Archaic Myths of the Orient and the Occident.

• Author: Foster, Benjamin R.

1. M. Diakonoff is best known to American readers as a scholar of ancient languages and of social and economic history of ancient western Asia. Even the diligent reader of his enormous output may feel initial surprise to meet him on the terrain of the mythographer, standing, as it were, backstage of his previous work. "The creation of myths is connected with the general forms of existence of archaic man and with his environment, irrespective of the particular language and ethnic origin of the tribes in question," he writes (p. 118). For Diakonoff, then, "Indo-European" or "Semitic" mythology are reworkings of human expression far older and more universal than in the forms now known, so it is a truncation (hence polemic with Dumezil) to posit the origins of the myths now known in specific peoples or regions, however interesting the later local forms may be in their own right. For Diakonoff, myth is "an emotionally charged interpretation of the world's phenomena in terms of events" (p. 87), that is, making sense of influences of the outside world and expressing reaction to them. These might include defining one's place in the world; positive, or more commonly negative, reaction to the notion "what is this?"; hunger; defense; cooperation; aggression; desire to eliminate physical discomfort; desire to satisfy sexual needs. Long ago, Archbishop Lowth remarked on the effectiveness of metaphor for strong but simple emotional expression (Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews . . . [Andover: Crocker & Brewster, 1829], 46; lecture 5), hence the prevalence of metaphorical or allegorical interpretation of myths in current scholarship; but Diakonoff prefers a more general "tropical means" (p. 87). Neither the language nor the specific figure matters so much as the expressive purpose. Groping backwards from the scattered data of class societies (and every reader will see areas where he does not necessarily agree with Diakonoff's reading of the data, but who will be master of it all?) to the thought modes of "archaic society" (in subsistence terms, hunting and gathering) may seem to the skeptical an act of faith. But Diakonoff reminds us that faith is needed for any mythology, ancient or modern; faith is needed for Frankfort's mythopoeic mind, Hooke's or Gaster's myth-making ritual, or Frazer's universal truth in story form. Diakonoff uses social psychology for older anthropocentric logic, emotion for older abstract truth, and comparative...