Category موضوعي
Texts and their transmission
Inscriptions, manuscripts, editions, translations and the transmission of texts.
Advanced search →Artifact 10 Entity 180 Period 1 Person 99 Site 28 Study 79 Ancient text 17
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Original photograph
Entity
Iliad
Greek epic attributed to Homer, narrating a phase of the Trojan War.
Fragment of the Hawara papyrus preserving Iliad 2.757–775, about 150 CE. A witness to the epic’s transmission in the Roman period; its date is not the date of composition
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Original photograph
Traditionally attributed author
Homer
The name to which Greek tradition attributes the Iliad and Odyssey.
Roman portrait bust representing Homer, second century CE; British Museum 1805,0703.85. An artistic likeness made long after the epics, rather than a contemporary portrait
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Original photograph
Person
Philo of Byblos
Writer of about the first–second centuries CE and author of Phoenician History, distinct from Philo of Alexandria.
Modern view of the Byblos remains, Lebanon, 4 September 2008. Photograph by Vyacheslav Argenberg; context for Philo of Byblos’s name, not a portrait or identification of his library
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Original photograph
Site
Crete
Greek island in the eastern Mediterranean, associated in Hesiod with hiding the infant Zeus.
Mountain landscape in the Lefka Ori of Crete, near Pachnes, 5 August 2016, according to the photographer’s metadata. A modern island view, not a location of Zeus’s hiding in the story
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Original photograph
Site
Phrygia
Historical inland Anatolian region with an Iron Age kingdom; Gordion was a major center.
Burial mounds MM and P at Gordion, in modern Türkiye. A view of Phrygian remains by Archaeologist 1950, 2 July 2019; regional archaeological context, not evidence for a specific story’s route
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Illustration
Contextual definition
Hupasiya
Inara’s human helper in the first Hittite Illuyanka account, who binds the serpent after the feast.
Modern diagram of Hupasiya’s two relationships in the first account: helping Inara and wanting to return to his wife and children. The ending is marked as damaged; no unpreserved fate or portrait is supplied
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Original photograph
Contextual definition
Cilicia
Historical region on Anatolia’s southern coast in modern Türkiye, with plains and uplands connected to the Levant and Anatolian interior.
The gateway known as Cleopatra’s Gate in Tarsus, a city of historical Cilicia in modern Türkiye, 3 October 2005. A view of a place in the region; the popular name does not date the visible building
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Original photograph
People
Hittites
Ancient people and kingdom of Anatolia, dominating much of Anatolia and northern Syria around 1650–1200 BCE.
The Lion Gate at Hattusha, the Hittite capital near Boğazköy in modern Türkiye. A contemporary view of the remains, photographed by Bernard Gagnon on 19 May 2014
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Original photograph
Contextual definition
Pseudo-Apollodorus
Name used for the author of the Bibliotheca, a Greek mythographic collection usually dated to the first or second century CE.
Title page of the Bibliothèque d’Apollodore in E. Clavier’s edition, Paris, 1805, volume I, in Greek and French. It documents a later printed edition; the title’s author attribution is traditional
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Original photograph
Contextual definition
Hesiod
Greek poet whose major work is generally dated to the late eighth or early seventh century BCE, including the Theogony.
