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.
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 god Kothar. [1] I argue that on some parts of the mainland, the Divine Knr was sometimes absorbed by Kothar. On Cyprus, however, Kothar was himself absorbed by Kinyras. I reserve for separate discussion in Chapter 19 the traditions allying both Kinyras and ‘Kauthar’ to Byblos.
Kothar and Kinnaru
We encountered Kothar at Ugarit as a beneficiary of state sacrifice, the armorer of Baal, and maker of Aqhat’s marvelous bow. [2] He also appeared in the Rāp’iu text (RS 24.252.2–5), where the eponymous ‘king of eternity’ either sang, or was celebrated,
With kinnāru and pipes,
With drum and cymbals,
With ivory clappers, [3]
With the goodly companions of Kothar. [4]
With drum and cymbals,
With ivory clappers, [3]
With the goodly companions of Kothar. [4]
The parallelistic structure of the overall passage is clearly indicated by the repeated conjunction (b, ‘with’). [5] Hence, the expression translated here as ‘goodly companions’, whatever its exact meaning, must belong to the musical atmosphere, and so most plausibly designates the ensemble as a whole. [6] This may imply some personification of the instruments, so that it is actually Kinnaru, in the first position, who leads the group, just as Ningirsu’s balang-god presided over his temple-orchestra. [7] Consider too that only the instruments are named, not players; and yet players are needed if the instruments are to sound. This ambiguity is just what we have seen with the divinized instruments of Mesopotamia. If this interpretation is right, it would be welcome evidence that Kinnaru could indeed feature in (para)mythological contexts—something one expects on the basis of the Sumerian and Syro-Hurrian treatment of divinized cult-objects on the one hand, and Kinyras’ numerous appearances in Cypriot and Greek mythology on the other. [8]
In any case, the kinnāru and other instruments are apparently somehow subordinated to Kothar. Various cultic nuances may escape us, but one likely explanation is ready to hand: they were created by the divine craftsman. Recall that Kothar also made magical weapons for Baal, endowing them with proper names through a special ritual. [9] Nor is this idea incompatible with M. S. Smith’s interpretation as ‘the goodly ones bound/enchanted by Kothar’, detecting connotations of ‘magical binding’ in ḥbr (traditionally “companions”), since in Mesopotamia definite ritual procedures governed the construction of cult-objects, their investment with divinity, and their dedication to sacred service. [10]
RS 24.252 is the one Ugaritic text that seems to attest a significant connection between Kothar and music. [11] Yet the kinnāru’s divinization in that city surely means that Kothar was not the only or primary musical god there, despite the lack of unambiguous evidence for a personified treatment of Kinnaru.
Philo of Byblos: Khousor and His Retiring Twin
When Kothar was discovered in the Ugaritian texts, he was soon recognized as the ancestor, and helped clarify the early nature, of the Khousor who is mentioned by two late Phoenician authors surviving only in fragments—Mokhos of Sidon and Philo of Byblos. [12]
For Mokhos, reinterpreting his cosmogonic traditions under the stimulus of Hellenistic philosophy, Khousoros (sic) was “the first opener” and “the power of mind, since it first distinguishes indistinct nature.” [13] He enjoys a very exalted position as son of “Oulomos, the God who has been Thought.” ‘Oulomos’ is related to Heb. ‘ôlām (‘Everlasting’), an epithet of Yahweh, with an Ug. cognate used of El. [14]
The account by Philo of Byblos (ca. 100 CE)—partially preserved by Eusebios (ca. 260–339), bishop of Caesarea—is comparatively conservative, and so more informative about the traditional attributes of Kothar/Khousor. [15] Philo collected and combined material from the several Phoenician cities, and it is often not clear, no doubt intentionally, where a given tradition originates. [16] The relevant passage is part of a long genealogy of culture heroes who map the perceived course of civilization, beginning with a mythical foundation of Tyre, but wending its way towards a vaguely Byblian conclusion. It is difficult to know, therefore, whether Philo’s Khousor stems from one or the other city, or is more generally representative of Phoenicia. [17]
Khousor appears after the invention of huts, skins for clothing, the taming of fire, the first maritime adventure (on a log), and mastery of hunting and fishing:
And from them [sc. Hunter and Fisher] were born two brothers, the discoverers of iron and how to work it, of whom the one (tháteron), called Khousor, cultivated the verbal arts (lógous) and incantations (epōidás) and divination (manteías). And this one is known as Hephaistos, though he also discovered fishhook, bait, fishing-line, and raft, and was first of all men to sail. Because of this they revered him even as a god after his death; and he was also called Zeus Meilikhios. And some say that his brother [18] had the idea of walls made from bricks. [19]
As Hoffman first pointed out in 1896, this dossier overlaps strikingly with what is credited to Kinyras. [20] Another vital sympathy, he emphasized, is that Kinyras is father of Adonis, a role played by Kauthar in ps.-Meliton (see Chapter 19). Brown was able to expand the comparison on the basis of Kothar’s profile in the Ugaritian texts. [21] Following Hoffman and Brown, I assembled further evidence in Chapter 13 for Kinyras’ nonmusical attributes, three broad areas of which, we now see, are closely paralleled by Philo’s Khousor: Kinyras discovered metals and metallurgical tools, promoted seafaring, and invented roof- and/or wall-tiles. I may now add several further comparisons. Kothar too—the Ugaritian god, that is, versus Philo’s Khousor—had a maritime dimension, as a kind of divine steersman or protector of sailors invoked in a poem of the Baal Cycle; [22] and indirectly through his overseas home on Crete in Ugaritian epic, symbolizing maritime palatial trade networks in daedalic luxury items and technologies. [23] Kothar was, like Kinyras, a builder, constructing palaces for Baal and other gods—Kinyras built Aphrodite’s temple—and both worked in precious materials. [24] Kinyras and Kothar are both credited with intricate decorative schemes involving animal figuration. [25] Both are also armorers: Kinyras makes and/or supplies Agamemnon’s breastplate(s), Kothar designs the weapons with which Baal subdues Sea, and delivers Aqhat his priceless compound bow. [26] It is tempting to link Kothar the bowyer with the otherwise quite stray report in the Pindaric scholia that Apollo loved Kinyras for being an archer. [27] Finally, we have seen that in early Greek poetics, Kinyras was proverbially wealthy and often connected with kháris—a display of generosity that results in beholden friendship. This too may echo Kothar, since the root kṯr, the basic idea of which was ‘build/work’, led secondarily in Semitic languages to associations with success, prosperity, and abundance. [28] Note that Philo glosses Khousor as Zeus Meilikhios (the ‘mild’ or ‘gracious’). [29]
The sympathies of Khousor and Kinyras, already undeniable, become quite remarkable when one considers Philo’s attribution of lógoi, epōidaí, and manteîai to Khousor. Although these powers can be paralleled to some extent for Kothar in the Ugaritian texts, [30] they accord much better with what one expects of a Divine Lyre, both on the basis of Mesopotamian and Hurro-Hittite parallels for divinized instruments, and the performance contexts known for the kinnāru itself.
