Akhenaten or his officials did a calculation about the number of sacrifices performed daily throughout Egypt across all the major priesthoods, and set out to perform the same number of daily sacrifices at Akhetaten. It could not be said therefore, that insufficient sacrifices were being made. This of course is a hypothesis, and is not so far supported by any texts. But to have so many sacrificial tables in one temple means that they served a real rather than a purely symbolic function.

I agree with everything you said about Hamlet’s Mill. And you are correct that academics have ways of disguising what they don’t know, or aren’t sure about, and there is plenty of that in the book. Having an academic career can often be like walking a tightrope over a bed of burning coals, if you are trying to open up uncharted territory. Most academics deliberately avoid risking their reputations with speculative work, and do more boring stuff instead. We should be grateful to Santillana and von Dechend for staying the course and producing a pioneering work, even if the result is difficult and a sometimes frustrating read.

Sometimes of course they know something, but can’t say it, because the insight is something beyond what can be supported by academic evidence, or is beyond what colleagues can accept as credible explanation. This happens more often than you might think. My most important Assyriological contact wrote a whole paper (72 pages) on a body of ideas shared by the scholars in the royal court in the 1st and 2nd millennia BCE, without overt mention of the most important implication of his discussion [...]. I wrote and told him what that implication was. He agreed in his reply, but is still coy about discussing the matter with his peers. It is not always possible for an academic scholar to say what he thinks in public. Sometimes reading academic papers is a bit like reading code.

The H A Rey book is probably as important as you say, but I have not yet read it. I will let you know when I have. It can be hard to know the forms of the constellations in the distant (and not so distant) past. Re-interpreting the shapes according to the details found in the related myths is probably the only way.

When I mentioned the image of an Egyptian god discussed at a lecture in Cambridge (after which I was nearly run down by Stephen Hawking – I had no idea his wheelchair could make around 15 miles per hour), I wasn’t referring to the question of whether an image of a god is a representation of it, or the god itself. What was strange about the image was that the statue was a representation of a representation of the divine, since it was mounted on a sled. I have no idea what significance that image was meant to have, but its existence is a mark of the sophistication of the Egyptian mind,
which saw the physical world in terms of representations (and sometimes representations of representations).

I take your point about the images of the divine in the constellations being representations of things which have a different (and transcendental) kind of existence – without physical form as we understand it. You refer to this as ‘the invisible realm’, which is fine. I generally refer to this realm as ‘the plenum’. I think we both mean the same thing, but we can discuss that as we go.

Representation is a serious business as you point out, and even now, in various places. I used to have difficulty with the humanist tradition in western scholarship, which encouraged the idea that if you wanted to have some of the qualities of Cicero (for example), then you should read the entirety of his extant work, and regularly. And learn to write text in his style. I never liked this at all, since my attitude was that you should read, interpret and understand an author. But I now understand this approach as stemming from the idea that to represent something is to be that something – to some degree at least.

I’ve taken on board your pointers to blog posts, and how to search for some of them. I’m now reading your stuff on a regular basis. And thanks for the chart, and clarification of the role of Ophiuchus. I’m sure you are right. I was struck by the coincidence of the image turning up when it did, and being such a great example.

The article ‘The Horizon of the Aten’ is one I’m still brooding over, but my experience is that it is likely to be written over a couple of days when I least expect it. But you can ask questions in the meantime. It is a partner to the article ‘Polytheism, Monotheism, and the Cult of the Aten’. At: http://shrineinthesea.blogspot.com/2018/04/polytheism-monotheism-and-cult-of-aten.html


Best regards,

Thomas

Reviewer Notes for 'The Sacred History of Being' (2015)

Notes on Part One:

The Preface gives an outline overview of the book and its parts, and something of the context. One way to look at the book and its subject is as an extension of A.O. Lovejoy’s The Great Chain of Being, which examined the idea of Plenitude from the Classical Greeks onwards. SHB provides an extra nine hundred years to the history of the idea of Being, taking it back into the 14^th century B.C.E.

The first chapter explains something of the authors background, and how he came to approach the past from the point of view of the history of the idea of Being, and came to study ancient languages and history in London.

Historians of philosophy treat the 5^th century B.C.E. as the proper start of sophisticated philosophical thought, as we now understand it, with figures such as Parmenides, Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle as the principal figures. It comes as shock to find Plato recounting the immense age of philosophy in his dialogue The Protagoras. This is the subject of ‘How Old is Philosophy?’, and ‘The Arrival of the Idea of Being’

‘The West and the Other’ explores the way western modes of thought are inverted from those in the east.  ‘The Golem’ is about how it is possible for things present in bodies of evidence to remain invisible. When the SHB project began, I expected it to be difficult to find supporting evidence. In fact it is present in vast quantities both in ancient texts and in the archaeology. But two centuries of scholarship have glided past this evidence, as if it is not there.

‘Change and what is Permanent’ looks at some of the ideas which are present, but which are not much studied. These are abstractions, which are normally associated with the philosophical explosion of the 5^th century B.C.E. in Greece, but are major components in thought from earlier periods. The human capacity to deal in abstractions is, as a corollary of the notion of cultural progress, assumed to have developed first in Greece. This a poor frame in which to try to understand ancient thought.

The discussion which occupies the rest of Part One of SHB concerns the Ontological Argument, which has been the mainstay of the understanding of the nature and reality of God in the west, since Anselm. The point of this extended discussion of this argument is to show that it isn’t really about the nature of the divine at all, but about the properties and attributes of the divine. In other words, it is loosely argued, and assumes that the frame of time, space and the underlying reality of the world (whatever that might be), is something which exists apart from the nature of God.

This isn’t how divinity was understood or discussed in the ancient world. To argue in this way puts an insuperable barrier between ourselves and the possibility of an understanding of the divine in antiquity, and makes it impossible for us to understand the relationship between religion and philosophy.

The chapters are:

A Sense of the Past.
How old is Philosophy?
The Arrival of the Idea of Being.
The West and the Other.
The Golem.
Change and what is Permanent.
The Ontological Argument.
The Ontological Argument in Anselm.
The Ontological Argument in Descartes.
The Nature of Reality in Berkeley.
Hume and Kant on Reality.
The End of the Ontological Argument.

Notes on Part Two:

Part two explores ancient Greek ideas about the Divine, and the arguments which were used. It looks in detail at argumentation which appears in Plato’s work, and also at ideas which are reputed to have been part of the doctrines of Pythagoras.

‘The Sweet Song of Swans’ examines the nature and history of the scholarship around the work of Plato, which is contained mainly within the period of the past two centuries. The Platonic corpus is problematic. It appears to be inconsistent. Plato was still writing at 80 years of age, and so it seems possible that Plato changed his views over time, and this is reflected in half a lifetime of writing. On the other hand, there is no evidence that Plato’s Academy was a research institution, and so there is no reason to assume that his views changed during that half a lifetime. Those modern scholars who take this view have a problem however, since they have been unable to dig out the consistent doctrine (hoary with age) underpinning the weaving discourse of the dialogues.

The late neoPlatonic philosopher Olympiodorus gives us some clues as to the reasons for the form of Plato’s discourse. Further clues come from close analysis of some parts of Plato’s dialogues, particularly in the Timaeus and the Sophist.

