tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6588247216777605704.post6218168597773876704..comments2023-04-05T08:04:07.514-04:00Comments on Bryn Mawr Classical Review: 2016.08.19Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6588247216777605704.post-49778548808373615832016-08-18T20:16:57.334-04:002016-08-18T20:16:57.334-04:00I thank Prof. Goldwyn for his prompt and mostly po...I thank Prof. Goldwyn for his prompt and mostly positive review of our volume. I write to correct preemptively one claim I fear he could be seen as attributing to us, about the existence of liturgical lamentation among the Hittites. As stated on p. 50 in a discussion of city laments, "lamentation as a recorded genre is strikingly absent from the Hittite corpus," beyond mentions of laments at Hittite royal funerals. In Chapter 4, Dutsch and I suggest the possibility of a tradition of liturgical lament for disappeared young men in west Anatolia, comparing it to the "Hittite mugawar invocations for disappeared gods" (p. 81). Mugawars are not laments, and probably were rooted in pre-Hittite Anatolian practices. Liturgical laments for disappeared beings among Iron-Age Mariandynians could have developed out of cognate local Bronze Age Anatolian practices on the western periphery of the Hittite kingdom (not the same as "Hittite" practices). Because of lack of evidence we explicitly refrain from attempting to explain how the Mesopotamian city lament themes we compare to themes in Aeschylus' Persians ended up in the putative liturgical laments performed in Iron Age western Anatolia (see pp. 84-5). Throughout this chapter we compare the phraseology of passages from Aeschylus' tragedy, not with Hittite, but with Sumerian city laments, the same laments discussed by Jacobs in Chapter 2. (N.B., our point is that the laments Aeschylus puts in the mouth of his Persian characters are not Persian, but west Anatolian, see pp. 89-90. On p. 85 we suggest why: "Aeschylus references ... the Anatolian-influenced Milesian lament of Phrynichus' Capture of Miletus." I appreciate that not all readers will be persuaded by our argument here.) <br /><br />I regret any confusion the compressed discussions in these chapters may have caused. Further clarifying information can be found by following the trail of citations in the footnotes. Mary R. Bachvarovanoreply@blogger.com