Proto-Homers

Gordon summarizes epics that previewed the Homeric epics in quite direct ways. The “Ugaritic Legend of Kret is of Cretan derivation as the name of the hero indicates. Like the Iliad, the story concerns a war waged so that a king might regain his rightful wife who is being withheld from him, in a distant city. This theme is found nowhere else among known texts in any language prior to our East Mediterranean tablets of the Amarna Age. It is alien to the older extant literature of Egypt and Mesopotamia.”

For the Odyssey , he points to the Egyptian story of Wenamon, who “was sent on a mission to Byblos. Like Odysseus, he traveled by ship on the East Mediterranean. En route, he had misadventures and escapades at Dor, south of Haifa. After fulfilling his mission . . . , he wants to go home go Egypt. Pursued by enemies, he is forced to sail to Cyprus, where he seeks protection from the Island Queen.” Though the text breaks there, we are left with ‘the clear inference that he at last got home again.”

Thus, the detailed parallels between Homer and earlier literature are not accidental but genetic, since “both as whole entities, and, at the same time, in innumerable details, there is demonstrable agreement.” On the other hand, “No comparable array of parallels can be made between Homeric Epic and the pre-Amarna literatures of Egypt and Mesopotamia.”