Plato often refers to looking to the ‘one true thing’. That ’one true thing' is Being itself, which he characterises as ‘The Good’. It never changes, it is entirely itself, and it is the goal of the philosopher to rise through the forms to the form of the good, and to return again, with knowledge of beneficial things.

J.G. Frazer once said that nothing useful could be said of the idea of Being. This was flying in the face of the whole of antiquity, whose civilizations articulated many aspects of the nature of Being as part of their understanding of the world. ‘Eleven attributes of Being’ discusses these, and why they had such importance in antiquity.

‘Pythagoras on Totality’ concerns a doctrine which was understood both in Mesopotamia and in ancient Greece. The idea can be traced back to the middle of the second millennium in Mesopotamia. Pythagoras is said to have learned of it in a lecture at Babylon after its fall to the Persians. Plato knew of it, and mentions the doctrine in his Timaeus. Once again, it is the idea of the ‘all’ being the location of all knowledge. It is the principal goal of the philosopher to access the totality of all reality. The distinction we customarily imagine to exist between philosophers and priests in antiquity, more or less breaks down at this point.

‘Solon in the court of Croesus’ is a re-examination of one of the most famous stories from antiquity, as told by Herodotus. There are details in the story which do not make sense without some analysis. In fact he is telling us about the importance of completion in understanding whether something is good or bad. He also connects the life of man with the cosmos using an unusual selection of numbers.
 

If we look closely at Homer’s Iliad (Book Eighteen in particular), we can see ideas in the text which are later reflected in Plato’s writing, which suggests strongly that Plato was writing about a body of ideas which was present in the late Bronze Age (discussed in the chapter 'Being in Homer').

The chapters are:

The Sweet Song of Swans.
The Academy.
The Platonic Theory of Being.
Plato’s Theory of Vision.
The Paradox of Knowledge.
Eleven attributes of Being.
Pythagoras and Totality.
Solon in the court of Croesus.
The Complexion of the Dead.
Being in Homer.

Notes on Part Three:

Ideas about water and ocean are held in common around the Mediterranean in the first and second millennia B.C.E. These ideas are associated with creation and the generation of life. They are also associated with the idea of abundance, which features in the Babylonian creation myth, performed each year by the King and the priests. The liturgy tells us about the intellectual frame of their world, as they understood it.  The physical world is a place of refuge, created by the gods to ensure the well-being of human life. The King is the earthly embodiment of the King of the gods, Marduk, whose character is described in detail. Each of his qualities enables him to maintain the good order of the world. Which tells us important things about how the gods were understood.

Israel suffered from the Assyrian addiction to war and cultural depredation. The Hebrews also spent some time in exile in Babylon, which gave them an insight into Mesopotamian thought about the Divine. Or was that insight garbled by the Hebrews, because they were engaged in a political and military struggle with their neighbours? ‘The Idea of Being in Israel’ considers this question.

The close connection between Hebrew and Assyrian thought was demonstrated by Simo Parpola in the early nineteen-nineties,  who showed that the Jewish Kabbalah is a close analogue of the Assyrian sacred tree. The Assyrian sacred tree is never described in detail in texts, though it is ubiquitous in Assyrian iconography. However if the principal Assyrian gods are placed within the structure of the Kabbalistic tree, with their associated god numbers, the fit is perfect. Formerly the Kabbalistic tree was understood to have been devised sometime in the early middle ages, possibly drawing on gnostic thought. If it is as old as the Assyrian sacred tree, then the history of intellectual thought as we have it is wrong.

The final part of the book concerns the installation of statues of the gods in both Assyria and Babylon. The revelation of close examination of the texts is that they are not talking about installing images of the gods, but the gods themselves. The rituals are described in detail, which gives an extraordinary insight into the minds of the scholars in the royal courts of Assyria and Babylon, and suggests we need to alter our perceptions of how divinity and the gods were understood in the first and second millennia B.C.E.

The postscript summarises how we might now understand the concept of Being, and the meaning of the representation of the gods, in both ancient Mesopotamia, and in ancient Greece.

The chapters are:

Ocean and the Limit of Existence.
Creation.
The Fifty names of Marduk.
The Idea of Being in Israel.
Understanding Creation as a Sacred Tree.
Being, Kabbalah, and the Assyrian Sacred Tree.
The Making and the Renewal of the Gods.
The Ritual sequence and its purpose.
The Nineveh ritual.
The Babylonian ritual.
Finding the Name of the Sacred Tree.
Postscript.

Notes on the Appendices:

It is a strange fact that neither of the two premier universities in England in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, managed to get the writings of Plato, Aristotle, and the neoPlatonists into English translation before a private individual did, at the cusp of the two centuries. The work was done by a scholar of great gifts, Thomas Taylor, supported by a private benefactor. He chose to undertake the translation of Plato and Aristotle, and the neoPlatonists, because he did not recognise the notional division between them which has taken root in western academia since the Enlightenment. Post-Enlightenment scholars like to understand Plato outside of a theological context, which doesn’t at all square with the focus of his writing. Plato would have been utterly dismayed to be read in this way, but the neoPlatonists are clearly talking theology, and so they need to be kept apart for the purposes of an academic and untheological understanding of Plato. I’ve included a mildly redacted piece by Thomas Taylor, which explains why Plato’s discussion of the one and the ineffable is a theological matter of some importance.

The appendix on the story of the first sage in Babylonia is included to amplify what we know of the Babylonian understanding of how knowledge is acquired. It is acquired from Being itself, represented by the ocean and the ocean depths, because Being is the all, and all knowledge is necessarily already there. So a conversation with eternity, which is what the all is, is the principle source of knowledge of good and beneficial things.

The extract from the annals of the Assyrian King Ashurbanipal on the exercise of kingship shows the importance attached to the idea of excellence in ancient Assyria, and that a concern with excellence was not an invention of the Greeks. Ashurbanipal lived in the seventh century B.C.E. Before now this significant passage had not been retranslated since the late nineteenth century. The Assyriologist Simo Parpola was kind enough to provide a new translation for me in 2005.

The appendices are:

Thomas Taylor on the Ineffable principle.
Oannes and the Instruction of Mankind.
Ashurbanipal on the exercise of Kingship.
Select Bibliography.
Abbreviations



Thomas Yaeger, April 10, 2018. Chapters added, September 2018.

Topics 5: Before 'The Sacred History of Being'

Much of the text which follows is from a document ('Topics 5') produced on December 30^th, 2002. It is a list of topics connected with ancient religion which are what we might understand as a technical substratum to religious thought. By this I mean something which underpins a number of ideas which might be found elsewhere, and in some other form, in the textual remains, but which is based on physical analogies with the properties and attributes which were understood to have some connection with the Divine.

I will expand on the first three items on the list.

Things like the deliberate breaking of objects at a ritually significant moment, before being thrown into the water at Flag Fen (a site in England of great ritual importance in ancient times), might have depended on the association of water with the Divine. This was an association which was made in a number of cultures, including Mesopotamia, Phoenicia,  Persia, Egypt, in Israel, and in Greece. Why this association? There are so many reasons, including the fact that water has no form, no colour of its own, and is everywhere. It was conceived to surround the world, and to signify abundance and generation.

The pursuit of distinctive excellences in design around the Polynesian islands might have happened because of the notion that the Divine can be understood as that which is the most excellent of things, and that pursuing excellence in the design of ritual tattoo designs was therefore an attempt to emulate one of the qualities of the Divine.

