14. Restringing Kinyras This chapter further documents Kinyras’ fundamental connection with pre-Greek Cyprus. I shall examine traces of popular narratives featuring the Cypriot king and his family which variously mythologized Aegean settlement in the eastern Mediterranean during the LBA–IA transition, and the evolving relationships between the new… Read more
15. Crossing the Water I have now shown that the evidence for a musical Kinyras is much more extensive than previously realized; that this was not a secondary accretion, but an early and essential dimension; and that his erstwhile divinity echoed into the Roman period as “Our… Read more
16. The Kinyradai of Paphos Evidence from and relating to Paphos especially lets us pick up the thread of Kinyras’ cult in the Classical period, and follow it down until later antiquity. Here the two broad patterns explored above—the social and political manipulation of Kinyras as a… Read more
Part III: Kinyras and the Lands around Cyprus 17. Kinyras at Pylos Important evidence for a BA Kinyras comes from an unexpected quarter: Mycenaean Pylos. Although the texts present ‘Kinyras’ as a PN, not DN, the contexts are consistent with the attributes of the Kinyras. Read more
18. The Melding of Kinyras and Kothar This chapter confronts the issue of Kinyras’ extra-musical qualities, which he regularly assumed on Cyprus, and which already seem to inform the Kinyras(es) of Pylos and the Kourion stands, both in the thirteenth century. I refine and develop the position,… Read more
19. Kinyras, Kothar, and the Passage from Byblos: Kinyras, Kinnaru, and the Canaanite Shift One could be content with explaining Kinyras’ arrival to Cyprus simply through the island’s proximity to the mainland, and a general emulation of its neighbors’ institutions. But in this and the following chapters,… Read more
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… Read more
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,… Read more
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… Read more
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… Read more
