THESPIS RITUAL, MYTH, AND DRAMA IN THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST THEODOR H. GASTER Foreword by Gilbert Murray The Norton Library W-W-NORTON & COMPANY-ING NEW YorkCONTENTS Fonswonp, by Gilbert Murray, O.M, seNorsis PART ONE: THE SEASONAL PATTERN cuarren 1: Ritual and Myth ‘cuAPTER 1: Ingredients of the Seasonal Pattern cusprer ut: The Seasonal Pattern in Ancient Near Eastern Ritual cuapren iv: The Seasonal Pattem in Ancient Near Eastern Myth PART TWO: SEASONAL MYTHS OF THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST FOREWORD INDEX OF TEXTS A. THF COMPREHENSIVE TYPE, ‘The Canaanite Poem of Baal B. Tu compar TYPE 1, The Hittite Myth of The Snaring of the Dragon 2. A Hittite Ritual Combat ©. Tie DISAPPEARING Gop TYPE 1. A Hittite Yuletide Myth: The Yuzgat Tablet 2, The Hittite Myth of Telipima 12 Ww 23, 26 6L 7 108 0 4 245, 267 270 2958 contents .. The Canaanite Myth of Aghat, or The Story of the Divine Bow 1D. THE CORONATION TYPE ‘The Egyptian Ramesseum Drama The Egyptian Memphite Drama E, THE BURLESQUE TYPE ‘The Canaanite Poem of the Gracious Gods excunsvs; An English Mummers’ Play PART THREE: LITERARY SURVIVALS OF THE SEASONAL PATTERN Survivals in Biblical and Classical Poetry EXCURSUS: 1. Chorus from the Bacchae of Euripides 2. Pacan to Dionysus, by Philodamus of Scarphe INDEX OF SUBJECTS AND AUTHORS 816 sit 899 406 436 442, 467 469 473 490 495 498 FOREWORD Itis hardly an exaggeration to say that when we look back to the beginnings of European literature we find everywhere drama, and slways drama derived from a religious ritual designed to ensure the rebirth of the dead world. Under ancient conditions, it was anxious work for every human group, when the harvest was over, to face the winter, when all life seemed gone, followed by the spring when, as Aleman puts it, “it blooms but there is not enough to eat.” Men could live only in the hope that a living and fruitful world would eventually be reborn. If there was no rebirth, there was famine. We scarcely realize today how close primi- tive communities stood to that recurring danger. Greek tradition explicitly testifes to a close connection of drama with Dionysus, and tho meaning of this becomes clear as soon as we recognize in Dionysus the spirit of the Renou- veat. In an Excursus to the lato Jano Harrison's Themis (Cambridge, 1912), I pointed out the recurrence in several Greek tragedies of a regular Dionysiae ritual, closely similar, 1s Herodotus says (Ii, 42), to that of the Egyptian Osiris, Tt comprises a coNFLict between tho god and his enemy; a DEATH or DIsAsTER, Which often takes the form of a Sparagmos or Tearing-in-Picocs; a NARRATIVE by a MESSENGER; a LAMLUN- ramion, and finaly an ANAGNORISIS OF DISCOVERY, and a THE~ ortany bringing comfort. This closely resembles the ritual of Osiris as a wheat god; his fight with his enemy Set; the sparagmos of the wheat sheaf; the lamentation; the discovery of the new shoots of wheat growing, and the birth of a new god. Moreover, similar rites obtained elsewhere in connection with Linos (the flax), Attis (the pine), Dionysus (the vine or fruit tree), Tammuz and other vegetation gods. But this was by no means the only form of the rebirth ritual. Most often, perhaps, it was not the same god who was re- bor, but & Son of the god, who took his throne and his pplace. There is, for example, the sequence, in Hesiod, of Ouranos, Krotos, and Zeus, to be followed in turn by the un-10 FoREWwoRD Known Son of Zeus, greater than his father. There is likewise Dionysus, the "New Zeus,” whom, according to the Orphie formula, “his father seats upon the royal throne, arms with the sceptre, and makes king of the cosmic gods” (Lobeck, C. A, Aglaophamus [Kénigsberg, 1829], 552). Indoed, the very name Dionysus is believed to mean “Zeus-young” or “Zeus-son” (cf. Cook, A. B., Zeus ii [Cambridge, 1925], 271) Yet another form of the pattem may be recognized in the plot of several ancient Greek tragedies: a god loves a mortal Woman; their offspring,’a son or a pair of twins, is discovered and cast out to die, while the mother is imprisoned and other- wise punished —a true mater dolorosa — until eventually the son is rediscovered, found to be of divine birth, and established as king. The symbolism is clear: the sun- or sky-god descends to fructily the frozen earth in rain and lightning; there is a long period of waiting; then the Young God is discovered in the first bloom of spring. This form was reproduced in almost sardonic fashion in the Ion of Euripides, Dut it lived on, reduced from divine to human terms, sa the New Comedy. Moreover, there can be little doubt that its central idea, that of the Son of God redeeming a dead or dying world and introducing a new kingdom free from the stains of the past, has survived even. to the present day and has exercised a lasting influence on the formulae of Christian wor ship in modem Greece. One recalls the anxious old woman whom J. C. Lawson met during Holy Week in Euboea. “Of course T am anxious,” said she, “for if Christ does not rise tomorrow, we shall have no corn this year” (Modem Greck Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion (Cambridge, 1910], 573). For Greck tragedy, then, the case is clear; and that som thing very similar holds also for the other great branch of Hellenic drama has been shown by the late Francis Cornford in his work, The Origins of Attic Comedy (Cambridge, 1914). Moreover, Comford has pointed out that the same method may be applied even to the poems of Hesiod and that, if these be regarded as relies of ritual drama, many of the in- congruities which now appear in them at once become intelligible. Nor is it only in ancient Greek literature that the influence of the Seasonal Pattern may be detected. In her fine study, FoREWwoRD u The Elder Edda and Ancient Scandinavian