Kinyras: The Divine Lyre

  Franklin, John Curtis. 2016. Kinyras: The Divine Lyre. Hellenic Studies Series 70. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_FranklinJ.Kinyras.2016.


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 somehow established prior to Aegean immigration. So far as I can see, these findings can only be reconciled by accepting that:

  1. Kinyras is at heart a Divine Lyre, akin to Kinnaru at LBA Ugarit and very probably other cognates on the mainland; and that:
  2. This Divine Lyre was imported by one or more Cypriot cities in the LBA, from one or more specific origins and/or in a more general emulation of mainland culture. He then lingered on into the IA to be used differently by different communities at different times.

My phrasing shows that many specifics remain to be considered. What material is there in the Alashiya texts and other contemporary documents to support and elucidate the proposed importation of a mainland god? Why was a Divine Lyre imported at all? How and when did it develop so many nonmusical attributes and powers? What evidence is there in LBA Cypriot music iconography for the kinds of ideas associated elsewhere with divinized instruments and musician-kings? How and when did this ‘Kinyras’ come to symbolize the island’s pre-Greek culture in its entirety? I shall address each of these questions in turn.

Alashiya and the Mainland Cults

That a Kinnaru-like figure could have been imported to LBA Cyprus finds good general support in the island’s cosmopolitan outlook at this time, and close political and cultural engagement with its mainland periphery—NK Egypt, the Hittite Empire, and especially Hurro-Luwian Kizzuwatna/Cilicia, and Syro-Levantine sites like Ugarit and Byblos in the core area of knr-culture. The relevant material includes clear evidence for ongoing cultic and theological engagement between island and mainland.

In one of the Amarna letters, an unnamed Alashiyan king explains why he has sent Pharaoh only 500 talents (?) of copper. “Behold, the hand of Nergal is now in my country; he has slain all the men of my country, and there is not a (single) copper-worker.” As Nergal is a Mesopotamian underworld god associated with war, death, and plague, the king seems to mean that a plague or war has struck his kingdom (one of his queens also died). [1] But ‘Nergal’ itself is a conventional Akkadian calque used in international communication, so that a corresponding local figure must be assumed—one of many examples of the period’s supralocal theological outlook. [2] We may reasonably suppose, a fortiori, that this unnamed Alashiyan god was equally seen as a form of Resheph—the Syro-Levantine god connected with war and bringing and averting disease and other disasters—since Resheph was himself early on glossed as Nergal at Ebla, Ugarit, and elsewhere. As a neighboring god, Resheph is also more likely to have had an actual cult on Cyprus, as he did in NK Egypt. [3] Note that the Cypriot Ingot God (see below) is of the smiting type often associated with BA representations of Resheph. [4] Related to this puzzle is a famous bilingual inscription from the sanctuary at Tamassos (ca. 375), where Apollo, also associated with plague, was given the Greek title Alasiṓtas (spelled syllabically), thus masking a pre-Greek god. [5] The corresponding Phoenician text gives “Resheph ’lhyts,” where the epiclesis is modeled on the Greek. [6] Here too it is unclear whether we are dealing with three originally distinct DNs, with the Alashiyan one implied or forgotten; or whether the latter already bore a form of the name Resheph in the LBA, and was then distinguished from his mainland namesake by immigrant Phoenicians of the first millennium. [7]

The international profile of Alashiyan cult is further seen in another Ugaritian text, seemingly from the harbormaster to the king and dealing with a sale of ships. The official reassures him that “I myself have spoken to Ba‘al ˹Ṣaphon˺, [16] to the eternal Sun (Šapšu), to Astarte, to Anat, to all the gods of Alashiya.” [17] It is generally agreed, from the final phrase, that one of the parties to the transaction (a merchant?) was an Alashiyan. But how to account for the juxtaposition of these specific divinities? Should “all the gods of Alashiya” be taken in apposition to Ba‘al, Shapsh, Astarte, and Anat, so that these Semitic figures become representatives of the Alashiyan pantheon? [18] (‘Ba‘al’ is a theophoric element in several Alashiyan PNs. [19] ) A second suggestion—that the Ugaritian official has used local Semitic names to refer to their Alashiyan equivalents—would require such extensive functional correspondences between the two pantheons that some de facto syncretism of Alashiyan and Semitic divinities would have to be supposed. [20] Or are “all the gods of Alashiya” simply conjoined to the Semitic gods, so that the Ugaritian and Alashiyan parties to the transaction are both divinely represented? [21] This seems the readiest interpretation: it is only natural that, in an Ugaritian document, local gods be named and foreign powers treated generically. But even this interpretation would hardly prevent one or more Syro-Levantine gods from being recognized on Alashiya itself in some hybrid form. At the very least, the text reinforces the impression that the Cypriot and mainland gods were intimate neighbors.

The goddess is linked to Alashiya in the Hittite Ritual and Prayer to Ishtar of Nineveh. [31] The purpose of the ritual, which derives from the MH period and Hurrian incantatory practice, was, in time of plague, to entice Ishtar of Nineveh—using “trails of edibles converging on the offering site” [32] —back from whatever foreign land she was lurking in, and thus restore the royal family to health and the natural world to abundance. After the goddess’s statue has been appropriately prepared, the diviner-priest (ḪAL) is instructed to work through a long catalogue of lands according to a fixed epicletic formula (“O Ishtar … [if you are in Nineveh] then come from Nineveh. If you are [in] R[imuši, then come from Rimuši],” etc.). [33] Alashiya occurs midway through this litany. To be sure, we seem to have a “boilerplate list of names” intended to encompass most of the known world. [34] Hence a very similar (though slightly smaller) catalogue, which also includes Alashiya, appears in another Hittite evocation rite addressed to the Cedar Deities. [35] Nevertheless, many of the places are indeed known to have hosted cults of ‘Ishtar’ in various guises (including Astarte)—Nineveh, Mitanni, Ugarit, Amurru, Sidon, Tyre, and Canaan, to name the more obvious. There is therefore no a priori reason to doubt that Alashiya too housed a goddess identifiable as Ishtar. [36] Also valuable is I. Wegner’s observation that Aphrodite’s birth and arrival to Cyprus, as told by Hesiod, is embedded in a succession myth of ultimately Hurrian extraction. [37]

