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Original photograph
Researcher
Bernardo Ballesteros
Scholar of early Greek poetry and its comparison with Mesopotamian and Near Eastern literature.
Vestibule dome in the University of Vienna’s main building, photographed in 2016. Institutional context associated with the scholar, rather than a portrait
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Original photograph
Concept
Ugaritic language
Ancient Semitic language preserved in Ugarit’s tablets on the Syrian coast, from the fourteenth–twelfth centuries BCE, written in a cuneiform alphabet.
Fragment bearing the sequence of Ugaritic alphabetic letters, about 1400–1200 BCE in the Louvre catalogue; AO 19992. A photograph of an actual witness from Ugarit
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Original photograph
Concept
Sumerian language
Ancient language of southern Mesopotamia, clearly attested in third-millennium BCE texts and maintained in learning and ritual after its spoken use declined.
Tablet of a Sumerian lament with Akkadian translations of many lines, about the second–first centuries BCE; Met 86.11.286a. A late witness to the language’s continued scribal and ritual use
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Illustration
Entity
Hundred-Handers
Beings in Hesiod’s poem, shown in one scene leaving captivity and darkness for light.
Modern diagram of the release from captivity into light at Theogony669. It explains the scene when comparing emergence verbs, without reconstructing the Hundred-Handers’ appearance
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Illustration
Entity
Tashmishu
Divine figure named in Kumarbi’s pregnancy with the storm god and the river Aranzah.
Modern diagram highlighting Tashmishu among the figures in Kumarbi’s pregnancy account. It preserves the multiple names without supplying a complete biography or imagined portrait
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Illustration
Entity
Aranzah
River as a divine figure, named among those Kumarbi carries in the Hittite song.
Modern diagram of Kumarbi’s pregnancy list, highlighting Aranzah as a river divine figure. Branches group names in the scene; not a river map or the order of every birth event
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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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Original photograph
Entity
Hurrians
Ancient Near Eastern groups and language, prominent in northern Mesopotamia, the Levant and Anatolia in the second millennium BCE.
Hurrian-language incantation tablet from Ras Shamra, about 1400–1200 BCE, Louvre AO 12016. Rama, 20 October 2007. Evidence of Hurrian at Ugarit, not the Kumarbi-song tablet
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Illustration
Entity
Alalu
First heavenly ruler in the surviving Kumarbi song; defeated by Anu, he flees to the dark earth.
Modern diagram of the surviving Alalu–Anu account: service, defeat and flight to the dark earth. Arrows do not establish genealogy; no ancient divine likeness is invented
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Original photograph
Entity
Aphrodite
Greek goddess whose origin Hesiod relates to foam after the assault on Ouranos.
Aphrodite with a Turtle, an incomplete restored statue from Dura-Europos, about the second–third centuries CE, Louvre AO 20126. Shonagon, 5 January 2024; an object later than Hesiod’s poem
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Original photograph
Entity
Athena
Greek goddess associated in Hesiod with Zeus, Metis and birth from the head.
Athena’s birth from Zeus’s head on an Attic vessel, about 570–560 BCE, Louvre CA 616. Bibi Saint-Pol, 1 June 2007. An ancient artistic witness; the museum records restorations to the vessel
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Illustration
Entity
Metis
Divine figure and Athena’s mother in Hesiod; Zeus swallows her while pregnant to forestall a possible successor.
Modern diagram of Metis’s role in Hesiod: pregnancy, a warning about succession, swallowing by Zeus and Athena’s birth from the head. Arrows order events; not an ancient image of the goddess
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Original photograph
Entity
Rhea
Zeus’s mother in Hesiod, hiding the child and giving Kronos a stone instead.
Rhea presents the stone to Kronos; wood engraving published in the 1878 Leipzig edition of Der Olymp. Later printed reception of the scene, not an artifact photograph or a likeness from Hesiod’s time
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Original photograph
Entity
Gaia
Earth as a divine figure, active in the gods’ origins and conflicts in Hesiod.
Gaia lifts the infant Erichthonios toward Athena; detail of an Attic vase, about 470–460 BCE, Munich 2413. Bibi Saint-Pol, 10 February 2007; another scene representing Gaia as Earth
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Original photograph
Entity
Ouranos
Sky as a divine figure in Greek poetry; Kronos’s father in Hesiod.
The assault on Ouranos in a sixteenth-century work by Vasari and Gherardi, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. Later artistic reception, not an ancient Greek witness or a contemporary image of Hesiod’s time
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Original photograph
Entity
Kronos
Greek divine figure and Zeus’s father; Hesiod connects his reign with struggles between divine generations.
Rhea hands Kronos a wrapped stone on an Attic jar, about 460–450 BCE, attributed to the Nausicaä Painter. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 06.1021.144; museum photograph
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Original photograph
Researcher
Amir Gilan
Tel Aviv University scholar of Hittite texts and ancient Anatolia, studying religion, ritual, literature and historiography.
