The prehistory of pre-Socratic philosophy in an orientalizing context
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Posted on December 1, 2020 by Elements of Racial Education

1. The contexts of history

Philosophy is until today linked to a chain of traditions which begins with Greek texts dating from around 2400 years ago: the works of Plato and Aristotle have been continuously studied since then; they were transmitted to the Persians and the Arabs and reintroduced in Europe and are still in any philosophical library. Plato, in turn, was not an absolute start; he read and criticized Heraclitus, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Protagoras and other Sophists - we speak of “presocratics” but should rather say “preplatonic”; Aristotle read and criticized Plato and everything else he could find up to Anaximander. Even if philosophy is anything but sure of its own identity, the very question "What is philosophy?" Is inseparably linked to the Greek foundations.No one has been able to reinvent philosophy because it has always been present.

No comparable tradition of books, texts and translations goes back beyond Anaximander, Heraclitus, Parmenides. From what we can see, there is no direct translation in Greek literature before the Hellenistic period. It cannot be said from any book of the classical period that it was a translation of an oriental language, although Hannon's African Journey is a possible exception (1). While Latin literature begins with translations and adaptations from Greek, the Greek situation in its formative period must have been different. And yet there was a literature, a highly developed literature, all around in the various "oriental" civilizations close to the Greeks. And the Greeks were anything but immune from oriental influences.

In fact, what we take to be the beginning of Greek philosophy began just around the time when the eastern superpower met the Greek world and established its rule over the most flourishing, advanced and sophisticated regions, the cities of Ionia. . Thales of Miletus is linked to a solar eclipse which is related to the conflict of the Medes, Lydians and post-Assyrian Babylonians, in 585 BC. BC (2); Anaximander is said to have written his book, one of the first Greek prose books, just when King Cyrus the Persia conquered Sardis, capital of the Lydians, in 547 BC. BC (3); Xenophanes left his city, Colophon in Asia Minor, "when the Mede arrived" (B22). Heraclitus stayed in Ephesus and kept in touch here with the sanctuary of Artemis,where the construction of the first great marble temple in Greece had been started by Croesus, king of Lydia, and was completed during the Persian reign; the main priest of Artemision adopted a Persian title, Megabyxos.

But the establishment of Persian rule over the Eastern Greeks was only the last act in a process of interactions that had long taken place. After the break-up of the so-called Bronze Age Koine , after the end of palaces and literature, when a fragmented and unstable conglomerate of small tribes and colonies remained in the eastern Mediterranean, progress had mainly come from three sources: the intensification of Mediterranean trade with the Phoenician cities, such as Tire in the first place; the propagation of a simple writing system, the alphabet; and the formidable expansion of Assyria - a military crisis at the origin of economic and cultural progress.

Assyrian expansion reached the Mediterranean in the ninth century; it reached its peak in the eighth and seventh centuries: Damascus was conquered around 800, Israel in 722, Cyprus around 700; Sidon was destroyed in 670; Egypt came under Assyrian rule in 671-655. The main adversary in eastern Anatolia, Urartu, collapsed under the weight of an invasion from the north led by the "Cimmerians" around 700; the same for Phrygia. At that time, Gyges became king of Lydia, he established his reign over the main Greek cities of Anatolia and he made an alliance with Assurbanipal, king of Assyria. This enabled him to open the King's Route from Ionia to Mesopotamia. Assyrian power then suddenly collapsed by the combined assaults of Babylon and the Iranian Medes in 612: Nineveh, the Assyrian capital, was destroyed.

The Greeks were on the fringes of these events. The Greeks settled in Cyprus in the twelfth century at the latest; they established trading posts in Syria in the ninth century. They themselves succeeded in developing long-distance trade in competition with the Phoenicians, from Syria to Etruria, with "colonies" in southern Italy and Sicily. At that time, Euboea was the dominant place of relations between East and West. There were some conflicts with the Assyrians both in Syria and Cilicia; in the eighth century, the Greek kings in Cyprus paid homage to Assyria. This was not, however, comparable to the disasters that had befallen the Aramaeans and Louvites of southern Anatolia, the Phoenician cities of Syria, Israel in Palestine, and Egypt.The Greeks were lucky enough to be affected but not crushed by the eastern assault. Rather, they took advantage: Eastern skills spread to the Mediterranean regions, probably in part by the refugees. The Greeks, being the most eastern of the Westerners, could then begin their particular journey (4).

By far the most important cultural transfer was alphabetical writing. There is no need here to dwell on the advantages of the alphabet over ancient writing systems, whether hieroglyphic or cuneiform (5). There will be no further discussion of the difference between consonantal writing, which the Semites had retained until then, and vowel writing, which the Greeks introduced, largely out of misunderstanding (6). The success of the Greek alphabet is visible in the fact that it was quickly adopted by the surrounding peoples, almost simultaneously by the Phrygians in the east and by the Etruscans in the west, followed by the Lydians and Lycians in Anatolia. - the case of the Carians is more complicated - and by the Latins, the Veneti and the Iberians on the other hand.

The Greeks adopted the alphabet, it seems, shortly after 800 BC. J-.C. (7). There was a kind of explosion in writing in the second half of the eighth century. A Mycenaean-type linear writing system had survived in Cyprus. But the Greeks then decided to write in "Phoenician", as they called it. They learned and carefully preserved the name of the letters, alpha , beta , gamma , delta, which mean nothing in Greek, and they kept their immutable sequence, which our computers still respect; the shapes of the letters, too, were at first practically identical. The place of transfer is unknown - the Phoenicians or rather the Aramaeans, Syria or Cyprus? Some still argue a considerably earlier date, but direct evidence is lacking.

Along with the alphabet, the Greeks also adopted the writing tablet, which retained its Semitic name, deltos , and the leather scrolls and layout of books, with a subscriptiocharacteristic at the end instead of a title at the beginning (8). Some form of book transmission from cuneiform to Phoenician and Greek must have occurred. But since the transition to alphabetic writing means using perishable materials, wooden tablets and scrolls, and ditching clay tablets, the direct evidence suddenly disappears. With closer contact with Egypt after the seventh century, the papyrus replaced the leather scroll. The first Greek books that we can assume to have existed were poetry - Homer, Hesiod, maybe oracles. There are two famous documents in verse from around 730 BC. AD, the "amphora of Dipylon" in Athens and the "cup of Nestor" in Ischia (9). The Cup of Nestor, in particular,with its careful inscription in verse in lines, leaves little doubt that books of Greek poetry existed at this time (10). The first prose books, however, appeared much later, with Anaximander and Pherecydes in the sixth century.

This invites some reflections on the means of philosophizing, including the problem of oral versus written. For about the last 2400 years, we have known philosophy in the form of the philosophical book; and philosophical books were born and still see the light of day in discussion circles, in "schools of philosophy". Plato set the example with his Academy, and similar institutions existed with varying success until the end of antiquity and were resuscitated in the universities and academies of Europe. We are less well informed about the situation before Plato.We are told that Anaximander's book was the first prose book published (11) - in what context? We are told that Heraclitus dedicated his book to the temple of Artemis in Ephesus (12) - did this mean publication or seclusion? We observe that practical textbooks in astronomy and geography began to circulate in the sixth century; aNautike Astrologia was attributed to Thalès (13); Scylax de Caryanda, at the time of Darius, wrote a periêgesis (14); Hecataeus wrote on geography and presented a map of the Earth (15). We also find genealogical manuals written in prose by Hecataeus of Miletus, Acousilaos of Argos, Pherecydes of Athens (16). The astronomical-geographic and genealogical textbooks were both in a way modernizations of the works of Hesiod, Theogony with Catalog , and Les Travaux et les Jourswhich ends with astronomy. Acousilaos precedes his genealogy by theogony. Around the same time, around 500 BC. J-.C., Appears another book which begins with the creation of the world and continues with the development of the tribes which constitute the people: Bereshit , the first book of the Bible, whose final writing could belong to this same period. The Greeks were not isolated.

So much for the books; it is difficult to find serious evidence of the existence of philosophical schools before Plato, even if the later doxography built successions ( diadochai ). There are contradictory statements regarding the sect of the Pythagoreans (17); Heraclitians are mentioned in the fifth century, but it is not known whether they accidentally read and imitated Heraclitus or had any connection and organization. Parmenides adopted Zeno, we are told (18). It would be quite an old and ubiquitous model of the tradition of knowledge, in particular of secret knowledge, within a "family", whether that of craftsmen, seers or poets ( 19). The doctors of Kos were all Asclepias.

In the Eastern world, there were other institutions for the tradition of knowledge: temples which existed as economically independent and autonomous units and which nurtured a clerical priesthood; the schools of writing, "the house of the tablets", were linked to them. Since the ancient, complex writing systems, which continued to be used in the first millennium BC. AD, required professional training that lasted for years, the house of the tablets was the foundation of the conscience of "those who know": a wise man is a "Lord of the tablets". Sapiential literature tends to appeal to kings by seeking to take advantage of their authority, be it Solomon or another monarch.