An apparently independent tradition was entered by Eusebios for the year 1425 of his lost Chronicle. This held that Paphos, along with Melos, Thera, and Bithynia, was ‘founded’ (condita/ektísthē) either by ‘Phoinix’—a standard Greek eponym for ‘Phoenicia’, by which we must also understand ‘Canaan’ [51] —and/or in connection with the abduction of Europa and the search for her by Kadmos ‘the Phoenician’. [52] The exact date of course has no real value, as Eusebios and the earlier Greek chronographers on whom he drew introduced many distortions in rationalizing their sources—which were myths and legends far more often than documents. But the Trojan War serves as one major anchor for all such constructions, so that this ‘foundation’ was definitely seen as predating the Aegean migrations to Cyprus. [53] To dismiss completely a LBA setting for these ‘Phoenician foundations’ because of their association with Phoinix or Kadmos would beg the question of what cultural realities underlie those myths. While Thasos and Thera are perhaps more readily connected with Iron Age Phoenician trade and settlement, [54] S. Morris has argued compellingly that those pursuits were “a revival, or survival, of Late Bronze Age Canaanite maritime trade”; of Levantine influence in the cult installation at Mycenaean Melos (Phylakopi), she writes that “appreciating these discoveries requires suspending the separation of Bronze and Iron Ages.” [55] In any case, the tradition of an early ‘Phoenician foundation’ at Paphos need not stand or fall with the other sites named; and there is certainly plenty of archaeological evidence from thirteenth-century Paphos for regular trade and cultural contact with the Levant. [56]

Importing the Divine Lyre

For the crucial question of how a Divine Lyre could engender so rich a mythological cycle as Kinyras enjoyed, we saw clear examples in Mesopotamian texts (Lugal-e, Gudea Cylinders, Babylonian Erra Myth), and probably the Hurro-Hittite Song of Silver, of mythological narratives spun around anthropomorphized objects and materials of cult and magic. In all of these, the narratological role of the personified item reflected the real-world position or function of the item itself. I have also argued that the same pattern underlies the several lamentable metamorphoses that afflicted Kinyras’ family members, resulting in cult-objects and processes (Chapter 12). We are thus justified in seeking further correspondences between the mythology of Kinyras and the realia of lyre-cult, particularly the intersection of both with Astarte/Ishtar/Inanna and her function as a royal patroness.

It is perfectly conceivable that, in importing some form of ‘Ishtar’ cult, LBA Cypriot kings equally emulated the performance practices and ritual poetics of one or more continental neighbors, the latter themselves influenced by Mesopotamian archetypes.

Music and the Harmonious Realm

On the basis of comparative material and systematic considerations, I have posited a LBA Cypriot ideology of the musician-king who oversees a peaceful, powerful kingdom under the protection of the goddess, whom he praises, and with whom he communicates, through song.

franklin fig38

Figure 38. Enthroned/seated harpist, Sacred Tree, and offering-bearers. Cypriot bronze stand from Kourion (?), thirteenth century. London, BM 1920/12–20/1. Drawn from Papasavvas 2001 fig. 42–47.

Whatever the exact intention, the stand is important for attesting on Cyprus, already in the pre-Greek period, an ideologically-charged conjunction of music, metal, and kingship—all three important mythological attributes of Kinyras.

franklin fig39

Figure 39. Enthroned/seated harpist and harpist devotee. Cypriot bronze stand from Kourion (?), thirteenth century. London, BM 1946/10–17/1. Drawn from Papasavvas 2001 fig. 61–67.

Although the ideology of both stands accords very well with a ‘Kinyrad’ interpretation, an organological complication must be confronted. It would have been most convenient if the musicians were given some form of Syro-Levantine lyre. Instead we find Mesopotamian(izing) harps. Yet this is not a fatal problem. Actually it is quite suggestive.

From Divine Lyre to Culture-Hero

Both stands present music as the controlling element of a larger symbolic system. This is already a startling ‘prediction’ of Kinyras, as an originally musical figure who subsumed further nonmusical functions. But the parallel is all the more striking for the ingot-bearer of the first stand, given the metallurgical Kinyras of legend. This strongly suggests that a metamusical Kinyras goes back in some form to the thirteenth century (at least); and the same conclusion is urged by independent evidence from Mycenaean Pylos (Chapter 17). This brings us to the puzzling disjunction between the versatile Kinyras of IA Cypriot myth and the powers and associations that can be reconstructed for a Divine Lyre à la Kinnaru of Ugarit.

I have argued that the Divine Lyre’s importation to Cyprus was one aspect of a more general theological engagement with the mainland, especially as concerned royal cult and its patronage by ‘Ishtar’. This context, I submit, can also illuminate the expansion of Kinyras, whose totalizing function as a culture-hero goes well beyond the usual type of prôtos heuretḗs, the legendary inventor of some one cultural pursuit. [121] The royal hymns of Shulgi and Ishme-Dagan proclaimed the king’s superhuman perfection in all civilized arts; similar ideas were applied to Solomon. Like Shulgi, Kinyras established standard measures and ensured that they were scrupulously upheld (“talents of Kinyras”). Both were expert diviners. [122] The ideal king also built and restored temples. Gudea built the house for Ningirsu; Shulgi’s father Ur-Nammu initiated ziggurats at Ur, Eridu, and Nippur, and restored Inanna’s complex at Uruk; similar works for Inanna and other gods are attested for Shulgi and Amar-Suen. Although these were historical projects by historical figures, their promotion entailed aspects of mythmaking, as seen clearly in the Gudea Cylinders. It is in keeping with this that Gudea, Ur-Nammu, and Shulgi all assumed the guise of master builder and brickmaker in poetry and/or iconography. [123] Just so, legend held that Kinyras built Aphrodite’s great sanctuary at Paphos, and invented both bricks and tiles. [124] As the ideal of royal perfection accounts for the metamusical Kinyras, so it explains the musical powers of Shulgi, Ishme-Dagan, David, and Solomon. Shulgi claimed expertise in both celebratory song and lamentation, and both were practiced by David. We saw the same dual musical function with Kinyras (Chapters 9, 10, and 12).

franklin fig40

Figure 40. The ‘Ingot God’, Enkomi, ca. 1250 (LC III). Inv. F.E. 63/16.15. Drawn from Flourentzos 1996:47.

