John Franklin

Ritual Music and Deified Instruments in the Bronze Age Near East

The cognitive interface between musician and god, instrument and player Kinyras, in Greco-Roman sources, is the central culture-hero of early Cyprus: legendary king, metallurge, Agamemnon’s (faithless) ally, Aphrodite’s priest, father of Myrrha and Adonis, rival of Apollo, ancestor of the Paphian priest-kings (and much more). Kinyras increased in depth and complexity with the demonstration in 1968 that Kinnaru—the divinized temple-lyre—was venerated at Ugarit, an important Late Bronze Age city just… Read more

Coming soon in the Hellenic Studies Series

We are happy to share the following publications that will soon be available through Harvard University Press. Gregory Nagy Masterpieces of Metonymy In Masterpieces of Metonymy, Gregory Nagy analyzes metonymy as a mental process that complements metaphor. If metaphor is a substitution of something unfamilar for something familiar, then metonymy can be seen as a connecting of something familiar with something… Read more