Offering an expansive view of the ancient Mediterranean world, Gods, Heroes, and Monsters: A Sourcebook of Greek, Roman, and Near Eastern Myths in Translation, Second Edition, presents essential Greek and Roman sources--including work from Homer, Hesiod, Virgil, and Ovid--alongside analogous narratives from the ancient Near East--Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Hittite kingdom, Ugarit, Phoenicia, and the Hebrew Bible. Some of the sources appear here in English translations for the first time. This collection stresses cultural continuities and comparisons, showing how Greek and Roman myths did not emerge in a vacuum but rather evolved from and interacted with their counterparts in the ancient Near East. Reinforcing this more inclusive definition of "classical," it is organized thematically, which allows readers to excamine each category of myth in a comparative and cross-cultural light. For example, "Part III: Epic Struggles: Gods, Heroes, and Monsters" provides sources that feature Greek heroes like Heracles, Apollo, Achilles, and Hector along with the Epic of Gilgamesh and other ancient Near Eastern selections that focus on the hero. Gods, Heroes, and Monsters, Second Edition. shows how the literature, inhabitants, and intellectual traditions of Greece and Rome and the ancient Near East were inextricably intertwined. The book is enhanced by a vibrant, full-color, 16-pg. photo insert, and many new translations by editor Carolina L�pez-Ruiz and others.

Gods, Heroes, and Monsters: A Sourcebook of Greek, Roman, and Near Eastern Myths in Translation

Literature & Fiction

López-Ruiz, Carolina

United States

Oxford University Press

This is the first book in English about the earliest historical civilization in the western Mediterranean, known as "Tartessos." Endowed with extraordinary wealth in metals and strategically positioned between the Atlantic and Mediterranean trading routes at the time of Greek and Phoenician colonial expansion, Tartessos flourished in the eighth and seventh centuries BCE. Tartessos became a literate, sophisticated, urban culture in southwestern Iberia (today's Spain and Portugal), enriched by commercial contacts with the Aegean and the Levant since at least the ninth century. In its material culture (architecture, grave goods, sanctuaries, plastic arts), we see how native elements combined with imported "orientalizing" innovations introduced by the Phoenicians. Historians of the rank of Herodotos and Livy, geographers such as Strabo and Pliny, Greek and Punic periploi and perhaps even Phoenician and Hebrew texts, testify to the power, wealth, and prominence of this western-most Mediterranean civilization. Archaeologists, in turn, have demonstrated the existence of a fascinating complex society with both strong local roots and international flare. Yet for still-mysterious reasons, Tartessos did not attain a "Classical" period like its peer emerging cultures did at the same time (Etruscans, Romans, Greeks). This book combines the expertise of its two authors in archaeology, philology, and cultural history to present a comprehensive, coherent, theoretically up-to-date, and informative overview of the discovery, sources, and debates surrounding this puzzling culture of ancient Iberia and its complex hybrid identity vis-a-vis the western Phoenicians. This book will be of great interest to students of the classics, archaeology and ancient history, Phoenician-Punic studies, colonization and cultural contact.

Tartessos and the Phoenicians in Iberia

History

Celestino, Sebastian

Europe

Setting itself apart from typical anthologies in classical mythology, Gods, Heroes, and Monsters: A Sourcebook of Greek, Roman, and Near Eastern Myths in Translation presents essential Greek and Roman sources--including work from Homer, Hesiod, Virgil, and Ovid--alongside analogous narratives from the ancient Near East--Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Hittite kingdom, Ugarit, Phoenicia, and the Hebrew Bible. Some of the sources appear here in English translations for the first time. This collection stresses cultural continuities and comparisons, showing how Greek and Roman myths did not emerge in a vacuum but rather evolved from and interacted with their counterparts in the ancient Near East. Reinforcing this more inclusive definition of "classical," it is organized thematically, which allows readers to examine each category of myth in a comparative and cross-cultural light. For example, "Part III: Epic Struggles: Gods, Heroes, and Monsters" provides sources that feature Greek heroes like Heracles, Apollo, Achilles, and Hector along with the Epic of Gilgamesh and other ancient Near Eastern selections that focus on the hero. Offering a uniquely expansive view of the ancient Mediterranean world, Gods, Heroes, and Monsters shows how the literature, inhabitants, and intellectual traditions of Greece and Rome and the ancient Near East were inextricably intertwined. The book is enhanced by a vibrant, full-color, 16-pg. photo insert, and many new translations by editor Carolina López-Ruiz and others. Ideal for undergraduate courses in Classical Mythology, it is also captivating reading for the general public.

Classics

Ancient Greece has for too long been studied in isolation from its Near Eastern neighbors. And the ancient Near East itself has for too long been seen as an undifferentiated cultural monolith. Classics and Near Eastern Studies, in our modern universities, continue to be separated by various disciplinary, linguistic, and ideological walls. Yet there is a growing trend to dismantle these divides and look at the Greek world within its fullest geographical and cultural contexts. 
This book aims to bring the comparative study of Greek and Near Eastern cosmogonies to a new level. It analyzes themes such as succession myths, expressions of poetic inspiration, and claims to cosmic knowledge, as well as the role of itinerant specialists in the transmission of theogonies. Rather than compiling literary parallels from different periods and languages and treating the Near East as a monolithic matrix, the author focuses on the motifs specific to the North-West Semitic tradition with which the Greeks had direct contact in the Archaic period. Focusing on Hesiod's Theogony, the Orphic texts, and their Ugaritic, Phoenician, and Hebrew counterparts, Carolina López-Ruiz avoids traditional diffusionist assumptions and proposes instead that dynamic cultural interaction led to the oral and intimate transmission of stories and beliefs.