Khousor’s appearance early in the development of civilization, culminating in the invention of writing by Taautos (< Thoth), encourages us to understand lógoi in pre-literate, performative terms as ‘the artistic use of language’. After all, even in the literate cities of the LBA Levant, traditions of poetry and liturgical music must have remained basically oral, notwithstanding the Hurrian hymns with musical ‘notation’. [31] Lógoi comfortably embraces the full verbal range needed in cult and court: ritual prescriptions, praise-hymns, laments, epic poetry or other narrative song. [32] Such powers go well beyond the known realm of Kothar. [33]
A similar point may be made about epōidaí, ‘incantations’. True, Kothar recites spells while making Baal’s weapons, a procedure befitting metallurgy as a kind of magic. [34] The Mesopotamian Ea/Enki, whom the scribes and theologians of Ugarit equated with Kothar, has been invoked as a parallel here, since he was credited with divination, magic, and an array of other cultural inventions, including music. [35] Yet it is not clear how far Ea’s musicality per se is paralleled by Ugaritian Kothar (versus Philo’s Khousor), whose association with musical instruments in RS 24.252, I have suggested, is due mainly to his magical craftsmanship. [36] And the Greek word epōidaí has considerably wider connotations than what is attested for Kothar. [37] The word’s root, aoidḗ, means ‘song’, with epi- (‘upon’) distinguishing simple song from the efficacious singing of ritual acts. [38] Herodotos, for example, uses the word of the Magi’s theogonic singing during Persian sacrifices; according to the mysterious Derveni Papyrus, the Magi’s “incantation has the power to banish interfering spirits.” [39] Plato refers to itinerant diviners (mánteis) who claimed to compel the gods through “sacrifices and epōidaí.” [40] Other applications of epōidḗ included healing and purification. [41] Highly relevant for the question of Kinyras/Khousor are authors who treat ritual lamentation as a type of epōidḗ, notably in the context of Adonis-cult. [42]
Divinatory arts (manteîai) would also be most appropriate for a Divine Lyre, recalling Kinyras’ guise of priest and prophet, still cultivated by the Paphian Kinyradai in the Roman period. [43] And Philo’s plural invites further parallels—the coercive communication with Ningirsu through the divinized balang in the Gudea Cylinders; the ecstatic song-acts of kinnōr-prophets in the Old Testament; or the hexametric oracles of the Delphic priests. [44]
Thus, the overlap between Khousor’s powers and what is attested for Kothar at Ugarit is only very partial. Yet all three abilities would suit a Divine Lyre very well.
Philo’s musicalized Khousor indicates that in one or more traditions Kothar took over the territory of a more musical ‘junior brother’, whose very name he eclipsed. A reciprocal tendency may be glimpsed in Philo’s assignment of ironworking not only to Khousor but to his anonymous sibling. The latter is further associated with the technique of wall-building from bricks—the closest parallels being Pliny’s attribution of tegulae to Kinyras, and of bricks, clay vessels, bronze, and gold to ‘Cinaras’ by Étienne de Lusignan. [45] While some would explain Philo’s pair of builder-brothers through Kothar’s dual name at Ugarit (Kothar-wa-Hasis, ‘Clever and Wise’ [46] ), Khousor’s mantic/musical skills and the Kothar-like qualities of Kinyras show that the situation is more complex. [47] The Ugaritic texts reveal that divine couplings were a rather flexible phenomenon in the thirteenth century; of the thirty-three pairs enumerated by J. C. de Moor, seventeen featured gods who appeared elsewhere in different combinations. [48] Some were clearly ad hoc juxtapositions. He concluded that: “combinations of the type X w Y meant nothing more at first than bringing two deities who were thought to be somehow related closely together. At this stage they kept their individuality.” Later such ‘assimilations’ came to be regarded as the “double-barreled name of one divine being”; this is seen sometimes already at Ugarit, where for instance Kothar-wa-Hasis can be referred to in the singular. Also relevant is that a divine pair was sometimes called collectively by its first member; for instance ‘Anatu and ‘Aṯtartu (‘nt w ‘ṯtrt), who are often paired, [49] are once ‘the Two ‘Anatu-goddesses’. [50] One may compare the Dioskouroi, who were sometimes just ‘the Castors’. [51]
These patterns suggest various routes by which Kothar and a Kinnaru-figure may have coalesced. While Kothar and Kinnaru were evidently distinct at Ugarit, this need not have been universally true in the Levant, about the specifics of whose cults and mythology we remain largely ignorant, especially for the second millennium. If Kothar were himself represented as a knr-player somewhere, he could have assumed a byname akin to Kinyras (the ‘lyre-player’), and taken on such musical powers as one sees with Philo’s Khousor. Or Kothar and a musical brother could have been known eventually as simply ‘the Kothars’. It is certainly understandable that the great craftsman-inventor might absorb such a sidekick like a parasitic twin. Even at Ugarit, the Rāp’iu text suggests a ‘familiar’ relationship between Kothar and kinnāru/Kinnaru, the former apparently enjoying the more prominent position. The wide-ranging and abundantly attested [52] Kothar may have been a sort of ‘immediate superior’ to Kinnaru at Ugarit and elsewhere. His equation with Ea may also have been a factor, since at Ugarit at least local gods who were identified with international counterparts (Sumero-Babylonian, Hurrian) achieved greater prominence in the state cult. [53] Kinnaru, by contrast, stood out for lacking a heteronymous counterpart in the Akkadian versions of the pantheon texts. [54] Recall that Enki/Ea created the lamentation-priest (gala) to calm the anguished Inanna. [55] An ‘Ea-Creator’ string is also attested in the Akkadian version of the Mesopotamian tonal system, which somehow underlies the Hurrian hymns from Ugarit. [56] Here, potentially, is an important link between Kothar-as-Ea and Kinnaru-as-lyre-tradition. [57]
Despite the sporadic illumination provided by the Ugaritian texts, there is no particular reason to suppose that Philo’s musicalized Khousor is a direct diachronic development of Ugarit’s Kothar. We know enough about first-millennium Phoenician cults to be sure that there was considerable diversity from city to city in the LBA too. [58] I have already argued, on the basis of the Kinyras(es) of Pylos and the thirteenth-century Cypriot stands, that a metamusical Kinyras had emerged by this time on the island. Whether this development was original to Cyprus, or had earlier roots in a mainland city other than Ugarit—for instance Byblos—will be considered in Chapter 19.