It is certainly startling to think that a legendary priest of Aphrodite and hieratic ‘kinyrist’ could be credited with metalworking. But recall the industrial use to which lamentation singing and other music was put in Mesopotamia. [126] Conversely, the conjunction of metal-processing facilities and cult sanctuaries at Enkomi, Kition, and other Cypriot sites reveals a systematic sacralization of the LBA copper industry. Evidently metallurgy was seen as a kind of magical art, its geological basis and human development both ultimately in divine hands. [127] This is the readiest explanation of the famous ‘Bomford Goddess’, a female bronze figurine of unknown Cypriot provenance and probably twelfth-century or earlier date, who stands upon an ingot. [128] H. Catling associated her with a then-recent sensation from a sanctuary at Enkomi—the so-called Ingot God, who also surmounts an ingot (Figure 40). [129] Though found in an assemblage of items dated to the late twelfth or early eleventh century, stylistic criteria show that the Ingot God—akin to the smiting-god type of BA Syria and the Levant—is actually rather older. [130] G. Papasavvas has demonstrated, through technical analysis of the seam between ingot and feet, that the former was added at a relatively late stage, transforming a Levantine type into a distinctively Cypriot idol—embodying and upholding, through a combination of martial and metallurgical attributes, state control of metallurgical production and distribution. [131] Now J. Webb has persuasively argued that a second chamber—the west adyton, whose cult-figure is lost—must once have housed a divine consort for the Ingot God, analogous to the Bomford Goddess. [132] These analyses lend strong support to Catling’s hypothesis that Cypriot metallurgy was a sacred industry governed by a divine couple—the goddess who guaranteed the fecundity of the mines, and the god who controlled and protected the industrial processes. [133]

franklin fig41

Figure 41. Procession/dance scene. Modern impression of LBA Cypriot cylinder-seal from Enkomi, ca. 1225–1175 (LC IIIA). Nicosia, Cyprus Museum 1957 inv. no. 36. Drawn from Courtois and Webb 1987 pl. 7 no. 23.

franklin fig42

Figure 42. Procession/dance scene with possible stringed instrument. Modern impression of LBA Cypriot cylinder-seal from Enkomi Tomb 2. Stockholm, Medelhavsmuseet Inv. E. 2:67. Drawn from Karageorghis 2003:280–281 no. 320.

A more precise understanding of the historical circumstances behind the Divine Lyre’s arrival and evolution is considerably hindered by the disputed problem of the island’s political configuration in the LBA, which was probably not static. Several scenarios may be suggested.

On any historical scenario, Kinyras must be seen as a product of the LBA, deriving from the self-image projected by one or probably more Cypriot kings to their subjects. The original Kinyras resided at the intersection of royal ideology and sacred lyre-cult—that is, in the execution of liturgical music in the contexts of state ritual. After the ‘Great Collapse’, the old ideology rang on in popular memory under his name. His original attributes were best preserved at Paphos, to which we now turn.

Footnotes

[ back ] 1. EA 35.10–15, 35–39: Schaeffer 1971:509–510; AP:21–37; Moran 1992:107–109 (with defense of “talents” in n2); SHC 2 no. 16; PPC:320.

[ back ] 2. Hadjioannou 1971:37–40; AP:21–23; Moran 1992:108n3. Similarly, while Nergal is often mentioned in the Amarna letters and Ugaritian and Hittite documents, he need not have been actively worshipped in these places. For theoretical observations on the interplay of “deities in their local and supra-regional aspect,” see Pongratz-Leisten 2011:89–93 et passim.

[ back ] 3. So Dietrich 1978:16–17; DDUPP:187–188. For Resheph as Nergal at Ebla, Ugarit, etc., and his cult in LBA Egypt, see Stadelmann 1967:56–76; Lipiński 2009:23–27, 79–81, 161–221 et passim.

[ back ] 4. Lipinski 2009:139–160, especially 145–146.

[ back ] 5. Cf. Dietrich 1978; Glover 1981:148.

[ back ] 6. ICS 216 (a-la-si-o-ta-i = Ἀλασιώτᾳ, line 4); further discussion in Masson 1973:117–119; cf. Hadjioannou 1971:41; Schretter 1974:151–173; AP:22, 25–26; DDUPP:188; SHC 2 no. 122; Lipinski 2009:231–233. That the Phoen. title is secondary is shown by the correspondence of –ts with Gk. -τας. Conversely, Apollo Ἄμυκλος (dat. a-mu-ko-lo-i) is probably an interpretatio Graeca of Resheph Mikal in a third-century inscription from Idalion (ICS 220 = KAI 39, with comments to 38; DGAC:247–248). Others argue for a connection between Laconian and Cypriot cult: Dietrich 1978; GR:51, 145; Lipiński 1987b:95n27 with further references, eclipsing Stadelmann 1967:52–56; Lipiński 2004:64; Lipinski 2009:232–235.

[ back ] 7. Resheph is first directly attested on the island via ostraka and inscriptions in the fifth century. So on the hypothesis he would have been reintroduced during the Phoenician colonial period (perhaps like ‘Kinyras’ himself: see p369). Cf. Stadelmann 1967:52.

[ back ] 8. EA 35.26.

