Mummy Wheat: Egyptian Influence on the Homeric View of the Afterlife and the Eleusinian Mysteries

by R. Drew Griffith

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Homer presents a world-view in which death represents the end of consciousness and total annihilation of personhood. Yet in Odyssey, Book Four, he contradicts this by saying that one man at least will not die, but will be transported to Elysium, where he will have a blessed existence forever. In Mummy Wheat R. Drew Griffith argues that this shocking violation of Homer's no...more

Paperback, 272 pages

Published by University Press of America

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May 15, 2009

Dimitri rated it

In Mummy Wheat, R. Drew Griffith argues that Egyptian thought influenced the development of Greek eschatology, beginning in the Bronze Age and culminating in specific survivals in literature (Homeric epic) and ritual (the Eleusinian mysteries). His focus is on etymology, but Griffith ranges into archaeology, mythology and history to support his thesis.

The starting point of his argument is sketched in the Introduction and Chapter 1: Greek Elysium, a paradise which in Homer is only ac...moreIn Mummy Wheat, R. Drew Griffith argues that Egyptian thought influenced the development of Greek eschatology, beginning in the Bronze Age and culminating in specific survivals in literature (Homeric epic) and ritual (the Eleusinian mysteries). His focus is on etymology, but Griffith ranges into archaeology, mythology and history to support his thesis.

The starting point of his argument is sketched in the Introduction and Chapter 1: Greek Elysium, a paradise which in Homer is only accessible to Menelaus, is an intrusive Egyptian element, since Greek literature consistently refers to a gloomy afterlife. Griffith attends to the origins of Elysium in more detail in Chapter 2. He rejects Burkert’s etymology of Elysium from Greek enēlusios (‘struck by lightning’) and Puhvel’s from PIE *welsu- (‘meadow’), agreeing with Alford that the term derives from the Egyptian ‘field of reeds’. He then seeks out echoes of this appropriation, arguing that Homer’s description of the Nile and other rivers as diipetēs (usually translated ‘fallen from Zeus’) refers to the celestial river along which the sun traveled in Egyptian cosmology. Greek metaphors connecting birds and boats consequently derive from Egyptian celestial barques, and Greek bards thought of temples as flying boat-houses of gods. Finally, Griffith suggests that Zeus granted Elysium to Menelaus because as the son-in-law of Zeus he could have usurped Zeus’ position as ruler of the universe.

Chapter 3 argues that Greek makar, ‘blessed’, derives from Egyptian m3’-hrw, ‘true of voice’, and that this phrase is calqued by the Homeric epea pteroenta, ‘winged words’. This and other Egyptian notions about the voice of the dead, Griffith argues, are productive of other Homeric formulae. The historicity of Memnon, the mythological king of the Aithiopes and ally of the Trojans, is the subject of Chapter 4. In Chapter 5, Griffith examines possible Egyptian influence on Greek colour words. Homeric deities often have hair described as kuanos, ‘blue’, which Griffith connects to Egyptian descriptions of blue-haired deities. Homer describes the earth as black, which again Griffith connects to Egypt, which in antiquity was noted for its black silt. The motivation for this, he suggests, is that Egyptians taught Greeks about irrigation, and the phrase ‘black earth’ was coined in remembrance of this fact. Griffith also interprets the phrase usually translated ‘rosy-fingered Dawn’ as influenced by the iconographical programme of Amenhotep II. Chapter 6 posits an Egyptian origin for Greek nektar, the drink of the gods, from Egyptian ntry, an ingredient in the mummification process (sodium carbonate).

The final two chapters argue that the Eleusinian mysteries, which granted its initiates a privileged afterlife, have an Egyptian background. Similarities in Greek and Egyptian aetiological myths are stressed. Griffith uses the work of Raymond Moody Jr. on death-bed visions to analyse the experience of Eleusinian initiates, in order to explain the long-lasting power of this Greek mystery cult.

Although I am sympathetic to the general argument that Greek cosmology and eschatology are influenced by Egyptian thought, this book’s potential to contribute to the discussion is compromised by significant errors of fact and method. For example, Cretan hieroglyphic is not influenced by Egyptian hieroglyphic, as Griffith claims (65). The archaeological evidence at Troy (modern Hisarlık) cannot possibly suggest that the myth of the Trojan war was based on real people (46), and the well-preserved body in Grave V of Circle A at Mycenae does not prove that the Mycenaeans knew mummification, Egyptian or otherwise, nor can evidence from Homer be used to support this idea (4). The epithet rhododaktulos, ‘rosy-fingered’, which Griffith finds problematic (61-64), is a perfectly normal Greek possessive compound noun with a long and productive history, as numerous Mycenaean and Greek examples show (T. Meissner and O. Tribulato, ‘Nominal Composition in Mycenaean Greek’, Transactions of the Philological Society 100.3 [2002:] 289-330).

In addition to such problematic details, the text contains numerous assertions and arguments that strain credulity. For example, Griffith argues that Greek temples were thought to be flying ships. He begins by pointing out that the unique phrase ‘temples… of the gods’ (Odyssey 6.10) occupies the same metrical position as the common formula ‘swift ship’ before the hephthemimeral caesura, which is not a particularly striking coincidence. We are told, however, that the latter was plausibly a formal model for the former (23). Greek temples generally face east, and Egyptian pyramids are likewise oriented to cardinal points and celestial phenomena (24); this is a tenuous connection, as is the observation that the Greek words for temple and ship (nēos and nēus respectively), although they have different etymologies, look alike (24). In Chapter 4, Griffith argues that the mythological Memnon is based on the historical Amenhotep III, although their names are not connected, because the pharaoh (1) was in contact with Late Bronze Age Greece (Memnon is a character in Greek mythology), (2) married foreign princesses (Memnon was an ally of Troy), (3) claimed descent from Amun-Ra (Memnon was the son of Eos), (4) was handsome (as was Memnon), and (5) had a father named Tuthmosis, which resembles Tithonus (Memnon’s father).

Griffith’s methodology is at first blush typical of Homeric scholarship: he identifies an irregularity in Homer, and proceeds to resolve it. He begins the book, for example, with the observation that in Homer only Menelaus is sent to Elysium and that this exception constitutes an ‘irreparable rent in the metaphysics of Homer’s world’ (xxx). But Odysseus is offered, and rejects, a wholly analogous destiny with Calypso on Ogygie (E. Cook, The Odyssey in Athens [Ithaca, 1995:] pp. 30-31). Indeed, it seems clear that Menelaus’ immortalization, like Odysseus’ potential immortalization with Calypso, has a negative valuation in the Odyssey (G. Crane, Calypso [Frankfurt am Main: Athenaeum, 1988] pp. 15-18, 40-44). We should also probably connect Elysium with the Hesiodic Isles of the Blessed, and the immortalization of epic heroes such as Achilles, Memnon, Diomedes, the Dioscuri, Telemachus and Telegonus. There seems to be a consistent pattern: some epic heroes are granted a happy afterlife in paradise in Greek epic. It is true that these stories are not present in Homer, but this does not mean that he is unaware of them. The origin of Elysium may well be Egyptian, but it is not the inexplicable intrusion on a monolithic Greek eschatology that Griffith depicts it as, and its treatment in Homer is better understood as a thematic choice within a larger poetic tradition.

In sum, Griffith's argument is a house of cards whose superstructure
is heavier than its faulty foundations. Where Griffith is correct,
his reasoning is so flawed that scholars cannot build upon his work.
I am afraid that like Medea, he embarked on this enterprise 'more
eager than wise' (Euripides Medea 485).(less)

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