From the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh to the Babylonian creation story Enuma Elish and the Egyptian tale of Osiris, creation myths, epic narratives, and hymns provide keen insight into systems of meaning used by ancient peoples to understand the cosmic order, morality, and time. How did narrative and ritual enable people to make sense of natural disasters, military conquest, and other encounters with uncertainty, violence, and mortality? And to what extent were their ideas about kingship, law, gender, ritual, and the afterlife instantiated in lived practices, institutions, and landscapes of the ancient world?
This course will serve as an introduction to myths, cosmologies, and belief systems of ancient Western Asia. We will examine creation narratives and ritual traditions that emerged from the region using a comparative approach to cult, symbolism, and the social order. Alongside primary sources including epic narratives, hymns, incantations, and visual material, we will critically engage with modern theoretical perspectives that approach myth as a cultural language shaped by history, politics, and the environment. Along the way, we will explore theories of cosmology and symbolic systems drawn from the disciplines of anthropology, history, and philosophy, developing analytic tools to understand how belief structures operate. What can ancient texts teach us about the role of myth and narrative in expressing and consolidating social, cultural, and political ties? And what forms of knowledge, belief, and aesthetic pleasure do such texts produce and compel, both in their own time and in ours? Readings will include works by Mircea Eliade, Talal Asad, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Jan Assmann, Henri Frankfort, Bronislaw Malinowski, Emily Teeter, and Mary Bachvarova.
