ZEUS' RISE TO POWER: THE CREATION OF MORTALS 107
quotation is from p. 10). Useful but brief remarks in Ken Dowden, The Uses of Greek
Mythology (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 57-60 and 181. Full discussion with bibli-
ography by R. Mondi, "Greek Mythic Thought in the Light of the Near East," in L.
Edmunds, éd., Approaches to Greek Myth (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1990), pp. 142-198. C. Penglase, Greek Myths and Mesopotamia (London: Routledge,
1994), focuses on Hesiod and the Homeric Hymns and defines the criteria for influ-
ence (as opposed to random similarities) on pp. 5-8.
- Translated by Stephanie Dalley, from Myths from Mesopotamia (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1989), p. 253.
- Tablet xii was composed much later than the rest of the Gilgamesh epic and so was
not part of the original poem. The death of Gilgamesh is not part of the Akkadian
version of the epic, which is the source of the translation by Stephanie Dalley, but
there exists a fragmentary Sumerian version. Gilgamesh's monstrous opponents were
Humbaba (or Huwawa), guardian of the Pine Forest in the mountains of southwest
Iran (tablet v), and the Bull of Heaven (tablet vi).
- Maureen Gallery Kovacs provides clear introductory background for the nonspecialist
in her translation, The Epic of Gilgamesh (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press,
1989).
- Translated by Stephanie Dalley (see note 25), p. 50.
- The texts of myths of Kumarbi and Ullikummis are translated by A. Goetze in J. B.
Pritchard, éd., Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, 3d ed. (Prince-
ton: Princeton University Press, 1969, previous eds. 1950 and 1955), pp. 120-125. They
are not included in Pritchard's selections in paperback, The Ancient Near East, 2 vols.
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958 and 1975).
- Both versions are in Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts, pp. 52-57 (Sumerian
version translated by S. N. Kramer) and pp. 106-109 (Akkadian version translated
by E. A. Speiser). Stephanie Dalley, see note 25, translates the Akkadian version,
pp. 154-162.
- See Dalley, from Myths from Mesopotamia, p. 154.
- The debts of Greeks to others have always been recognized and over the years have
offered fruitful avenues of research. At times, however, there has been a compulsion
to deny the Greeks the credit that is their due for the heritage they have left us. The
book by Martin Bernai challenging traditional positions caused quite a stir when it
first appeared: Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, Vol. 1, The
Fabrication of Ancient Greece 1785-1985 (London: Free Association Books; New
Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1987). It has been successfully challenged by
many scholars. See in particular a collection of essays edited by Mary R. Lefkowitz
and Guy MacLean Rogers, Black Athena Revisited (Chapel Hill and London: The Uni-
versity of North Carolina Press, 1996). Mary Lefkowitz offers a refutation accessible
to the non-specialist: Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach
Myth as History (New York: Basic Books [HarperCollins]), 1996.
