Season 1: Ancient Poetry of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Archaic Greece

Mesopotamia’s Culture and Ancient Poetry

An illustration from Austen Henry Layard‘s The Monuments of Nineveh (1853). Bronze Age urban centers like Ur, Babylon, Ashur, and Nineveh produced literally tons of cuneiform tablets covered in ancient poetry and other forms of writing. Over the course of the nineteenth century, scholars started deciphering that writing, a project that continues to this day.

Ancient literature, and more specifically ancient poetry, began as a set of oral traditions. Long before the Bronze Age, Neolithic bards likely recited ancient poetry to the accompaniment of musical instruments – instruments like drums, flutes, and simple lyres. The earliest literature extant in cuneiform and hieroglyphs exhibits complex schemes of meter, refrains, and other literary devices. This complexity suggests that even before the Bronze Age, Neolithic humanity had innovated widely in the technical and narrative aspects of literature still in use today.

Poetry, then, is probably as old as the species. But during the Bronze Age, scribes started carving poetry into rock, and pressing it into moist clay. The Epic of Gilgamesh, (Episode 3), is fairly well known. So, too, due to their similarities with Genesis, are the Enuma Elish and Atrahasis (Episode 2). However, other milestones of ancient poetry remain obscure, like the Sumerian epic The Descent of Ishtar, the Cylinders of Gudea narrative, Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, and the poetry of Enheduanna of Ur (c. 2200 BCE). Fortunately, scholars are increasingly translating Akkadian and Sumerian literature into excellent English editions. Thorkild Jacobsen’s The Harps that Once contains nearly 500 pages of just Sumerian poetry alone. We can hope that more and more ancient poetry of Mesopotamia will appear in modern translations in the coming years. For an introduction to the subject, begin with Episode 1: The Tower of Babel.

Ancient Egyptian Literature

Ancient Egypt had a 3,000-year-long history. Its climate was, and continues to be uniquely suited to the preservation of texts. Naturally, archaeologists have discovered a lot of ancient poetry there. The painting is Stephan Bakalowicz‘s Praying to Khons (1905).

Most of us know about ancient Egypt’s material remnants. We know about its pyramids. And we know about its grave goods. What we don’t know as much about is its texts. Archaeologists have unearthed texts all over Egypt. The most famous of them is the Book of the Dead (Episode 4). The 3,500-year-old Book of the Dead is far older than the Old Testament. It is a dense, complex book, exhibiting ideas that would later be ubiquitous in all religions – divine judgment, a multipart afterlife, and a natural cosmic order.

In addition to religious texts and inscriptions, ancient Egyptian writers also set down stories about the world and how to live in it. Editor William Kelly Simpson’s The Literature of Ancient Egypt collects much of the ancient poetry and fiction of Egypt. Episode 5 of Literature and History retells and analyzes two of ancient Egypt’s most complete stories, “The Eloquent Peasant,” and “The Shipwrecked Sailor.” Episode 6 explores ancient Egypt’s proverbs and wisdom literature. These programs offer a general introduction to both the sacred and secular literature of ancient Egypt.

Ancient Poetry in Greek

The poets Hesiod and Homer wrote the most influential ancient poetry in Greek. Unfortunately, we know little about them for certain today. The painting is a detail from William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s Homer and His Guide (1874).

Ancient Greek literature begins with Hesiod and Homer. Hesiod’s Works and Days (c. 700 BCE) blends myths and folkways. The Theogony, (also by Hesiod), records how the world was created, the wars between the first generations of gods, and how Zeus came to be in charge. The podcast covers these texts in Episode 7 and Episode 8, respectively. While Hesiod was important, however, Homer was arguably the most influential poet in Greco-Roman literature. Antiquity thought of Homer as a single person. Early scholars imagined him as a blind genius from the east. Today, scholarship has taken a different path. We now understand the Iliad and Odyssey as long, collaborative works that assumed their present form around 700 BCE. However the Homeric epics came about, they are ancient Greece’s most important poems. The Iliad tells the story of the Trojan War. At its climax, the Greek champion Achilles defeats the Trojan champion Hector. Possibly the most famous war story on Earth, the Iliad bristles with action sequences, duels, and soaring, beautiful similes. The Odyssey is rather different. Its first half is an adventure story. Odysseus, a veteran of the Trojan War, voyages homeward, beset by perils and temptations. When he gets there, the adventurer discovers that he has one more battle to fight.

Literature and History offers three episodes each on the Iliad and Odyssey. They are some of our best-loved programs. Hear the story of the Iliad in Episode 9, Episode 10, and Episode 11. Learn the story of the Odyssey in Episode 12, Episode 13, and Episode 14. All six programs contain introductions and summaries of the texts. Additionally, they offer information about historical context and contemporary scholarly theories. Season 1 concludes with a bonus series called Before Yahweh. The sequence explores more Bronze and Iron Age religions and literature that may have influenced the Old Testament. Appropriately, up next is Season 2: The Old Testament, an introduction to Earth’s most influential book, and the taproot of the Abrahamic religions.