Smolarz Auditorium at Tel Aviv University, 30 June 2012. Context for the university associated with Amir Gilan; not his department’s building or his portrait
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Original photograph
Researcher
Jenny Strauss Clay
Professor emerita at the University of Virginia, specializing in early Greek poetry and its gods and human–divine relations.
The Rotunda and Lawn, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, 14 March 2011. Institutional context for Jenny Strauss Clay; a campus view, not her portrait
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Original photograph
Researcher
Adrian Kelly
Professor of Ancient Greek Literature at Oxford and Balliol, researching early poetry and the traditions shaping it.
Front quadrangle of Balliol College, Oxford, 21 January 2004. A view of the college associated with Adrian Kelly; it does not establish his position in that year or locate his office
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Original photograph
Researcher
Christian Zgoll
Scholar at Göttingen working on ancient languages and comparative mythology, including Greek poetry and Hittite texts.
The Aula at Göttingen University, 3 April 2016. Institutional context for Christian Zgoll, not a portrait or identification of his office
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Original photograph
Researcher
Erik van Dongen
Researcher who examined Kumarbi–Hesiod connections in a 2010 doctoral thesis at University College London.
University College London portico, 25 March 2015. Institutional context for Erik van Dongen’s 2010 thesis; a later photograph, not a portrait or identification of his office
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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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Illustration
Contextual definition
Inara
Goddess in Hittite traditions who plans the feast enabling the serpent’s defeat in the first Illuyanka account.
Modern narrative diagram of Inara, Hupasiya and the storm god cooperating in the first Illuyanka account. Arrows show successive roles in the story; not an artifact or a reconstruction of divine appearances
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Original photograph
Contextual definition
Mount Kasios — Jebel Aqra
Coastal mountain in the Syrian–Turkish border area, known as Jebel Aqra and by ancient names including Kasios.
Jebel Aqra, also known as Mount Kasios, with the Mediterranean coast in the Syrian–Turkish area. Summer 2008 according to the photographer, Anthiok; the original August upload date does not establish the day of capture
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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
Researcher
Ola Wikander
Scholar of ancient Near Eastern texts and the Hebrew Bible at Lund University, studying Ugaritic and shared poetic imagery.
Ola Wikander at the Oslo Book Festival, 18 September 2010. Photograph by decltype; identity and date follow the photographer’s source metadata
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Original photograph
Researcher
Ian Rutherford
Specialist in Greek literature and religion at the University of Reading, studying contacts with Anatolia and Egypt.
The Whiteknights campus of the University of Reading, with the Humanities and Social Sciences building, 10 November 2007. A view of the university associated with Ian Rutherford’s work
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Original photograph
Researcher
Calvert Watkins
Scholar of Indo-European languages and ancient poetry (1933–2013), who worked at Harvard and then UCLA.
Harvard Yard in winter, 7 January 2010. Calvert Watkins worked at Harvard until his retirement in 2003; the photograph shows the campus after that date
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Original photograph
Researcher
Gary Beckman
Scholar of the Hittite language, Hittite religion and ancient Near Eastern history, associated with the University of Michigan.
Angell Hall at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 8 March 2022. Institutional context for Gary Beckman, who joined Michigan in 1992; not a portrait or identification of his office
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Original photograph
Contextual definition
The Eight in Egyptian creation traditions
The Eight are four divine pairs describing conditions before the ordered world in Egyptian traditions
The Ogdoad in a ceiling relief at the temple of Hathor in Dendera: four pairs with frog and snake heads. This source crop was made by JMCC1 from Olaf Tausch’s 2011 photograph. The standing temple belongs to later Ptolemaic and Roman construction
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Original photograph
Contextual definition
Shu and Tefnut
Shu and Tefnut are an Egyptian divine pair associated with air and moisture respectively
Bronze ritual menat bearing the heads of Shu and Tefnut, from Egypt’s Late Period, 664–380 BCE. Walters Art Museum, 54.1515. Instruments of this type were used with beaded collars in rituals
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Original photograph
Contextual definition
Re, Egyptian sun god
Re is the Egyptian sun god, associated with creation, life and renewal of cosmic order
Pay raises his hands before Re-Harakhty, shown with a falcon’s head and solar disk, in a limestone stela fragment from Saqqara. The Met dates the object to about 1328–1318 BCE; inventory 04.2.527
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Original photograph
Contextual definition
Ptah
Ptah is an Egyptian god associated with Memphis, craftsmanship and creation
Statuette of Ptah wearing a close-fitting cap, straight beard and enveloping garment. Made of cupreous metal, it is dated by the Met to 664–30 BCE; object 04.2.406
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Original photograph
Contextual definition
Atum
Atum is an Egyptian creator god associated with Heliopolis
Atum as a human-headed cobra above an animal-mummy box. Made of cupreous metal, the object is dated by the Met to 664–30 BCE; inventory 04.2.519. It illustrates one of the god’s forms in later Egyptian periods
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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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