“Homeric tradition has its own way of telling us that Minoan/Mycenaean civilisation was intertwined with the culture of the Semitic Phoenicians. Iliad 14: 321-322 makes Phoenix (named after the ancestor of the Phoenicians) the maternal grandfather of Minos. …Archaeology bears out early cultural connections between the two.”

—  Cyrus H. Gordon

Source: The Common Background of Greek and Hebrew Civilizations (1965 [1962]), Ch.VII Further Observations on Homer

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Homeric tradition has its own way of telling us that Minoan/Mycenaean civilisation was intertwined with the culture of …" by Cyrus H. Gordon?
Cyrus H. Gordon photo
Cyrus H. Gordon73
American linguist 1908–2001

Related quotes

“The Phoenicians were the Canaanites. Thus Phoenicia… was invaded by the Israelites, who eventually pushed the Phoenicians to the coastal fringe. Subsequently, the Israelites borrowed various cultural elements from the Phoenicians, including the first alphabet. Some groups of Israelites even adopted the god Ba'al and, presumably, the practice of child sacrifice.”

Jeffrey H. Schwartz (1948) American anthropologist

Source: What the Bones Tell Us (1997), Ch. 2

David Fleming photo

“Every civilisation has had its irrational but reassuring myth. Previous civilisations have used their culture to sing about it and tell stories about it. Ours has used its mathematics to prove it.”

David Fleming (1940–2010) British activist

Surviving the Future, (2016), p. 180, Epilogue http://www.flemingpolicycentre.org.uk/lean-logic-surviving-the-future/

“As a Macedonian [Philip] was looked down upon by the more refined Athenians, but they shared the same Hellenistic culture. How deep this went is evident in aesthetically the least spectacular, but politically the most explosive, of the finds in Vergina. In the Great Tumulus above Philip's tombs, which was raised by the invading Galatians in 274 BC, the archaeologists found fragments of no fewer than seventy-five funeral monuments, or stelai. The names on these were entirely Greek, save two which appeared to be Hellenised versions of Thracian and Phoenician names. The implication is that Philip's Macedonia was thoroughly Hellenised, an outpost of classical Greek culture.”

Robert Fox

The Inner Sea: The Mediterranean and its People, (Sinclair-Stevenson, London, 1991) pp. 229-230

“Indian art has been the product of Indian culture as the Greek art has been the product of Greek culture or the Roman art has been the product of Roman culture. Indian culture, however, has been the product of two streams of thoughts and practices, one, the Folk, belonging to the oral traditions operating at the folk level, in the villages, and, the other, classical, belonging to the sophisticated literary traditions, the former is sometimes called 'Lower Tradition' and the latter 'Higher Tradition.”

Swaraj Prakash Gupta (1931–2007) Indian archaeologist and art historian

Elements of Indian Art (2002)

Marshall McLuhan photo

“The comic strip: upholder of Homeric culture.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1960s, Counterblast (1969), p.19

Tullio De Mauro photo

“It is not possible to fully understand modern world culture without appreciating its connection and its continuity with the heritage of classical culture.”

Tullio De Mauro (1932–2017) Italian linguist

Claudio Gentili, “Time out” for Classical Studies? The Future of Italian Liceo Classico in the 4.0 world https://www.researchgate.net/deref/http%3A%2F%2Fdx.doi.org%2F10.15581%2F004.33.127-143, in Estudios Sobre Educacion, 33:127-143, October 2017.

B. W. Powe photo

“Followers of another political party tell us that we will strengthen ourselves by ignoring our history, our traditions, our mythologies, our culture and vision, and by following the American way.”

B. W. Powe (1955) Canadian writer

Forms, Eulogies, Images and Symbols, p. 157
Mystic Trudeau: The Fire and the Rose (2007)

Robert M. Pirsig photo

“A culture-bearing book, like a mule, bears the culture on its back. No one should sit down to write one deliberately. Culture-bearing books occur almost accidentally, like a sudden change in the stock market.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Afterword (1984)
Context: A culture-bearing book, like a mule, bears the culture on its back. No one should sit down to write one deliberately. Culture-bearing books occur almost accidentally, like a sudden change in the stock market. There are books of high quality that are an part of the culture, but that is not the same. They are a part of it. They aren't carrying it anywhere. They may talk about insanity sympathetically, for example, because that's the standard cultural attitude. But they don't carry any suggestion that insanity might be something other than sickness or degeneracy.

Camille Paglia photo

“Western culture from the start has swerved from femaleness. The last western society to worship female powers was Minoan Crete. And significantly, that fell and did not rise again.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 8

Julian (emperor) photo

“Now for a few words about Aphrodite, whom the Phoenician theologians agree in making co-operate in the work of creation with the last-mentioned goddess — and I believe they are right.”

Julian (emperor) (331–363) Roman Emperor, philosopher and writer

Upon the Sovereign Sun (362)
Context: Unto men Athene gives good things — namely, wisdom, understanding, and the creative arts; and she dwells in their citadels, I suppose, as being the founder of civil government through the communication of her own wisdom.
Now for a few words about Aphrodite, whom the Phoenician theologians agree in making co-operate in the work of creation with the last-mentioned goddess — and I believe they are right. She, then, is the mingling together of the celestial deities, and of the harmony of the same, for the purposes of love and unification. For she being near to the Sun, and running her course together with him, and approaching close to him, she fills the heavens with a good temperament, she imparts to the earth the generative power, whilst she herself provides for the perpetuity of generation of animals, of which generation the Sovereign Sun contains the final efficient cause. She, however, is joint cause with him, enthralling our souls by the aid of pleasure, whilst she sheds down from the aether upon the earth her rays so delightful and pure, more lustrous than gold itself.

Related topics