The situation of the Greeks, in comparison, is characterized by a threefold flaw: there were hardly a few temples as economically independent units that could feed a clerus. ; there is no such thing as the prestige of a house of tablets; and the kings had recently passed away. Alphabetical writing is so easy to learn and practice that no class distinction emerges from elementary school; it was the Sophists who invented higher education as a new form of class distinction. In fact, it will have been a decisive factor in transforming a lack into progress: cultural knowledge broke away from the dominant institutions and hierarchies, from the houses of the tablets, from the temples and from royalty; it became mobile, managed by the single individual. This spread with the economic and political changes of the time, which put forward the individual initiative of individuals and groups. So even "wisdom" became the capital of the enterprising individual,competing with his neighbor (20). Western Semites from Tarsus to Jerusalem to Tire would have had the same opportunities with a similar economy and a similar writing system. We can hardly estimate how far they have gone. They were harassed, disturbed and stopped by the devastating invasions of the Assyrians and Babylonians recorded in history. The Greeks, being those who lived most in the East among the Westerners, were close to the events but remained almost untouched. The Jews, in the midst of the unrest, were able to preserve their own identity only by the compelled decision to make their scriptures their highest authority, rather than using them as the tool of spiritual freedom.Western Semites from Tarsus to Jerusalem to Tire would have had the same opportunities with a similar economy and a similar writing system. We can hardly estimate how far they have gone. They were harassed, disturbed and stopped by the devastating invasions of the Assyrians and Babylonians recorded in history. The Greeks, being those who lived most in the East among the Westerners, were close to the events but remained almost untouched. The Jews, in the midst of the unrest, were able to preserve their own identity only by the compelled decision to make their scriptures their highest authority, rather than using them as the tool of spiritual freedom.Western Semites from Tarsus to Jerusalem to Tire would have had the same opportunities with a similar economy and a similar writing system. We can hardly estimate how far they have gone. They were harassed, disturbed and stopped by the devastating invasions of the Assyrians and Babylonians recorded in history. The Greeks, being those who lived most in the East among the Westerners, were close to the events but remained almost untouched. The Jews, in the midst of the unrest, were able to preserve their own identity only by the compelled decision to make their scriptures their highest authority, rather than using them as the tool of spiritual freedom.We can hardly estimate how far they have gone. They were harassed, disturbed and stopped by the devastating invasions of the Assyrians and Babylonians recorded in history. The Greeks, being those who lived most in the East among the Westerners, were close to the events but remained almost untouched. The Jews, in the midst of the unrest, were able to preserve their own identity only by the compelled decision to make their scriptures their highest authority, rather than using them as the tool of spiritual freedom.We can hardly estimate how far they have gone. They were harassed, disturbed and stopped by the devastating invasions of the Assyrians and Babylonians recorded in history. The Greeks, being those who lived most in the East among the Westerners, were close to the events but remained almost untouched. The Jews, in the midst of the unrest, were able to preserve their own identity only by the compelled decision to make their scriptures their highest authority, rather than using them as the tool of spiritual freedom.The Jews, in the midst of the unrest, were able to preserve their own identity only by the compelled decision to make their scriptures their highest authority, rather than using them as the tool of spiritual freedom.The Jews, in the midst of the unrest, were able to preserve their own identity only by the compelled decision to make their scriptures their highest authority, rather than using them as the tool of spiritual freedom.

The special luck of the Greeks on the fringes of the productive and dangerous East was repeated, in a striking and unpredictable way, with the Persian Empire: its expansion was stopped just at the limit which has since been called the border between Asia. and Europe. About a third of the Greek population had come under Persian rule and for centuries lost its cultural importance; but the rest unexpectedly succeed in retaining their freedom and thus developing a new consciousness in opposition to Asia. This was the advent of what has since been called "classical" civilization; it came to declare its independence at all levels; it has decisively influenced even cultural history in retrospect.

In fact, what we call early Greek philosophy is indebted to earlier literary traditions in two ways: there was and continues to be what we call sapiential literature, knowledge crystallized in the form of elaborate sentences; and there were the cosmogonic myths, the “creation stories”. Note that any writing school needs practical texts to practice; and what constitutes the content of an elementary book? Simple proverbs and stories - namely sapiential literature and mythology. It is thus one of the social contexts for literature that we have had to deal with. This is not to forget that mythology was used in hymns and other ritual texts to celebrate the respective gods; so the Enuma Elishhas its place in the feast of the New Year of Babylon - and not without appealing to kings - in the two works of Hesiod Theogony , comprising the catalogs, and The Works and the Days . These two works appear to be close to the date when the Greeks first borrowed the alphabet and learned the function and layout of leather scrolls. This does not mean that Hesiod was the only gateway. There is the cosmogonic passage in the Iliad which is close to the Enuma Elish.(21). And Orpheus' theogony, as known from Derveni's papyrus, seems to be a meeting place of oriental motifs; there must be a lot of things that we can't identify. But we also see how a set of astronomical knowledge and mathematical techniques had accumulated in particular from the temple-schools of Babylon; he made significant progress just at the crucial time of the sixteenth to the fifth centuries. It clearly affected the Greeks. Look at our names of the planets or the laborious sexagesimal system we still use to measure circles and angles.

2. The research periods

The thesis or suspicion that Greek philosophy was not an original invention of the Greeks, but was copied from older oriental prototypes, is not recent. It goes straight back to Aristotle's book On Philosophy and his students, who discussed the barbaros philosophia  ; they took into account, of course, Egyptians, Chaldeans, Iranian magoi including Zoroaster, Indian gurus, and also Jews (22). Prior to Aristotle is the association of Pythagoras with Egypt (23); and probably also that of Democritus and the Magi (24). The question of the barbaros philosophiais the first theme discussed by Diogenes Laërce. The last head of the Neoplatonic Academy of Athens, Damascios, in his book on first principles, offers interpretations of the cosmogonies of the Babylonians, Magi, Phoenicians and Egyptians, citing the book of Eudemus, raises it well known to Aristotle, which contained, among other information, an exact paraphrase of the opening lines of the Babylonian Enuma Elish . This is one of the first cases where direct translation from an oriental book can be established (25). Normally knowledge of oriental languages ​​did not exist, or was even concealed. The Hellenic translation of the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint, stands out as a singular achievement; she was hardly noticed outside of Jewish circles.

The Jews and the Christians appropriated the thesis about the barbaros philosophia and maintained that Moses had lived several centuries before Plato (26). They thus alleged that Plato had taken all the essential elements of his philosophy from Israel: What is Plato if not a Moses speaking Attic, writes Numenios (27). Unimportant, in these ancient discussions, was the overall direction: no trace of East-West or North-South conflict.

The learned history of philosophy as developed in the nineteenth century summed up the discussion, with varying results. By then India and China had been discovered as high cultures to be taken seriously. India in particular could impress with texts which seemed close to Greek philosophy even by the strength of linguistic knowledge. Yet what gained ground was the critical position of Eduard Zeller: in the introduction to his magnificent work Die Philosophie der Griechen in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung(28), first published in 1856, it presented a review of earlier proposals as to the Chinese, Indian and other precursors of Greek philosophy, and it came to a negative result. Zeller's position and arguments were often reworked and repeated until the mid-twentieth century (29). Hence we can agree to the idea that Greek philosophy was self-generated and purely Greek.

Therefore, the drastic change that occurred just around the time of Zeller's essay has often been overlooked: the emergence of original texts in Eastern literatures, first Egyptian and Mesopotamian, then Hittite and Ugaritic. Until then, little more than the Old Testament had been known from pre-Greek antiquity, and philologists had no problem showing that these texts had not been known to the Greeks before the Hellenistic period. . The Avesta was known in 1771 (30) but remained a marginal curiosity. However, the new texts of the “ancient Near East” have since made a date. Henceforth neither Hebrew nor Greek, neither Moses nor Homer are the beginning of literature, but rather the texts of the pyramids or the Sumerian myths.The problem of the context in which Greek philosophy evolved from the sixth to the fourth centuries BC. AD now appears under another horizon. It was an unknown, William Ewart Gladstone, who, in 1890, referred to the parallel between Apsû and Tiamat in theEnuma Elish and Ocean and Tethys in the Iliad (31). Discussions focused on “Babel and the Bible” and also on Homer and Gilgamesh. Themes relevant to philosophy arose on the other side, the Iranian side, after Zarathustra had gained fame through Nietzsche. Richard Reitzenstein, with the help of HH Schaeder, went from Hellenistic syncretism to Iranian origins; Iranian and Indian parallels to Hesiod's Myth of the Ages were pointed out, while the Uppsala school developed the idea of ​​a World Giant and an Iranian "Time God", Zurvan / Zervan; both made their appearance in Greek Orphism. Albrect Goetze even discovered "Persische Weisheit in griechischem Gewande", comparing a chapter of the Hippocratic treatiseOn the weeks and texts in pehlevi. Religious history still seemed to arouse more interest than that of philosophy. It was not until 1941 that Francis Macdonald Cornford, in a reading at Cambridge, presented a careful comparison of Hesiod and the Enuma Elish., which was published in 1950 (32). In the meantime the Hittite texts had appeared, with the striking parallel between the myth of Kumarbi and Uranus-Cronos in Hesiod; The Hittite is Indo-European, which helped to break down the barrier against the "Semitic" world. Following the Hittite, the Ugaritic too, was easily accepted. Uvo Hölscher underlined the new perspective in a fascinating article, “Anaximandros und der Anfang der Philosophie”; Hans Schwab, in his article “Weltschöpfung” of Pauly-Wissowa, developed the whole panorama of the cosmogonic myth; Martin West's comments on Hesiod are full of relevant information and insight, not to mention the sober and informative book by Peter Walcot (33).

The opening of new horizons coincided with a change in the concept of philosophy: rational ontology in the wake of Aristotle and scholasticism lost its appeal among the moderns, for, Aristotle and even Plato could be considered as having initiated fundamental errors in the origin and foundation of philosophy; there was a new interest in the pre-Socratics, in particular in Heraclitus and Parmenides, from Karl Reinhardt via Heidegger to Gadamer, combined with an intense interest in myths (34). The title of Olof Gigon's 1945 book is characteristic: Der Ursprung der griechischen Philosophie von Hesiod bis Parmenides. This includes Hesiod in the "origin", which seems to end with Parmenides. In the same year, however, the Hittite texts about Kumarbi had been published (35), which added a pre-hesiodic basis to the sequence - Olof Gigon did not like this at all. But the evidence was there.

Things calmed down again in the following decades although the inclination to include the Orient in our panorama of antiquity continued to increase, with a growing distance from the conception of the nineteenth century classic. A more heated discussion started from a side issue with Black Athena(36) by Martin Bernal. Bernal accuses the Western tradition, in particular the German one, of excluding the Semitic Southeast by racial prejudice; he argues that the origin of most cultural achievements is in Bronze Age Egypt - which would rule out philosophy. His thesis, and the reactions provoked, indicate the growing insecurity of our white Western world. Attacks are being launched against the "dead white males," of which the Greeks are the oldest and should be the most dead of all. We can hope that these debates are an incentive to research rather than an obstacle in the name of political correctness.

3. Corpus of non-Greek texts

The various languages ​​and civilizations close to archaic Greece, including their idiosyncratic writing systems, call for specialists, whose areas of expertise are necessarily separate. An introductory guidance should nevertheless be presented, as follows.

