Balang-Gods Wolfgang Heimpel Introduction [1] In his 1997 essay “The Holy Drum, the Spear, and the Harp: Towards an Understanding of the Problems of Deification in Third Millennium Mesopotamia,” Gebhard Selz found that the items in his title and other ‘cultic objects’ were deified by providing them with a name, animating them with the magic of the mouth-washing ritual,… Read more
Bibliography Abel, E. 1891. Scholia recentia in Pindari epinicia, vol. 1. Berlin. Ackerman, S. 2001. Under Every Green Tree: Popular Religion in Sixth-Century Judah. Winona Lake. Adang, C. 1996. Muslim Writers on Judaism and the Hebrew Bible: From Ibn Rabban to Ibn Hazm. Leiden. Ahl, F. 1985. Metaformations: Soundplay and Wordplay in Ovid and… Read more
Acknowledgments Many individuals deserve thanks for helping me produce this work, some for their great personal support, some for intellectual support, and many for both. First I must thank Jessica, my wife, for her unflagging encouragement and for the patience that she showed during my many late nights and weekends in the office. I also owe a great debt of gratitude to friends and mentors who read… Read more
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