When the Gods Were Born: Greek Cosmogonies and the Near East

Religion & Spirituality

Harvard University Press

Phoenicians and the Making of the Mediterranean

Ancient Civilizations

Review\n“[A] substantial and important contribution…to the ancient history of the Mediterranean. López-Ruiz’s work does justice to the Phoenicians’ role in shaping Mediterranean culture by providing rational and factual argumentation and by setting the record straight.”―Hélène Sader, Bryn Mawr Classical Review\n“For generations, the Phoenicians have been an invisible culture, overwritten by Greek historians. Phoenicians and the Making of the Mediterranean restores their rightful position as the principal engine of the early Iron Age, connecting the eastern Mediterranean to North Africa and Spain. With a light touch and a masterful command of the literature, López-Ruiz replaces old ideas with a subtle and more accurate account of the extensive cross-cultural exchange patterns and economy driven by the Phoenician trade networks that ‘re-wired’ the Mediterranean world. A must read.”―J. G. Manning, author of The Open Sea\n“A call to recognize the role of the Phoenicians and acknowledge our own preconceptions and prejudices about ancient history, López-Ruiz’s magnum opus will not only revolutionize our understanding of the Early Iron Age Mediterranean but also how we write the history of this region in the future.”―Denise Demetriou, author of Negotiating Identity in the Ancient Mediterranean\n“López-Ruiz weaves together evidence from diverse scholarly fields to spotlight the central role played by Phoenicians in shaping the ancient Mediterranean world. The result is a study as rich as the Phoenicians’ own famed luxury arts.”―Tamar Hodos, author of The Archaeology of the Mediterranean Iron Age\nThe first comprehensive history of the cultural impact of the Phoenicians, who knit together the ancient Mediterranean world long before the rise of the Greeks.\nImagine you are a traveler sailing to the major cities around the Mediterranean in 750 BC. You would notice a remarkable similarity in the dress, alphabet, consumer goods, and gods from Gibraltar to Tyre. This was not the Greek world―it was the Phoenician. Based in Tyre, Sidon, Byblos, and other cities along the coast of present-day Lebanon, the Phoenicians spread out across the Mediterranean building posts, towns, and ports. Propelled by technological advancements of a kind unseen since the Neolithic revolution, Phoenicians knit together diverse Mediterranean societies, fostering a literate and sophisticated urban elite sharing common cultural, economic, and aesthetic modes.\nThe Phoenician imprint on the Mediterranean lasted nearly a thousand years, beginning in the Early Iron Age. Following the trail of the Phoenicians from the Levant to the Atlantic coast of Iberia, Carolina López-Ruiz offers the first comprehensive study of the cultural exchange that transformed the Mediterranean in the eighth and seventh centuries BC. Greeks, Etruscans, Sardinians, Iberians, and others adopted a Levantine-inflected way of life, as they aspired to emulate Near Eastern civilizations. López-Ruiz explores these many inheritances, from sphinxes and hieratic statues to ivories, metalwork, volute capitals, inscriptions, and Ashtart iconography.\nMeticulously documented and boldly argued, Phoenicians and the Making of the Mediterranean revises the Hellenocentric model of the ancient world and restores from obscurity the true role of Near Eastern societies in the history of early civilizations.

In 2014, the Metropolitan Museum presented Assyria to Iberia at the Dawn of the Classical Age, an unprecedented exhibition that offered a comprehensive overview of art, diplomacy, and cultural exchange in the ancient Near East and across the Mediterranean at the beginning of what is now known as the classical age. This volume extends the innovative scholarship that underpinned the exhibition and accompanying book of the same title. Focusing on a time of transition, upheaval, and globalization, 27 essays by internationally distinguished scholars explore the cultural encounters of diverse populations interacting through trade, travel, migration, and war during the first millennium B.C. in a region that spanned over 1,000 miles in a continuous swathe from Assyria (present-day northern Iraq) to the western Mediterranean and northern Africa.

Assyria to Iberia: Art and Culture in the Iron Age: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Symposia

Arts & Photography

Van De Mieroop, Marc

COLLINS, Paul

Aruz, Joan

Bahrani, Zainab

Gunter, Ann C.

Finkelstein, Israël

Aubet, María Eugenia

Gubel, Eric

Tubb, Jonathan N.

Graff, Sarah

Killebrew, Ann E.

Gansell, Amy

Reich, Ronnie

Novák, Mirko

Özyar, Ash

Hill, Marsha

Winter, Irene J.

Boardman, Sir John

Feldman, Marian

Wolf-Dietrich, Niemeier

Caubet, Annie

Papalexandrou, Nassos

Matthäus, Hartmut

Stampolidis, Nicholas Chr.

Sannibale, Maurizio

History & Criticism

Metropolitan Museum of Art

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