the orientalizing revolution: near eastern influence on greek culture in the early archaic age -...
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Preview:http://books.google.com/books?id=cIiUL7dWqNIC&source=gbs_navlinks_sThe rich and splendid culture of the ancient Greeks has often been described as emerging like a miracle from a genius of its own, owing practically nothing to its neighbors. Walter Burkert offers a decisive argument against that distorted view, replacing it with a balanced picture of the archaic period "in which, under the influence of the Semitic East, Greek culture began its unique flowering, soon to assume cultural hegemony in the Mediterranean". Burkert focuses on the "orientalizing" century 750-650 B.C., the period of Assyrian conquest, Phoenician commerce, and Greek exploration of both East and West, when not only eastern skills and images but also the Semitic art of writing were transmitted to Greece. He tracks the migrant craftsmen who brought the Greeks new techniques and designs, the wandering seers and healers teaching magic and medicine, and the important Greek borrowings from Near Eastern poetry and myth. Drawing widely on archaeological, textual, and historical evidence, he demonstrates that eastern models significantly affected Greek literature and religion in the Homeric age.http://books.google.com/books?id=cIiUL7dWqNIC&source=gbs_navlinks_sGerman-born scholar Walter Burkert currently teaches at the University of Zurich. He is the leading active scholar of the religion of early and classical Greece. Burkert's work proceeds through intense, meticulous historical and philological investigation, seeking to understand Greek religion in and of itself. His studies wed philology and history with methods drawn from anthropology and resemble the work of Jonathan Z. Smith. But, unlike Smith, who seems to rule out diachronic considerations categorically in favor of synchronic taxonomies or analogical comparisons, Burkert remains interested in questions of long-term historical evolution and cross-cultural influence. Burkert gives particular attention to psychological causation and the biological roots of human behavior as revealed by the science of ethology. For example, his study of Greek sacrifice, Homo necans, roots the practice of sacrifice in the biological necessity faced by prehistoric hunting groups that killed to survive. Burkert suggests that this necessary, aggressive behavior gave rise to anxiety, but through the practice of sacrifice the unavoidable aggression, which otherwise threatened to destroy society, was redirected to its promotion instead. In Structure and History Burkert's theoretical concerns are larger, including both myth and ritual. The precise relation between myth and ritual has been a vexing question for scholars of ancient religions; Burkert places them side by side and links them at a structural level. He thinks ritual is older than myth, because it is a form of behavior found even in animals. Nevertheless, ritual and myth share several important features: Both depend upon basic biological or cultural programs of action and detachment from pragmatic reality. Both serve communication. Because myth and ritual are related in this way, it is possible for them to be found together. Burkert's Greek Religion is the current, standard handbook on the religions of ancient Greece. His most recent work has been devoted to examining the influence of the ancient Near East on archaic Greek civilization.TRANSCRIPT
The Orientalizing Revolution
Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age
Walter Burkert
The splendid culture of the ancient Greeks has often been described as emerging like a miracle from a genius of its own, owing practically nothing to its neighbors. Walter Burkert offers a decisive argument against that distorted view, pointing toward a balanced picture of the archaic period "in which, under the influence of the Semitic East--from writers, craftsmen, merchants, healers--Greek culture began its unique flowering, soon to assume cultural hegemony in the Mediterranean.
“Brilliant...[Burkert] is consistently thorough and challenging...Without denying the role of innate talent, he shows that much of the Greek miracle grew from an openness to influences from other cultures...[His] careful scholarship...has constructed the bridge that he set out to build.”
—Carol G. Thomas, American Historical Review
“An elegant and academically influential work...The Orientalizing Revolution can be enthusiastically recommended.”—Simon Hornblower, Times Literary Supplement“Burkert’s The Orientalizing Revolution remains an outstanding, or rather the outstanding, contribution to the question of `Near Eastern influence on Greek culture in the Early Archaic Age.”
—Greece and Rome
“This thought provoking work is an updated translation of Burkert’s Die orientlisierende Epoche in der griechischen Religion und Literature, 1984...It is refreshing to see a classical scholar follow in the footsteps of eminent Near Eastern scholars such as Cyrus Gordon and Michael Astour who have long argued for interconnections in the ancient Mediterranean world.”
—Mark W. Chavalas, Near East Archaeological Society Bulletin
Contents;
Preface
Introduction
1. "Who Are Public Workers": The Migrant Craftsmen
Historical Background
Oriental Products in Greece
Writing and Literature in the Eighth Century
The Problem of Loan-Words
2. "A Seer or a Healer": Magic and Medicine
"Craftsmen of the Sacred": Mobility and Family Structure
Hepatoscopy
Foundation Deposits
Purification
Spirits of the Dead and Black Magic
Substitute Sacrifice
Asclepius and Asgelatas
Ecstatic Divination
Lamashtu, Lamia, and Gorgo
3. "Or Also a Godly Singer": Akkadian and Early Greek Literature
From Atrahasis to the "Deception of Zeus"
Complaint in Heaven: Ishtar and Aphrodite
The Overpopulated Earth
Seven against Thebes
Common Style and Stance in Oriental and Greek Epic
Fables
Magic and Cosmogony
Conclusion
Abbreviations
Bibliography
Notes
Index of Greek Words
General Index
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Walter Burkert (born 2 February 1931) is a German scholar of Greek mythology and cult . An emeritus professor of classics at the University of Zurich , Switzerland , he also has taught in the United Kingdom and the United States . He has influenced generations of students of religion since the 1960s, combining in the modern way the findings of archaeology and epigraphy with the work of poets, historians, and philosophers. He has published books on the balance between lore and science among the followers of Pythagoras , and more extensively on ritual and archaic cult survival, on the ritual killing at the heart of religion, on mystery religions, and on the reception in the Hellenic world of Near Eastern and Persian culture , which sets Greek religion in its wider Aegean and Near Eastern context.