Apart from the Greco-Roman “classics”, only two corpus of ancient texts have survived by direct transmission, the sacred books of Israel, conventionally called the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament, and the Iranian Avesta. Greek literature is readily available, including translations, commentaries, and lexicons, although dates, for example for Homer and Hesiod, are still a topic of discussion. The Bible has been the object of the most in-depth studies for centuries, whether on the Jewish or the Christian side, with the result that the historical and literary evaluation and in particular the dating of texts, or segments of texts , remains deeply controversial. The Avesta has few specialists apart from linguists, and the dating problem is desperate.It is clear that there are two linguistic strata, the "old avestic" which is mainly that of the "songs", theGathas of Zarathustra, and the “recent avestic”, which constitutes the bulk of that of the liturgy ( Yasna ), hymns ( Yashts ) and the “law against evil spirits” ( Videvdat ). What we know about Zarathustra is mainly the message of the Gathas. But its dating is still estimated to be before 1000 BC. AD and the sixth century (37). There is a tendency to date the rest of the Avesta approximately to the time of the Achaemenid Persians, from the sixth to the fourth centuries BC. AD, even if the final written form, in a particular script designated for this purpose, could date from AD 400. At that time, the religion of Zarathustra had long since become the state religion of the Sassanid Empire. After the fall of the Sassanid kingdom in the ninth century, a series of books were produced by Zoroastrians in a Middle Persian language, pehlevi, which collects and elaborates ancient traditions, also making use of parts of the Avesta which have since been lost. Specialists have tried to find very ancient Iranian traditions, even pre-Zoroastrian ones,in these ninth century books, even if it means a step backwards of more than a millennium.

In relation to such problems posed by religious continuity, the rediscoveries and decipherments which concern Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Syria and Egypt lead to an indisputable stratum of the Bronze Age and the beginning of the First Age of the iron. However, most of the time we are dealing with fragments and the problems of interpretation are sure to persist.

Egypt, with a climate without rain, had the particular chance to preserve the wooden tablets and in particular the papyrus sheets with written texts, apart from the vast monumental heritage. There is a rich conglomerate of religious speculations dealing in particular with cosmogony and the afterlife, continuing up to the “texts of the pyramids”. Isolated shrines developed their own theology and mythology; thus one can find "a monument of Memphitic theology" or "the cosmogony of Hermopolis". What is striking from the Greek perspective is the primordial origin of water, with the cosmic “egg” of beginnings. This is not to neglect the vast corpus of mortuary texts and a significant body of sapiential literature.

The wedge-shaped writing that has survived on tens of thousands of clay tablets is incredibly rich. It begins in the third millennium with the Sumerian language, but soon adopts the Semitic language, which is now usually called Akkadian, including Babylonian and Assyrian. The cuneiform Akkadian spread in Syria in the third millennium, in Anatolia in the second; it is the general medium of late Bronze Age diplomacy; it begins to decline in relation to the alphabet in the first millennium, but continues to be fully used in Mesopotamia until the first century BC. J.-C.

As for cuneiform "literature" in a more particular sense, there are mythological accounts of gods and heroes in Sumerian, including specific acts of creation, mainly in the form of relatively short chants; there are also proverbs and fables. The later Akkadian develops such prestigious epics as Atrahasis , Gilgamesh and the Enuma Elish , the ceremonial cosmogony of Babylon. There are also elaborate sapiential texts such as the Babylonian Theodicea . A separate category, no less important, are the tablets of mathematics and astronomy.

Hittite texts are mainly represented by the archive of Boğazköy ‐ Hattusa, the Hittite capital. They are dominated by the Akkadian tradition, but the horrite also had an influence. There are rich collections of ritual texts and hymns to the gods but also mythological stories in epic form. A particular fame accompanies the accounts of successions and divine combats, The Kingdom of Heaven , Ullikummi , Illuyankas . An important and complex sapiential text, the Song of Liberation , has recently come to prominence as a bilingual Hurrian-Hittite text.

In Ugarit, excavations have brought to light several archives of tablets, partly in Akkadian, partly in a particular quasi-alphabetic script which was used in particular for mythological-ritual texts. The language is close to Hebrew, there are even coincidences in some sentences. Parallels to Greek mythology were noted from the start regarding the conflicts of gods, the dying gods, dragon fights, and war. However, there should be a warning that the texts are few, short and fragmented, and entire passages may not be clear due to consonantal writing which insufficiently indicates grammatical forms. Cuneiform Hittite and Ugaritic disappeared with the end of the Bronze Age, around 1200 BC. AD, although traditions,even mythologies persisted in Canaan as well as in Asia Minor.

Syria in general and the Phoenician cities in particular, in the midst of their remarkable development during the Iron Age, definitively adopted alphabetic writing and abandoned the clay tablets. Written documentation therefore suddenly comes to an end. No doubt that there were books of all kinds in the Phoenician and Aramaic languages, but hardly anything has survived; we remain dependent on the Greek testimonies, in particular concerning the Phoenician cosmogonic myths. Only one of the sapiential books has achieved world renown, The History of Ahiqar . It was originally written in Aramaic, fragments of which appear on the Elephantine papyrus; he could have been known to Democritus and more probably to Theophrastus. A Greek version is found in theLife of Aesop . The complete text exists in Syriac then, later, in Armenian and Arabic (38).

4. Mathematics and Astronomy

The use of numbers is prehistoric, as is familiarity with the seasons of the year, the changing position of the sun, the periods of the moon. Evidence of cultural dependence comes from details that are not ubiquitous but idiosyncratic, such as the names of constellations and planets, or the sexagesimal system that is unique to Mesopotamia. This makes the Mesopotamian influence on Greece certain. Homer has two names for the best known constellations of the northern sky, Dipper or Chariot; the name Chariot is also Akkadian. The determination of the Little Dipper, which includes the polar star, belongs to the Nautikê Astrologia, which was attributed to Thales; Callimachus claims that he comes from the Phoenicians (39). In most other cases it is impossible to determine the mode of transfer, the date, the kind of texts which were at work. There are more legends than facts about what the Greeks say about Egyptian priests, the Chaldeans of Babylon, the Magi, or even Pythagoras.

Calculation was part of the teaching of Mesopotamian schools. They developed the sexagesimal system for writing numbers, which allows for divisions by 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. There are number tables to facilitate further calculations, including square and cubic roots. It is surprising to find that the "Pythagorean theorem" was regularly used about a millennium before Pythagoras. There is even a tablet of "Pythagorean numbers", corresponding to the equation x 2 + y 2 = z 2. Quadratic equations are also solved by arithmetic (40). This is largely analogous to Euclid's second book; direct influence is generally accepted, although the logic of mathematics must produce parallel developments and modern forms of writing with mathematical symbols may render similarities more impressive than the original texts would.

The sexagesimal system had an influence on the weights and coins of Greece, where they bear a Semitic name, mana , Greek mnea , mnâ , "measure". A "mine" is the sixth part of a "load to be transported", heanton . The other use of the sexagesimal system that remains belongs to the circle: the 360 ​​degrees, subdivided into 60 minutes, 60 seconds; one degree approaches the daily movement of the sun in the zodiac. The first clear Greek proof of this is from Hypsicles in the third century BC. BC (41); but it was probably already used by Eudoxus in the first half of the fourth century.

Babylonian astronomy is not originally old, contrary to what the Greeks thought (42). Ptolemy, in his Syntax, dated the observations of the "Chaldeans" to 721 BC. AD, as Hipparchus had done before him. Watching for heavenly omens a kind of astrology had developed at an early time. Moon and sun eclipses were believed to be signs of disaster, and rituals were developed and used to thwart the threat - so far no idea of ​​causal necessity, which would later dominate Greek astrology. Observations, including eclipses, piled up, and patterns were observed. There are number tables which date back at least to the sixth century and which, by "zigzag functions", allow precise calculations of stellar and lunar movements and visibilities. It is a form of science in the full sense of the word,although quite different from later Greek methods, and without any physical hypothesis of explanation. It was found on tablets by Franz Xaver Kugler; the new description is by Otto Neugebauer; it reached its peak only in the Seleucid period.

A simple and ancient problem in practical astrology is the correlation of the phases of the moon and the solar year. While the Egyptians decided to completely dissociate the solar year from the moon - which the Julian calendar took up - everywhere else the true lunar months were preserved, with intercalary months to remain in phase with the seasons of the year. In Babylon an intercalary cycle of 19 years was found, and there is little doubt that Meton, who proposed such a cycle in Athens in 432 BC. AD, drew his idea and his knowledge from the East.

More precise observation is needed to notice the unevenness of the seasons - the summer period of half the year, from equinox to equinox, lasts a few days longer than winter. According to tradition Thales is already dealing with the problem. The Babylonians developed two different systems of astronomical calculation to deal with this inequality.

More specific discoveries in astronomy concern the planets and the establishment of their trajectory through the constellations of fixed stars, which the Greeks called the zodiac. Greek knowledge remained scant for a long time since the simple identification of the morning star and the evening star (Eosphoros / Phosphoros and Hesperos) as a planet was attributed only to Ibycus, Pythagoras or Parmenides (43) ; while the Babylonians had calculated periods of Venus at the time of Ammisaduqa in the seventeenth century BC. AD (44). The precise trajectory along which the planets orbit can be observed most easily in the "way of the moon"; it is an Akkadian expression.Further observations show that the sun and the planets keep the same trajectory - the projection of the ellipse of the Earth. This circle is marked, in vague analogy to the 12 months of the year, by 12 constellations which are then transformed into purely mathematical constructions, "signs" of 30 degrees each. The Greeks called it the "circle of animals",zodiakos , and said that it was first described by Cleostrates and Tenedos, a pupil of Anaximander. Earlier attestations of the zodiac seem to be lacking in Mesopotamia, but are now reported on tablets from the seventeenth century (45). The first cuneiform horoscopes appeared at the beginning of the fifth century (46).

Our names for the planets, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, are indirect copies of the Akkadian designations, by the Greeks, who translated Nabu, Ishtar, Nergal and Marduk. This was accomplished at the time of Plato at most, perhaps a few decades earlier (47).

We suspect that the idea of ​​a Great Year that we find in relation to the planets in Plato and Aristotle, and in an uncertain context in Heraclitus, comes from Babylonian astronomy or even Iranian speculations. There is no direct evidence for this but indirect indications in Berose about saros as equal to 6000 years (48).

