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19. Kinyras, Kothar, and the Passage from Byblos: Kinyras, Kinnaru, and the Canaanite Shift

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

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20. Kinyras at Sidon? The Strange Affair of Abdalonymos

20. Kinyras at Sidon? The Strange Affair of Abdalonymos This chapter addresses a curious problem that may entail a further mainland ‘Kinyras’, this time at Sidon. Abdalonymos—‘Servant of the Gods’ in Phoenician (Abd-elonim)—was said to be an impoverished member of the Sidonian royal house, installed by Alexander as king of that city in 333–332 after deposing ‘Straton’ (that is Abdastart III) following the battle of Issos. Read more

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4. Starting at Ebla: The City and Its Music

4. Starting at Ebla: The City and Its Music The cuneiform texts of Ebla (Tell Mardikh) have now yielded the word kinnārum, nearly a millennium and a half before King David. By ca. 2400, Ebla controlled a sizeable area of upper inland Syria; its dependencies included Karkemish, Alalakh, Hamath, Emar, and Harran. [1] Ebla’s political and commercial interests were quite wide-ranging, extending… Read more

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5. Mari and the Amorite Age: The City and Its Music

5. Mari and the Amorite Age: The City and Its Music The kinnāru is next attested in the eighteenth century at Mari (Tell Harīri) on the middle Euphrates. The city’s massive archive makes it a type-site for the political dynamics and economic complexities of the period. There is rich evidence for an ‘international’ music-culture, much like that of Ebla or Ur under Shulgi, but currently known in… Read more

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6. Peripherals, Hybrids, Cognates

6. Peripherals, Hybrids, Cognates This chapter presents a selective survey of mainly LBA texts and iconography from cultural areas peripheral to, and closely engaged with, the Syro-Levantine linguistic and cultural sphere in which kinnāru was at home. From a vast body of more general evidence, I have assembled the material bearing most closely on the Kinnaru-Kinyras question. This investigation helps flesh out a larger background for both… Read more

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7. Kinnaru of Ugarit

7. Kinnaru of Ugarit Having now surveyed the lyre-culture of the wider Syro-Levantine sphere, we may now turn to Ugarit, home of the Divine Kinnaru itself. Since Kinnaru does not certainly appear in personified form in any of the city’s narrative texts—although I shall suggest several possible cases [1] —we must approach him first through the evidence for the kinnāru itself. Not… Read more

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8. David and the Divine Lyre

8. David and the Divine Lyre The importance of the kinnōr in early Jewish tradition, and royal ideology specifically, is most fully embodied by David. The Bible and Josephus offer detailed descriptions of musical organization under David (ca. 1005–965) and Solomon (ca. 965–930). [1] Some consider these to be retrojections of the Second Temple’s sophisticated musical arrangements back into an imagined Golden… Read more

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Part II: Kinyras on Cyprus9. Kinyras the Kinyrist

Part II: Kinyras on Cyprus 9. Kinyras the Kinyrist A fundamental obstacle to connecting Kinyras with Kinnaru of Ugarit, and Syro-Levantine lyre-culture generally, is the relative scarcity and lateness of sources linking him to music. It is therefore best to begin by securing this elusive dimension, which should be the heart of Kinyras. Once that is established, his extra-musical associations can then be explored as… Read more

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10. Praising Kinyras

10. Praising Kinyras Pindar’s Pythian 2 contains the most elaborate allusion to Kinyras in early Greek literature and is our first explicit source for him as a familiar of Aphrodite and Apollo. [1] The latter relationship by itself readily suggests the musical and prophetic abilities credited to Kinyras elsewhere. [2] This natural inference, I shall argue here,… Read more

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11. Lyric Landscapes of Early Cyprus

11. Lyric Landscapes of Early Cyprus Pindar, supplemented by the scholia and other relevant texts, has established a musical Kinyras some five centuries older than “Our Kenyristḗs Apollo” at Roman Paphos. Three initial forays into Cypriot iconography have indicated earlier horizons still, although such pieces, being mute, can never prove that ‘Kinyras himself’ is intended. Nevertheless the abundant visual evidence for early Cypriot lyre culture can hardly… Read more