This course compares the canonical cosmogonies of ancient Mesopotamia, Israel and Greece. We will study in detail the creation epic Enuma eliš and the flood epic Atra-hasis from Babylon, the opening chapters of the Biblical book of Genesis, and Hesiod’s Theogony and Catalogue of women; as well as considering related texts from across the ancient Mediterranean. We will ask how the set texts describe the earliest history of the world and what this meant for their ancient audiences, how they relate to each other, and how they inform the long history of human investigation into the origins of the universe.