The Babylonians spoke of the "circle" of heaven and earth. A circular map of the Earth is found on a tablet (49), which has often been compared to the alleged map of the Earth presented by Anaximander and Hecataeus. The concept of a "sphere" of the sky, however, seems to be a purely Greek step, as is the explanation of eclipses as well as the idea and proof that our Earth must itself be a sphere.

5. Sapiential literature

What we call “sapiential literature” is a genre of literature which is fully developed in Egyptian, Sumerian, Akkadian, Hurrian (50), and last but not least in the Hebrew Bible. Comparable are, among the Greek texts, The Works and Days of Hesiod, Theognis, Phocyclides, an obscure poem Chironos Hypothekai and the tradition of the Seven Sages which takes the form of prose around 600 BC. AD; it could still be oral, at least in part. The prose books take up the tradition: the Aphorisms in the Hippocratic corpus, the works of Democritus, then the Anonymus Iamblichi (DK 89) and Pros Demonikon of Isocrates. The tradition continues to the logiaof Jesus. As for the presocratics, Heraclitus can be included in the genre (51), and Anaximander too, who, according to Apollodorus, presented his "opinions" in "a summary account" ( kephalaiôdês ) (52): not a flood of rhetoric but declarations. isolated sapiential.

Sapiential literature takes proverbs in several forms in order to constitute general rules, whether they are imperatives, declarations, or even short stories; thus fables, fables about animals and plants, are part of it (53). There are highly developed literary forms, such as dialogues, in Egypt and Mesopotamia, and in Job . Sometimes a given situation is mentioned, with kings entering the scene: The Instructions of King Amenemhat to his son Sesostris I (54); or, in Sumerian, Shuruppak's Instructions to his son Ziusudra- Ziusudra who had to survive the flood. In the Old Testament we find “The proverbs of Solomon the son of David, king of Israel”, and also “The words of king Lemuel. Sentences by which his mother instructed him. "( Proverb 31) which are to be compared with" the admonitions of Hesiod to his brother Perses ", given that The Works and Days of Hesiod is contemporary, or" the advice of Chiron to Achilles ", Chironos Hypothekai(55). A more hectic story was introduced in the Aramaic text of Ahiqar, which was also known to the Greeks (56). Ahiqar is slandered by his nephew and imprisoned by the king; when his innocence is proven and he is released, he has the opportunity to transmit his wisdom to the evil nephew by flogging, a blow, a piece of advice.

Wisdom proverbs rarely appear even in an attempt to establish a rule or a system. If there is causal reasoning, it is only one step; it is not an ethical philosophy. There may be sophisticated literary devices such as the acrostic (57); there are elaborate antitheses and striking metaphors, but also puzzles. “A virtuous wife is her husband's crown, but a shameful woman is like decay in her bones. ”( Proverb 12: 4); Hesiod is simpler: "A man cannot meet anything better than a woman when she is good, but nothing worse when she is bad." "( The Works and the Days , 702)

There are always recognizable intellectual achievements in sapiential literature that go beyond trivialities: there is an elaborate use of language, with analogies and antitheses; there is the assumption, which is anything but obvious, that it helps to have wisdom, that it pays to learn it from wise men - a logos optimism , you could say. There is also the postulate of generalization: the advice of the wise man is valid always and everywhere, beyond the moment - even if the advice could be: keep the moment, kairon gnôthi .

The optimism of logos has its limits; it can touch the boundaries of cynicism: "Most people are bad" - that, too, is a proverb of the Seven Sages (58). And is it true that “wisdom is more valuable than gold” ( Proverb 23:14)? Does piety pay? Job's text strives to defend the thesis; the supposedly Babylonian theodicy says, "Those who neglect the god walk the path of prosperity while those who pray to the goddess are impoverished and dispossessed." "(59)

The optimism of the logosis always inclined to train a form of morality that relies on reason against emotion; a morality that urges rationality, moderation, self-control, as well as justice and piety, against strong temper, drunkenness and sexual dissolution. "Avarice is a serious and incurable disease", say the Egyptians; "Better austerity and happiness than riches and problems" (60); “Measurement is best,” say the Seven Sages (61). One line from Homer that made a lasting impression on Greek readers is Odysseus's warning to pretender Amphinomus: "Such is the disposition [us] of men on Earth, just like the day that Zeus, the father of men and of the gods, brings ”, uncertain and changeable, brilliant or obscure.The wisdom of Odysseus is taken up by Archilochus (West 131/132) and criticized by Heraclitus (B17, B72). But long before Homer an Akkadian text analyzed the condition of humanity in a similar way: "Their disposition changes as day and night: when they are hungry they become like corpses, when they are satisfied they compete with the gods. "(62). A remarkable proverb from the Cologne papyrus of Archilochus about the animal world is that: "the bitch, being hasty, gives birth to blind puppies"; the same proverb appears in a text by Mari a millennium before Archilochus (63). There are other parallels in the fables (64)."Their disposition changes as day and night: when they are hungry they become like corpses, when they are satisfied they compete with the gods" (62). A remarkable proverb from the Cologne papyrus of Archilochus about the animal world is that: "the bitch, being hasty, gives birth to blind puppies"; the same proverb appears in a text by Mari a millennium before Archilochus (63). There are other parallels in the fables (64)."Their disposition changes as day and night: when they are hungry they become like corpses, when they are satisfied they compete with the gods" (62). A remarkable proverb from the Cologne papyrus of Archilochus about the animal world is that: "the bitch, being hasty, gives birth to blind puppies"; the same proverb appears in a text by Mari a millennium before Archilochus (63). There are other parallels in the fables (64).the same proverb appears in a text by Mari a millennium before Archilochus (63). There are other parallels in the fables (64).the same proverb appears in a text by Mari a millennium before Archilochus (63). There are other parallels in the fables (64).

More important than coincidences of this kind is the tendency to extend wisdom to cosmic dimensions. The ethics of measurement comes to dominate the broad lines of cosmology: the forms of pre-philosophy that we seek, wisdom and cosmogony, come into contact. "By wisdom the Lord established the earth; by understanding he established the heavens" ( Proverb 3:19). Wisdom itself proclaims: “When he laid out the heavens, I was there; when he drew a circle on the surface of the abyss, when he fixed the clouds above […] when he gave a limit to the sea […] I was at work with him ”( Proverb8: 27-30). The Egyptians operate Maat, the Order, alongside the sun god, the Babylonians have Misharu, the Just Order, in the same place and in the same function (65). "Helios will not transgress his limits", writes Heraclitus, "or else the Erinyes, the assistants of Justice, will find him" (66). Anaximander affirms that all of the things present, your eonta, “Give each other reparation and satisfaction for their injustice, according to the set time” (67); he is probably thinking of the agenda and the year, which effectively compensates for the lack by excess and vice versa. The paradigm of the cosmic order is a form of justice, whether it is Maat or Misharu accompanying the sun or the Erinyes who pursue all transgression. Justice holds the alternating keys of day and night, Parmenides formula (68); "This world […] was always, is and will be: an eternal fire, kindling by measure and extinguishing by measure", according to Heraclitus (69). Heraclitus had obviously reached a new dimension, always starting from the same foundation of justice and "measure for measure" in the cosmic order.

And even the peculiarity of Heraclitus' wisdom can be seen more clearly through the background of traditional wisdom literature. The beginning of the slightly abbreviated proverb of Solomon is: "The proverbs of Solomon, son of David […] by which […] the simple will acquire discernment and […] if the wise listen, he will increase his knowledge" (70 ). This contrasts with the beginning of Heraclitus' book: “This logos, which is true, is still misunderstood by men, either before they hear it, or when they hear it for the first time. Although all things are done according to this verb, they seem to be ignorant of it ”(71). Doesn't that sound like a parody of the naive and mundane promise of wisdom to be taught to those who do not know it and to improve in those who know it? No, says Heraclitus, men demonstrate that they are incapable of understanding, even if they are in immediate contact with the things that are happening. It certainly goes beyond the claim that wisdom existed when limits were placed on the sea. But it involves the traditional approach.

6. Cosmogony

There are various variations of stories about the beginning of the world. The paradigm, as it was, is established by the Babylonian text of Enuma Elish , the creation epic recited on the Babylonian New Year feast (72). In Egypt we do not find a representative text but several groups of texts, fully developed or of a rather allusive character, usually reflecting the position of a particular sanctuary: Heliopolis, Memphis, Hermopolis (73). In Hittite, we have the text of Kumarbi, which is particularly close to Hesiod (74). This is not to leave aside the beginning of the Bible, which even has a cosmogony in two different accounts (75).

Cosmogony is highly speculative, as has always been recognized. The external form of the text is still ingenuous: it is a typical ad hoc story - an expression of disdain for anthropologists (76). In the beginning there was […] then came […] and then - so on. First the world was not, then Heaven and Earth appeared, and gods, and men, and their relationship was established. Even the so-called first philosophers among the Greeks did not disdain this form of story: "All things were confused", begins Anaxagoras, "all things being together, none appeared, everything was occupied by air and by ether" (77). How close this is to "The earth was formless and empty: there was darkness upon the face of the deep" ( Genesis 1: 2).

A speculative result is still found in the concept of "beginning", a beginning from which all things flow. The Bible begins with the famous words “In the beginning” ( bereshit ) ( Genesis 1: 1) and Hesiod writes “in the beginning” and asks “what is the origin of the world and the first of all beings” ( Th. 115) , while Anaximander appeals to the concept of Archê , according to Theophrastus (78).

Further results of speculation are reversal and antithesis. If you begin to tell the story of the beginning of everything, you must first of all remove from your understanding everything, your entire world, people and animals, houses and trees, mountains and sea, Heaven. and Earth. So the typical beginning of the cosmogonic myth is accomplished by subtraction: there is this great and resounding Not Yet. Thus begins the Enuma Elish : “When the sky was not yet named above, the earth below had no name […] No reed bush was assembled, no reed was visible, while no gods had not appeared, neither being called by a name, nor endowed with a destiny […] ”(79) An Egyptian text on the pyramids affirms that“ When the sky had not yet been built, when the earth had not yet come into being, when nothing had yet been created ”(80) - what was there then? “[T] he darkness on the surface of the abyss […]”, the Bible tells us (81); a yawning abyss, says Hesiod, chaos(82); the Night, says the theogony of Orpheus (83); Infinity, seems to have written Anaximander. "Everything was confused", we read in Anaxagore (84). The most common answer is: there was water in the beginning. It is not limited to the ancient world; this is also reported from America (85). The beginning is water, Thales would have declared; but long before Thales, the Egyptians had developed water cosmogonies in various variants (87). The Enuma Elish also describes groundwater and salt water, Apsu the procreator and Tiamat who begot them all as parents of all. Surprisingly enough, this reappears in the middle of Homer 's Iliad with Ocean and Thetys, "generating all" (88).

