Mother: weeps—laments her son’s uncertain fate—prepares to approach the god—hopes to avert a theodic crisis—bathes—is purified—dresses herself—is in the presence of women—ascends—bears a strewn offering—prays
These are the ritual contours from parallel scenes in the Epic of Gilgamesh (3.35-119) and the Odyssey (4.749-767; 17.46-60). Ninsun, mother of Gilgamesh, and Penelope, mother of Telemachus, perform the rituals at a prodigious distance of space and time from each other (Mesopotamia in the 3rd Millennium BCE and Ancient Greece in the 2nd Millennium BCE, respectively). The rituals occur early on in the epics at moments of great risk for Gilgamesh and Telemachus. Burkert (1992: 99-100) briefly discussed the scene in the Odyssey as a “near translation” of the one in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Their relationship has since received no further examination.
The driving force behind Ninsun and Penelope’s prayer scenes is rooted in atavistic anxiety around their sons’ perilous situations: Gilgamesh must face the monster Huwawa; the blood-thirsty suitors plot against Telemachus. Ninsun and Penelope undertake ritual actions to manage this anxiety, beseeching the gods to protect their sons. The mothers are successful in forming a symbiosis between god and human, an alliance for mutual benefit, offerings in exchange for protection of their sons. This symbiosis extends to the broader level of narrative and ritual within the epics: the rituals lend gravity and pathos to the narrative, while the narrative supplies meaningful context for the rituals.
Burkert assumes Homer’s deliberate borrowing and adaptation of the Babylonian source material. However, a more interesting and useful inquiry is the following: how could these ritual contours have emerged from within their respective cultural milieus? By contextualizing the scenes, that is, by grounding them in the lived cultural experiences of their respective ancient audiences—combat veterans, refugees, and survivors of the shifting sands of empires—we may begin to appreciate their reception and the dialogue between them that is potentially lurking beneath the surface of stale arguments of explicit literary borrowing. I argue that the parallel strongly suggests a shared culture, of Near Eastern cultural continuity and integration of which Greece was a part, and neither deliberate alterity nor Orientalism on the part of the Greeks.
Burkert, W. 1992. The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age. Translated by Margaret E. Pinder and Walter Burkert. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
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