From Mesopotamia to Etropole: Transformations of the about the Giant Cosmic Myth Cover Image
  • Price 4.90 €

От Месопотамия до Етрополе. Трансформации на мита за гигантската космическа птица
From Mesopotamia to Etropole: Transformations of the about the Giant Cosmic Myth

Author(s): Ana Stoykova
Subject(s): History, Language and Literature Studies, Literary Texts, Cultural history, Studies of Literature, Middle Ages, Theology and Religion
Published by: Институт за литература - БАН

Summary/Abstract: The paper discusses the archaic mythological motif of giant cosmic birds that invoke the sun to rise, escort it on its heavenly way, or protect the earth from solar radiation. Tracing variants of this motif in the literary tradition (Slavonic Book of Enoch, Apocalypse of Baruch, Physiologus, etc.) points to the conclusion that it occurs in texts that originated in the form familiar to us in Greek, during the Hellenistic and Roman periods, most probably in Alexandria. It appears that sun-birds absorbed ancient ideas that passed from Sumer and Akkad through Babylon into the Hebrew apocalyptic tradition and were later combined with Greco-Roman elements. The names for the bird in the texts under anaylsis – phoenix, gryphon, halkydra – are the result of interpratatio graeca; they appear in order to “translate” the image of the cosmic bird from one culture into another. In the end, the motif, in a Christianized form, penetrated into the Byzantine tradition and, from there, into Old Slavic writing, enjoying a sustained interest through the Late Middle Ages. This case of millennial continuity points to the transplantation of an ancient mythological motif from Mesopotamia to various monotheistic cultures and its eventual adaptation into the Christian Byzantino-Slavic cultural sphere

  • Issue Year: 2014
  • Issue No: 49-50
  • Page Range: 126-168
  • Page Count: 43
  • Language: Bulgarian, Old Slavonic