The Holy Land of the Noble Ethiopians!

[maiherpra]

Homer in the Iliad and Odyssey make at least five references to the Ethiopians. In four out of the five times, Ethiopia is mentioned as a place sacred to the Gods, and not African gods, but the Greek Gods themselves. How is it that a land so far away from Greece such as the Sudan was able to gain such divine rimportance or connotations for the greeks!


List of Quotes from Robert Fagles:

Iliad 1.423-4 (Thetis is speaking to Achilles.)

Only yesterday Zeus went off to the Ocean River

to feast with the Aethiopians, loyal, lordly men,

and all of the gods went with him.



Iliad 23.205-207 (Iris is speaking to the winds.)

No time for sitting now. No, I must return

to the Ocean’s running stream, the Aethiopians’ land.

They are making a splendid sacrifice to the gods—

I must not miss my share of the sacred feast.



Odyssey 1.21-25

But now

Poseidon had gone to visit the Ethiopians worlds away,

Ethiopians off at the farthest limits of mankind,

a people split in two, one part where the Sungod sets

and part where the Sungod rises. There Poseidon went

to receive an offering, bulls and rams by the hundred—

far away at the feast the Sea-lord sat and took his pleasure.



Odyssey 4.81-84 (Menelaus is speaking to Telemachus)

Believe me,

much I suffered, many a mile I roved to haul

such treasures home in my ships. Eight years out,

wandering off as far as Cyprus, Phoenicia, even Egypt,

I reached the Ethiopians, Sidonians, Erembians—Libya too.



Odyssey 5.281-287

But now Poseidon, god of the earthquake, saw him—

just returning home from his Ethiopian friends,

from miles away on the Solymi mountain-range

he spied Odysseus sailing down the sea

and it made his fury boil even more.

He shook his head and rumbled to himself,

“Outrageous! Look how the gods have changed their minds

about Odysseus—while I was off with my Ethiopians. . . .”

[maiherpra]

I believe there might be two reasons for the importance of Ethiopia (modern day Sudan) as a sacred land to the Ancient Greeks. Lets begin with the first reason.

According to Bernard Knox in his introduction to Robert Fagles' Iliad. Homer was a culmination of an impressive and ancient oral poetic tradition very similar to African Griot traditions of modern West Africa or Somalia. This would have made it a living tradition, incorporating political and cultural trends of the recent past or even current era into an overtly historical poem or epic based on events occuring a long time before such trends. (This would account for the many instances of anachronism in Homer.) Homer it is believed was the first oral poet innovative enough to write the poem down. And according to most experts this might have taken place around 800--700bc. This date coincides with the awakening of Kush at Napata. Here is Timothy Kendal on the subject:

www.jebelbarkal.org/

By the eighth century BCE a family of local Nubian chiefs restored the Jebel Barkal Amun cult and sanctuary and established Napata as the center of an independent kingdom of Kush. Reviving and promoting the New Kingdom royal myths, rituals and propaganda, which were apparently still widely remembered, they claimed Amun of Jebel Barkal as their divine father; they claimed the New Kingdom pharaohs as their “ancestors;” and they declared themselves heirs of the revived kingship of Upper Egypt and Kush, which had not existed since the New Kingdom. By about 750 BCE, with the support of the Amun priesthood in Thebes, the new kings of Napata assumed the “Upper Egyptian” throne in a bloodless coup through the combined oracular authority of Amun of Jebel Barkal and Amun of Karnak (fig. 5). By 712 BCE they had conquered and reunited all of Egypt so that their rule was now counted as Egypt’s 25th Dynasty

Since the Greek Oral Tradition was a living tradition this meant possibly that Homer was simply incorporating into a historical poem a very current political trend, namely the awakening of Kush as the Spiritual Home and birth place of Amun, centered around the Sacred Mountain Gebel Barkal.

Attachments:

[truthteacher2007]

Jun 28, 2011 21:28:46 GMT -5 maiherpra said:

Homer in the Iliad and Odyssey make at least five references to the Ethiopians. In four out of the five times, Ethiopia is mentioned as a place sacred to the Gods, and not African gods, but the Greek Gods themselves. How is it that a land so far away from Greece such as the Sudan was able to gain such divine rimportance or connotations for the greeks!