[ back ] 9. For various parallels, especially from Hurro-Hittite sources, see AP:23, 29–37; Strauss 2006:199. For the range of the šā’ilu, notably the reading of dreams and incense, see CAD s.v.

[ back ] 10. Cypriot Phrasios: [Apollodoros] Library 2.5.11. Pygmalion: Servius Auctus on Vergil Georgics 3.5. Hyginus Fabulae 56 gives ‘Thrasius’, now son of Pygmalion and himself brother of Busiris. The common denominator of these variants is mantic relations between Cyprus and Egypt, even if the Cypriot setting itself is secondary (so HC:66).

[ back ] 11. EA 23; Moran 1992:61–62; Beckman 1998:2–3.

[ back ] 12. See Wegner 1981:156 and further below.

[ back ] 13. RS 24.325 (KTU/CAT 1.141): Dietrich and Loretz 1969b:173–174; SHC 2 no. 64; Baurain 1980b:291; PPC:320.

[ back ] 14. See p401–406.

[ back ] 15. RS 24.274 = Laroche 1968:504–507; SHC 2 no. 65; cf. AP:55.

[ back ] 16. For the restoration, see HUS:678.

[ back ] 17. RS 18.113A,6–8: PRU 5 no. 8; KTU/CAT 2.42; cf. Muhly 1972:207; AP:55; Knapp 1983 (superseding Lipiński 1977); SHC 2 no. 47; PPC:181, 320. Nmry in line 9 is usually understood as referring to Amenhotep III (Nebmare); but Singer (HUS:678) has attractively reinterpreted this line as invoking a supreme Alashiyan god, “the blessed/strong one, king of eternity”—noting the seemingly chthonic character this would imply, and suggesting as a possible parallel the description of Rāp’iu in RS 24.252, 1 (for which see p134–135); cf. PPC:320.

[ back ] 18. Lipiński 1977:213; Webb 2003:17.

[ back ] 19. For these theophorics, Astour 1964:245–246 (e.g. Be-e[l][a]-am-m[a], ‘Baal-inspires-dread’); cf. Knapp 1983:40.

[ back ] 20. Karageorghis and Karageorghis 2002:273; Budin 2003:133–134.

[ back ] 21. Muhly 1972:207; HUS:678 (Singer).

[ back ] 22. Hesykhios s.v. Ἔγχειος· Ἀφροδίτη. Κύπριοι. Cf. Karageorghis 1988:195. Martial Aphrodite: Farnell 1896–1909 2:653–655; Pirenne-Delforge 1994:450–454.

[ back ] 23. See Budin 2003:202–206, 274–275 (quotation), suggesting a special connection with Ishara at Alalakh. For the maritime Aphrodite, see p330. For Baalat Gebal, see p463–486.

[ back ] 24. Karageorghis 1977; Dietrich 1978:16–17; Kypris:11–12 and 34 (Paphos), 198 (Khytroi).

[ back ] 25. See p363.

[ back ] 26. For eleventh-century Cretan iconographic influence in the ‘goddess with upraised arms’, see e.g. Budin 2003:275; Kypris:78.

[ back ] 27. For the history and geographical range of Ishtar of Nineveh, see Wegner 1981; Beckman 1998; cf. Bachvarova 2013 with further literature.

[ back ] 28. For this development, Wilhelm 1989:30–31; KH:150–151.

[ back ] 29. Since the majority of these were connected with towns and mountains in North Syria or southeastern Anatolia, they may be “hypostases of a single divine archetype.” See Wegner 1981:157–195 with Beckman 1998:3–4 (quotation) and n39; cf. Bachvarova 2013:24 and n5.

[ back ] 30. For Hurrian Ishtar at Ugarit, see Herrmann 1973; Wilhelm 1989:51; indices to RCU, and p. 275 for Egyptian usage of ‘Hurrian land’ to refer to North Syria and southern Anatolia.

[ back ] 31. KUB 15.35 + KBo 2.9 = CTH 716: Sommer 1921, especially 95; Archi 1977; SHC 2 no. 42; CS 1 no. 65 (whence the title used here). M. Bachvarova, whom I thank for introducing me to this text, points out that the some versions of the ritual contain Hurrian ritual phrases (Haas and Wegner 1988:376–380, nos. 84, 85).

[ back ] 32. G. Beckman in SHC 2 no. 42.

[ back ] 33. For the ḪAL, Wegner 1981:155.

[ back ] 34. Beckman 1998:5n57.

[ back ] 35. KUB 15.34 i.48–65 = CTH 483; SHC 2 no. 41.

[ back ] 36. Cf. Wegner 1981:155, 204–207. One might quibble that the text guarantees only a Hurro-Hittite perspective, the proposition not being necessarily intelligible in Alashiya itself. But this is belied by the evidence already considered for the neighborly theological relations between Alashiya and its mainland neighbors.

[ back ] 37. Hesiod Theogony 188–200. Cf. Wegner 1981:205. That Hesiod’s Aphrodite travels eastwards from Kythera will then be a Hellenizing innovation.

[ back ] 38. KBo 12.39; CTH 141; Steiner 1962:134–135; Otten 1963:10–13; SHC 2 no 37.

[ back ] 39. G. Beckman in SHC 2 no. 37; cf. PPC:321. The clause in question is obv. 19: see Steiner 1962:135 (not in the text of Otten 1963:10–13).

[ back ] 40. Smith 2015:74–77.

[ back ] 41. See indices to RCU, with Pardee’s suggestion on 275.

[ back ] 42. RS 24.643 (KTU/CAT 1.148), obverse. See further p120.

[ back ] 43. RS 17.352; Nougayrol 1956:121–122 (no. 55); SHC 2 no. 23; Beckman and Hoffner 1999 no. 35; cf. PPC:320–321.

[ back ] 44. S. Budin in PPC:321.

[ back ] 45. Karageorghis and Karageorghis 2002:273.