The alternation of open and closed lotuses in both Egyptian and Assyrian designs, most often in the design of carpet edges and thresholds, is usually treated simply as a matter of artistic design. But if the concept of the Divine in Egypt and Assyria involved the idea that whatever the divine is, it is necessarily at the edge of physical reality – at the limit of what physical reality is, then we can understand the association between the threshold and the alternating design, as a representation of the Divine as something which necessarily embraces the possible states in which things can exist. In the case of the lotuses, they can be open or closed, and at the limit of physical reality, they are in both states. We know in the case of the ritual for the inauguration of divine statues in Assyria, the ritual made special use of thresholds during the process.

And so on.

I’d been pursuing this interest since 1991 or thereabouts. There is a first outline of what became The Sacred History of Being from early 2003, which was worked up into chapters and sections, which were to deal with a number of items in the list. 

The actual draft which I worked on up to 2005 retained a number of elements of the outline, but it became clear that it was an unworkable way to make the case I wanted to make, which was the idea that the conception of a singular divinity lay somewhere behind the multiplicity of gods in the ancient world. Too many cultures, and too much detail.  I needed to do it some other way. I decided that a detailed exploration of the technical substratum would wait, and that it would be easier to discuss if the conception of a singular divinity had already been explored.

Here is (an edited) version of the list -

-Flag Fen: pattern of distribution of ritual objects in the lake/bog (broken/intact).

-Geographic array of excellences pursued by Polynesian islands (tattooing, stone carving, etc).

-Decorative motifs in Near Eastern and Egyptian Art: the alternation of open and closed lotus flowers.

-Decorative motifs in Near Eastern Art: the corridor/infinite regression of doorways in altar design (see Mastaba).

-The Omphalos in Greece and Babylonia.

-The concept of the Boundary and the limit in antiquity (Greece, the Near East, and Egypt).

-The concepts of the mean and the extreme in Greece.

-The concept of completion in antiquity (Greece, Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, Sumer, Persia).

-The concept of Kingship in Antiquity (Greece, Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, Sumer).

-The zoo in Assyria.

-The concept of the Museum in Greek Egypt and Assyria.

-The concept of the Library in Greece, Greek Egypt, Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, Sumer and Rome.

-The concept of fate in antiquity.

-The concept of ‘kairos’ or ‘right time’ in antiquity.

-The concepts of ‘the same’ and ‘the different’.

-The concepts of ‘the little more’ and ‘the little less’.

-The infinitely small and the infinitely great.

-The collection of augmentations and reduplications.

-Metaphor in antiquity.

-Metonymy in antiquity.

-Possession in antiquity (Assyria, Greece, Babylonia).

-The concept of sacred space in Greece, Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, and Sumer.

-The conception of the otherworld in Greece, Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, Sumer, Rome (etc).

-The conception of ‘reality’ in Greece, Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, Sumer, etc.

-The concept of virtue (excellence) among the Greeks (Athens and Sparta).

-The concept of  virtue (excellence) among the Assyrians, Babylonians, Egyptians, and Sumerians.

-Excellence and discipline in antiquity.

-The concept of ‘the other’ in antiquity.

-The listing of objects by their virtues (or accidental characteristics) (Sumer)

-Accidental property or virtue?

-The concept of transcendence and the transcendent in Assyria, Babylonia, Egypt, Greece and Sumer.

-The problem of transcendence in antiquity.

-Markers of the transcendent in antiquity.

-The pure and the impure (are priests pure or impure?)

-The problem of the priest.

-Hair and Nails (extremities).

-The concept of the foreign.

-The living and the dead (differences and similarities)

-Do statues live?

-The lives of statues.

-Movement and the inanimate

-Eternity (and the millions of years)

Gk ‘zoon’ (Hdt).

-Mastaba tomb to multiple mastaba tomb (pyramid) (augmentation and reduplication)

-The conception of the Divine in Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, Sumer and Greece.

-Can a man become a god while alive?

-Can a man become a god at all?

-Divine honours in Greece and Persia.

-The Cult of the Great Gods

- Augmentation and reduplication (the emphatic in antiquity).

-The pursuit of the Great.

-Airs, waters and places before Plato and Aristotle (direction and geography in the ancient world).

-Loosing and Binding (Greece and Israel).

-High Places (Britain, Greece, Israel, Canaan).

-The temple as the Gods house.

-Filling the temple with gravel (Sumer) – completion.

-The puzzle of the palace and the temple.

-The King and the High Priest.

-The Shamanic aspects of King and Priest.

-The concept of the Soul in Greece and Egypt.

-The Pythia (old woman) wearing young woman’s clothes.

-Reduplication of social structures in Roman society (consuls and tribunes, praetors and aediles).

-‘Consular Tribunes’

-The fabrication of Roman history (the 1^st cent. Filter)

-The Roman Arena – mythological guises for murder.

-Wrestling by grave a means of passage to the next world (Greece, Rome).

-Ancestor worship (the past as the other in antiquity – Rome and Polynesia).

-Hebrew emulation of Babylonian and Assyrian religious forms and narrative.

-Hebrew inversions of Babylonian and Assyrian religious forms (abandonment of the image).

-Cultures without professional priestly classes (Assyria, Greece).

-Is Greece influenced by Egypt?

-Self-creation of Sparta and its military virtues.

-The evidence for early Sparta.

-The false door in Egypt

-proximity and touching (Egypt, Greece, Assyria, Babylonia, Sumer).

-The idea of symbol in antiquity.

-The concept of the telos

-The idea of the telos in antiquity before Socrates

-‘Going before’.

-The joint in antiquity (China, Greece, etc).

-The concept of identity in antiquity.

-The concept of similarity in antiquity.

-The concept of discrete states (law of the excluded middle).

-The wall (limit, boundary as proximity of the other).

-The text addressed to the gods.

- Addressing the gods in general.

-theology and history as emulation

-theology and history as dissimulation

-The Iiad and the Odyssey as Achaean documents.

-The Iliad and Odyssey in terms of art and artifice.

-The parallel lives of Greeks and Gods in the Iliad.

-The ordering of a theology by a poet (Homer).

-Theological assimilation (Greece, Assyria, Egypt, Babylonia).

-The conception of the Good.

-The concept of the One.

-Concept of the Many.

-Concept of the cairn.

-The Tibetan prayer wheel.

-The contents of the Egyptian altar (bread, lotuses, etc).

-The ground of reality (ousia) and its properties

-The Golden Section (Golden Mean) as the abstraction.

- Alternative views of polytheism

- The numinous in antiquity.

- Rites of passage.

-Rites of communication.

-Varro’s analysis of the possible types of religious belief.

-Varro’s concept of ‘superstitio’.

-Religious theatre and Incarnation in antiquity.

-The Chinese Warriors (Terracotta Army).

-The Parmenidean Hypothesis.

-The damnation of the Parmenidean hypothesis (by Parmenides) in Plato’s account.

-The Democritean account of reality an alternative to the Parmenidean, or a subset?

Thomas Yaeger, March 30, 2018.

The Making and Renewal of the Gods in Ancient Assyria

A key chapter from The Sacred History of Being, published in November 2015. This chapter will be quite perplexing for readers who imagine that the important aspects of ancient religious practice, its preoccupations and purposes, are essentially the same as those which we are accustomed to in the later Abrahamic religions. Modern religion in fact bears very little relation to ancient religion, except in terms of some generalised concepts and vestigial remains. 