Étienne de Lusignan: Cinaras and His Retiring Twin
While Khousor’s absorption of a musical brother is understandable, the reverse, as one has with Kinyras, is more surprising. And it is quite remarkable how the two processes mirror each from island to mainland. It is of a piece with this that, while ‘Kinyras’ persisted as a Grecophone PN, [59] the element knr is not certainly attested in Canaanite or Phoenician/Punic PNs, nor at Ugarit [60] —although we did see a fifteenth-century example from nearby Alalakh. [61] Kothar/Khousor exhibits the opposite distribution. Absent from inscriptions and texts not stemming from Syria and the Levant, Khousor’s longevity and popular appeal is clear from Amorite and Ugaritian PNs going back to the MBA and LBA, respectively, [62] and Neo-Punic and Aramaean PNs enduring to the third century CE. [63] The early names especially suggest that Kothar was regarded as a kind of king and/or patron of kings. [64] Here is another parallel with Kinyras.
A still more remarkable inversion is found in Étienne de Lusignan who, we saw, echoes the metallurgical inventions that Pliny assigned to Kinyras, yet adds a number of independent, Kotharesque details, including bricks, bowls, and other shaped vessels. [65] Recall that Philo attributes bricks to Khousor’s unnamed brother. But the most startling detail in Lusignan’s whole ancient Cypriot history is his assertion that
The god Paffo [Paphos] … had two sons, Cinaras and another; the latter was not numbered among the gods. [66]
Once again, no extant Classical source mentions a brother for Kinyras. [67] Fraternal pairs, we have seen, were a traditional mythological construction in the region; but they are not otherwise prominent in Lusignan’s account. The historian will hardly have invented an anonymous non-entity who plays no role in the ancient Cypriot dynastic sequence in which his ‘Cinaras’ looms large, and is otherwise so artificially contrived. [68] We are very fortunate indeed that Lusignan bothered to include this point, which must be a vestige of something significant. That he himself felt this way is shown by the later Description, which, though containing rather less ancient material, still troubles to mention Paffo/Paphos and his two sons before again discussing only Cinaras. [69] Unless one supposes that Lusignan’s source for this ‘retiring twin’ was some ancient source now lost, he must have drawn on the island’s conservative oral traditions. In either case, I conclude that he attests a Cypriot version of the same process that informs Philo—the fusion of Kinyras and Kothar, with a record kept ‘in the family’ through an anonymous twin.
The historical and cultural circumstances behind this melding of Kinyras and Kothar have remained elusive. [70] Clearly the phenomena are geographically conditioned, with complementary outcomes on Cyprus and the mainland. Yet the two were never fully sundered. This “insularity and connectivity” of Cyprus will be especially important for understanding the interchangeability of Kinyras and Khousor/Kauthar at Byblos as late as the third century CE. [71]
The Craftsman-Musician Twins Mytheme
The melding of Kothar and Kinnaru appears to be a special instance of a more general Syro-Levantine pattern. Philo’s long sequence of ‘brotherly pair’ culture-heroes probably perpetuates an early Canaanite mythological device, also seen in Cain and Abel, and perhaps the Ugaritic divine pairings. [72] The most conspicuous musical example is in Genesis, where Lamech’s son Jubal was the mythological ancestor of lyre- and pipe-players, while his half-brother Tubal-Cain was “instructor of every artificer in brass and iron.” [73] Here too, as with Kinyras/Khousor, is a surprising conjunction of music and metalworking, once more in a fraternal relationship. Its projection into the deep past finds startling circumstantial support at Beni-Hassan (Figure 3 = 4.1j, ca. 1900). [74] Popular etymology may also have played a role. [75]
Lamech and his children were particularly mutable in the NE reception of Biblical stories. Because the family was responsible for much early culture, they were often adjusted to fit local traditions, and we find many changes to their discoveries, especially the musical. [76] I have already discussed the remarkable variant in which Lamech invents lamentation and the lute at a stroke. [77] The treatment of Jubal and Tubal-Cain shows that the brothers’ names and roles were highly unstable, yielding phenomena very similar to the melding of Kinyras and Kothar. Theodore Bar Koni, for example, the eighth-century Nestorian exegete from Kashkar in southern Mesopotamia, introduces Cainan and Tubal-Cain as a pair of metallurgists:
Some say that Cainan and Tubal-Cain, who were of the family of Cain, were the first who invented the three tools of the art of working in iron—the anvil, hammer, and tongs … It is said that “Jubal was the father of all who play lyre and pipes,” because the Cainites had bands who played the pipes to make evil spirits flee so that they would not affect people. [78]
Here the metalworking Tubal-Cain has been bifurcated and endowed with a twin. Bar Koni then reverts to the Biblical account by quoting the ‘original’ verse about Jubal; but note that Jubal is not called the brother of Tubal-Cain, who after all already has Cainan. Since this second metalworking sibling is apparently a local innovation, it is perfectly possible in principle that the family’s musical contributions were equally reworked, and yet are masked here by the Biblical quotation.
