From Hittite to Homer

This book provides a groundbreaking reassessment of the prehistory of Homeric epic. It argues that in the Early Iron Age bilingual poets transmitted to the Greeks a set of narrative traditions closely related to the one found at Bronze-Age Hattusa, the Hittite capital. Key drivers for Near Eastern influence on the developing Homeric tradition were the shared practices of supralocal festivals and venerating divinized ancestors, and a shared interest in creating narratives about a legendary past using a few specific storylines: theogonies, genealogies connecting local polities, long-distance travel, destruction of a famous city because it refuses to release captives, and trying to overcome death when confronted with the loss of a dear companion. Professor Bachvarova concludes by providing a fresh explanation of the origins and significance of the Greco-Anatolian legend of Troy, thereby offering a new solution to the long-debated question of the historicity of the Trojan War.1. Introduction; 2. Hurro-Hittite song at Hattusa; 3. Gilgamesh at Hattusa: written texts and oral traditions; 4. The Hurro-Hittite ritual context of Gilgamesh at Hattusa; 5. The plot of the Song of Release; 6. The place of the Song of Release in its Eastern Mediterranean context; 7. The function and prehistory of the Song of Release; 8. Sargon the Great: from history to myth; 9. Long-distance interactions: theory, practice, and myth; 10. Festivals: a milieu for cultural contact; 11. The context of epic in Late Bronze and Early Iron Age Greece; 12. Cyprus as a source of Syro-Anatolian epic in the Early Iron Age; 13. Cultural contact in Late Bronze Age Western Anatolia; 14. Continuity of memory at Troy and in Anatolia; 15. The history of the Homeric tradition; 16. The layers of Anatolian influence in the Iliad; Appendix. Contraction and the dactylic hexameter.