As far as the ancient Mesopotamian religious elite was concerned, it was within their power to both create divine images, and to set them up in Heaven. Strange? It is to us. But we don't make this conception unimportant by refusing to address what the evidence tells us. This chapter gives an indication of the extensiveness and detail in the evidence which has emerged from the ground over the past 150 years or so. 

The evidence for this strikingly different understanding of the nature of reality is largely ignored (currently), except by specialists in a relatively narrow field. It is hard to understand, and without an understanding of ancient philosophical ideas about the world, virtually impenetrable to modern scholarship. I've given some reasons in the chapter why this is so. 

This is just one of the puzzling areas of Mesopotamian civilization. There is elsewhere on this site a collection of divination texts, with the title 'Who will Appear Before the City?'. Equally strange, they concern conversation with Shamash the Sun god, about what will happen in the future. 

Thomas Yaeger, February 20, 2018. 

***

"Enki's beloved Eridug, E-engura whose inside is full of abundance! Abzu, life of the Land, beloved of Enki! Temple built on the edge, befitting the artful divine powers!" 

 'Enki's journey to Nibru.'  [i]

I have argued that the practice of philosophy in Greece is rooted in the context of religious ritual, and that philosophy as practised and discussed by Plato had as a principal purpose the exposing of a paradoxical quality in reality, in that reality has a two-fold nature (containing the limited, existing in time; and the unlimited, which participates in eternity), and that the world of experience is in effect an illusion within the ur-reality. As a consequence, the world as it presents itself is a series of images of Being, which point to its ineffable and invisible nature. Plato also spoke of the heavens as a moving image of eternity, patterned after the nature of Being, the 'most fair' image of divinity after which to pattern the world and everything contained within it. He also intimated that what applied to the reality of the Forms also applied to the 'revered and holy' images of the gods. This is possible because of the two-fold nature of reality. Things can be made holy, and holiness can be withdrawn.

So Plato was not talking entirely abstractly about Ideas and the Forms. They can have both concrete form on earth as well as a presence in Heaven. This suggests that in Ancient Greece, there was ritual practice associated with the making of divine statues, built on the precepts of the transcendent theology of the divine cults. Unfortunately, none of the rituals which might have existed have survived from the Greek cultural context.

The presence of a theory of Being in ancient Assyria has been demonstrated to be likely, on the basis of the clear similarity between the structures of the Jewish Kabbalah and the Assyrian Sacred Tree. The following chapters seek in addition to establish relationships between what Plato had to say about the creation of the world and its patterning, and ritual practice concerning the making of gods in Assyria. We have good detail for the latter. If the Assyrians understood the concept of Being as the root of reality itself, then the relationship of the forms of things to a wholly abstract concept of Being in Assyria should show parallels with the discussion in Plato.

The reconstruction of the Mis Pî ritual and its associated incantations mainly comes from the Neo-Assyrian or Neo/Late Babylonian periods. So that is from the 8th to 5th century B.C.E, although there are some fragments from Uruk dating to the 2nd century.  [ii]  These tablets come from Nineveh, Assur, Babylon, Sippar, Nippur, Kalhu (Nimrud), and a small number of other, more widely spread locations. The majority come from Ashurbanipal's library at Nineveh, and so date from the 7th century B.C.E. Their colophons confirm that they were the property of the library. Some of the texts from Nineveh are copies of texts originating elsewhere, but the tablets do not often give the sources. Full details of the existing texts are given in The Induction of the Cult Image in Ancient Mesopotamia, SAALT1, 2001, p27 - 29.

The following text concerning the preparation for the renewal of divine images, dates from the latter days of the reign of Esarhaddon (680-669 B.C.E.), and describes the process of the renewal of the cult images from the initial consultation of the oracles, to the final installation of the images.  [iii]

When in heaven and on earth signs favourable for the renewal of the (statue of) the gods occurred,  [iv]  then I, Esarhaddon, king of the universe, king of the Land of Assur,  the apple of Assur’s eye, the beloved of the great gods, with the great intelligence and vast understanding,  which the great Nudimmud, the wise man of the gods, bestowed on me,  with the wisdom which Assur and Marduk entrusted to me when they made me aware of the renewal of (the statue of) the great gods,  with lifting of hands, prayers, and supplication, (I) prayed to the divinities Assur, king of the Gods, and to the great Lord Marduk.

The following passage concerning the right to make gods we have already encountered. I repeat it here, within its original context:

 “Whose right is it, O great gods, to create gods and goddesses in a place where man dare not trespass? This task of refurbishing (the statues), which you have constantly been allotting to me (by oracle), is difficult! Is it the right of deaf and blind human beings who are ignorant of themselves and remain in ignorance throughout their lives? The making of (images of) the gods and goddesses is your right, it is in your hands; so I beseech you, create (the gods), and in your exalted holy of holies may what you yourselves have in your heart be brought about in accordance with your unalterable word”. 

Again, as is common in the translation of texts which seem to make little sense without minor emendation, this translation inserts words apparently required in English to render the meaning clear. Thus the line which says “…the renewal of the (statue of) the gods occurred” actually ought to be rendered “….the renewal of the gods occurred,” in order not merely to be strictly faithful to the original text, but in fact to enable us to understand what the text is actually saying. Likewise with the sentence “the making of (images of) the gods and goddesses is your right,” the rendering ought to be simply: ”the making of the gods and goddesses is your right.” We are dealing with a pattern of belief which employs images towards the worship of its divinities, and understands these images as actualisable representations of that which cannot be represented as an image, since that image transcends all of the categories of our understanding. The gods can have existence in this physical world precisely because of this transcendent nature.

Such existence defies common-sense, but it does not defy the logic of idolatry. Just as for some modern worshippers there is no necessary contradiction between a divinity who is transcendent in nature and yet immanent, in antiquity there was no necessary contradiction between a transcendent god and his incarnation in a cult image. The idea – by its elusive nature - was always subject to criticism, and latterly ridicule, both within and beyond the cultural grouping which supported such a notion, but it made sense within the implex of ideas around the role of the cult image.

The passage referring to Esarhaddon as: ‘the beloved of the great gods, with the great intelligence and vast understanding, which the great Nudimmud, the wise man of the gods, bestowed on me, with the wisdom which Aššur and Marduk entrusted to me when they made me aware of the renewal of (the statue of) the great gods,’ yokes together the idea of knowledge with kingship, and also with divinity, since the gods Aššur and Marduk made him aware of the need for the renewal of the great gods. He has the ‘great intelligence and vast understanding’ of ‘the great Nudimmud’, who  is in fact the god Ea, often identified with Enki the trickster god, but also the god of craftsmen. ‘Nu.dim.mud’ is one of Ea’s epithets, meaning ‘fashioner of images’.

We have already discussed the interesting equation between knowledge and ‘vast understanding’ and its contrast with the non-royal, non-divine ignorance which is the common lot of mankind within this model - the “deaf and blind human beings who are ignorant of themselves and remain in ignorance throughout their lives…”, and also Esarhaddon’s allusion to one of the theological questions of the day, by asking ‘Whose right is it, O great gods, to create gods and goddesses in a place where man dare not trespass?” Clearly however this is Esarhaddon’s task, and no-one else’s. It is a royal task, communicated to Esarhaddon by divine command, and not easy to perform: “This task of refurbishing (the statues), which you have constantly been allotting to me (by oracle), is difficult!”