Hesiod and the Muse, an 1891 oil-on-wood painting by Gustave Moreau, Musée d’Orsay RF 1961 7. A modern artistic reception of the ancient poet, not a contemporary likeness
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Original photograph
Contextual definition
Birmingham, United Kingdom
Birmingham is a city in England whose university preserves early Qur’anic parchment leaves
The public Library of Birmingham, England, on 6 September 2025. A contemporary city view; the Qur’anic leaves are held by the university’s Cadbury Research Library, a different institution
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Original photograph
Contextual definition
New York City
New York City is in the United States and houses the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Lower Manhattan, New York City, seen from Governors Island in 2017. A contemporary city view; the Metropolitan Museum mentioned in the definition is not shown
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Original photograph
Contextual definition
Memphis in Egypt
Memphis is an ancient Egyptian city near Mit Rahina south of present-day Cairo
The large statue of Ramesses II at Memphis/Mit Rahina, Egypt, photographed on 17 June 2007. It belongs to the New Kingdom in the thirteenth century BCE, one of the later phases in the city’s long history
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Original photograph
Contextual definition
Hermopolis, Khemenu
Hermopolis is an ancient Egyptian city at Ashmunein, called Khemenu in Egyptian
A colossal statue of Thoth as a baboon at Ashmunein/Hermopolis, from Amenhotep III’s reign in the fourteenth century BCE. Photographed on 18 September 2006; it offers a material example of the city’s association with Thoth
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Original photograph
Contextual definition
Heliopolis, ancient Iunu
Heliopolis is the Greek name of Egyptian Iunu, at Matariya in northern present-day Cairo
The obelisk of Senusret I at Matariya in Cairo, at the site of ancient Iunu/Heliopolis, 2 September 2001. It belongs to the Middle Kingdom, in the twentieth century BCE; the monument’s date differs from that of this modern photograph
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Original photograph
Contextual definition
Iran
Iran is the modern country containing Shush, ancient Susa
Ruins of Darius’s palace at Persepolis in southwestern Iran, 24 September 2016. They belong to the Achaemenid period; construction of the site’s complex began around 518 BCE. This is one ancient Iranian site, distinct from Susa mentioned in the definition
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Contextual definition
Egypt
Egypt lies mainly in northeastern Africa and includes the Sinai Peninsula in Asia
The Nile at Aswan in southern Egypt, 23 May 2007. A modern view of the river, its banks and sailing boats, illustrating part of the Nile Valley’s geographical setting
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Contextual definition
Iraq
Iraq is a modern country encompassing much of ancient Mesopotamia
The Tigris in Baghdad, Iraq, on the evening of 29 December 2021. A modern river and city view illustrating the present geographical setting of Mesopotamia
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Original photograph
Contextual definition
Turkey
Turkey is a modern country including Anatolia and territory in southeastern Europe
Ortaköy Mosque and the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul, Turkey, June 2008. A modern view of the strait and the bridge joining the city’s European and Asian shores
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Original photograph
Contextual definition
Anatolia
Anatolia is the region occupying the Asian part of present-day Turkey
Aktepe Hill near Göreme in Cappadocia, central Anatolia in present-day Turkey, 31 July 2009. A landscape photograph, not a representation of one particular ancient kingdom or people
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Original photograph
Contextual definition
Noah
Noah is the flood-story figure in Genesis and a prophet in the Qur’an
Entry of the Animals into Noah’s Ark, an etching by Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, around 1650–1655 CE. The Met, 2012.136.525. A seventeenth-century European artistic reading of the story, with the ark visible in the background
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Original photograph
Contextual definition
Muhammad, prophet of Islam
Muhammad is the prophet of Islam, living about 570–632 CE in the setting of Islam’s seventh-century emergence
The Green Dome and minarets of the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, Saudi Arabia, on 26 November 2025. This contemporary photograph shows part of the place associated with Muhammad’s life; the visible buildings reflect later architectural phases
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Contextual definition
Jesus Christ
Jesus Christ is Christianity’s central figure, who lived in the first century CE
Christ between two angels in a sixth-century mosaic at the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna, Italy. He is shown seated above a blue sphere in a cosmic scene. Photograph by José Luiz, 17 September 2016
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Contextual definition
Solomon
Solomon is the biblical king, David’s son, associated in Kings with Jerusalem and building the temple
The Judgment of Solomon, an oil painting by Nicolas Poussin from 1649, in the Louvre, INV 7277. It depicts the judgement between two women in 1 Kings 3 and illustrates the story’s reception in seventeenth-century European art
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Original photograph
Contextual definition
Abi-milku
Abi-milku was a fourteenth-century BCE ruler of Tyre, known from letters to Egypt’s king
Akkadian letter from Abi-milku, ruler of Tyre, to the Egyptian king, preserved on a clay tablet from the Amarna archive. The Met dates it to about 1347–1330 BCE; object 24.2.12
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Original photograph
Contextual definition
Pepi II
Pepi II was an Egyptian king of the Sixth Dynasty in the late third millennium BCE
Queen Ankhnes-meryre II with her son King Pepi II on her lap, in an Egyptian-alabaster statuette of the Sixth Dynasty, late third millennium BCE. Brooklyn Museum, 39.119. Photograph by Stephen Sandoval, February 2009
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Contextual definition
Merenre I
Merenre I was an Egyptian king of the Sixth Dynasty in the late third millennium BCE
Egyptian-alabaster vase shaped as a mother monkey holding her young, inscribed with King Merenre I’s name. The Met dates it to about 2255–2246 BCE; object 30.8.134. The royal inscription appears on the shoulder
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Original photograph
Contextual definition
Unas
Unas was the last king of Egypt’s Fifth Dynasty, in the late third millennium BCE
The remains of Unas’s pyramid at Saqqara, from the late Fifth Dynasty, around the twenty-fourth century BCE. Its interior preserves the earliest known Pyramid Texts inscribed in a royal pyramid. Photograph by Vincent Brown, 2017
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Contextual definition
Shabaka
Shabaka was a Kushite king of Egypt’s Twenty-fifth Dynasty in the late eighth century BCE
Bronze head from a statuette identified by Turin’s Museo Egizio as King Shabaka, of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty. The museum dates the object to 722–655 BCE; inventory Cat. 1394. The image is released by the museum under CC0
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Original photograph
Contextual definition
Papanikri
Papanikri is the named ritual specialist associated with a Hittite ritual addressing the omen of a damaged birth stool
Part of the Great Temple ruins at Hattusha, the Hittite capital, near modern Boğazköy in Turkey. UNESCO dates the temple remains to the thirteenth century BCE. Photograph taken on 17 March 2013, providing context for the city that preserved collections of Hittite rituals
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Illustration
Study
A story's date is not its manuscript's date: how do we date ancient texts?