This speculation is well justified by a parallel passage in the Book of the Bee—a sort of theological rumination on various ‘historical’ topics drawn from Biblical legend by Solomon of Akhlat, bishop of Basra (Iraq) in the early thirteenth century. While the first part of his account is taken over verbatim from Bar Koni (hence the ellipsis below), the metalworking twins go on to share credit for musical inventions, while Jubal has now disappeared:
Cainan [Tubal?] and Tubal-Cain … constructed all kinds of musical instruments, harps, and pipes. Some say that spirits used to go into the reeds and disturb them, and that the sound from them was like the sound of singing and pipes. [79]
There is a telling ‘error’ here. The Book of the Bee first follows Bar Koni in naming the brothers Cainan and Tubal-Cain. But in its musical sequel quoted above—which contains several deviations from Bar Koni, including the relocation of “evil spirits” from the patients into the pipes themselves—the brothers reappear as Tubal and Tubal-Cain. There is no way to decide the ‘correct’ reading. One might suggest that ‘Tubal’ is a mistake for ‘Jubal’, but this would still leave Tubal-Cain partaking in both metals and music; and given the novel pairing of Cainan and Tubal-Cain, an error of Tubal for Jubal would itself be symptomatic of the mutability of the brothers’ names and relationships.
These texts present striking parallels with Philo’s Khousor and Lusignan’s Cinaras, and strongly suggest that the reception of Tubal and Jubal was shaped by a wider mythological pattern—the craftsman-musician mytheme—with pagan mythology leaving its imprint as in a palimpsest.
Confounded Lyres?
The last issue bearing upon Kinyras and Kothar is potentially the most crucial, since it concerns a comparable crossover in lyre terminology and morphology, apparently at the Greek and Syro-Levantine linguistic and cultural interface.
In 1938, soon after Kothar was resurrected at Ugarit, H. L. Ginsberg proposed connecting kítharis and kithára—common Greek words for lyre-playing and lyre, respectively, and of no certain etymology—with the Sem. √kṯr from which Kothar also came. [80] The words’ triconsonantal shape would certainly accord with a Semitic origin. But a direct derivation is made unlikely by the lack of any certain lyre-name from this root in Semitic languages, where knr was so productive and persistent. [81] An indirect etymology via some special semantic development, however, has seemed possible to some. J. P. Brown, while exploring the sympathies between Kinyras and Kothar, noted that Ginsberg’s suggestion
would lead to the neat hypothesis (which unhappily goes beyond the evidence) that the kinnōr [sic] was Kothar’s instrument, and that both words went into Greek as Kinyras, kitharis, but with reversed meaning. [82]
It must be stressed that Brown was not proposing to derive kithára from knr, as has sometimes been thought. [83] Such a suggestion, once made by K. von Jan, was already rejected by H. Lewy in 1895, and has thus mostly remained out of play (but see below). [84] Brown’s proposal was rather a chiasmus whereby under mutual semantic influence, each root, knr and kṯr, would have produced both a god- and instrument-name, but with opposite outcomes in ‘Greek’ and Levantine areas:
| Lyre | God/Hero | |
| ‘Greek’ | kithára | Kinyras |
| Levantine | kinýra/kinnōr | Kothar |
Remember that for Brown, without knowledge of the Divine Kinnaru, Kinyras was but a hero of Greek mythology. Yet the phenomenon of divinized instruments—a god invested in a cult-object—might offer a way through the maze. [85] With this, the lines of symmetry are rearranged:
| Root | Lyre | God |
| knr | kinnāru/kínaris/kinýra | Kinnaru/Kinyras |
| kṯr | kithára/kítharis | Kothar |
When one considers that Kothar and Kinyras were variously confounded in Phoenicia and Cyprus; that Syro-Levantine and Cypro-Aegean lyre-types coexisted on Cyprus probably from the time of Aegean immigration in the twelfth century, and certainly by the ninth (Chapter 11); and that it is precisely on Cyprus, the eastern rim of the early Greek linguistic continuum, that Kinyras most conspicuously survived in an expanded form that incorporated Kothar-like powers—under these very particular circumstances, it would be remarkable indeed if the mirror-image lyre-terminology were accidental.
Nevertheless, accident it may be. A development of Sem. nn or n to Gk. th is not inconceivable perhaps via some Anatolian channel (given a certain lability between dentals and liquids in Hittite, Lydian, and Carian). [86] This problem needs further investigation. [87] Preliminarily, one may note that an interchange of n and th in a Cypro-Anatolian context is seen with the city of Gergitha in the Troad; according to tradition, this was once called Gergina and was founded by one of the Gerginoi—a kind of secret police in Cypriot Salamis descended from prisoners brought by Teukros, who in a later generation returned to the Troad. [88] Any underlying historical reality is obviously obscure. [89] But on circumstantial evidence, western Anatolia is a plausible environment for the entry of kítharis, kithára, and (en)kitharízein into Aeolic/Ionic epic diction, where they exist marginally alongside phórminx and its relations. [90] And the early Greco-Lesbian tradition maintained that the kithára was formerly called ‘Asiatic’ because of its association with Lydia—that is Así(w)a, Hitt. Aššuwa. [91] Given the ‘unshifted’ forms kínaris and kinarýzesthai, [92] one might posit a development via some North Syrian channel, with or without Cyprus as an intermediary. Recall that some of the earlier ‘Cypro-Phoenician’ symposium bowls with lyre-ensembles are actually of North Syrian workmanship, and that these workshops were active and even dominant in the ninth/eighth-century Aegean markets. [93]
Footnotes
[ back ] 1. For Kothar generally, Albright 1940:296–297; Gaster 1961:161–163; YGC:135–137; Gese et al. 1970:147–148 et passim; Xella 1976; KwH; Morris 1992:79–100 et passim; Morris 1998; DDD col. 913–915 (Pardee).