The text continues with details of the means by which the gods are to be renewed.  Esarhaddon says:

Endow the skilled craftsmen whom you ordered to complete this task with as high an understanding as Ea, their creator.  Teach them skills by your exalted word; make all their handiwork succeed through the craft of Ninshiku.

Ninshiku is yet another name for Ea, a late form from post-Kassite times, though based on the Sumerian Nin-ši-ku.  [v]  Esarhaddon is asking that the workmen be endowed with all the qualities of understanding and skill associated with Ea, the god of the craftsmen (i.e., the god also known as Nudimmud). This is tantamount to the request that the craftsmen have at least a temporary divinity for the duration of the renewal of the gods. The craftsmen have the excellence of the craftsman god only for a limited period, and for a precise purpose. They are therefore in a sense demiourgoi, like Plato’s craftsman in the Timaeus, able to fashion an image after the nature of the divine, while not being wholly or permanently divine themselves. Except that in this case, the gods themselves (aspects of the transcendent divinity) are being created.

Esarhaddon’s text continues with details of the means of oracular transmission of the gods wishes to the king:

I arranged diviners in groups in order to obtain a reliable oracular pronouncement about entering the bīt mummi. I performed divination (in order to determine whether the renewal should be done) in Aššur, Babylon (or) Nineveh. To determine the experts who should do the work and their initiation, I decided that each group should decide for itself separately; and still all the extispicies were in perfect agreement; they gave me a reliable, positive answer.

In other words, the oracular inquiries made by several groups of diviners produced answers which arrived together at the same time and agreed about the same issue.

Esarhaddon tells us that the oracular answers ordered him to enter the Bit Mummi in Aššur,

The capital, city, the dwelling of Aššur, Father of the gods; they indicated to me the names of the artisans (fit) for completing the work. By authority of a reassuring and favourable oracle, the diviners ordered me to do this work as follows:  “do it quickly, pay attention, and be careful; do not let up, do not direct your attention elsewhere”.  I trusted their positive and unchangeable oracle; I placed full reliance (on it).

It would seem from this text that there were at least two sets of oracular responses involved – those which ordered Esarhaddon to enter the Bit Mummi in connection with the renewal of the gods, and a second grouping of responses which were given within the precincts of the Bit Mummi, which named the artisans who were to undertake the work, and therefore those who were to be given a temporary divinity for the purpose of renewing the gods. Esarhaddon’s will is not to be focused on any other activity than this renewal.

In a favourable month, on a propitious day in the month of Shabatti, the favourite month of Enlil, I entered the bit mummi, the place where refurbishing was done, which the gods had chosen.

Among the epithets of Enlil (Sumerian ‘Ellil’) is ‘king of the foreign lands’, and the center of his cult was the temple E-kur, the ‘mountain house’, at Nippur. One of the images associated with Enlil is ‘merchant’ which suggests association with transactions.  [vi]  Arranging the work for the month of Shabatti, Enlil’s favourite month, would therefore be seen as propitious for work so definitively connected with the otherness of the gods in heaven.

I brought carpenters, goldsmiths, metalworkers, stone-cutters, “skilled artisans knowledgeable in the mysteries” into the temple which Shamash and Adad had indicated through divination. I installed the craftsmen there.

The work by the artisans is to be done in a place of both mystery and knowledge. We might infer from the choice of this place by the gods Shamash and Adad that the place in which the renewal is to happen is not fixed.  [vii]  The choice of the Bit Mummi is therefore likely to have a special significance for this occasion of renewal. The craft of making cult images, of the manufacture of the gods, is a religious mystery, knowledge of which is granted only to a limited group, who are installed in the chosen temple.

Red gold, mined in the mountains, which no one had as yet worked for artistic purposes, countless precious stones, not yet cut…., native to the mountains and upon which Ea had generously bestowed his splendour so that they might be fit for the lordly deities, I prepared in abundance for the shrines of the great gods, my lords, and for the bejewelling of their divinity, I gave (all these costly materials) into the pure hands (of the craftsmen).

Emphasis is laid on the fact that the materials which are to be used for the renewal of the gods have not yet been worked for such purposes – in other words they have not already served as materials for another form. They are as gifted by the gods – ‘upon which Ea had generously bestowed his splendour’, and therefore suitable for the work of the renewal. The Red gold, mined in the mountains (kur – a place of otherness), has not been worked, and ‘precious stones, not yet cut’, for the ornamentation of the divine images, Esarhaddon ‘gave…. Into the pure hands’.

‘Splendour’ here is indicated by ME.LAM/Melammu.  [viii]  Black and Green suggest that it connotes a ‘brilliant, visible glamour which is exuded by gods, heroes, sometimes by kings, and also by temples of great holiness and by gods’ symbols and emblems’.  They also suggest that ‘while it is in some ways a phenomenon of light, melam is at the same time terrifying and awe-inspiring’. Further:

Gods are sometimes said to ‘wear’ their melam like a garment or a crown, and like a garment or a crown, melam can be ‘taken off.’ If the god is killed, his melam disappears. While it is always a mark of the supernatural, melam carries no connotation of moral value: demons and terrifying giants can ‘wear’ it too.

[i] Black, Cunningham, Robson, Zόlyomi, The Literature of Ancient Sumer, 2004, p330


[ii] The Induction of the Cult Image in Ancient Mesopotamia, SAALT1, 2001, p27.


[iii] The Esarhaddon text comes from Borger’s Die Inschriften Asarhaddons, Königs von Assyrien. AfO Beiheft. 9. Graz. It is reproduced in translation in C.B.F. Walker and Michael B. Dick’s The Induction of the Cult Image in Ancient Mesopotamia, SAALT1, 2001 p25-27.


[iv] Note 79 on page 25 indicates that the astronomical sign meant here was the heliacal rising of Jupiter. The omen is discussed in detail in Borger 1956: 17-18. Note 79 also suggests a comparison with an omen declaration given to Ashurbanipal CT 35 pl.13-15, line 23 , which runs: ‘I commissioned you with the renewal of these (images of the) gods and of their temples (as before the words supplied by the translator in brackets should be ignored). The astronomical omen also had to be confirmed by a liver omen.


[v] C.B.F. Walker and Michael B. Dick’s The Induction of the Cult Image in Ancient Mesopotamia, SAALT1, 2001.p25, n84.


[vi] Black and Green, Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia, ‘Enlil’ p76.


[vii] Shamash and Adad were invoked in Babylonian extispicy rituals see Black and Green, Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia, 'Utu', p184 . It is possible that the instruction to use the Bit Mummi as the place for the renewal of the gods was received through divination by liver. Interestingly Plato’s account of the liver in the Timaeus describes the organ as reflecting the reason, which is a reflection of the reason of the heavens, exactly as it might have been regarded here (revealing the wishes of the gods Shamash and Adad). See also Black and Green, Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia, 'melam' and 'ni', p 130-1.


[viii] C.B.F. Walker and Michael B. Dick’s The Induction of the Cult Image in Ancient Mesopotamia, SAALT1, 2001.p26, n86. It can be understood in terms of a visible counterpart of the 'me' of the gods.