● (1972) Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism , Translated by Edwin L. Minar, Jr., Harvard University Press , ISBN 0-674-53918-4 .
● (in German) Homo necans : Interpretationen Altgriechischer Opferriten und Mythen. Berlin: De Gruyter. 1972. ISBN 3-11-003875-7.
○ (in Italian) Homo necans: Antropologia del Sacrificio Cruento nella Grecia Antica. trans. Francesco Bertolini. Turin: Boringhieri. 1981. ISBN 88-339-5114-6.
○ Homo necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth. trans. Peter Bing. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1983. ISBN 0-520-03650-6.
● Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual . Berkeley: University of California Press. 1979. ISBN 0-520-03771-5. http :// books . google . com / books ? id = APcX 1 KKHF 9 wC & printsec = frontcover .
● (1985) Greek Religion , Harvard University Press, ISBN 0-674-36280-2 . Originally published in 1977 in German, and translated into English by John Raffan, this has been widely accepted as a standard work in the field.
● (1987) Ancient Mystery Cults , Harvard University Press, ISBN 0-674-03386-8 , Based on his Jackson Lectures at Harvard, 1982.
● The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age. trans. Margaret E. Pinder. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. 1992. ISBN 0-674-64363-1.
● (1996) Creation of the Sacred : Tracks of Biology in Early Religions , Harvard University Press, ISBN 0-674-17569-7 .
● (1998) The Orientalizing Revolution : Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age , Translated by Margaret Pinder, Harvard University Press, ISBN 0- 674-64363-1.
● Savage Energies: Lessons of Myth and Ritual in Ancient Greece. trans. Peter Bing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press . 2001. ISBN 0-226-08085-4.
● (2004) Babylon , Memphis , Persepolis : Eastern Contexts of Greek Culture , Harvard University Press, ISBN 0-674-01489-8 .
http :// en . wikipedia . org / wiki / Walter _ Burkert Orientalizing Period
From Wikipedia , the free encyclopedia
In the history of Ancient Greece the Orientalizing Period is the cultural and art historical period informed by the art of Anatolia, Syria, Assyria, Phoenicia and Egypt, which started during the later part of the 8th century BCE. dubious discuss It encompasses a new, Orientalizing style, spurred by a period of increased cultural interchange in the Aegean world. The period is characterized by a shift from the prevailing Geometric Style to a style with different sensibilities, which were inspired by the East. The intensity of the cultural interchange during this period is sometimes compared to that of the Late Bronze Age.
During this period, the Assyrians advanced along the Mediterranean coast, accompanied by Greek mercenaries, who were also active in the armies of Psammeticus in Egypt. The new groups started to compete with established Greek merchants. In other parts of the Aegean world similar population moves occurred. Phoenicians settled in Cyprus and in western regions of Greece, while Greeks established trading colonies at Al Mina, Syria, and in Ischia Pithecusae
off the Tyrrhenian coast of Italy. These interchanges led to a period of intensive borrowing in which the Greeks adapted cultural features from the Semitic East into their art. Burkert 1992 128 et passim.
Massive imports of raw materials, including metals, and a new mobility among foreign craftsmen caused new craft skills to be introduced in Greece. In The Orientalizing Revolution Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age, Walter Burkert described the new movement in Greek art as a revolution "With bronze reliefs, textiles, seals, and other products, a whole world of eastern images was opened up which the Greeks were only too eager to adopt and adapt in the course of an "orientalizing revolution" Burkert 1992 128 . Many Greek myths originated in attempts to interpret and integrate foreign icons in terms of Greek cult and practice.
Some Greek myths reflect Mesopotamian literary classics. Burkert 1992, 41-88, has argued that it was migrating seers and healers who transmitted their skills in divination and purification ritual along with elements of their mythological wisdom. He has suggested direct literary Eastern influence in the Homeric literature. The intense encounter during the orientalizing period also accompanied the invention of the Greek alphabet, based on the earlier phonetic but unpronounceable Phoenician writing, which caused a spectacular leap in literacy and literary production, as the oral traditions of the epic began to be transcribed onto imported Egyptian papyrus and occasionally leather.
In Attic pottery, the distinctive Orientalizing style known as "proto-Attic" was marked by floral and animal motifs it was the first time discernibly Greek religious and mythological themes were represented in vase painting. The bodies of men and animals were depicted in silhouette, though their heads were drawn in outline women were drawn completely in outline. At the other important center of this period, Corinth, the orientalizing influence started earlier, though the tendency there was to produce smaller, highly detailed vases in the "proto-Corinthian" style that prefigured the black-figure technique.
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