[ back ] 2. ‘Kothar’ will refer both to the god as a wider Syro-Levantine figure and to his specific manifestation at Ugarit (context should make the difference clear); for the form, see n12. I reserve ‘Khousor’ (Gk. Χουσώρ) for the complex Phoenician culture-hero presented by Philo of Byblos (see p445–452), probably with special Byblian associations. ‘Kauthar’ will apply to the cognate figure in ps.-Meliton (Chapter 19). Note that the vocalization of Ug. kṯr as Kôtharu (/kōθaru/), which entails taking Arabic *kawṯar as cognate (KwH:51–80), is not always accepted; Huehnergard 2008:141 considers it “by no means certain,” noting that otherwise the Ugarit-Akkadian ku-šar-ru (RS 20.123+ = Nougayrol 1968:248 (no. 137 IVa.19) will equally permit /kūθaru/ or /kŭθaru/. Yet the latter form is in any case ruled out by Philo’s Χουσώρ (see n12 below), which establishes the long quantity of the first syllable. And the Greek spelling ΧΑΥΘΑΡ in a third-century CE tombstone from Hama, Syria (Lassus 1935:33 no. 14), an Aramaean area, definitely favors the Arabic form’s relevance to the reconstruction (as realized already by Albright 1938:593; cf. Brown 1965:199; KwH:77; S. Weninger, communication, May 2012); for the old diphthongal value is clearly indicated by Greek αυ, itself still diphthongal at this time (Allen 1987:79–80). It may still be, however, that at Ugarit ku-šar-ru does reflect something closer to /kūθaru/ than /kōθaru/ (cf. p273–274).
[ back ] 3. For this interpretive issue, see p135n140.
[ back ] 4. See p135, with text and comments.
[ back ] 5. Good 1991:156–157; Clemens 1993:73.
[ back ] 6. For those who interpret line three as referring not to another instrument but to cult-dancers (see p135n140), the “goodly companions of Kothar” will follow suit by parallelism: cf. Clemens 1993:73n57: “pair of instruments (x2); personal participant (x2).” Yet even this line of thinking is not incompatible with a musical Kothar, since both instruments and ‘Kothar-dancers’ would obviously comprise an integrated performance.
[ back ] 7. N. Wyatt (DDD col. 912) seems to envisage such a possibility, citing the passage in connection with Psalms 57:8–9 (cf. p164) as evidence of “an older usage when minor gods of the pantheon were called upon to glorify their overlord.”
[ back ] 8. Cf. p6–7, 25–33, 103, 122–123.
[ back ] 9. See p122.
[ back ] 10. See p23–25.
[ back ] 11. Support for a musical Kothar has also been sought from the Kotharat, the seven ‘skillful’ goddesses who preside over marriage and conception rituals, arguably as songstresses (Margalit 1972). But this still would not guarantee a musical sense for Kothar himself, as one can suppose independent semantic developments of √kṯr. Dahood 1963 argued well for an allusion to Kothar in Ezekiel 33:32, so that “you are like a singer of love-songs” becomes “skillful with reed-pipes” (“a Kothar on the pipes”?); cf. Cooper 1981:386.
[ back ] 12. The ‘Greek’ orthography (Χουσώρ) reflects normal Phoenician phonetic developments. The long ô of Kothar resulted from the monophthongization of P-S aw (see n2), and then underwent further development to û, whence it is represented by Gk. ου (since υ/ῡ, having narrowed to /ü/ or /ǖ/ by the later fifth century, was no longer appropriate: see p196). As to the final syllable, after the loss of final short vowels in Phoenician, accented a was lengthened to ā and then to ō (by the same process which had produced the Canaanite Shift of ā > ō in the second millennium, still exerting its influence: Harris 1936:25 §8, 34–35 §11; Harris 1939:59–60; SL §21.13, 25.6). The stages of development are thus *Kawṯaru > *Kôṯaru > *Kû/ôšár > *Kû/ôšā ́ r > *Kûšṓr > ‘Gk.’ Χουσώρ (cf. KwH:79–80). Initial k– can be represented by Greek χ from the Hellenistic period.
[ back ] 13. Mokhos of Sidon (Tyre? cf. Baumgarten 1981:148n33) FGH 784 F 4, preserved by Damaskios, a Syrian Neo-Platonist of the fifth–sixth century: Χουσωρὸν ἀνοιγέα πρῶτον … τὴν νοητὴν δύναμιν ἅτε πρώτην διακρίνασαν τὴν ἀδιάκριτον φύσιν, On First Principles 125c (1.323 Ruelle); also in Attridge and Oden 1981:102–103. See generally Barr 1974:47–49 (undermining the equation of Khousor-‘Opener’ and Ptah advanced by Hoffman 1896:253–254 and YGC:193–196).
[ back ] 14. Οὐλωμὸς ὁ νοητὸς θεός. See Cross 1973:18; Attridge and Oden 1981:104n7; Barr 1974:48–49).
[ back ] 15. For the character of Philo’s work and sources, see p123.
[ back ] 16. See Philo of Byblos FGH 790 F 1 (21); cf. Lokkegaard 1954:53.
[ back ] 17. But see p472. Note that Philo’s later treatment of Sydyk and Misor and their children appears to double some of his Khousor material: see p510–511.
[ back ] 18. We must follow Clemen 1939:50 (so tacitly Brown 1965:203; Baumgarten 1981:169) in emending to the singular (τοὺς ἀδελφούς > τὸν ἀδελφόν: see text in next note). The phrase θάτερον τὸν Χουσώρ clearly implies a pair of brothers and that a second will indeed be discussed, as is the case throughout the larger narrative; the traditional plural reading would require us to suppose three (or more) brothers, of whom only Khousor is named. The corruption may have arisen from the following accusative plural τοίχους, with the glossing of Khousor as both Hephaistos and Zeus Meilikhios in the relatively long intervening stretch making a careless scribe lose track of brotherly pairs (A’s reading αὐτῶν, “their brothers,” will have followed suit). Just possibly Khousor’s brother was in fact named, but has fallen from the text, through cavalier abstraction by Eusebios or in transmission; but the text reads smoothly. Some would connect Khousor’s anonymous brother with the ‘Craftsman’ (Τεχνίτης) who comes soon afterwards (Clapham 1969:108); but this figure has a named brother of his own (Γήïνος Ἀυτόχθων). Τεχνίτης may however be a doublet of Kothar deriving from Philo’s conflation of regional Phoenician variants (Attridge and Oden 1981:84n70).
