engleski

Following in the Footsteps of the Sun: Gilgameš, Odysseus and Solar Movement

During the heyday of the solar-myth paradigm it was a norm to interpret every single mythic character and his or her actions in terms of either the annual or diurnal solar movement. With the paradigm’s inevitable demise, the body of evidence that was central to its approach was relegated to a more peripheral position by the adherents of succeeding paradigms that successively dominated the field. This has left a significant number of references to solar phenomena in ancient text on the margins of scholarly interest, including those that appear in the central texts of both Mesopotamian and Greek traditions. This paper focuses on a re- evaluation of the presence of solar resonances in a section of the Epic of Gilgameš that contains clear and explicit references to the sun and its course. At the same time, following in the footsteps of many earlier scholars, it offers a parallel analysis of a section of Odysseus’ itinerary of a similar character. This re-evaluation has shown that the respective sections of the heroes’ itineraries are partly structured on an analogy with solar movement, but that the dominant use of solar references in these texts is more haphazard and reflects more circumscribed intentions of the texts’ authors.

Gilgameš – Odysseus – solar movement – myth

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