Introduction The world of the ancient Greeks did not arise ex nihilo but developed from earlier cultures, which are harder to evaluate because of their extreme age. The last century or more of research has, however, proven that most of the languages of Europe, the Near East, and India all descend from a common language, Proto-Indo-European (PIE), and that the various cultures of the Indo-European (IE) world,… Read more
1. “Swift Horses” from Proto-Indo-European to Greek Horses are nearly ubiquitous in the early recorded poetries of the Indo-European world, and one particular facet of this presents a perfect starting point for our discussion: a reconstructible Proto-Indo-European poetic expression describing horses. For the earliest poetries of Greece, India, and Iran not only treat horses in ways that are strikingly similar but even utilize some of the same… Read more
12. Kinyras the Lamenter In the Gudea Cylinders, the ‘court’ of Ningirsu included two separate balang-gods, one overseeing music to “make the temple happy,” the other “to banish mourning from the mourning heart.” [1] This dichotomy, reflecting basic aspects of human experience and their musical expression, is also found in the evidence for Kinyras. We have seen that Kinyras was a performing… Read more
13. The Talents of Kinyras Our analysis of Cypriot iconography and the prehistory of kinýra (and associated music) is compatible with the idea that Kinyras could go back to the pre-Greek island in some form. And after all, our best evidence for divinized instruments is of BA date, from Kinnaru of Ugarit on back to third-millennium Mesopotamia. And, as it happens, while the fifth-century Pindar is our… Read more
14. Restringing Kinyras This chapter further documents Kinyras’ fundamental connection with pre-Greek Cyprus. I shall examine traces of popular narratives featuring the Cypriot king and his family which variously mythologized Aegean settlement in the eastern Mediterranean during the LBA–IA transition, and the evolving relationships between the new Greek-speaking communities and the pre-Greek and later Phoenician groups with whom they shared the island. Aegean Foundation Legends and… Read more
15. Crossing the Water I have now shown that the evidence for a musical Kinyras is much more extensive than previously realized; that this was not a secondary accretion, but an early and essential dimension; and that his erstwhile divinity echoed into the Roman period as “Our Kenyristḗs Apollo.” We have also seen that his multifaceted reflection of pre-Greek Cyprus in IA myth implies that he was… Read more
16. The Kinyradai of Paphos Evidence from and relating to Paphos especially lets us pick up the thread of Kinyras’ cult in the Classical period, and follow it down until later antiquity. Here the two broad patterns explored above—the social and political manipulation of Kinyras as a cultural icon, and the maintenance of his ancient role as a hieratic servant of the goddess—overlap most fully. And ultimately… Read more
Part III: Kinyras and the Lands around Cyprus 17. Kinyras at Pylos Important evidence for a BA Kinyras comes from an unexpected quarter: Mycenaean Pylos. Although the texts present ‘Kinyras’ as a PN, not DN, the contexts are consistent with the attributes of the Kinyras. This material, I shall argue, indicates that by the thirteenth century Kinyras—as the Greeks would call him—had already outgrown his… Read more
18. The Melding of Kinyras and Kothar This chapter confronts the issue of Kinyras’ extra-musical qualities, which he regularly assumed on Cyprus, and which already seem to inform the Kinyras(es) of Pylos and the Kourion stands, both in the thirteenth century. I refine and develop the position, taken by J. P. Brown and others, that Kinyras was productively implicated in a syncretic relationship with the WS craftsman… Read more
19. Kinyras, Kothar, and the Passage from Byblos: Kinyras, Kinnaru, and the Canaanite Shift One could be content with explaining Kinyras’ arrival to Cyprus simply through the island’s proximity to the mainland, and a general emulation of its neighbors’ institutions. But in this and the following chapters, I shall attempt to trace more specific geographical connections. One will naturally think first of Kinnaru and Ugarit. This is… Read more