[ back ] 46. Karageorghis 1977:72–85; CAAC II.3–16; Budin 2002:319–320; Webb 2003:15–17; Budin 2003:140–145, 274; PPC:176.

[ back ] 47. Webb 1999:157–165; Webb 2003:17 (quotation).

[ back ] 48. Herodotos 1.105. The identification of Aphrodite/Ourania with Astarte is also made by Philo of Byblos FGH 790 F 2 (31): τὴν δὲ Ἀστάρτην Φοίνικες τὴν Ἀφροδίτην εἶναι λέγουσι; Pausanias 1.14.7. For Astarte at Ascalon, cf. 1 Samuel 31:10.

[ back ] 49. Cf. Brown 1965:214: “We might conjecture … that when the Philistines took over the Semitic goddess of Ascalon, they began to adapt her into a form which would be more acceptable to other Aegean peoples … They might then have exported the new version of the cult back along the Phoenician island-settlements which marked their invasion route, and where the old version had already been established.” See also Blinkenberg 1924:30n* (sic).

[ back ] 50. Pausanias 1.14.7: “The worship of Ourania was established among the Assyrians first of men, and after them among the Paphians out of the Cypriots, and out of the Phoenicians those who inhabit Ascalon; and the Kythereans learned to honor her from the Phoenicians.” Herodotos himself elsewhere (1.131) subscribed to an Assyrian (and Arabian) origin for the goddess (under respective local names), crediting them with introducing her to the Persians. Pausanias probably rationalized the two passages (Blinkenberg 1924:30).

[ back ] 51. See p55.

[ back ] 52. The relevant section is preserved by Saint Jerome, Synkellos, and the twelfth-century Chronicle of Michael the Syrian. Helm punctuates Jerome’s text as Melus et Pafus et Thasus et Callista urbes conditae Bithynia condita a Foenice, quae primum Mariandyna vocabatur, clearly construing the sites prior to Bithynia as Phoenician colonies (Helm 1984:48b = Schoene 1967 2:34). This was also the view of HC:69 and n6 (who however evidently errs in giving the year as 1415 and crediting Byblos specifically—though for Melos at least one may note Herodian De prosodia catholica 89.20 Lentz: οὕτω δὲ καὶ ἐκαλεῖτο Μῆλος μία τῶν Κυκλάδων ἀπὸ τῶν Βυβλίων Φοινίκων). Synkellos is closely parallel (Μῆλος καὶ Θάσος καὶ Ἀλκισθὴ ἐκτίσθησαν καὶ Πάφος. Βιθυνία ἐκτίσθη ὑπὸ Φοίνικος, ἡ πρὶν Μαριανδηνὴ καλουμένη, 185.14 Mosshammer), although the punctuation here associates Phoinix only with Bithynia. A solution to the syntax may be sought in Michael the Syrian, who, by including the Rape of Europa, introduces (and probably preserves) the necessary motive: “A cette époque, furent bâties les villes de Mélos, Paphos, Thasos, et Kalistés. L’enlèvement d’Europe eut lieu. Bithynia fut bâtie par Phénix” (3.8, Chabot 1899–1924 1:45). This is synchronized with the age of Moses.

[ back ] 53. For the Trojan War was a chronographic boundary, and the various ancient calculations, see Burkert 1995.

[ back ] 54. Edwards 1979:182–184. A connection between Kinyras and the Thasian TN Κοίνυρα, said by Herodotos 6.47 to be near the Phoenician mines, was suggested by Salviat 1962:108n7; G. Dossin in Salviat and Servais 1964:284. But this seems very doubtful.

[ back ] 55. Morris 1992:110–111, 124–149 et passim (quotations 110, 125); Edwards 1979:187–191 was prepared to accept a stratum of LBA ‘memories’ in the Kadmos myth, though would commit to no specific detail.

[ back ] 56. Paphos:50–71. Hill dismissed the idea of LBA ‘Phoenician colonization’ (HC:69 and n6), but the archaeological record has deepened substantially since.

[ back ] 57. Vergil Aeneid 1.619–622: see p354.

[ back ] 58. I leave aside the vexed question of the (seemingly inevitable) linguistic kinship of ‘Astarte’ and ‘Aphrodite’ (Dugand 1974, especially 91–98; Karageorghis 1977:111–113, 227; for phonetic difficulties, other theories, and earlier references, see GR:408n18; West 2000). The Mycenaean royal title Wánassa (‘Queen’) for the Cypriot goddess (see below) would certainly accord with the existence of an Astarte-figure (‘Queen of Heaven’, in later Gk. Ouranía) at the time of Mycenaean immigration. But these points should not be pressed, as ‘Queen’ is a natural honorific, and ‘Aphrodite’ itself is not attested on the island before the Classical period.

[ back ] 59. See p380, 382n70, 407.

[ back ] 60. See p100–102.

[ back ] 61. See p77–79, 89–90.

[ back ] 62. See p84 and Heimpel, “Balang-Gods,” 23f.

[ back ] 63. See p33–37, 80–81, 151–152, 158, 167–174 .

[ back ] 64. Collins 2007:158–159.

[ back ] 65. See p169–170, 173.

[ back ] 66. See Chapter 8.

[ back ] 67. See p25, 282.

[ back ] 68. DDUPP:452–453.

[ back ] 69. See p25–37, 161–165.

[ back ] 70. Frazer 1914 1:49. It is perhaps significant that the queens of Paphos, like the goddess herself, bore the title Wánassa—although the same was true of the king’s sisters: Aristotle fr. 526 Rose (from the Constitution of the Cypriots) = Harpokration Lexicon of the Ten Orators and Suda s.v. ἄνακτες καὶ ἄνασσαι· οἱ μὲν υἱοὶ τοῦ βασιλέως καὶ οἱ ἀδελφοὶ καλοῦνται ἄνακτες, αἱ δὲ ἀδελφαὶ καὶ γυναῖκες ἄνασσαι· Ἀριστοτέλης ἐν τῇ Κυπρίων πολιτείᾳ.