Because once you go black you never go black?....

[maiherpra]

The first hypothesis i find quite tantalising, however the second reason am about to give might be more likely. According to Timothy Kendal Gebel Barkal rose into religious prominence during the New Kingdom epoch with ironically the destruction of Kush as an independent kingdom by Thutmose I. After the conquering of Kush:

In Jebel Barkal the Egyptians believed they had found Amun’s birthplace, his “Mound of Creation” and his “southern Heliopolis.” The gigantic pinnacle on its south corner seemed to be a “statue,” made by non-human hands; it was many times higher and more massive than any made by man. This “figure,” however, represented not one thing but many at once, all confirming the presence and nature of the mysterious god, believed to dwell “hidden” (=amun) within the mountain. The most obvious shape visible within the pinnacle was that of a rearing royal uraeus, wearing the White Crown of Upper Egypt. This apparently revealed to them immediately that the hill was an original source of their kingship, that the god of Jebel Barkal was a primeval form of Amun (divine father of Egyptian kingship), and “proved” to them that the pharaohs had a divine right to rule the farthest limits of Kush as a part of Upper Egypt.


It seems that during the New Kingdom, the Ancient Egyptians possessed so much faith in the idea of Kush as the holy land that the Greeks who interacted with them or who learned about their New Kingdom religion seemed to have been heavily influenced by the idea. Eventually corporating in their own myths and pseudo history, the symbol or reputation of the Sudan or Kush as a Holy Land. And there is other evidence to support this theory. The destruction of Troy or at least the events which inspire the legend has been placed to about 1200bc, which falls within the New Kingdom era.

And other references to Egypt in Homer all bear resemblance to the New Kingdom. For instance Achilles in swearing his refusal of gifts meant to woo him into coming to the aid of Greeks who are being bested by the Trojans, after Achilles and his troops withdraw from battle after Achilles is insulted by King Agamemnon, invokes a wealthy Egypt reminescent of New Kingdom glory:


he may promise me the wealth

of Orchomenus or of Egyptian Thebes, which is the richest city in

the whole world, for it has a hundred gates through each of which

two hundred men may drive at once with their chariots and horses;

Also BETSY M. BRYAN, in The Oxford History Of Ancient Egypt makes a quite interesting link between a famous New Kingdom warrior pharaoh Amenhotep II and the hero Achilles:

Amenhotep II’s reign was a pivotal one in the early New Kingdom, although today it is often dwarfed by the shadow of his two predecessors and his successors in the late 18th Dynasty. During a reign of nearly thirty years (with a highest known regnal year of twenty-six) the king had military successes in the Levant, brought peace to Egypt together with its economic rewards, and faithfully expanded the monuments to the gods. In his own time Amenhotep II commanded recognition most particularly for his athleticism, and his monuments often allude to this capability. As a young man, the king lived in the Memphite region and trained horses in his father’s stables (if we are to believe the inscription he left on a stele at the Sphinx temple at Giza). His greatest athletic achievement was accomplished when he shot arrows through copper targets while driving a chariot with the reins tied around his waist. The fame of this deed was monumentalized not only in the stele inscription from Giza but in carved relief scenes in Thebes. It was also miniaturized on scarabs that have been found in the Levant. Sara Morris, a classical art historian, suggests that Amenhotep II’s target shooting success formed the basis hundreds of years later for the episode in the Iliad when Achilles is said to have shot arrows through a series of targets set up in a trench.

Shaw, Ian (2004). The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt (pp. 241-242). Oxford University Press, USA. Kindle Edition.

And one should not underestimate the importance of so called 'Nubia' as a holy land for the Egyptians during the New Kingdom. Some of the most impressive temples built in the New Kingdom are located in 'Ethiopia'. Timothy Kendal claims the most famous aspect of Amun as a Ramheaded God was the result of Amun during the New Kingdom taking on the form and face of a nameless Kushite God, after the Egyptian appropriation of Gebel Barkal, as the birth place of Amun.

Attachments:

[nebsen]

Kasekemwy,

Excellent information . Thanks so much ; this is the reason I joined ESR is to acquire this type of information esp. about a time period that I'm most interested !