Unity is doomed to dissolve: differentiation must come from one beginning. Any cosmological narrative is doomed to follow these lines. The grandest idea is that Heaven separated from Earth in the second stage of creation. The normal Archaic language usually does not have a term for "world"; it lists the fundamental constituents, "Heaven and Earth". So the world as "Earth and Sky" appeared by separation. Even this idea is not a peculiarity of the ancient Mediterranean world; it is found in Africa, Polynesia and Japan (89). The Hittites and Hesiod have the violent myth of a castration of Heaven, of the separation of the primordial couple (90). The Egyptians have a more peaceful development since Shu, the "Air",only raises the goddess of Heaven - who is feminine in this case - Nut, of Earth (91), Geb. According to Anaximander, a sphere of fire grew around the center, which was apparently a kind of silt; the sphere then burst into pieces which turned into wheels, carrying embrasures of flame around the Earth (92). It still means the separation of Heaven and Earth. It persists, in another way, in Leucippe (93).

For further development, there are two narrative options, two models: one could be called biomorphic, the other technomorphic. The biomorphic model introduces couples of different sexes, insemination and birth; the technomorphic model presents a creator in the function of the skilled craftsman. The biomorphic model gives rise to successive generations, with episodes of battle between the Old and the New; it suggests stories and is therefore strongly mythical. The myth of succession is found in the Enuma Elish, in the royalty of the Hurrian-Hittite sky and in Hesiod (94). It echoes curiously in Hippo: "The fire, generated by water, conquered the power of the procreator and constituted the world" (95). It is tempting to call the biomorphic model the Greek model, the technomorphic model the biblical one. “In the beginning the Lord created heaven and earth” (96); “And god made […]” He sculpts Eve from a rib and he even makes the first clothes from skin. Hesiod, on the contrary, fully opted for the biomorphic version. Things are more complicated, however, especially when there are combinations of the two models, as in the Enuma Elish, and also in the Orphic cosmogony as it is known from the Derveni papyrus: both introduce certain generations of gods into the conflicts of the myth of succession, but at a certain stage they make the principal god plan its creation.

Creation is more rational: it gives the author the opportunity to describe the objects in detail. Listen to the Enuma Elish : when Marduk killed Tiamat, the primordial mother, the sea monster, "the Lord rested and inspected his body, he divided the monstrous form and created wonders, he cut it in two like a fish to dry, he disposed of it half as the roof of the sky ”- we obtain the separation of the sky and the earth -“ as for the stars, he arranged the constellations […] he made the crescent moon appear, he entrusted the night to it […] Each month, without ceasing, you will give it the form of a crown. At the beginning of the month to shine on the country, you will show your horns to determine six days; on the seventh day you will be half a crown. The fifteenth day should always be the middle of the month. When the sun reaches you at the base of the heavens, it lowers your crown and decreases the light. "(97)

It is not hectic but quite correct. The Old Testament is much more summary: "God said: Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky, to separate the day from the night [...] and God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule over the day, and the smallest light to rule over night; he also made the stars. "(98) Hesiod is less precise:" And Théia gives birth to the great Helios and the shining Selene, and Eos who brings light to all terrestrial men and to the immortal Gods who inhabit the large Ouranos. And she gave birth to them, being united in love with Hyperion. And Eurybiè, having united in love with Kreios, gave birth to the great Astraios and Pallas, for she was a powerful Goddess, and Perses who excelled in all works. Eos, united with Astraios, gave birth to the Impetuous Winds:the agile Zéphyros and the rapid Boréas, and Notos. And she gave birth to them, being united with a God. Then she gave birth to the Lightbringer Star, born in the morning, and the Resplendent Stars with which Ouranos is crowned. (99) No one would say that Hesiod is more rational than the Orientals; he only gives names to the concepts of the divine - Theia - and of "he who is above", Hyperion; but this is only a tautology to make Astraios the father of the stars, it is absolutely not systematic in its separation from the morning star from other stars. The concept of "creator of the world" is explicitly rejected by Heraclitus: "The order of this world […] none of the gods or men ever created it" (B30). Heraclitus seems to develop the biomorphic model into a phytomorphic model,the principle of growth according to internal laws such as is the case in plants; the Greek term for such growth isphysis , which was later translated into Latin as natura . The famous proverb that “ physis likes to be hidden” (B123) probably originates from this precise observation: if you dig up the germ to see it grow, you destroy the plant. Yet we observe that almost none of Heraclitus' successors could not do without a creator: Parmenides introduces a daimonfemale who “rules everything” and creates divine powers such as Eros (100); Anaxagoras gives a similar function to nos, the spirit, the force responsible for all differentiation; Empedocles has Love made organs and organisms in his factory; it was only Democritus who, criticizing Anaxagoras, tried to exclude the spirit from the formation of the macrocosm and the microcosm (101). The reaction came from Plato and Aristotle; The Timaeus of Plato finally establishes the term "creator" demiourgos in Greek philosophy.

It has become a commonplace to assert that it was the Greeks who walked the path from mythos to logos(102). It has more recently been observed that even the Orientals - the scholars of Assyria, for example - were already pursuing such a path. Take one of the texts that comes from the house of the conjuring priests of Assur, around 650 BC. AD (103): there are three earths and three heavens, says the text: “In the Upper Earth he establishes the souls of men, in the center; on Middle-earth he made his father Ea sit in the center ”(Ea is groundwater); “In the Lower Earth it includes the 600 gods of the dead (Annunaki), in the center. This postulates three stories for our world, the Earth we live on, with groundwater, just as Thales describes it, and deeper, in a lower region, the lower world with its adequate gods. Heaven, by correspondence, also has three domains:the highest belongs to the sky god, Anu, as well as to 300 celestial gods; the middle Heaven, made of a resplendent stone - perhaps amber - is the throne of Enlil, the sovereign god; the lowest realm, made of jasper, is the realm of the constellations: "he designed the constellations of the gods out of it". According to Livingstone, these texts "make existing theology more precisely accord with the facts of the natural world", with the natural cosmos in which we live. The story still retains the form of the cosmogonic myth: the god did this, and that, and that, and so on. The result, however, is the existing cosmos, which could be best indicated by drawing a figure rather than by a narrative (104).made of a resplendent stone - perhaps amber - is the throne of Enlil, the sovereign god; the lowest realm, made of jasper, is the realm of the constellations: "he designed the constellations of the gods out of it". According to Livingstone, these texts “make existing theology more precisely agree with the facts of the natural world”, with the natural cosmos in which we live. The story still retains the form of the cosmogonic myth: the god did this, and that, and that, and so on. The result, however, is the existing cosmos, which could be best indicated by drawing a figure rather than by a narrative (104).made of a resplendent stone - perhaps amber - is the throne of Enlil, the sovereign god; the lowest realm, made of jasper, is the realm of the constellations: "he designed the constellations of the gods out of it". According to Livingstone, these texts “make existing theology more precisely agree with the facts of the natural world”, with the natural cosmos in which we live. The story still retains the form of the cosmogonic myth: the god did this, and that, and that, and so on. The result, however, is the existing cosmos, which could be best indicated by drawing a figure rather than by a narrative (104).these texts “make existing theology more precisely agree with the facts of the natural world”, with the natural cosmos in which we live. The story still retains the form of the cosmogonic myth: the god did this, and that, and that, and so on. The result, however, is the existing cosmos, which could be best indicated by drawing a figure rather than by a narrative (104).these texts “make existing theology more precisely agree with the facts of the natural world”, with the natural cosmos in which we live. The story still retains the form of the cosmogonic myth: the god did this, and that, and that, and so on. The result, however, is the existing cosmos, which could be best indicated by drawing a figure rather than by a narrative (104).

Three heavens appear in Anaximander; he even seems to have used the plural “heavens” ( ouranoi ), which is absolutely unusual in the Greek language (105). But he combined the three heavens with three categories of celestial bodies - the stars, the moon and the sun - thus introducing "the logosdimensions and distances ”, as Eudemus, the pupil of Aristotle (106) explains. Its sequence, in turn, was evidently influenced by Iranian tradition, the ascension of souls to the stars, the moon, the sun and the eternal light (107). Anaximenes corrects that the stars are more distant than the sun. Between the Assyrian priest and Anaximander - the text of Ezekiel gives a date of 593/2 BC. AD - there is the vision of Ezekiel of Yahweh on his throne, arranged in a wheeled chariot of complex design, whose wheels come and go; and whose throne is amber, as in Assur (108).

Anaximene says that the stars are frozen in a crystalline sky “like drawings”, zôgraphêmata  : this almost seems to be a translation of the Assyrian text: Enlil “conceived” or “traced” the constellations on the sky of Iaspis (109). Another Akkadian text on astronomy, Enuma Anu Enlil , describes the same idea in a more theological aspect: on the sky “the gods made the stars in their own image”. Peter Kingsley drew attention to the fact that almost the same expression appears in the Platonic Epinomis : constellations are "images of the gods, like animated statues of the gods, fashioned by the gods themselves." "(110)

A kind of dialogue seems to be continuing between Assur, Jerusalem and Miletus. Let us not forget that Anaximander, according to tradition, wrote just when Sardis was conquered by the Persians (111); while Gyges had kept regular contact with Nineveh more than a century before; and that Alcée's brother, a hireling, had gone to Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon (112).

7. Iranian affinities       

The Achaemenid Empire is no longer part of prehistory but of the contemporary history of the pre-Socratic movement. Eastern sources, however, become particularly evasive during this period, while Greek clues often present Greco-Persian amalgamations which are difficult to analyze.