[ back ] 71. See p37–40.

[ back ] 72. Beauty of Kinyras: p335n99. Cf. Shulgi A (ETCSL 2.4.2.01), 15, “I am Shulgi, who has been chosen by Inanna for his attractiveness”, and p35, 37–40.

[ back ] 73. See p154.

[ back ] 74. See p119.

[ back ] 75. See p152, 174, 178.

[ back ] 76. Wegner 1981:148–150.

[ back ] 77. RS 15.82, 4 (KTU/CAT 4.168): see further p114.

[ back ] 78. See p114–118.

[ back ] 79. See p99.

[ back ] 80. Although the structure of these texts (essentially ‘end reports’) is hardly conducive to inclusion of such details. For this corpus, see recently Stökl 2012:103–152, 211–215; for the special role of Ishtar, Parpola 1997:XVIII–XXXVI, XLVII–XLVIII et passim.

[ back ] 81. See p85.

[ back ] 82. See p161–165.

[ back ] 83. Catling 1964:203–211; Papasavvas 2001; Papasavvas 2004.

[ back ] 84. Karageorghis and Papasavvas 2001:348–352. For the first stand discussed below with its ingot-bearer before a tree, Knapp 1986:87 has pointed to antecedents in Cypriot pottery and glyptic of the fifteenth and fourteenth centuries: see images in his fig. 2 (eight seals variously from Kourion, Enkomi, and Hala Sultan Teke).

[ back ] 85. Papasavvas 2001; Karageorghis and Papasavvas 2001:343–348; Papasavvas 2004; cf. PPC:272–274, noting that molds for the ajouré figure-work have been discovered on the island.

[ back ] 86. PPC:274.

[ back ] 87. For its shape, cf. MgB 2/2:80–85 fig. 62–70 (OB); 102 fig. 108 (Kassite seal, fourteenth century); 126 fig. 145 (N-A); 130 fig. 147 (N-A); 136–138 fig. 151–152 (N-A, ‘Elamite orchestra’).

[ back ] 88. London 1920/12–20/1 (height 12.2 cm.; ring diameter 9.4): Catling 1964 no. 34 (205–206 and pl. 34 a–d); Matthäus 1985 no. 704 (314–315 and pl. 100, 102); Papasavvas 2001 no. 23: 239–240 and 351–352, fig. 42–47; Aspects:82 no. 58, fig. 68.

[ back ] 89. Barnett 1935:209: “We are actually shown the male divinity of the tree … in the process of being worshipped”; Hübner 1992:123.

[ back ] 90. Catling 1964:206. Aspects:82 notes both possibilities.

[ back ] 91. For this view of the circular space at the temple of Apollo Hylátēs (Kourion), see with parallels Hübner 1992; for the one on Yeronisos, Connelly 2011:334–338. The same idea has been advanced for the Idalion phiálē (PBSB, Cy3: Figure 29 above): see Tubb 2003. For LBA Canaanite parallels, Mazar 2003.

[ back ] 92. Mitannian Sacred Tree: Collon 1982:13, 78. Cypriot reception in various media: Danthine 1937:195–209; Porada 1981:27; Meekers 1987 (a typological study of 144 cylinder seals and one impression from LBA Cyprus, distinguishing four stages in the transformation of the Mitannian glyptic version); Webb 1999:272 (scenes of tree-adoration). For the Tree’s broader ANE contexts, see p160n71 with references.

[ back ] 93. See p159–161.

[ back ] 94. Keel 1998:40: “All of these [sc. offerings on the stand] can be understood as sacrifices and gifts for a goddess or her temple.” Gaber forthcoming includes the present tree among other evidence for the diffusion of Inanna iconography from Mesopotamia and its persistence and evolution in appropriate contexts in the Levant and Cyprus.

[ back ] 95. Catling 1964:206

[ back ] 96. See p236–239.

[ back ] 97. See p37–40.

[ back ] 98. See index s.v. ‘order, symbolized by music’.

[ back ] 99. Odysseus, still disguised as a beggar, compares the good repute of his faithful Penelope to that of “some faultless king, who, fearing god and / Holding sway among mighty and many men, / Upholds justice. And the rich dark earth brings forth / Its wheat and barley, and the trees teem with their fruit; / Herds steadily produce, and the sea gives up its fish— / All from his kindly leadership—and the people flourish under him” (Odyssey 19.109–114). While the passage adheres to the ‘Ruler’s Truth’ of Indo-European tradition (Watkins 1995:85. Also Martin 1984:34–35), similar concepts characterized LBA royal ideologies of the ANE; in that age of Great Kingship the Mycenaean wánax—not an Indo-European word—is likely to have been defined by a fusion of Indo-European, Pre-Greek/Minoan, and ANE concepts (see papers in Rehak 1995). It is therefore relevant that when Odysseus reveals himself through the trial of the bow he is compared to a lyrist (21.406–413). Recall the lyre-player (with Minoanizing instrument) who looms so large in the Throne Room fresco at Pylos (LH IIIB2–IIIC: Lang 1969:79–80 and pl. 27, 125–126), the climax of a procession scene, beginning in the adjacent room(s), which depicts some kind of religious ritual and feast overseen by the king—illustrating “the ruler’s direct association both with the festival calendar and with an explicit ideology of divine protection and sound rule”: McCallum 1987:140–141 (quotation), cf. 70–71, 109–124, 144–145; Palaima 1995b:132–133; Shelmerdine 2008:83–84.

[ back ] 100. See p95. Cf. Bachvarova forthcoming, who, comparing the KI.LAM festival, interprets a number of Linear B tablets from Thebes as relating to a harvest festival, involving the convergence of regional labor-groups upon the capital (distributions are recorded for winnowers, builders, basket-carriers, shepherds, fullers, leather workers, textile workers).

[ back ] 101. See index s.v. ‘royal ideology:king as musician’.

