> I know, if we put things into compartments this is what we ought not to do.
> But when one reads the Odyssey about the killing of the cattle of the Sun
> God, and the punishment to Odysseus' men in consequence, one is very close
> to the Golden Calf story. Moses' brazen serpent on the pole heals the
> Israelites afflicted with snake bite in the desert. There is almost a
> generic Mediterranean culture, yoking Africa, Asia, Europe. Perhaps it is
> wrong of me to see things this way, but my dissertation director, Phillip
> Damon, spent years working on the Semitic elements in Homer, and there are
> plenty. and then there are wonderful things in early Christian art, where
> Odysseus tied to the ship mast is a type of Christ on the Cross, etc.
Julia,
Homer is supposed to have lived about 800 BC, and the OT is supposed to have
been written down about 1800 BC, and nowhere near Greece. Lots of
intermediary links to fill in, though maybe one can. I'd like to read
Damon's books, if you can recommend any one in particular.
The whole issue of diffusionist theory is fascinating. If the Egyptians built
pyramids, and the Incas built pyramids at a later date, does this imply some
contact between the cultures? Maybe. But maybe important to notice that the
Egyptian pyramids were tombs, and the Inca pyramids were temples. So they
may not be as alike as they seem.
A dot is another story. People makes dots all over the world. Here, the
shape is so simple it's easier to assume many people discover it
independently.
I believe the swastika is a sort of axial figure in diffusionist arguments,
and occurs in art from many different places. Is this shape so simple that
many peoples could discover it independently? Or is it so complicated that
one needs to assume nobody would think of drawing a swastika unless they saw
somebody else do it?
People of course can discover very complicated things independently. Newton
and Leibnitz both discovered the calculus. Darwin and Wallace came up with
essentially identical theories of evolution.
On snakes, one might assume people would use them as images in any part of
the world where there are snakes. Intertwined (copulating?) snakes might or
might not be another matter. Very old Sumerian carving of intertwined
snakes. And there is an odd passage in Ovid's Metamorphoses that TS Eliot
quotes in the notes to The Waste Land. Tiresias is turned into a woman, then
strikes two intertwined snakes and becomes a man again. Is this a
Mesopotamian theme turning up in Ovid?
Anyone know how the caduceus became a symbol of the medical arts?
pat sloane
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