Working wonders: Hephaestus and the Armour of Achilles

This is a retitled chapter from The Sacred History of Being (originally titled: 'Being in Homer'). It analyses Book XVIII of The Iliad. It is something of an eye-opener about the intellectual life of what became known as the Greek Heroic Age. Much of the intellectual and tropic detail in this book of The Iliad strongly resembles ideas and themes which can be found in Mesopotamian and Phoenician sources.

It is not much studied in modern times for an understanding of Greek life and thought, since it is full of fantastical elements, whose context we think we lost long ago. It may be studied for the language and the poetry, and also for the narrative of a small but crucial part of the conflict between the Achaeans and the city of Troy.

There is an exception however, which is discussed (among other things) in this chapter. It is a favourite subject of classicists and ancient historians, but they find it hard to agree about why the passage is present in the poem, and what it means. Looking at the entire book, which hangs together extremely well as an artistic enterprise, it is perfectly clear why the passage is present, and what its meaning is.

The text of the chapter is unchanged, and I've retained the footnotes (though they have been renumbered).


TY, February 19, 2018.

***

A passage in Homer’s Iliad, often thought to be a later interpolation in the text, the famous ‘Shield of Achilles’ episode, features a collocation of images, struck together on an imaginary shield. The shield edge is bounded by Ocean, which among the ancient Greeks connotes border, the edge of the world. It is also the place of generation, which is associated with Being and the gods. There is a scene where a dispute is being resolved, which is an image of justice. This is an allusion (in the Greek context) to the sun God Apollo, who, like his Mesopotamian counterpart, Shamash, is a god of justice. This image, rather than being a later interpolation, can be shown to echo the themes in the same section of the Iliad.

If we follow the story from the beginning of the eighteenth book of the Iliad, where Thetis comforts her son Achilles who is grieving for the death of his friend and kinsman Patroclus, we shall see how the images point to an articulate idea of Being. The essence of the events in this book is that Thetis promises to procure her son Achilles new armour from Hephaestus. At the command of Hera, Achilles attacks and strikes terror into the enemy. The body of Patroclus is recovered, and prepared for funeral rites. The armour is prepared by Hephaestus for Achilles.

Achilles is expecting to die, recalling that his mother once informed him that, though he was the bravest of the Myrmidons, he would, though now still surviving, would leave the light of the sun ‘by the hands of the Trojans’. Twice in this passage, his contemplation of the fate of the Achaeans is described as a ‘revolving’ in his mind (and once in his soul), which is reminiscent of Plato’s description of rational thought in the Living Animal. He grieves for the fallen Patroclus, killed by Hector. He gives a dreadful moan, and we are told that ‘his venerable mother heard him, while she was sitting in the depths of the sea.’ This passage is a close parallel to the Mesopotamian image of Ea/Enki at home in the midst of the waters of the Apsu. We are told that Thetis was beside her aged father in the depths, and that she immediately lamented for her son’s grief.  [i]  We are also told that ‘all the goddesses were assembled around her, as many Nereids as were at the bottom of the sea’, so this is a place where a totality (of Nereids) is collected together. In the Mesopotamian story the location is a house, whereas Thetis resides in a cave.

We are given a list of many of their names, and these repay attention.

The list is Glauce, Thaleia, Cymodoce, Nesaea, Spio, Thoa, and ‘large-eyed’ Halia, Cymothoë, Actaea, and Limnorea, Melita, Iaera, Amphithoë, and Agave, Doto, Proto, Pherusa, and Dynamene, Dexamene, Amphinome, and Callianira, Foris, Panope, and distinguished Galatea, Nemertes, Apseudes, and Callianassa.  In addition are mentioned Clymene, Ianira and Ianassa, Maera, Orithya, and fair-haired Amathea. There were others, but they are not named by Homer. The cave is described as ‘resplendent’ and full of Nereids.

Some of these are particularly interesting. Glauce as an adjective might qualify thalassa as ‘gleaming sea,’ as it does at II, 34. Thaleia probably connotes ‘abundance’ (thallo, as in thalassa), Nesaea means ‘island’ or ‘islet, from nēsos.  Spio probably means ‘cavern, cave or grotto’, derived from ‘speos’ (in Homer appearing as speious).  Halia may mean ‘blowing seaward’ (Homer uses haliaēs to mean this in the Odyssey. In connection with the epithet ‘large-eyed’, Halia is an Ionian word meaning ‘assembly of the people’. Homer is punning), and Cymothoë ‘billowing waves’.  Actaea means coast, (Aktaia), Limnorea may connote a large pool of standing water, or directly indicate the sea, Melita may be honeyed mead, or perhaps 'sweet water', and Amphithoë suggests 'running quickly around,' as water does when it is loosed from its bounds.

And so on. The pattern is clear. These are mainly attributes of water or liquid in different states, and therefore a collection of terms which might be used to describe aspects of the sea, or of the primal ocean, which might be the focus of priestly contemplation. Other terms refer to things associated with the sea, such as caves, and shorelines, and so on. We have here a partial list of attributes and properties of images which reference the divine. It may be that the origin of this list is one or more temple documents, compiled for a cult centre, in order to standardise a set of images and descriptions which might be used to approach the reality beyond images.

Ten of the names of the Nereids appear to be similar, but in different forms. These are Amphithoë and Amphinome, Callianira and Callianassa, Cymodoce and Cymothoë, Dynamene and Dexamene, and Ianira and Ianassa. The pairing of names in divine genealogy is well known in Mesopotamia, and usually indicates a twin birth. If this is the pattern which is being followed, it suggests that the Nereids might have been part of a complete theology at one time, perhaps imported from the near East, or perhaps brought to Greece by an incoming population group. It is also possible that the Nereids are very old and local to Greece. Unfortunately we have very little other information about the Nereids from any source other than Homer.  [ii]  We do know that the Phoenician theology was also focused on the depths of the sea, paralleling part of the Mesopotamian theology, with the god Ea living in the abyss at the bottom of the ocean. And that the Greeks did extensive business in their emporia along the coast of Phoenicia.

Achilles grief stems in part from the fact that the armour of Patroclus has been removed by the Trojans. Achilles own armour was also taken by the Trojans. The decision of Thetis to supply her son with the finest possible set of armour represents an inversion of the desecratory action of Hector, which has a bearing on the design represented on the shield made by Hephaestus, since it shows good order opposed to bad order.

Thetis and all the Nereids leave the cave, weeping, ‘and the wave of the ocean was cleft around for them.’ This is an image which recalls the creation, in that the ocean may be understood as a god, and to part the waves is to cut the divine body in two, as described in both Plato's account of the creation, and the Mesopotamian  account.

The concept of fate in the Iliad is strikingly inexorable, like that found in Mesopotamian literature – Achilles says: ‘may I die then immediately, since it was not destined that I should aid my companion now slain.’ Nevertheless he asks that bad order be replaced with good, and so ‘therefore contention might be extinguished from gods and men; and anger, which is wont to impel even the very wisest to be harsh.’ This idea is represented in the design of the shield, with two communities, one of which is based on brigandage, the other a place where contention has been banished. Thetis (‘the silver footed’) had urged Achilles ‘not to enter the slaughter of Ares’ before he sees her return at dawn with the armour from king Hephaestus.