[ back ] 102. Catling 1964:207.

[ back ] 103. London 1946/10–17/1 (height 31 cm; ring diameter 15.5): Catling 1964 no. 36, 208–210 and pl. 35 a-6 (musicians in d); Matthäus 1985 no. 706 (316–318 and pl. 103–104); Papasavvas 2001 no. 28, 242–243, 359–360 fig. 61–67 (musicians in 61, 64); Aspects:83 no. 59 fig. 69.

[ back ] 104. Compare especially MgB 2/2:102 fig. 108 (Kassite seal, fourteenth century); 106 fig. 114–115 (NB). The mirroring of the two instruments was recognized by Catling 1964:209; so too Coldstream 1986:13, but calling both lyres; the standing figure’s instrument is considered a lyre in Aspects:83, followed by Knapp 2011:123. The opposing perspectives are admittedly confusing, but close inspection of the left-hand figure reveals the harp’s horizontal bar passing over the player’s arm. The rounded material below each instrument’s bar must represent the excess string-lengths treated decoratively; there are Mesopotamian parallels for this from the OB (MgB 2/2:88 fig. 75), Kassite (102 fig. 108), and N-A periods (122–123 and fig. 141, 126–127 and fig. 145, 130 and fig. 147, 136–139 and fig. 151–153), although none of these shows the strings gathered and tied off near the corner of the frame, as is apparently done here. I thank S. Hagel for helpful discussion of these points.

[ back ] 105. Papasavvas 2001:243; Aspects:83 (quotation).

[ back ] 106. So rightly Coldstream 1986:13; D’Albiac 1992:288.

[ back ] 107. Keswani 1989:61, 65; Steel 1998, especially 291–292; PPC:196–197; Wijngaarden 2002:154–155; Bachvarova forthcoming (“Cyprus as a Source of Near Eastern Epic: An Overview”).

[ back ] 108. Cypriot sphinxes: Dessenne 1957:78–81, 154–160, 192–194, 198–199; Markoe 1988:21–22 (Syro-Phoenician antecedents and funerary associations); D’Albiac 1992; Webb 2001:75, noting two votive examples from the sanctuary of the Ingot God at Enkomi (Sols II–I); Aspects:110.

[ back ] 109. 1 Kings 7:27–37.

[ back ] 110. SCE 2 pl. CCXLV no. 2180; Buchner and Boardman 1966:35 no. 126; Reyes 2001:69, cat. 75, fig. 98.

[ back ] 111. D’Albiac 1992:289. This seal-design is stressed by D’Albiac 1992:289–290 as a key example of the IA continuity of complex iconography, along with the Hubbard amphora (see p256).

[ back ] 112. A remarkable coincidence should be signaled here. From some angles (e.g. Papasavvas 2001, fig. 64 and our Figure 39), a minute face appears below the arm-end of the right-hand instrument, suggesting a parallel with the heads of gods and pharaohs which graced Egyptian harps by the MBA (cf. p60); while these were affixed above the arm, a ceramic fragment with relief from Hattusha does show a harp-arm with such an ornament beneath (probably the head of a bird or quadruped: HKm:68 and pl. 10 no. 32; the curve of the arm is also similar). But the face/head on the Cypriot stand is probably illusory, as shown by an x-ray image kindly undertaken by J. Ambers and T. Kiely of the British Museum (who also arranged for preliminary observations and photography by S. Mirelman on my behalf). One sees, in a standard photograph, that the leftmost string of the instrument is, along much of its length, rather puffy; but the x-ray, penetrating corrosion to the underlying features of greater density, shows the thin string-line as originally intended. The top end disappears altogether in the x-ray, showing that here corrosion was more severe, bulging out to yield a fugitive face.

[ back ] 113. Coldstream 1986:13.

[ back ] 114. See p53, 256–257.

[ back ] 115. See p77–79, 89–90.

[ back ] 116. See p118.

[ back ] 117. See p33–37, 80–81.

[ back ] 118. See p90–92.

[ back ] 119. See p97, 119.

[ back ] 120. See p92–93.

[ back ] 121. Kleingünther 1933.

[ back ] 122. Shulgi: p35, 38. Kinyras: Chapter 16.

[ back ] 123. Ur-Nammu: RIME 3/2 1.1.2–8; CS 2 no. 138C; cf. Michalowski 2008:35. Shulgi: RIME 3/2 1.2.1–34; CS 2 no. 139B. Amar-Suen: RIME 3/2 1.3.3–9, 1.3.14–17; CS 2 no. 140A. Inscribed figurines bearing baskets of bricks on their heads have been discovered in foundation deposits, as well as vast numbers of bricks stamped with royal names: Ellis 1968:23–25 (et passim), and fig. 19–20, 22–25 (‘peg-wizards’ of Gudea, Ur-Nammu, Shulgi, and Rim-Sin of Larsa bearing baskets on heads, from Lagash, Nippur, Uruk, and Ur, respectively). Gudea is also described as a brickmaker, and carrying a mortar basket on his head, in The Building of Ningirsu’s House (ETCSL 2.1.7): Gudea Cylinders A 5.2–10, 6.6–8, 18.10–19.2, 20.24–21.12.

[ back ] 124. Bricks/tiles: see p325 (these inventions also underlie the complex Khousor, Kinyras’ alter ego in later Phoenicia: see Chapter 18). Temple-builder: Tacitus Histories 2.3, and further below, p401.

[ back ] 125. Cf. Papantonio 2012:54–69 for good theoretical arguments against the idea that ideology and power simply “flow[s] from the top to the bottom of society”; rather it is “dialectically related to the different sets of resources, material (i.e. technology, artefacts) or non-material (i.e. knowledge, rank). In this respect, power and change operations usually can work on the basis of societal reproduction and transformation rather than clash and confrontation” (57–58).

[ back ] 126. See p24, 30.