The term magos is clearly borrowed from Iranian, and thus irrefutable proof of an early Iranian influence in Greece. It has a double use or meaning in Greek, already discussed in a book, Magikos , attributed to Aristotle (113): the "authentic" magoi are said to be priests possessing a particular theology and ritual, unlike the "magic of the sorcerers ”( goeteutike mageia ), whose meaning predominated. The Magoi appear in Herodotus as a class of Median priests and spokespersons for the Persian religion; the magoi as charlatans and magicians are attested in the Hippocratic treatise On sacred illness, and also in Sophocles and Euripides (114).

For the oldest testimony, we usually refer to Heraclitus (115) and neglect the earlier and in fact fundamental testimony, the inscription of Behistun by Darius. Darius states: "There was a man named Gaumata, a Mage, who lied and said: I am Bardia" (117). Each time the name "Gaumata" appears, the formula "the magus" is added, as if to make it unforgettable. It was obviously an Iranian term; the text does not give an explanation. But he also asserts (sec. 70) that Darius sent the text throughout his domain in order to be read in public. In other words, this text was known to all Greeks in every city of Asia Minor and the adjacent islands, around 520 BC. The Greeks would therefore have remembered the term magos, in such a way that if such a man appeared he would have attracted attention. Note that we are here at a time for which we have no other direct testimony; which is more than 80 years from Sophocles, Herodotus and Hippocrates, and perhaps more than 20 years from Heraclitus, who loses the status of first witness.

This does not bring any "teaching of the Magi" to our knowledge. We have fascinating conjectures and haphazard reconstructions left, in an amalgamation of authentic Greek and Iranian. The two elements of the Iranian tradition which were presented in the 1920s with resounding, The myth of the ages and "Persische Weisheit in griechischem Gewande", are based on a Pahlevi testimony. The specialist who most recently considered the second element, Duchesne-Guillemin, arrived at contradictory results (118); whereas the Hippocratic treatise On Weeks has in some way been lost (119). The myth of the ages constitutes a problem with regard to the sources of Hesiod (120); the pehlevi texts as well as theIndian yugas that have been put in the context are so many centuries later that it takes special faith to see them as close to the putative original.

Similar uncertainties and controversies accompany the invention of a time god, Zurvan, supreme god of a certain pre-Zoroastrian or para-Zoroastrian religion; which it was asserted that he had influenced Chronos in Pherecydes and in the Orphic theogony (121), but also the god Aeon, Eternity; which made its appearance on the threshold of the end of Antiquity (122). Iranian testimony, in this case, has to be collected from Peelvis, Syriac, Armenian and Arab sources - another challenge for a deep dive into various late syncretic documents.

A special connection between Heraclitus and Iran has often been assumed, with the complex of fire and cosmic order as the linking ideas (123). But apart from the obscurity of Heraclitus, there are no Iranian texts on which to base a direct comparison; the Zoroastrian fire cult appears fully developed only in the post-Achaemenid era.

There remain two religious ideas in which Iranian influence has long been assumed: celestial immortality and dualism, which introduces an adversary to God (124).

The idea of ​​a soul ascension to the heavens, which is still popular in our own religion, does not belong to the oldest stratum which is common to Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine and Greece; instead we find a land of no return or a domain of Hades as a dark and sinister subterranean place with swamps and clay, far from the gods. In the religion of Zarathustra, on the contrary, from the first documents there is the promise that the pious will ascend to God and remain with him in the future (125). In Greece, the idea of ​​soul, psyche or pneuma , ascending to heaven after death is found from the fifth century BC. J.-C.

The classic document of Mazdean doctrine is the Hadoxt Nask , a text in the language of the Avesta: the deceased, on the third night, will encounter his own "religion", daena , in the form of a beautiful daughter, who guides him through three stages, the good thought, the good word, the good deed, towards the "eternal light" in the presence of Ahura Mazda (126). In the Peelvis writings, citing lost parts of the Avesta, the three stages are specified as the stars, the moon and the sun (127). There could be pre-Zoroastrian elements: immortality, amrta- , is an Indo-European concept; there is a heavenly paradise in the Veda.

The Greek testimony to such an idea of ​​celestial ascension is less specific, although it was formerly referred to as "a Pythagorean revolution" (128). The most important is the Athenian epigram on the death of Potidaea in 432 BC. AD (129). What is striking is the proximity to pre-Socratic thought, with physical ideas about aither (130) and "return to origins" (131); this appears in the Hebrew Qohelet (3.21) but it is suspected that it is an interpolation. Could there have been an Iranian impulse? The pre-Socratic elements, the concept of aitherand the return to the origins, are not found in the Zoroastrian religion. On the other hand, there are Greek antecedents, in the first place Heracles, who ascends towards Olympus (132). In addition, there is an Egyptian influence, which was surely at work in the field of funerary beliefs. Heavenly immortality, however, is not at the center of Egyptian eschatology, but rather moves following the sun through the lower world and "going forward by day". In this sense, the ascension of a soul- aitherin heaven is closer to the Iranian paradigm. The transmigration, related to Pythagoras and "Orpheus" and wrongly attributed to the Egyptians by Herodotus, must ultimately come from India - which was also part of the Persian Empire since Darius; we find ourselves and are lost in a mixture of influences.

Herodotus asserts that the Persians do not worship images in temples but sacrifice on "the highest mountains, and give the name of 'Zeus' to the whole circumference of the sky" (1.131.2). Herodotus' testimony suspiciously accords with pre-Socratic theories of enlightenment, particularly those of Diogenes of Apollonia and Democritus (133). In the Avesta, Ahura Mazda is clearly distinct from the sky, even though it dwells in the House of Praise in Eternal Light. There may have been a convergence of religious speculations between East and West (134).

More interesting is the principle of dualism. It is clear in the Gathas that Zarathustra, as a radical reformer, struggled against older forms of worship, such as the sacrifice of cattle and the consumption of soma, and that he reversed traditional terminology so that the old term Indo-European for god, deivos , becomes the designation of bad demons, daevas . Against his supreme god, Ahura Mazda, he opposed an evil spirit, Angra Mainyu, and involved all humans in the struggle between the two. An elaborate account of this can be found in the Bundahishnpehlevi - and much earlier in a modified form in Manichaeism - but it is in Greek texts from the fourth century BC. AD that we find the first traces, Theopomp, Aristoxene and Eudemus (135). The question of the influence of Iranian dualism on Greek philosophy focused on the issue of whether Plato's concept of a bad world soul in the Lawsis dependent on Zarathustra (136). As for the pre-Socratic, it is Empedocles who develops a kind of dualism when he explains what happens in nature by the antagonism of two principles or gods, Philia and Neikos, one positive and sympathetic, the other absolutely negative. , disastrous, hateful. And Empedocles turns the conflict into a struggle, regulated by predestined time, with Neikos who “arises” to realize his prerogatives “in the fulfillment of time” (B30). This is a piece of mythology that seems to be unnecessary for the system; modern interpreters will prefer that there be continuous interaction between the two principles rather than phases of a cycle and a sudden rise in power. Was this motivated by the myth of Zarathustra,Angra Mainyu's attack on Ahura Mazda? There is no contemporary Iranian text or reliable Greek testimony that can prove a positive answer (137). How much this would help in interpreting Empedocles is another question.

The classicists are however probably inclined to underestimate the presence of Persia in the Greek horizon, and to exclude an Eastern heritage by ignoring it. They should take the opportunity to consider the development of Greek thought from the rich perspective of its intercultural background.

Walter Burkert, “Prehistory of Presocratic Philosophy in an Orientalizing Context”, in The Oxford Handbook of Presocratic Philosophy , Oxford University Press, 2008, p. 55-85, translated from English by JB