Thetis then turns away from her son, and addresses the Nereids, saying that they should now enter the ‘broad bosom of the deep’, about to behold the ‘marine old man, and the mansions of my sire, and tell him all things’. The Nereids return to Ocean here is not simply a retracing of steps, but entry into the world of the divine. It is a place which must know all things. Thetis travels alone to ‘lofty’ Olympus, to Hephaestus, ‘the skilful artist,’ to ask if he is willing to make the armour.

In the meantime, Achilles is visited by the goddess Iris (peace), sent by Hera, to remind him of the disgrace that would be the consequence of the body of Patroclus being abandoned to the Trojans. She isn't urging peace.  However Achilles tells her of his mother’s admonition not to join the battle until her return. Iris then urges that he go toward the ditch and show himself to the Trojans, so that in their terror they may desist from battle, at least for a while.

Achilles rose after the departure of Iris. The goddess Minerva threw around his strong shoulders her fringed aegis. ‘And the divine one of goddesses crowned his head around with a golden cloud, and from it she kindled a shining flame’, and the flame from his head reached to the sky. He stood, having advanced from the wall to the trench only, and did not mingle with the Greeks, mindful of the advice of his mother. Three times he shouted over the trench, and three times were the Trojans and their allies thrown into confusion, with the assistance of Pallas Minerva. By this means the body of Patroclus was recovered.

So Achilles did not fight, but recovered the body of Patroclus by the use of his intelligence, through the assistance of the goddess of wisdom. It is good order to succeed through throwing your enemies and their allies into confusion, rather than achieving your aim by violence and slaughter. This part of Homer's text reflects a time when social and political issues were often resolved through angry and divisive contention. Thetis had urged Achilles not to enter the slaughter of the god of warfare, Ares, until she returned: Ares, in a sense, is as responsible for bad order as the Trojans and their allies.

This is followed by another striking image involving Ocean. ‘Large-eyed, venerable Hera’ ‘sent the sun to return to the flowing of the ocean, against his inclination.’ The sun therefore set, and the Greeks and the Trojans stopped fighting. The Trojans assembled in their council before they even thought to eat, which suggests they were impelled by anger more than sense. They were addressed by ‘prudent’ Polydamus, the son of Panthus. The name Panthus (Panthoos) again references the ideas of the telos and of Being, where everything is embraced, including past and present. In fact, the son of Panthus is described as one who, alone among them, ‘saw both the future and the past’. Hector and Polydamus were both possessed of excellences and virtues. Born on the same day, Hector excelled in counsel, and the other ‘greatly in the spear.’ Polydamus advised to guard the towers and the city overnight, dressed in their armour. Hector effectively told him to shut up, and advised that they should fight by the Greeks ships in the morning, and that if Achilles has arisen at the ships, ‘it will be the worse for him’.

The irony here is that it is Polydamus, who excelled 'greatly in the spear' and is therefore excellent in warfare, who makes the prudent proposal. Hector, by contrast and against expectation, provided bad counsel. So the Trojans assented to Hector, and cheered him. But they were foolish, since Pallas Minerva ‘had taken their senses away from them.’ They assented to Hector’s advising of destructive things, and no one assented to the prudent counsel of Polydamus.

By this time (after sunset, when the sun is below the waves) Thetis had reached the home of Hephaestus on Olympus – incorruptible, starry, and remarkable among the brazen immortals. Hephaestus therefore is remarkable, but not divine, though he possesses attributes of the divine.  He makes statues of the gods, or in fact ‘makes gods’ as was the understanding of the early part of the 1^st millennium B.C.E.  He thus has very special attributes, like the Mesopotamian Nudimmud, and can make things in heaven as well as on earth.

Homer tells us that Thetis found him sweating, working at the bellows, making twenty tripods to stand around the wall of his ‘well-built palace’. These tripods had golden wheels placed under the base of each, so that ‘of their own accord they might enter the heavenly council, and again return home – a wonder to be seen.’

Here is another image which references the world of Being. It also associates the divine world with the idea of council: the two are associated through the idea of totality, since totality is an attribute of both council and Being. And in a sense, they are interchangeable through their common possession of totality. We are told of the perfection of the work which has produced these tripods, as we were told of the perfection of the body of the living animal in the Timaeus: “so much finish had they, but he had not yet added the well-made handles, which he was preparing; and he was forging the rivets.”

So we have three attributes of the divine referenced in this passage: totality, perfection and council, struck together. The tripods have golden and therefore incorruptible wheels. They are also circular, and complete. By virtue of these attributes alone, they can pass into the heavenly council, and also return, again by virtue of these attributes.

This is a clear anticipation of the theory of wholes or totalities attributed to Pythagoras, and repeated by Plato, in which completeness by itself allows participation in the divine, and indeed identity with the divine. This passage is virtually impossible to explain outside the context of a theory of this sort. In which case, the theory of wholes and totalities was known to Homer in the 9th or 8th century B.C.E.  [iii]

The tripods are able to move between the worlds, which makes sense, if the worlds are conceived of as being physically distinct - one way in which commerce with the divine can be framed. That these remarkable objects are tripods probably reflects two things - that the objects can have reality in this world, and the worlds above and below this one. The tripod is also a common ritual object in the early 1st millennium B.C.E, and not only in Greece. It might be used to hold a vessel for burning incense, or for collecting the blood of a sacrifice, and so on. The image carries these and other associations of commerce with the divine world.

Thetis is greeted by Hephaestus, and then his wife Charis. Hephaestus recalls that “an awful and revered goddess… saved me when distress came upon me, fallen down far by the contrivance of my shameless mother,  [iv]  who wished to conceal me, being lame.”  [v]  He then focuses on the importance of Ocean for him, saying: “Then should I have suffered sorrows in my mind, had not Eurynome and Thetis received me in their bosom; Eurynome, daughter of the refluent Ocean.”  [vi]  He tells us he was with them for nine years, during which time he made in brass “many ingenious works of art, buckles, twisted bracelets, and clasp-tubes, in the hollow cave,” while “round us flowed the immense stream of Ocean, murmuring with foam: nor did any other either of gods or mortal men know it; but Thetis and Eurynome, who preserved me, knew it.” He asks Charis now to set before Thetis “good hospitable fare”, and lays aside his tools. “He went out of the doors limping, and golden handmaids, like unto living handmaidens, moved briskly about the king.” Here we have the art of statuary associated with a former inhabitant of Ocean – and it is the art of creating living statues of which Hephaestus is a master craftsman.

We are told something of their attributes: “in their bosoms was prudence with understanding, and within them was voice and strength; and they are instructed in works by the immortal gods.” We have been told earlier that Hephaestus can make objects which can enter the heavenly council of their own accord, and return again, which was “a wonder to be seen”. So we know that setting up statues within Heaven is within his abilities. He can make living creatures which have within them the attributes of prudence and understanding. They are also instructed in works by the immortal gods, which means that these golden handmaids are expressions of the divine will and intention.

