Creation and the Cosmos (Volume A)

Creation and the Cosmos (Volume A)

General Concepts • cosmogony • ex nihilo • theomachy • hierarchical structure

Cannibal Spell for King Unis “Unis’s privileges will not be taken from him, for he has swallowed the Perception of every god” (28).

Great Hymn to the Aten • el-Amarna • monism • Hapy • dat • etiological myths

Enuma Elish • “when on high” • Akkadians • Tiamat (mother ocean)/ Apsu (father, fresh water) • Marduk/ Ea • Esharra and Babylon • Qingu’s blood, human creation as “artful” • Anunna and Igigi (higher, lesser) gods

Marduk

Ziggurat

Sanctity of the Text The first one should reveal them The wise and knowledgeable should ponder them together The master should repeat, and make the pupil understand The “shepherd” and “herdsman” should pay attention (38).

Hesiod • Theogony, “birth of the gods” • Gaia / Uranus (mother earth/ father sky) • Titans • Hesiod as a shepherd “tending sheep at the foothills of god-haunted Helikon” • invocation to the Muses

Nine Muses • Kleio • Euterpe • Thaleia • Melpomene • Terpsichore • Erato • Polymnia • Ourania • Kalliope

Aphrodite and the Titans

Prometheus and Hubris

Pandora

The Races of Mankind

Philosophers • Thales of Miletus, water as prima materia • Heraclitus, theory of transformation • Empedocles, conjunction of the elements, laws of attraction and repulsion • Anaxagoras, intelligence and process

Lucretius • Epicureanism • “But if I knew nothing of atoms, of what they were, still from the very ways of the heavens, from many other things I could name, I’d dare to assert and prove that not for us and not by gods was this world made” (55). • “Surely the heavens and earth must also have a time of origin and a time of death” (56).

Discussion Questions What do these creation myths tell us about original societies, their cultures, and their understanding of the universe?

This concludes the Lecture PowerPoint presentation forThe Norton Anthology of World Literature

Creation and the Cosmos (Volume A)