[ back ] 19. Philo of Byblos FGH 790 F 2 (11) = Eusebios Preparation for the Gospel 1.10.11–12: Ἀγρέα καὶ Ἁλιέα … ἐξ ὧν γενέσθαι δύο ἀδελφοὺς σιδήρου εὑρετὰς καὶ τῆς τούτου ἐργασίας, ὧν θάτερον τὸν Χουσὼρ λόγους ἀσκῆσαι καὶ ἐπωιδὰς καὶ μαντείας. εἶναι δὲ τοῦτον τὸν Ἥφαιστον, εὑρεῖν δὲ καὶ ἄγκιστρον καὶ δέλεαρ καὶ ὁρμιὰν καὶ σχεδίαν, πρῶτόν τε πάντων ἀνθρώπων πλεῦσαι. διὸ καὶ ὡς θεὸν αὐτὸν μετὰ θάνατον ἐσεβάσθησαν. καλεῖσθαι δὲ αὐτὸν καὶ Δία Μειλίχιον· οἱ δὲ τὸν ἀδελφὸν [Clemen, see n18: τοὺς ἀδελφοὺς MSS] αὐτοῦ [A: αὐτῶν] τοίχους φασὶν ἐπινοῆσαι ἐκ πλίνθων.
[ back ] 20. Hoffman 1896:256–258.
[ back ] 21. Brown 1965. But his unawareness of Kinnaru led him to endorse the comparison of Kinyras with el-ku-ni-ir-ša (El, Creator of the Earth), now obsolete (cf. p5n27), and to reject the etymology of Kinyras < κινύρα (cf. p4, 189).
[ back ] 22. RS 2.[009] + 5.155 = KTU/CAT 1.6 vi.51–53. Kothar’s conjunction with the sea is clear in this text, although the exact interpretation is debated: see RTU:145 and n126 with further references.
[ back ] 23. Kothar’s homes in Crete (Caphtor) and Egypt: RS 3.361 (KTU/CAT 1.1 iii.1, 18–19); RS 3.346? (1.2 iii.2–3); RS 2.[014]+ (1.3 vi.14–16). For further evidence connecting Kothar and the sea, KwH:105–118; cf. Brown 1965:204; DDUPP:109. Kothar as a totalizing figure of second-millennium trade with the Aegean and Egypt: Morris 1992:93 et passim; Morris 1998; note especially the startling discovery of Minoan frescoes at Avaris and elsewhere: Bietak 2005, etc. The interpretation of Kothar as ‘fisherman of Athirat/Asherah’ (see Baumgarten 1981:167, 200), and so a close connection with the ‘Lady of the Sea’ (DDUPP:72; OSG:14 with references in n25), has been abandoned: see Smith and Pitard 2009:377.
[ back ] 24. Kothar as palace-builder: RS 3.361? (KTU/CAT 1.1 iii.27–28); RS 3.346 (1.2 iii.7–11); RS 2.[008]+ (1.4 v.41–vi.38). See generally Gaster 1961:161nXIV; Gordon 1966:22–23, 48–49, 58–60, 63–64 (somewhat out-of-date); Gese et al. 1970:148; Baumgarten 1981:169–170; KwH:218–250, 310–350; Morris 1992:83–84.
[ back ] 25. Kinyras and Agamemnon’s breastplate: Homer Iliad 11.24–28; see p1, 322–323. Kothar’s gift for Athirat: RS 2.[008]+ (KTU/CAT 1.4 i.23–43).
[ back ] 26. Baal’s weapons: RS 3.367 (KTU/CAT 1.2 iv.11–15); Aqhat’s bow: RS 2.[004] (KTU/CAT 1.17 v.10–28, vi.20–25).
[ back ] 27. Σ Pindar Pythian 2.30g (Abel 1891): see p226.
[ back ] 28. See especially KwH:51–80, convincingly upholding the relevance of Arabic cognates, including kawṯar, ‘abundant goodness’; so too SL §29.9.
[ back ] 29. For Kothar as Zeus Meilikhios, see Baumgarten 1981:168–169; contrast KwH:113–114.
[ back ] 30. For scenes in which Kothar appears to be prophetic, see Smith 1994:336. For incantations, see below.
[ back ] 31. See p97.
[ back ] 32. The Greek does not support the idea that λόγους ἀσκῆσαι here is defined by καὶ ἐπῳδὰς καὶ μαντείας (KwH:443: “the ‘verbal arts’ of Khousor … do not include music, but ‘spells and prophecies’”). Λόγοι are a separate category—various forms of poetry that (as typically in the ancient world) will have had a musical aspect.
[ back ] 33. KwH:442–445 rightly emphasized the tenuous basis for supposing a musical Kothar; cf. Brown 1965:206; Good 1991:157 (“it remains puzzling that the Ugaritic texts do not place Kothar in a musical context apart from [RS 24.252]”).
[ back ] 34. See p394n127. Cf. Obermann 1947:208; Gaster 1961:161–163; KwH:119.
[ back ] 35. Kothar as Ea: RS 20.024, 15; RS 20.123+, IVa.19, etc.: Nougayrol 1968:44–45 (no. 18), cf. 51; 240–249 (no. 137). Cf. Clapham 1969:107; Gese et al. 1970:98–99, 147; Lichtenstein 1972:104n57, 110; Baumgarten 1981:166; SURS:861 and n1116 with further references. Ea is invoked in various incantations from Ugarit, but is not unique in this: SURS:1020–1021.
[ back ] 36. See p444–445.
[ back ] 37. Caquot 1976:300 rightly understood ἐπῳδαί broadly—“chants (ou des incantations)”—but anachronistically retrojects this to Kothar himself.
