Mesopotamian elements in the proem of parmenides? correspondences between the sun-gods helios and shamash

The Classical Quarterly

Volumn 52, Issue 2, 2002, Pages 583-588

  Steele, Laura D ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 85007981536     PISSN: 00098388     EISSN: 14716844     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/cq/52.2.583     Document Type: Article

References (19)

1. I thank all those who read earlier drafts of this paper: M. Griffith, A. A. Long, A. Bulloch, C.W. Greenewalt, A. Kilmer, L. Pierce, I. Pafford, and A. Littauer. Any remaining error in fact or interpretation is my own. This paper is dedicated to Dr Carol Brandert.
2. Edition and translation in L. Taran, Parmenides (Princeton, 1965), 7-9.
3. For general information, see ‘Utu’ in J. Black and A. Green, Gods, Demons, and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia (Austin, 1992), 182-4.
4. For arguments in favour of the solar trajectory of Parmenides’ journey, see W. Burkert, ‘Das Proomium des Parmenides und die Katabasis des Pythagoras’, Phronesis 14 (1969), 1-30, following W. Kranz, ‘Uber Aufbau und Bedeutung des Parmenideischen Gedichtes’, Sitzung-berichte der Koniglichen Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 47 (1916), 1158-76. For a semantic rebuttal of Kranz's hypothesis, see Taran, (n. 2), 23.
5. Or katabasis; see the thorough discussions in Burkert (n. 4) and in P. Kingsley, In the Dark Places of Wisdom (Shaftesbury, 1999), 58ff.
6. Theogony 902ff.; cited in A. Mourelatos, The Route of Parmenides (New Haven, 1970), 15.
7. Cf. Pausanias 5.20.3; another possible keyholder is Aeacus, according to Apollodorus 3.12.6.
8. Except perhaps in Iliad 8.411; cf. M. L. West, The East Face of Helicon (Oxford, 1997), 141.
9. Lines 22-7; cited in Mourelatos (n. 9), 42.
10. W Heimpel, ‘The sun at night and the doors of heaven in Babylonian texts’, Journal of Cuneiform Studies 38 (1986), 127-51; see W. Horowitz, Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography (Winona Lake, 1998), 266 for gates of heaven.
11. Text: E. Ebeling (ed.), Keilschrifttexte aus Assur religiosen Inhalts, Band 1 (1919), 7: 2ff. Translation: Heimpel (n. 13), 134.
12. Foster (n. 14), 675.
13. Foster (n. 14), 646; emphasis added.
14. Kingsley (n. 5), 72-73.
15. UFBG 503-10,line 3; trans. in Foster (n. 14), 665.
16. Cf. ‘Bunene’ in Reallexikon der Assyriologie and references in West (n. 11), 507. In addition, an incantation to Sumerian Utu mentions his ‘four-lion yoke’; lines 91 and 100 in Alster (n. 27), 30. Shamash is, however, most often depicted travelling on a anthropomorphized boat on Akkadian cylinder seals; see the example in J. Oates, Babylon (London, 1986), 173, fig. 121. Hymns to Shamash rarely mention his mode of transportation at all.
17. Cf. the discussion in West (n. 11), 507. So, too, the fact that Helios is represented with rays emanating from his shoulders could derive from similar representations of a Cretan deity that influenced Apollo as well, and this deity seems in turn to have been influenced by representations of Shamash; see A. J. Evans, JHS 21 (1901), 170; cited in ‘Sun and sun worship’ in The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge.
18. Even so, the available evidence suggests that Aeschylus’ Heliades recounted the story of Phaethon, which is not necessarily relevant to the account in Parmenides (see n. 31). S. Radt (ed.), Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta 3, Aeschylus (Gottingen, 1985), 68-73.
19. For transmission of Near Eastern material to Greece generally, see West (n. 11), ch. 12. For transmission of Babylonian beliefs to Parmenides specifically, see Kingsley (n. 5), 11-27, 46-48.