Bridging East and West: Wisdom Literature in Mesopotamian and Greek Traditions

The project Bridging East and West: Wisdom Literature in Cuneiform and Greek Traditions (BRISDOM) explores similarities and differences in wisdom in Mesopotamian and Greek traditions. BRISDOM represents the first ever attempt to provide a comprehensive study of wisdom in Mesopotamia and Greece. Wisdom reflects on some of the most fundamental questions of mankind, such as the meaning of life, mortality, and relations with the divine. Wisdom literature had an enormous circulation in both Mesopotamia and Greece and includes very different text types such as sayings, proverbs, fables, books of instructions, diatribes and dialogues. The project aims at understanding the conceptualization of wisdom in Mesopotamian and Greek traditions through a definition of the corpus of “wisdom texts” as well as highlighting similarities and differences of wisdom literary motifs between Mesopotamia and Greece.

Comparative studies have been undertaken from the nineteenth century in the early days of the discovery of Mesopotamian civilizations and continued throughout the twentieth century. The world renown classicist Martin West summarized the relation between Mesopotamia and Greece in a famous statement “Greece is part of Asia; Greek literature is a Near Eastern literature.” Despite these efforts, comparative studies have been substantially limited to a collection of parallels. Moreover, classics have been largely dominated by a Eurocentric outlook that, to quote another major classicist, Walter Burkert, “used to see the Greeks … as isolated, classical.” BRISDOM aims to overcome these restraints by studying the socio-cultural context of wisdom in Mesopotamia and Greece rather than chasing for parallels.

In a widespread opinion the Middle East represents a radically antithetic culture from the Western/European civilization. This opinion is not the product of the dramatic events of the last twenty to thirty years that have devastated the Middle East and the consequent flow of migrants knocking on the European doors. This opinion is deep-rooted in the nineteenth century Romanticism and its idea of innate characteristics (Geist) of every culture and the idealization of ancient Greece. The Orient was seen as “the great other”. These concepts combined with the racial political ideologies that developed in the late nineteenth and early twenty centuries endure in the society and in political views still today. The commonly perceived incompatibility between the East and the West results in the paradigmatic and often misused concept of ‘clash of civilizations.’ However, academic studies on the links between Greece and the Near East have ultimately revealed the undoubted oriental influence on the formation of the European civilization. By studying wisdom and wisdom literature BRISDOM may lead to understand how Mesopotamia and Greece were interrelated and whether they were parts of a globalized, multi-cultural world unhindered by cultural or linguistic boundaries. This project reveals its potential far beyond the pertinent field because it may provide the basis for a reconsideration of the roots of Western civilization and its ways of thinking. Thus, the intercultural contacts highlighted by the comparative study of wisdom in Mesopotamia and Greece may provide new insight on the cultural setting of those ancient societies that eventually survives in present day Europe through the Graeco-Roman culture.

My research first addressed the conceptualization of wisdom in Mesopotamia and Greece. It turned out that wisdom was conceptualized in very similar ways in Mesopotamia and Greece. In both areas and literatures, wisdom was a complex of technical and intellectual skills encompassing different aspects of human life. Then I concentrated on how wisdom/knowledge was received and approached, and I found out that analogical reasoning operated very similarly in Mesopotamia and Greece. Although epistemic objects were different, the way of thinking and the approach to knowledge was astonishingly similar in Mesopotamian scholarship and in pre-Socratic philosophy.

During the outgoing phase at UC Berkeley I attended the graduated courses organized at NES department, in particular those in Sumerian held by Professor Veldhuis. Under his guidance I also acquired new skills in DH by learning how to prepare digital editions of cuneiform texts in the ORACC platform and I created my own ORACC project titled SAWL, "Sumerian and Akkadian Wisdom Literature". I also participated in the Akkadian Reading Group that gathers scholars and students to read to read selected Akkadian texts. In fall semester 2020 I taught a course for the graduate program of NES Department: we read Sumerian and Akkadian wisdom texts drawing comparison with other literatures notably Greek and Biblical literature. The text read in class have been incorporated in the SAWL project.

During the incoming phase I first concentrated on the development of wisdom literature in Mesopotamian traditions. I argued that some Vanity Theme compositions that were usually regarded as expressing a critical view of existing and traditional values propound a traditional outlook of religious piety and devotion. Then I focused on some parallel motifs in Mesopotamian and Greek literatures. Unlike previous scholarship that pointed to the closeness of the Homeric poems to the Standard Babylonian version of Gilgameš (i.e. first millennium version), the study of the heroic ethics has revealed that the Iliad finds similarities with the Old Babylonian version of the Gilgameš epic. This research unearthed a common cultural background where transmission of motifs might have occurred. The study of specific motifs has shown a structural analogy between two important scenes in the Gilgameš’ epic and the Iliad that can only derive from a direct literary dependence. Four articles (2 co-authored) have been prepared and will be soon sumbitted to peer reviewed journals. Another article is being prepared.

At UNITO I attended Professor de Martino’s classes of Hittitology where I learned Hittite grammar. This training strengthened my competences as an ancient Near Eastern scholar. During the second semester of 2020-2021 academic year, I taught a course in the UNITO Master Program. My course focused on Mesopotamian religion and wisdom traditions.

Although the study of pre-Socratic philosophy was not initially envisioned, the research produced exceptional results precisely from the comparison between Babylonian hermeneutics and the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus. Although there is no claim for a transmission between Mesopotamia and Greece, which can be hardly proved, it turned out that Babylonians and Heraclitus had different epistemic objects but a similar epistemological approach. The study of Aeschylus and Plato confirmed that Heraclitus was not isolated in the history of Greek thought.

A new reading of the Vanity Theme compositions revealed that texts that were thought of delivering a critical message towards existing values, fully abide to the traditional religion. The widespread view that the Homeric poems were mostly connected to the first millennium recension of the Gilgameš Epic has been refined in light of striking similirarities with the Old Babylonian sources.

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - BRISDOM (Bridging East and West: Wisdom Literature in Mesopotamian and Greek Traditions)

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