[ back ] 38. The ‘Getty hexameters’ contain much relevant language: text in Faraone and Obbink 2013, 10–11 (note especially lines 1, 6, 23–24).
[ back ] 39. Herodotos 1.132.3 (μάγος ἀνὴρ παρεστεὼς ἐπαείδει θεογονίην, οἵην δὴ ἐκεῖνοι λέγουσι εἶναι τὴν ἐπαοιδήν); Derveni Papyrus col. 6.1–11 (ἐπ̣[ωιδὴ δ]ὲ̣ μάγων δύν[α]ται δ̣αίμονας ἐμπο[δὼν] γι[̣νομένο]υ̣ς μεθιστάν̣αι, 2–3, ed. Kouremenos et al. 2006). I assume that the papyrus speaks of Persian Magi specifically (for the issue, Lightfoot 2004:103; Kouremenos et al. 2006:166–168 with references), although apotropaic and cathartic incantations were of course more widely spread in the ANE.
[ back ] 40. Plato Republic 364b; cf. Symposium 202e. Plato exploits the overlap between singing and incantation in the Laws, when his Athenian, after a discussion of the positive psychagogic effects of a proper musical education for children, realizes that “what we call songs (ᾠδάς) now appear in fact to have been incantations (ἐπῳδαί) for the soul” (Plato Laws 659d–e, following Bury’s text in the Loeb edition).
[ back ] 41. Sources in AGM:32 (beginning with Homer).
[ back ] 42. Sophokles Ajax 582: θρηνεῖν ἐπῳδάς; Bion Lament for Adonis 91, 94–95: αἱ Χάριτες κλαίοντι τὸν υἱέα τῶ Κινύραο … χαἰ Μοῖραι τὸν Ἄδωνιν ἀνακλείοισιν, Ἄδωνιν, / καί νιν ἐπαείδουσιν (“The Graces beweep the son of Kinyras … the Moirai too invoke ‘Adonis, Adonis’, / and sing incantations over him”).
[ back ] 43. Tacitus Histories 2.3–4; Clement of Alexandria Miscellanies 1.21. See Chapter 16. Cf. Hoffman 1896:256; Brown 1965:204. Extispicy in the hands of a Divine Lyre may conjure a rather grotesque image. But recall that the slaughtering of a bull for making the divinized lilissu-drum was governed by a highly elaborate series of ritual actions and incantations (see p23–26). Hermes’ invention of his divine-voiced (see p6n32, 411n68) lyre involved eviscerating a turtle, flaying a cow, and disemboweling a sheep: Homeric Hymn to Hermes 39–51 (handwashing is not mentioned).
[ back ] 44. See p26–33, 161–165.
[ back ] 45. Pliny Natural History 7.56.195; Chorograffia p. 13a, 14a, 87 (§28, 37, 590); Description pp. 27a, 30a, 224a. See p325.
[ back ] 46. So Clapham 1969:108; KwH:83–84, 170. I retain for convenience the conventional vocalization of ḫss; but note the further considerations in van Selms 1979:741; KwH:85–90.
[ back ] 47. It may well be, however, that Kothar’s dual name invited conflation with another god, better-defined than ‘Hasis’, as a means of better differentiating the two ‘brothers’. And doubtless a Divine Knr would be considered ‘wise’.
[ back ] 48. For the following points, see de Moor 1970:227–228.
[ back ] 49. Smith 2015:49–5, 57, 64–65.
[ back ] 50. De Moor 1970:228 and n75.
[ back ] 51. For ‘the Castors’, Pliny Natural History 10.121 (noted by Brown 1965:206).
[ back ] 52. KwH:51 collected forty-five instances.
[ back ] 53. SURS:1105–1112.
[ back ] 54. But see p121–122.
[ back ] 55. See p29.
[ back ] 56. See p59, 97.
[ back ] 57. One may note here the application of carpentry metaphors for the tuning process in both Akkadian (pitnu) and Greek (harmonía, the phonology of which reveals its Mycenaean pedigree): Franklin 2002b:2, 9, 15; Franklin 2002a:677 (with n26 for Akkadian pitnu); elaborated in Franklin 2006a:55n42.
[ back ] 58. DDUPP passim.
[ back ] 59. See p334–335.
[ back ] 60. See Pardee 1988a:139n87 for gods in the Ugaritian pantheon texts who are absent from PNs. In the Punic sphere, a KNRSN, son of B‘LŠLK may be attested as a member of a marzeaḥ, dedicating a temple at Maktar, Tunisia (first century CE): KAI 145.40, with the reading going back to Févrer 1956 (who considered it “douteux” [30], but compared “libyque KNRSN” in Chabot 1940–1941 no. 232). A KNRD‘T appears in KAI 139.1 (gravestone inscription, Chemtou, Tunisia, n.d.); the certainty of this reading is affirmed by Chabot 1918:296–301, but the name, vocalized as “Kanradât,” is taken as Libyan/Numidian.
[ back ] 61. For Alalakh, see p98.
[ back ] 62. Amorite royal name Kwšr in the Execration Texts of MK Egypt (ca. 1900): Sethe 1926:46–47; Albright 1940:297 and n47; Goetze 1958:28; YGC:136n65. Amorite PNs at Mari: Gelb 1980:131; KwH:58. Ugaritian names: Gröndahl 1967:152; KwH:62–63.
[ back ] 63. Phoenician/Punic: Hoffman 1896:254–255; Benz 1972:131, 336; Brown 1965:201; KwH:74, 77; DDD col. 914 (Pardee); Krahmalkov 2000:244; DDUPP:109–111. For ‘Χαυθαρ’ at Hama, Syria, see p443n2.
[ back ] 64. Besides the Amorite king Kwšr of the Execration Texts (see n62), there is the Ugaritian theophoric PN kṯrmlk, ‘Kothar-is-King’ (see p167n100 above); and King Kushan-rishathaim of Aram-naharaim (Judges 3:8, 10), rendered as Khousarsathom or Khousarsathaim in LXX, and Khousarsathos in Josephus Antiquities of the Jews 5.180.3, 183.2 (Hoffman 1896:256–258; but see Pardee, DDD col. 914–915).