Drama (Cam- bridge, 1920), Bertha S. Phillpotts has demonstrated how ‘much of earliest and greatest Norse poetry, which has come down to us in the form of narrative or song, must in its original form have been ritual drama dealing with the sea- sonal death and rebirth of the fruitful world, In the present volume, Dr. Gaster has tumed his vast learning to demonstrating, in fields far beyond my reach, the existence of a similar pattern, based on the same seasonal Grama, in the extant remains of Canaanite, Hittite, Egyptian, and Hebrew literature, He has shown that here too the same variety of forms obtains, and he has traced the essential structure backwards to purely functional procedures and forwards to residual survivals in hymns, psalms, and other forms of liturgical composition. The result is to my mind very impressive. ‘The instinctive fundamental desire of the human group to ensure that it shall survive and not die is a great thing in itsolf, and passes in almost all this primeval literature into something more: a consciousness that man, though he desper- ately needs bread, does not live by bread alone, but longs for a new life, a new age, with young gods, not stained by the deaths and impurities of the past. CHLERT MURRAYAUTHOR'S PREFACE Tt has long been suggested by students of such diverse compositions as the Indic Rig Veda, Greek tragedy and comedy, the Scandinavian Elder Edda, ancient Chinese folk songs, the Grail romances, and the English mummers’ play that there is an intimate connection between certain forms of literature and certain traditional patterns of ritual. The purpose of this book is to explore that theory in yet another ‘area, Its thesis is, in a nutshell, that some of the mythological texts which have come down to us from the ancient Near East likewise reflect, in their themes and structures and in the sequence of their component episodes, a pattern and sequence of ritual acts which, from time immemorial, have characterized major seasonal ‘festivals in most parts of the ‘world. To domonstrate this thesis, I frst discuss (in Part One) the relation between myth and ritual per se, and offer a pio- ture of the standard seasonal program, based on ancient and modem evidence. Then (in Part Two) I present and an- alyze in detail a series of Canaanite, Hittite, and Egyptian mythological texts in which, I claim, the same pattern may be detected in literary form. Finally (in Part Three), 1 seek to show how the pattern survived, in greatly attenuated and less dramatic form, in the structure ot certain Biblical psalms and of other liturgical compositions, ‘To prevent fundamental misunderstanding, it should be observed at the outset that what is here under discussion is not the origin of each particular composition presented, but that of the genre as a whole, It is not argued that tho texts themselves were actually the ibretti of liturgical dramas or the spoken accompaniments of ritual acts (though some of them, such as the Hittite Snaring of the Dragon and the Canaanite Poem of the Gracious Gods, seem certainly to have bbeen so), but only that they are mythic and literary articula- tions of the same basic Seasonal Patter. In other words, Tam trying to discover what first conditioned the peculiar form and content of that genre, but I fully realize that most AUTHOR'S PREFACE 13 of the texts aro a long way removed from that primitive origin; indeed, it is an essential part of my thesis that the genre underwent normal artistic evolution (or degeneration) and ended up, as often as not, as a mere literary convention. Throughout the presentation, considerable use is made of comparative religion and folklore. It is hoped that — quite par: from the correctness or incorrectness of the basic thesis =the material adduced from these sources will be found useful in. the interpretation of the texts. Here, however, it may be pointed out and emphasized that in comparing the customs of diverse cultures, I do not assume any direct relationship between them. The comparison is on the psycho- logical, not the historical level. I am endeavoring only to show that certain rudimentary reactions to the chythms of nature and the succession of the seasons characterize virtually all men everywhere and find expression in such similar tetms that what appears in any one particular culture may often be elucidated by alignment with parallel phenomena else- where. In this respect, the’ historical unrelatedness of the soveral cultures, and the fact that each of them also possesses its own peculiar traits and distinctive features, enhances, rather than weakens, the argument. The general soundness of this method of comparison may, in fact, be pertinently illustrated from the analogy of language. It is possible to assemble literally hundreds of parallels between the Aigura- tive and metaphorical use of words in the Semitic languages fon the one hand and the Indo-European on the other. This shows clearly that both groups share a common stock of natural images. Yet there is no philological relationship be- toween them, If, for instance, one were to compare the use in both of the word for “head” in the sense of “source of @ river,” the comparison would be psychologically valid and legitimate, regardless of the fact that, philologically, Hebrew r0'sh has nothing whatever to do with Greek kephalé or Latin caput! It should be observed also in this connection that the extensive use of comparative religion and folklore is not for a moment intended as a substitute for, but rather as a comple- ‘ment to, that sound philological exogesis from which all interpretations of ancient texts must necessarily proceed. I would repudiate unequivocally any suggestion that it im- plies a contempt for, or derogation of, the patient and in- valusble labors of philologists. At the ‘same time, however,