A story and its surviving manuscript may be centuries apart. Examples from Sargon, the flood, Enoch and the Qur'an explain how we date each stage.
Original IL Archive diagram of four distinct historical clocks: narrated event, composition, copy and material support. Modern methodological artwork, not a manuscript or artifact image
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Illustration
Entity
Radiocarbon dating
A probabilistic date range for organic material; for parchment it dates animal skin rather than ink directly.
Original clock diagram for dating organic material; it does not reproduce the Birmingham manuscript
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Original photograph
Study
Typhon and the storm-god battles: Illuyanka, Baal, and the limits of resemblance
How do Illuyanka, Baal and Zeus–Typhon battles resemble one another? Hittite, Ugaritic and Greek accounts, dated witnesses, stolen body parts and possible paths of contact.
Zeus confronts Typhon on a Greek hydria of the sixth century BCE, Staatliche Antikensammlungen, Munich, 596. Photograph by Bibi Saint-Pol, 9 February 2007; a witness to the story’s artistic representation
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Illustration
Entity
Typhon / Typhoeus
Zeus's serpent-headed opponent, whose battle differs between Hesiod and later Greek accounts.
Modern diagram separating Hesiod's Typhoeus from the later sinew episode; not an ancient depiction
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Illustration
Entity
Illuyanka
The serpent opposed by the storm god in two Hittite narratives preserved in CTH 321.
Modern diagram separating the two CTH 321 Illuyanka versions; neither a tablet photograph nor a portrait of the serpent
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Illustration
Study
Kumarbi and Kronos: divine generations and the succession of kingship
The Hittite Kumarbi song and Hesiod’s Kronos–Zeus narrative: succession, swallowing and birth, the dates of damaged witnesses, and possible routes of story circulation.
Original IL Archive comparison of succession in CTH 344 and Hesiod's Theogony. The broken line by Teššub marks the missing final enthronement in the Hittite text; the question mark marks the unproven transmission route. This is not an ancient artifact
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Illustration
Ancient text
Hesiod’s Theogony
Greek poem on divine generations and Zeus’s kingship; its surviving form does not identify all of Hesiod’s sources.
Modern map of selected Theogony passages; verse order does not prove a transmission route
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Illustration
Entity
Kumarbi
Hurrian divine figure in Hittite CTH 344; challenges Anu and carries the storm god after swallowing his seed.
Modern succession diagram for CTH 344; neither a proven father–son genealogy nor an ancient portrait of Kumarbi
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Original photograph
Study
Divine assemblies in the Levant and Greece: resemblance and transmission limits
Councils of El, Baal and Zeus: how feasts, messengers and decisions move Ugaritic and Homeric stories, and what chronology and Phoenician–Greek contact help explain.
Volute-krater attributed to the Capodimonte Painter; South Italian Apulian, about 320–310 BCE. Front: divine assembly above Amazonomachy. Not Ugarit’s council or a particular Homeric scene
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Original photograph
Entity
Zeus
Zeus is the sky god and leading deity in many Greek traditions. In the Iliad he presides over divine gatherings while others can still speak and object.
Greek marble head, third or second century BCE. The Metropolitan Museum identifies the deity as probably Zeus; the attribution is uncertain, and the object postdates the Iliad's formation
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