[ back ] 65. See p325.
[ back ] 66. Chorograffia p. 20 (§68): “Questo Dio Paffo regnando, hebbe dui figliouli, Cinara, & un’ altro; ilquale non è numerato fra li Dei.”
[ back ] 67. Our Lusignan passage answers Baurain 1980a:9, who criticized Brown 1965 for failing to produce a sibling for Kinyras to parallel Khousor and his brother.
[ back ] 68. See Appendix G.
[ back ] 69. Description p. 38: “Cestuy [sc. Paphe] eut deux enfans (sic).”
[ back ] 70. Cf. Parker 1970:244n9: “Exactly when and where Kinnar/Kinyras [sic] took over other attributes of Kothar must remain a matter for speculation.”
[ back ] 71. The phrase quoted is that of Knapp, PPC.
[ back ] 72. Brown 1965:206; Baumgarten 1981:141. Ugarit: de Moor 1970:227–228; KwH:81–84; del Olmo Lete 1999:82. Lokkegaard 1954:60–61 proposed that Philo represents a trend “for dividing or specializing the gods according to the splitting up of society in new trades and guilds following the demands of advancing culture and more refined art.” But his numerous pairs are probably due more to combining regional variants into a master scheme.
[ back ] 73. Genesis 4:22. See p43–46.
[ back ] 74. See p44–45.
[ back ] 75. For possible associations between qayin (‘smith’), qīnā (‘composition, dirge’), and kinnōr, see p44n5. D’Angour 2011:64–84 now proposes connecting the Greek myth of Kaineus with √qyn (‘forge’), interpreting him as ‘Spear-Man’ and parallel to Kinyras as embodying a Levantine cultural practice.
[ back ] 76. For Syriac, Persian, and Arabic sources, see Budge 1886:29 and n5 (see below); Farmer 1929:6–7; Robson and Farmer 1938:9 and n4; MgB 3/2:24; SOM 1:10–11, 153; also Jacobson 1996:303 vis-à-vis Tubal-Cain in Philo Judaeus. In the Armenian commentary on Genesis attributed to St. Ephraim, Jubal is connected exclusively with the lyre tradition; pipes are traced rather to the wife of Tubal; Horace’s ambubaiae and their relations (Satires 1.2.1: see Appendix C) make this more interesting than “an inner Armenian corruption or misunderstanding of the Syriac” (Mathews 1998:55 and n111). Similarly, Michael the Syrian (twelfth century), crediting Jubal with both kinnōr and kithára, eliminates pipes (Chronicle 1.6: Chabot 1899–1924 1:10).
[ back ] 77. See p312.
[ back ] 78. Theodore Bar Koni Liber scholiorum, Mimrā 2.97: the first part of my translation comes from Budge 1886, since the passage was taken over verbatim into the Book of the Bee 19; the second part is after Hespel and Draguet 1981–1982 1:116.
[ back ] 79. Book of the Bee 18: translation from Budge 1886; cf. Budge 1927:79–80.
[ back ] 80. Κίθαρις < kṯr: Ginsberg 1938:13; Nougayrol 1968:51. The potential parallel of Kinyras/kinýra and ‘Kauthar’/kithára was first noted, so far as I have found, by Lenormant 1871–1872:255n1 in connection with the dual tradition at Aphaka (for which see Chapter 19).
[ back ] 81. The proposal of Good 1991:156–157 to see such an instrument in RS 24.252, 5 (KTU/CAT 1.108), rather than the god Kothar, was refuted by Clemens 1993:73–74 (cf. p135n141). There remains the kissar, applied to some traditional lyres of East Africa (Plumley 1976). But this word probably derives from Greek κιθάρα under Hellenistic-Egyptian influence (versus krar < *kenar: see p58n65). Lyres per se, however, are probably older in the region: cf. Athenaios 633f on the harplike instrument played among the ‘Troglodytes’ (reported by the Hellenistic explorer Pythagoras: AGM:76n126). The begena, a last surviving ‘giant lyre’, is attributed to the Israelite tradition and associated with David (p58n65, 167). See further Kebede 1977:380; MGG 5:1042–1043 (G. Kubik); K. Wachsmann and U. Wegner in GMO s.v. Lyres, §3 Modern Africa, with bibliography.
[ back ] 82. Brown 1965:207.
[ back ] 83. So apparently Morris 1992:79–80n26. And beware Braun’s confusing statement in MAIP:146 (punctuation and capitalization preserved): “The root of the word itself, knr, appears frequently [sic!] in divine names such as kinýras, [[kinnaraas [sic!], kuthar]].” The same hodgepodge appears in MGG 1:1516.
[ back ] 84. Jan 1882:5, 35n142; Lewy 1895:164 (whence Rosól 2013:181). The idea is perpetuated by Hoch 1994:324 and in n45; but his further argument, that the modification of kinnāru to κίθαρις (sic) must have preceded the Canaanite Shift (whence no *κίθορις or *κίθωρις), does not follow in any case since the hypothetical borrowing could have been at any point from an ‘unshifted’ dialect in North Syria. See further below.
[ back ] 85. This can also answer the reservation of KwH:77: “Ginsberg’s proposal is plausible, but it assumes a thematic transmission from the PN to the name of an instrument. This transmission cannot be verified.” And the melding of Kothar and a Divine Knr would accommodate his later remark at 145n137: “Against Ginsberg’s proposal, there is no indication from Ugaritic as to why a word for ‘lyre’ should develop from the PN Kothar and not a different musical instrument (why not a tool?).”
[ back ] 86. Heubeck 1959:24–27; Heubeck 1961:19–21.
[ back ] 87. I have found no exact parallels in Melchert 1994, although the simplification of geminates in Lydian (e.g. /nn/ > /n/: p340, cf. 372 §9) would be relevant.
[ back ] 88. Athenaios 256b–c.
[ back ] 89. HC:86n2.
[ back ] 90. Note the Trojan context of Homer Iliad 3.54.
[ back ] 91. Franklin 2010:20–22; Franklin 2012:745–746.
[ back ] 92. See p198–199.
[ back ] 93. See p262.