05-18-2012, 03:08 AM
Probably because these ("Logos" vs "Mythos") are the kind of meaningless pseudo-intellectual distinctions we've been ashamed to use since the time of Dodds and company. Its always fun to substitute them for the "logos" of Heraklitos and the "mythos" of Aristotle though, just to really expose the oversaturation of Victorian wankery in light of later philology. All in all pointless.
Also you'd have to be a madman to think the "Babylonians" less advanced. Greece was hardly particularly brilliant Scientifically, especially when put in context alongside India (you know...number system, decimals, quadratics...computational linguistics, crazy metal working) and Babylon (arguably the source of a lot of the Indian stuff, certainly re: quadratics and computation). This isn't the '60s. Also Greece itself is very much in the tradition of the fertile crescent anyway. However we're not talking about Greece now.
Let's see re ancient lit. You have to an odd kind of wilfully ignorant person in light of the work of Parry, Lord, Foley, Finnegan and a hoard of other scholars to assume literature requires a textual basis. Or that its a form of development, as if having written sources is somehow better. Its a matter of form and function.
To take Greece as example the vast majority of literature until the Hellenistic age wasn't written down. Not just because of limitations in technology, but because there was no real reason to. Writing in terms of early Greek poetry was a step back, coupled with the fall of the phorminx it was one of the major death knells of epic.
Yet we know from philological reasoning that Greek epic actually has a very long pedigree, several centuries before we could even begin to postulate the Iliad narrative arising. Lyric arguably even longer based on metrics. From Greece, we've lost considerably more than we have before we even have the Homeric epics. In India, where the surviving texts are so great we have no idea how many they are you can bet the problem is compounded.
Now, for Persia. Well you have two things to bear in mind: the Persians DID leave a lot of stuff behind in terms of administrative documents and inscriptions (i.e the Aramaic and Akkadian stuff), we even had a fun project here at Oxford recently working with some Satraps correspondence etc. In general though the Persians made the switch over to more advanced, perishable, items early (as evidenced by sealing stones etc) and that probably went up in flames/generally did not survive.
I personally doubt there was any literature there though. We do know they had access to the Gathas, however (in an Eastern Iranian language) which are monumentally awesome poems, they existed in an oral format. Moreover we know from analysis of later texts that they were reacting in some part to older remnants.
I'm tired, having been writing since 6 I doubt I make much sense so I'm off.
tldr: I agree with Sean, here a few reasons why.
EDIT: PS if you're all interested outside of the older French books like Bryant (which in themselves are often criticised) I know of at least two academics publishing on Persia 2013 though I can't guess the price, probably usual academic prices e.g I can't afford them unless I review and keep the book prices. Still, worth looking for. Oh and the project I mentioned here a while back was called the "Arshama Project" if you want to google.
Also you'd have to be a madman to think the "Babylonians" less advanced. Greece was hardly particularly brilliant Scientifically, especially when put in context alongside India (you know...number system, decimals, quadratics...computational linguistics, crazy metal working) and Babylon (arguably the source of a lot of the Indian stuff, certainly re: quadratics and computation). This isn't the '60s. Also Greece itself is very much in the tradition of the fertile crescent anyway. However we're not talking about Greece now.
Let's see re ancient lit. You have to an odd kind of wilfully ignorant person in light of the work of Parry, Lord, Foley, Finnegan and a hoard of other scholars to assume literature requires a textual basis. Or that its a form of development, as if having written sources is somehow better. Its a matter of form and function.
To take Greece as example the vast majority of literature until the Hellenistic age wasn't written down. Not just because of limitations in technology, but because there was no real reason to. Writing in terms of early Greek poetry was a step back, coupled with the fall of the phorminx it was one of the major death knells of epic.
Yet we know from philological reasoning that Greek epic actually has a very long pedigree, several centuries before we could even begin to postulate the Iliad narrative arising. Lyric arguably even longer based on metrics. From Greece, we've lost considerably more than we have before we even have the Homeric epics. In India, where the surviving texts are so great we have no idea how many they are you can bet the problem is compounded.
Now, for Persia. Well you have two things to bear in mind: the Persians DID leave a lot of stuff behind in terms of administrative documents and inscriptions (i.e the Aramaic and Akkadian stuff), we even had a fun project here at Oxford recently working with some Satraps correspondence etc. In general though the Persians made the switch over to more advanced, perishable, items early (as evidenced by sealing stones etc) and that probably went up in flames/generally did not survive.
I personally doubt there was any literature there though. We do know they had access to the Gathas, however (in an Eastern Iranian language) which are monumentally awesome poems, they existed in an oral format. Moreover we know from analysis of later texts that they were reacting in some part to older remnants.
I'm tired, having been writing since 6 I doubt I make much sense so I'm off.
tldr: I agree with Sean, here a few reasons why.
EDIT: PS if you're all interested outside of the older French books like Bryant (which in themselves are often criticised) I know of at least two academics publishing on Persia 2013 though I can't guess the price, probably usual academic prices e.g I can't afford them unless I review and keep the book prices. Still, worth looking for. Oh and the project I mentioned here a while back was called the "Arshama Project" if you want to google.
Jass