At this point Thetis makes her request to Hephaestus, that he make armour for her son Achilles. The armour of Achilles was lost when Patroclus was slain, since Achilles had given him his own. Thetis explains that “All day they fought round the Scaean gates, and certainly on that day had overturned Troy, had not Apollo slain, among the foremost warriors, the gallant son of Menoetius, after having done such mischief, and given glory to Hector.” Apollo is the god of justice as well as of the Sun, and so is the dispenser of victory and defeat to men in battle.  [vii]

It is particularly interesting to consider how it is that negative characteristics can have positive qualities, as we find in the Iliad and the Odyssey.  Odysseus has the epithet ‘Sacker of Cities’, and at the time Homer was writing, it is clear that being a ‘sacker of cities’ was not seen universally as reprehensible to the society of the time, but Homer himself objects to it.  [viii]  Hence the 'Shield of Achilles' passage, where the contrast is made between a prosperous city and a city under siege, open to destruction and the division of spoils. The idea is planted that the rapacious behaviour of former times, in a time before reason, may not have much to recommend it.

Underlying the idea that the ‘sacking of cities’ is something which may have honour and glory associated with it, is the abstract notion of greatness. The sacking of a city is greatly destructive, and so participates (within this simplistic model) in greatness. What we have here is an idea which fits within the mental model in which it is possible to connect with divinity through extreme action. There would have been many objections to this, on the grounds that such action did not promote the good, or good order. Hence it was a question which would have exercised the Greeks as being a pattern of behaviour which superficially made sense within a mental model of the world of the late Bronze Age.

[i] It is interesting and possibly significant that Homer never mentions Nereus by name, but is referred to as the 'aged father' of Thetis.

[ii] It is well known that Homer composed the Iliad and the Odyssey somewhere in Anatolia, and so the Nereids may have been part of the theology of an Anatolian cult, rather than a Greek one. It is unnecessary to explore here that even in ancient Greece it was accepted by some that a significant number of their gods had a foreign origin.

[iii] The alternative would be to argue that not only is the 'Shield of Achilles' passage a later interpolation, but that much of the eighteenth book of the Iliad comes from a much later date. I don't think that would be a credible suggestion. The very fact that so much in Homer has been difficult to explain for so long, argues that the text we have comes from an age with a different set of preconceptions about how things work.

[iv] In later accounts, Hephaestus is son of Hera, without the intervention of a father. Here he is son of Zeus and Hera, sister and wife.

[v] The lameness of Hephaestus reflects the awe in which workers in metal were once held: they seem to work magic, and yet they are here on earth. They seem to work with heavenly fire, but are not actually divine.

[vi] Eurynome is daughter of Okeanos, as he says. But her name means something like 'wide pasture'. The first part of her name translates literally as 'broad' or 'wide'.

[vii] His equivalent in Assyria is Shamash, who has similar qualities, and is sometimes represented in palace reliefs as hovering over the field of battle, represented by his symbol of the winged circle.

[viii] 'Destruction of cities' is included among the lists of Sumerian 'mes'.

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The Sacred History of Being will be available free from Smashwords during the month of November 2017, to mark the second anniversary of its publication in 2015. Use the coupon available on the Smashwords page for the book. The coupon is available for use from the 25th of October.

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"All about how history is built by inclusion and omission. Even written histories have to hang together like a good story." - Nick Zacharewicz @NickSCZach

The Subject 

The Sacred History of Being has as its radical thesis that a philosophical knowledge of divine things was at the heart of ancient religion, both in Greece and the ancient Near East. And that the source of all knowledge was understood to be Being itself. 

 Formerly argued by classical scholars to have been first discussed by the ancient Greeks in the middle of the first millennium B.C.E., the articulate concept of Being can now be traced as far back as the middle of the second millennium, and the state of Assyria.

The Greeks themselves had several stories about the origins of philosophy, a discipline which essentially deals with abstractions, including that it originated elsewhere, but that is not the received narrative. The consequence of this, is that all historians of ideas, when constructing their accounts of the intellectual development of man before the arrival of Parmenides and Plato, have had to negotiate the Greek invention of philosophy, and the corollary, that articulate discussion of the abstract concept 'Being' didn’t happen before this. 

The Old Testament has examples where God declares his identity with Being itself (‘I am that I am’, better translated into English as ‘I am that which is,’ and ‘I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God', for example), but these are not regarded by scholars as evidence of a sophisticated discourse around the idea of Being. Instead these statements indicate inchoate notions and beliefs about the nature of god, rather than anything more profound. The statement in Malachi, however, that 'I do not change', is an explicitly philosophical understanding of the nature of God. 

This is the full chapter list for the edition of The Sacred History of Being, published on November 2, 2015. 


Preface.

Part One.

A Sense of the Past.
How old is Philosophy?
The Arrival of the Idea of Being.
The West and the Other.
The Golem.
Change and what is Permanent.
The Ontological Argument.
The Ontological Argument in Anselm.
The Ontological Argument in Descartes.
The Nature of Reality in Berkeley.
Hume and Kant on Reality.
The End of the Ontological Argument.

Part Two.

The Sweet Song of Swans.
The Academy.
The Platonic Theory of Being.
Plato’s Theory of Vision.
The Paradox of Knowledge.
Eleven attributes of Being.
Pythagoras and Totality.
Solon in the court of Croesus.
The Complexion of the Dead.
Being in Homer.

Part Three.

Ocean and the Limit of Existence.
Creation.
The Fifty names of Marduk.
The Idea of Being in Israel.
Understanding Creation as a Sacred Tree.
Being, Kabbalah, and the Assyrian Sacred Tree.
The Making and the Renewal of the Gods.
The Ritual sequence and its purpose.
The Nineveh ritual.
The Babylonian ritual.
Finding the Name of the Sacred Tree.
Postscript.

Appendices.

Thomas Taylor on the Ineffable principle.
Oannes and the Instruction of Mankind.
Ashurbanipal on the exercise of Kingship.
Select Bibliography.
Abbreviations

Available Full Chapters

The first five chapters of the book, plus the preface, are available to read in full, by following the links below. A further chapter from part one, which discusses George Berkeley's understanding of the Nature of Reality, and two chapters from part three, 'Ocean and the Limit of Existence', and  'The Idea of Being in Israel', are also available to read in full. Plus one of the appendices, which discusses the Babylonian account of the first sages, and man's acquisition of knowledge. 

Preface

Part One

A sense of the past
How old is Philosophy?
The Arrival of the idea of Being
The West and the Other
The Golem
Change and what is permanent
Recurring Questions
The Ontological Argument
The Ontological Argument in Anselm
The Ontological Argument in Descartes
The Nature of Reality in Berkeley
Hume and Kant on Reality

....

Part Three

Ocean and the Limit of Existence
The Idea of Being in Israel

....

 Appendices

Oannes and the Instruction of Mankind

The eBook is in ePub format, which can be read on Macs, iPads, iPhones, etc, and most other tablets, irrespective of the operating operating system they use. If you have an Amazon Kindle, the ePub formatting of the book can be converted easily to the MOBI format, which the Kindle uses, with the excellent eBook management software Calibre, which can be downloaded free. 

The book can be read on a PC, laptop or notebook computer, in ePub or any other eBook format, using the Adobe Digital Editions software, which is also available free, in both Mac and PC formats. Supports conversion to many formats, including PDF. 

The principal distributor of The Sacred History of Being is Smashwords. The book can be downloaded from Smashwords directly, after a signup which takes just a minute or so. After purchase (free, with the coupon TT95F), the book goes into a library space associated with your signup, and it can be downloaded on to your device from there. Just follow the link.

The book has a five star review at Goodreads. 

Thomas Yaeger, October 25, 3017.