(1) Geographi Graeci Minores I.1–14.
(2) Hdt. 1.74 = 11A5.
(3) DL 2.2 = Apollodorus FGrH 244F29 = 12A1.
(4) For details, see Burkert, The Orientalizing Revolution .
(5) It is sufficient to refer to Jeffery, The Local Scripts of Archaic Greece ; Heubeck, Archaeologia Homerica ; Burkert, The Orientalizing Revolution , 25–33; Woodard, Greek Writing from Knossos to Homer. There are a few documents of alphabetic writing dating back to 1200 BC. AD, and some of the following centuries; the wide distribution seems to have occurred from the tenth century. The alphabet, along with the Aramaic language, entered the Assyrian Empire and came to dominate the administration of the Persian Empire.
(6) Burkert, The Orientalizing Revoution , 26.
(7) The oldest document so far, circa 770 BC. AD, comes from Osteria dell'Osa near Gabies: Bietti Sestieri, La necropoli laziale di Osteria dell'Osa , 209–12; Peruzzi, Civiltà greca nel Lazio preromano ; Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum 48, 1266.
(8) Wendel,Die griechisch ‐ römische Buchbeschreibung verglichen mit der des Vorderen Orients .
(9) Amphora Dipylon: IG I 2   919; Jeffery, The Local Scripts of Archaic Greece , 76, no. 1; Hansen, Carmina Epigraphica Graeca I , no. 432; Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum 48, 89; Nestor cup: Jeffery, The Local Scripts of Archaic Greece , 239, no. 1; Hansen, Carmina Epigraphica Graeca I , no. 454 (wrong date; read 725–720); Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum 46, 1327.
(10) These are not necessarily the texts of "Homer" that we have, but rather earlier versions of them, or relating to Hesiod. Oracles take the form of hexameters as a common Greek medium.
(11) 12A7.
(12) DL 9.6 = 22A1.
(13) DK 11B1–2.
(14) Geographi Graeci Minores I.15–96; see von Fritz, Griechische Geschichtsschreibung 1 .52–54.
(15) FGrH 1; his card: 1T12 = Anaximand. A6 DK.
(16) FGrH 2; 3.
(17) Burkert, Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism , 114–18.
(18) DL 9.25 = 29A1.
(19) Burkert, The Orientalizing Revolution , 41–46.
(20) Lloyd, “On the 'Origins' of Science.”
(21) See notes 31; 90.
(22) Arist. Peri philosophias fr. 6 Rose; Fr. 35 = DL 1.1, see 1.6–11 = Sotion fr. 36 Wehrli; Thphr. Fr. 584a Fortenbaugh = Porph. Abst . 2.26.3; Clearchus fr. 6 Wehrli.
(23) Hdt. 2.81.2; Isoc. Bus . 28.
(24) DL 9.34 = 68A1; Suid. sv = 68A2; Philostr. VS 10 = 68A9; Ael. VH 4.20 = 68A16; Hippol. 1.13 = 68A40; Philostr. VA 1.2.
(25) Dam. Pr . 123–25, 1.316–24 Alley = Eudem. Fr. 150 Wehrli. Strom . 1.101; 1.165–82; 5.89.
(26) Tatian 31; 40; Clem.Al . (27) Numen. Fr. 8 Places; see Aristobulus in Clem.Al . (38) See Eastern sources in the list of references. Democrit. B299 (faulty?) = Clem.Al . (73) Study in AA.vv. , (91) AA.vv. ,
Strom 1.150.1.
(28) Zeller, Philosophie der Griechen I , 21–52.
(29) Hopfner, Orient und griechische Philosophie ; Mondolfo and Zeller, La filosofia dei greci nel suo sviluppo storico , 63–99.
(30) Anquetil-Duperron, Zend-Avesta .
(31) Gladstone, Landmarks of Homeric Studies , app.
(32) Cornford, “A Ritual Basis for Hesiod's Theogony.”
(33) Hölscher, “Anaximander und die Anfänge der Philosophie”; Hölscher, Anfänglisches Fragen ; Schwabl, “Die griechischen Theogonien und der Orient”, 39–56; West, Hesiod, Theogony; West, Hesiod, Works and Days ; Walcot, Hesiod and the Near East .
(34) Reinhardt, Parmenides und die Geschichte der Griechischen Philosophie ; M. Heidegger, “Der Spruch des Anaximandros”, in Heidegger, Holzwege , 296–343; Gadamer, Um die Begriffswelt der Vorsokratiker .
(35) See Eastern sources in the list of references.
(36) Bernal, Black Athena ; see Lefkowitz and Rogers, Black Athena Revisited ; Lefkowitz, Not Out of Africa .
(37) See Gnoli, 1–26.
Strom . 1.69; Thphr. DL 5.50, lists of works no. 273, p. 40, Fortenbaugh. See also Burkert, The Orientalizing Revolution , 32–33, and note 30; Luzzato, “Grecia e vicino oriente: tracce della 'Storia di Ahiqar'”; Luzzato, “Ancora sulla 'Storia di Ahiquar'.”
(39) Call. Fr. 191.54 f., See 11B1 DK.
(40) See van der Waerden, Science Awakening , and in particular Neugebauer, “Zur Geschichte des pythagoräischen Lehrsatzes.”
(41) Hypsicles, Greek Authors' Edition , ed. V. de Falco, M. Krause, O. Neugebauer (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1966), 36/47.
(42) See van der Waerden, Die Anfänge der Astronomie ; Neugebauer,History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy ; Pettinato, La Scrittura Celeste .
(43) Ibyc. Fr. 331 Poetae Melici Graeci ; Pythagoras or Parmenides: DL 9.23; see Burkert, Early Pythagoreanism , 307.
(44) Reiner and Pingree, Enuma Anu Enlil Tablet 63 ; see oriental sources in the list of references.
(45) See Panchenko, “Who Found the Zodiac?”
(46) Rochberg ‐ Halton, “Babylonian Horoscopes and Their Sources.”
(47) Burkert, Ancient Pythagoreanism , 299–301. Cronos / Saturn versus the Babylonian Ninurta, also known as the "Sun Star", is a special case.
(48) Pl. Ti. 39d; Arist. Fr. 5; Berose FGrH 680F3, p. 374 f. Jacoby; van der Waerden, “Das gras Jahr und die ewige Wiederkehr”; Panaino, “Riflessioni sul concetto di anno cosmico”, 87–101.
(49) West, Early Greek Philosophy and the Orient , pl. 5.
(50) See West, Hesiod, Works and Days ; Uehlinger, “Qohelet im Horizont mesopotamischer, levantinischer und ägyptischer Weisheitsliteratur der persischen und hellenistischen Zeit”, 155–247. Hurrian sapiential literature has become accessible with the “Song of Liberation” (Neu, Das hurritische Epos von der Freilassung ).
(51) See note 73.
(52) DL 2.2 = 12A1 = FGrH 244F29, trad. KRS 100.
(53) Fables are also present in the “Song of Liberation”; Neu, Das hurritische Epos von der Freilassung , see Eastern sources in the list of references.
(54) Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature , 1: 135, see Eastern sources in list of references.
(55) Schmid, Geschichte der griechischen Literatur , 1: 287–88.
(56) See note 39.
(57) Prov. 31:10; the “Babylonian theodicy”: BWL (see Eastern sources) 70–89.
(58) Bias 10.3, DK sec. 6.1; “A man is money”, Aristodemus à Alcée fr. 360 Voigt.
(59) BWL 74 f.
(60) Assmann, Ma'at, Gerechtigkeit und Unsterblichkeit im alten Ägypten, 88; the teachings of Amenemope, Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature , 2: 152.
(61) Cleobule 10.3, DK sec. 1.
(62) Od . 18.136–37; BWL 40 f., 43, with an Akkadian commentary; Burkert, The Orientalizing Revolution , 118.
(63) Archil. Fr. 196a West; Moran, “An Assyriological Gloss”, 17–19; Burkert, The Orientalizing Revolution , 122–23.
(64) Burkert, The Orientalizing Revolution , 120–24; West, The East Face of Helicon , 82–83, 502–5.
(65) Assmann, Ma'at, Gerechtigkeit und Unsterblichkeit im alten Ägypten .
(66) Heraclit. B94.
(67) Anaximand. B1.
(68) Parm. B1.11–14.
(69) Heraclit. B30.
(70) Prov. 1: 1–5.
(71) Heraclit. B1.
(72) See Eastern sources in the list of references. Eastern Sources: The Birth of the World , see Eastern sources in the list of references. (74) See note 36. (75) Gen. 1 and 2.4: “book of births” ( toledoth ) can be understood as a second title. (76) Just So Stories for Little Children is the title of a book by Rudyard Kipling (London, 1902); it was taken as a controversial concept by Ribichini, Rocchi, and Xella, La questione delle influenze vicino-orientali sulla religione Greca

, 42, with a reference to Totem and Taboo by Sigmund Freud.
(77) Anaxag. B1.
(78) Simp. in Ph . 24.15 = 12A9; Hippol. Haer . 1.6.2 = 12A11; for the controversial interpretation, see KRS 108–9.
(79) Enuma Elish 1.1–8.
(80) Text of the pyramids 1040 a – d, see also 1466 b – d, AA. vv., Eastern Sources: The Birth of the World 46 (see Eastern sources in the list of references).
(81) Gen. 1: 2.
(82) Hey. Th . 116; the meaning of chaos was already very controversial in antiquity.
(83) Ouranos Euphronides, Pap. Derveni col. 14; Arist. Metaph. 1071b27; Eudeme fr. 150 Wehrli.
(84) Anaxag. B1.
(85) Tedlock, Popol Vuh , 64.
(86) Arist. Metaph . 983b20 = 11A12.
(87) Hölscher, Anfänglisches Fragen .
(88) Burkert, The Orientalizing Revolution , 91–93.
(89) Staudacher, Die Trennung von Himmel und Erde .
(90) ANET 120, Hoffner-Beckman 40 (see Eastern sources in the list of references); see West, Hesiod, Theogony , 20–22, 211–13; and see ANET 125, Hoffner ‐ Beckman 59 for Ullikummi. Eastern Sources: The Birth of the World (see Eastern sources in the list of references), 47 sec. 9.