[ back ] 127. Sacred/magical metallurgy: Frontisi-Ducroux 1975:35–82 passim; Karageorghis 1976b:57, 73–76; J. Karageorghis 1977:97–117; GR:47, 153; Knapp 1986; Dalley 1987; Loucas-Durie 1989; Morris 1992:87–88, 112; Blakely 2006. There is a parallel from Mycenaean Pylos, where a number of bronze-workers are qualified as ‘Potnian’, that is, ‘of the goddess’ (in the Jn series: see Lupack 2007:56; Lupack 2008b:114–119). But note that only about six percent of bronze-workers known from the Pylian records are so qualified (Lupack 2008b:118).

[ back ] 128. This idea was first formulated by Catling 1971. Two closely comparable examples are in the museums of Nicosia and Kouklia (Palaipaphos), but since the base of each is broken away the original presence of an ingot is uncertain: Karageorghis 2002b:96 no. 194.

[ back ] 129. Schaeffer 1965; Courtois 1971; Schaeffer 1971:505–510, with pl. I–VII. For these remarkable figures, find-contexts, and ideology, see inter al. Masson 1973; Karageorghis 1977:97–117; Knapp 1986; Karageorghis 1998:32–33 and fig. 8–9; Webb 2001; Papasavvas 2011:61–62, noting significant stylistic deviations from the smiting-god type.

[ back ] 130. Muhly 1980:156–161; Knapp 1986:86–89 (“long been revered … cared for and protected by both the elites that fostered their worship and the producers who carried it out,” 87); Papasavvas 2011:65. Resheph and the smiting-god type: Lipiński 2009:139–160, especially 145–146.

[ back ] 131. Papasavvas 2011:63–65, suggesting that the original figurine goes back to an earlier cult-­structure (Sols V–VI [LC IIC]), while the attachment of the ingot, with its fairly crude artisanship, belongs to the period that immediately preceded the town’s abandonment by the eleventh century.

[ back ] 132. Webb 1999:102–113 and Webb 2001.

[ back ] 133. Cf. Budin 2002, emphasizing sexuality and power over fertility both for the Bomford Goddess and Aphrodite more generally. Her point is well taken, though she herself acknowledges (319) that it is precisely in the iconography of the Cypriot goddess that a fertility aspect may be identified (LC II kourotrophos figurines); and if this slips away from later iconography, still Aphrodite is often associated with fertility especially in Cypriot contexts: Kypris:226–228 et passim. In early Greek poetry, see especially Hesiod Theogony 194–195 and Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 69–74. Recall too that the Cypriot goddess was sometimes interpreted as Demeter/Ceres: see p287n46. For the ‘fertility’ of Cypriot metals, cf. Ovid Metamorphoses 10.220 (fecundam Amathunta metallis) and 531 (gravidam Amathunta metallis).

[ back ] 134. Schaeffer 1971 argued that the Ingot God, whatever his Cypriot name, had already been associated with Mesopotamian Nergal and/or WS Resheph; the basis was EA 35, containing the Alashiyan king’s apology to Pharaoh for his inability to send copper (for this text, see p372–373). Dalley 1987 sees a parallel in the Sumerian fertility goddess Ninhursag, also patroness of copper smelting, who by the early second millennium had been paired in North Syria with Nergal, identified with the WS Resheph (see p372). Dussaud 1954 interpreted as Kinyras the famous ‘Horned God’, also from Enkomi (Dikaios 1962, with fig. 18–22; Dikaios 1969–1971:197–199, 527–530, pl. 139–144; Karageorghis 1998:30 and fig. 7), and often connected with the island’s ‘horned Apollo’ (Apollo Kereátas: see p230n64).

[ back ] 135. Brown 1965:216–219; EFH:56–57, eschewing the alternative interpretation of Burkert 1992:35, 190.

[ back ] 136. See p476–479.

[ back ] 137. See especially Knapp 1986.

[ back ] 138. Porada 1948:196 et passim.

[ back ] 139. Webb 2002, developing ideas in Courtois and Webb 1987; Webb 1992; Webb 1999:262; cf. PPC:153–154.

[ back ] 140. Procession/dance scenes: Schaeffer 1952, pl. VII.1, 3–5; further references in Courtois and Webb 1987:76n249, 78n253; Webb 1999:272.

[ back ] 141. Buchholz 1966; Buchholz 1990.

[ back ] 142. Kolotourou 2005; Kolotourou 2007. Knapp 2011:122 has rightly noted that ubiquitous explanations of such finds in terms of goddess-cult are often facile and lacking in contextual support. A number of incised scapulae found in clear ritual contexts have also been interpreted as rhythmical instruments, though others see them as divinatory devices (both ideas could be right): see with references Webb 1999:249–250, doubting the musical interpretation (“predominantly if not exclusively associated with ritual and in particular with urban cult buildings of LC IIC–LC III”). Parallels are known from several Levantine sites: MAIP:94, 176; Caubet 2014:178.

[ back ] 143. Catling 1964:142–146; Knapp 2011:122, with references.

[ back ] 144. See p115–118.

[ back ] 145. Aign 1963:60 with fig. 25. First seal: Schaeffer 1952, pl. VII.4; Webb 1999:272–273 fig. 87.2. Second seal, from Enkomi Tomb 2 (inventory no. E 2:67), Late Cypriot I–II: SCE 1:474 no. 67 and pl. LXXVI no. 67 (“From the left approaches a procession of four adorers. The first of them holds a lyre”); Karageorghis 2003:280–281 no. 320 (lyre or fan), with comments of D. Collon (fan, comparing Collon 1987 no. 270).

[ back ] 146. Webb 1999:102–113 and Webb 2001.

[ back ] 147. See p242.

[ back ] 148. Webb 2001:76–79. For the locations of the figurines, see Courtois 1971:326, fig. 140bis.

[ back ] 149. Webb 2001; Papasavvas 2011:64.

[ back ] 150. See p10–11.

[ back ] 151. See p13.

[ back ] 152. See p11, 363.

[ back ] 153. See p345.