This book provides a groundbreaking reassessment of the prehistory of Homeric epic.
Key drivers for Near Eastern influence on the developing Homeric tradition were the shared practices of supralocal festivals and venerating divinized ancestors, and a shared interest in creating narratives about a legendary past u.
It argues that in the Early Iron Age bilingual poets transmitted to the Greeks a set of narrative traditions closely related to the one found at Bronze-Age Hattusa, the Hittite capital.
This book provides a groundbreaking reassessment of the prehistory of Homeric epic