(92) Anaximand. A10; see also Leucippe A1 sec. 32.
(93) 67A1.
(94) See Steiner, “Der Sukzessionsmythgos in Hesiods Theogonie und ihren orientalischen Parallelen.”
(95) Hippol. Haer . 1.16 = 38A1.
(96) Several inscriptions from Xerxes praise Ahura Mazda "who created the heavens, who created the Earth, who created man".
(97) Enuma Elish IV-V, pp. 254–55 Dalley (see Eastern sources in list of references).
(98) Gen. 1:14.
(99) Hey. Th. 371–82.
(100) Parm. B12–13.
(101) Democr. A1 = DL 9.35.
(102) But see discussions in Buxton, From Myth to Reason .
(103) Livingstone,Mystical and Mythological Explanatory Works of Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars , 78–91; see Burkert, “Orientalische und griechische Weltmodelle von Assur bis Anaximandros.”
(104) Livingstone, Mystical and Mythological Explanatory Works of Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars , 71; see Schibli, Pherekydes of Syros , 133, on Pherecydes: “Pherecydes, in summary, wanted to provide an alternative version to Theogony; he probably felt that his own version explained in a more coherent and precise way the origin of the world and the gods of the myth. »
(105) What was partly misunderstood by the doxography, Burkert," Iranisches bei Anaximandros ", 103.
(106) Eudèm. Fr. 146 Wehrli; Burkert,Ancient Pythagoreanism , 308–10.
(107) Burkert, “Iranisches bei Anaximandros”; West, Early Greek Philosophy and the Orient .
(108) Ezekiel 6; see West, Early Greek Philosophy and the Orient , 88–89; Kingsley, “Ezekiel by the Grand Canal.”
(109) See Kingsley, “Ezekiel by the Grand Canal.”
(110) Pl. Epin . 984a; Kingsley, “Meetings with Magi.”
(111) Anaximand. A1 = DL 2.2 = Apollodorus FGrH 244F29.
(112) See Burkert, “'Königs ‐ Ellen' bei Alkaios.”
(113) DL 1.8, see 1.1, Arist. Fr. 32–36; Sotion fr. 36 Wehrli. of magoias experts of the rite appear in the papyrus Derveni Col. 6, see Tsantsanoglou, “The First Columns of the Derveni Papyrus.”
(114) S. OT 387; E. Hel . 1396; see also Gorg. Hel . 10–11, 14; Pl. Plt . 280d.
(115) B14; the term magoi has been removed as an interpolation by Marcovich and other editors.
(116) Not discussed in de Jong, Traditions of the Magi .
(117) Inscription of Behistun (see Eastern sources in the list of references), secs. 11; 13; 14; 16; 52; 68; the term is kept in Old Persian and transcribed into Akkadian ( magusu ) and Elamite ( makuis). The term also appears for some priests on the tablets of Persepolis during the time of Darius: Koch, “Iranische Religion im achaimenidischen Zeitalter” 23–24. For further Greek evidence on the magoi see Bidez and Cumont, Les mages hellénisé . There is a bilingual inscription from Cappadocia from the first century AD. AD of a man who was magos for Mithra, KAI 265.
(118) Duchesne-Guillemin, “Persische Weisheit in griechischem Gewande?” Duchesne-Guillemin, “From Anaximandre to Empédocle”, 47; see Momigliano, Alien Wisdom , 128–29.
(119) Mansfeld, The Pseudo ‐ Hippocratic Tract Peri He Semaine Ch. 1–11 and Greek Philosophy, dated it from the time of Posidonios, with the approval of W. Theiler; Mansfeld changed his mind and now thinks of a false Judeo-Hellene, Mnemosyne 42 (1989): 184–185.
(120) Hesiod ( Op . 106–7) seems to indicate that this is not his own invention. The next problem is whether the four metal ages in Daniel 7 ultimately derive from Hesiod or from Hesiod's source, perhaps from an Aramaic text of the early iron age; see Burkert, “Apokalyptik im frühen Griechentum.”
(121) See Zaehner, Zurvan; West, Early Greek Philosophy and the Orient , 30–33.
(122) Junker, “Über iranische Quellen der hellenistischen Aion-Vorstellung”; review in Nock,Essays on Religion in the Ancient World , 377–96; Brisson, “The figure of chronos in Orphic theogony and its Iranian antecedents”; Zuntz, Aion, Gott Des Römerreichs , who tried to make Augustus the main "inventor" of Aeon.
(123) See Duchesne-Guillemin, “Heraclitus and Iran”, 34–49; West, Early Greek Philosophy and the Orient , 165–202.
(124) The most relevant question is to what extent these ideas influenced Judaism; see, for a critical position, G. Ahn, in Kratz, Religion , 191-209.
(125) Texts of the Gathas (see oriental sources in the list of references): Yasna 31.7: “abodes of bliss, filled with light”, when the god grants immortality (21); 43.3: passage “from good to best”, from the bodily to the spiritual, at the place where the god resides; 45.11: “salvation and the absence of death in his kingdom”; 51.15: the “house of praise, where the god was the first to go, is promised to you”.
(126) Piras, Hådoxt Nask (see Eastern sources in the list of references). The passage is further described in the Pahlevi texts of the Bundahishn and in The Book of Arda Viraz .
(127) See note 101.
(128) See Burkert, Ancient Pythagoreanism, 358–60. The main passages are Epich. 23B9, B22 = frs. 213, 254 Kassel-Austin; E. Erechtheus fr. 65.72 Austin; E. Supp. 532.
(129) IG I 3   1179.6 = Hansen no. 10: aither men psuchas hupedexato … (131) A relevant passage from Euripides was considered to be a reflection of Anaxagoras by the ancients, E. fr. 839 = Anaxag. A112. (132) The mention of the “stay among the gods” of Heracles Od. 11.602–3 was denounced as an interpolation by the old critic; Hebe represented as his wife is now attested in iconography around 600 BC. AD, see LIMC
(130) Diog.Apoll . A19, 42: the soul as "part of god". . 46–47, 369d – 370c; Aristox. fr. 13 Wehrli in Hippol.

, sv Herakles no. 3331; Hyacinth and Polybeus moving towards the heavens on the throne of Amyclae, Paus. 3.19.4.
(133) 64A8; 68B30.
(134) Frahm, “Zwischen Tradition und Neuerung”, 84–99, shows that priests of the Achaemenid Uruk established a preeminent role for the god “Heaven” (Anu). Artaxerxes' decree to Ezra (Ezra 7:12; authentic?) Calls the god of the Jews "God of Heaven".
(135) Theopompus 115F65 in Plu. Is Haer . 1.2.12 (see Kingsley, “The Greek Origin of the Sixth-Century Dating of Zoroaster”, 245–56); Eudem. Fr. 150 Wehrli; a passing allusion in Arist. Metaph . 1091b10. (136) Pl. Lg
. 896 d – e, 906a; see Plu. Procr . 1014d; Is . 370e – f; see Kerschensteiner, Platon und der Orient , who disputes this.
(137) Philostrate brings together Empedocles, among others, and the magoi , VA 1.2; Gorgias claims to have seen Empedocles practicing magic, 82A3 = Emp. A1 sec. 59 = DL 8.59; see also Kingsley, “Meetings with Magi.”

Oriental sources translated

General

ANET JB Pritchard, ed. Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament . 3rd ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969.

AA.VV .Oriental Sources I: The Birth of the World . Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1959.

TUAT O. Kaiser, ed. Text aus der Umwelt des Alten Testaments . Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1982–2001.

Mesopotamia

S. Dalley. Myths from Mesopotamia . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.

BR Foster. Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature . 2 flights. 2nd ed. Bethesda: CDL Press, 1996.

J. Bottéro and SN Kramer. When the Gods Made Man: Mesopotamian Mythology . Paris: Gallimard, 1989.

WG Lambert and AR Millard. Atra ‐ hasis: The Babylonian story of the Flood . Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969.

A. Heidel. The Gilgamesh Epic and Old Testament Parallels . 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949.

———. Enuma Elish: The Babylonian Genesis . 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951.

AR George. The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

BWL = WG Lambert. Babylonian Wisdom Literature . Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960.

DD Luckenbill. Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia . 2 flights. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1926.

O. Neugebauer. Astronomical Cuneiform Texts . 3 flights. Princeton: Lund Humphries, 1955.

O. Neugebauer and AJ Sachs. Mathematical Cuneiform Texts . New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1945.

E. Reiner and D. Pingree. Enuma Anu Enlil Tablet 63: The Venus Tablet of Ammisaduqa . Malibu, Calif .: Undena, 1975.

———. Enuma Anu Enlil, Tablets 50–51 . Malibu, Calif .: Undena, 1981.

H. Hunger and D. Pingree. MULAPIN: An Anstronomical Compendium in Cuneiform . Hom: F. Berger, 1989.

Egypt

M. Lichtheim. Ancient Egyptian Literature . 3 flights. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973–80.

———. Late Egyptian Wisdom Literature in the International Context . Freiburg, 1983.

Mr. Clagett. Ancient Egyptian Science. A Source Book I: Knowledge and Order . Philadelphia: American Philosopical Society, 1989.

Hittites

HA Hoffner and GM Beckman. Hittite Myths . Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990.

HG Gueterbock. Kumarbi: Mythen vom churritischen Kronos . Zürich: Europaverlag, 1946.

———. The Song of Ullikummi . New Haven: American Schools of Oriental Research, 1952.

H. Otten. Mythen vom Gotte Kumarbi: Neue Fragmente . Berlin: Akademie ‐ Verlag, 1950.

E. Neu. Das hurritische Epos von der Freilassung . Flight. I. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1996.

Canaan

A. Caquot, M. Sznycer and A. Herdner. Ugaritic texts I: Myths and legends . Paris: Ed. Du Cerf, 1974.

A. Caquot, J.-M. de Tarragon and J.-L. Cunchillos. Ugaritic texts II. Paris: Ed. Du Cerf, 1989.

MD Coogan. Stories from Ancient Canaan . Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1978.

C. de Moor. An Anthology of Religious Texts from Ugarit . Leiden: Brill, 1987.

KAI = H., Donner and W. Röllig. Kanaanäische und aramäische Inschriften . 3 flights. 2nd edn. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1966–69.

AI Baumgarten. The Phoenician History of Philo of Byblos: A Commentary . Leiden: Brill, 1981.

Ahiqar: FC Conybeare, J. Rendell Harris and A. Smith Lewis. The Story of Ahikar from the Aramaic, Syriac, Arabic, Armenian, Ethiopic, Old Turkish, Greek and Slavonic Versions . 2nd edn. Cambridge, 1913; TUAT III 2, 320–47.

Persian

J. Darmesteter and LH Mills. The Zend ‐ Avesta . 3 flights. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1883–95.

H. Humbach. The Gathas of Zarathushtra and the Other Old Avestan Texts . Flight. 1. Heidelberg: Winter, 1991.

Mr. Boyce. Textual Sources for the Study of Zoroastrianism . Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble Books, 1984.

A. Piras, ed. Hådoxt Nask. He connects Zoroastriano della sort dell'anima . Rome: Istituto Italiano per l'Africa e l'Oriente, 2000.

Inscription of Behistun of Darius

FH Weissbach. Die Keilinschriften der Achämeniden . Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1911, 8–74. (three versions).

RG Kent. Old Persian. Grammar, Texts, Lexicon . 2nd ed. New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1953, 116–34. (Persian version).

TUAT I 419–450. (all versions translated into German).

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Assmann, I. Ma'at, Gerechtigkeit und Unsterblichkeit Im Alten Ägypten . Munich, 1990.

Bernal, Martin. Black Athena: The Afro ‐ Asiatic Roots of Classical Civilization . London: Free Association Books, 1987.

Bidez, Joseph, and Franz Cumont. The Hellenized Magi: Zoroaster, Ostanes and Hystaspe according to Greek tradition . Paris: Belles Lettres, 1938.

Bidez, Joseph. Eos or Plato and the Orient . Brussels: Hayez, 1945.

Bietti Sestieri, AM La necropoli laziale di Osteria dell'Osa . Rome: Qasar, 1992.

Brisson, L. “The Figure of Chronos in Orphic Theogony and its Iranian Antecedents.” In Orpheus and Orphism in Greco-Roman Antiquity , edited by L. Brisson, nr. III. Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 1995.

Burkert, Walter. “Apokalyptik im frühen Griechentum: Impulse und Transformationen.” In Apocalypticism in the Mediterranean World and the Near East , 235–54. Tübingen: Mohr, 1983.

———. Babylon, Memphis, Persepolis: Eastern Contexts of Greek Culture . Cambridge, Mass .: Harvard University Press, 2004.

———. “Iranisches bei Anaximandros.” Rheinisches Museum 106 (1963): 97–134.

———. “Königs ‐ Ellen 'bei Alkaios.” Museum Helveticum 53 (1996): 69–72.

———. Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism . 1962. Translated by EL Minar, Jr. Cambridge, Mass .: Harvard University Press, 1972.

———. “Orientalische und griechische Weltmodelle von Assur bis Anaximandros.” Wiener Studien (1994): 179–86.

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