Table Of ContentSATHER CLASSICAL LECTURES
Volume Forty
MYTH
MYTH
ITS MEANING AND
FUNCTIONS IN
ANCIENT AND
OTHER CULTURES
by G. S. KIRK
Professor of Classics, University of Cambridge
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
BERKELEY AND LOS ANGELES
PUBLISHED BY THE SYNDICS OF THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
BF.NTI.EY HOUSE, 200 HUSTON ROAD, LONDON, NWI 2DB
AND
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
BERKELEY AND LOS ANGELES
© G. S. KIRK 1970
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 72 —628267
INTERNATIONAL STANDARD BOOK NUMBERS
CAMBRIDGE 0 521 07835 0 HARD COVERS
0 521 09802 5 PAPERBACK
CALIFORNIA 0 520 01651 3 HARD COVERS
0 520 02389 7 PAPERBACK
FIRST PUBLISHED 1970
REPRINTED 1971
FIRST PAPERBACK EDITION 1973
REPRINTED 1974
REPRINTED 1975
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Contents
Preface page v
Abbreviations ix
I Myth, Ritual and Folktale i
1 Introductory, p. i
2 Myth, religion and ritual, p. 8
3 The relation of myths to folktales, p. 31
11 Lévi-Strauss and the Structural Approach 42
1 An outline of the theory with some preliminary questions, p. 42
2 A relatively simple example—the tale of Asdiwal, p. 50
3 The South American material, p. 58
4 Geriguiaguiatugo and related myths, p. 63
5 Some desirable modifications, p. 73
6 The limits of the structural approach, p. 77
III The Nature of Myths in Ancient Mesopotamia 84
1 Introduction, p. 84
2 Irrigation and fertility, p. 90
3 Three myths of the underworld, p. 107
4 The nature of Sumerian myths, p. 115
5 Akkadian myths, p. 118
IV Nature and Culture: Gilgamesh, Centaurs and
Cyclopes 132
1 Gilgamesh, p. 132
2 The Centaurs, p. 152
3 The Cyclopes, p. 162
xii Contents
V The Qualities of Greek Myths page 172
: The thematic simplicity of the myths, p. 172
2 Basic concerns underlying the conventional structure, p. 190
3 A comparison with Germanic, Egyptian and Hindu mythology,
p. 205
4 The myths of Western Asia—Hurrian Kumarbi and Greek Kronos,
p. 213
5 The myths of Western Asia—Hittite and Canaanite, p. 220
6 Greek and Asiatic myths: a summary, p. 223
7 Mythical speculation in Hesiod, p. 226
8 Mythical and rational thought, p. 238
VI Tales, Dreams, Symbols: Towards a Fuller
Understanding of Myths 252
1 A suggested typology of functions, p. 252
2 Theories of mythical expression: Cassirer and others, p. 261
3 Fantasy and dreams, p. 268
4 Archetypes and symbols, p. 275
5 Possibilities of origin, p. 280
Index 287
Preface
THIS BOOK attempts to come to grips with a set of widely ranging
but connected problems concerning myths : their relation to folk-
tales on the one hand, to rituals on the other; the validity and
scope of the structuralist theory of myth; the range of possible
mythical functions ; the effects of developed social institutions and
literacy ; the character and meaning of ancient Near-Eastern myths
and their influence on Greece; the special forms taken by Greek
myths and their involvement with rational modes of thought; the
status of myths as expressions of the unconscious, as allied with
dreams, as universal symbols, or as accidents of primarily nar-
rative aims.
Almost none of these problems has been convincingly handled,
even in a provisional way, up to the present, and this failure has
vitiated not only such few general discussions as exist of the nature,
meanings and functions of myths but also, in many cases, the
detailed assessment of individual myths of different cultures.
The need for a coherent treatment of these and related problems,
and one that is not concerned simply to propagate a particular
universalistic theory (the very notion of which is in my opinion
chimerical), seems undeniable. How far the present book will
satisfactorily fill such a need remains to be seen. At least it makes a
beginning, even if in doing so it risks the criticism of being neither
fish nor fowl. Sociologists and folklorists may find it, from their
specialized viewpoints, a little simplistic in places; and a few
classical colleagues will not forgive me for straying far beyond
Greek myths, even though these can hardly be understood in
isolation or solely in the light of studies in cult and ritual. Others
may find it less easy than anthropologists, sociologists, historians of
thought or students of French and English literature to accept the
relevance of Lévi-Strauss to some of these matters ; but his theory
vi Preface
contains the one important new idea in this field since Freud, it
is complicated and largely untested, and it demands careful atten-
tion from anyone attempting a broad understanding of the subject.
The beliefs of Freud and Jung, on the other hand, are a more
familiar element in the situation and have given rise to an enor-
mous secondary literature, much of it arbitrary and some of it
absurd. I have tried to isolate the crucial ideas and subject them to
a pointed, if too brief, critique ; so too with those of Ernst Cassirer.
The myths of savage societies enter the discussion not only for
their own sake and in relation to Lévi-Strauss, but also as essential
data for interpretations by other anthropologists, Kluckhohn,
Boas and Malinowski in particular. Such 'primitive' myths are
of course a critical factor, not least because they can occasionally
be seen functioning in a natural and non-literate environment.
Nevertheless the main emphasis of the book is on ancient Near-
Eastern and Greek myths. The former, the oldest known to us, are
deeply fascinating and generally neglected. They also provide a
surprisingly good proving-ground both for structuralist and for
other kinds of interpretation, and not merely for the ritualistic
theories that have recently tended to dominate the Near-Eastern
scene. Both they and Greek myths exemplify the effects of passage
from an oral to a literate but still deeply traditional milieu. In
many respects, however, Greek myths, far from being the exemplar
they have always been taken for, constitute a very special and
rather impure case. Neither the handbooks nor the detailed studies
of individual myths make this plain, and so I have concentrated
(in the earlier part of the fifth chapter) on trying to isolate the
generic characteristics of Greek mythology and the basic interests
that persist even through a long and distorting process of schema-
tization.
Other special emphases, apart from that on ancient myths, will
become clear as the book unfolds, but may usefully be outlined
here. Most important, my main interest has been in exploring and
to a degree rehabilitating the role of many myths as in some sense
speculative, as concerned with problems in society or incom-
patibilities between culture and nature. Lévi-Strauss has already
brought that role into prominence, admittedly in an exaggerated
form, and has more than compensated for an earlier anthro-
pological tendency to focus exclusively on myths as charters or as
effective re-enactments of the creative and determinative past.
Preface vii
These latter functions are correspondingly unstressed in the present
context, at least until the final chapter. So too, for different
reasons, is that of myth as the accompaniment of ritual, a genuine
role that has been heavily inflated in the past forty years. Among
specific topics to receive less than their fair share of attention by
encyclopaedic standards are Amerindian myths of the Plains and
Southwest, because of their almost impenetrable syncretism, and
the non-legendary mythology of Homer, perhaps because I have
been too closely involved with other aspects of his poetry. On the
other hand I have felt free to advance detailed and quite long
interpretations of myths that particularly engrossed me, like those
of Enki and Ninhursag, Gilgamesh, the birth of a great god from
Kumarbi/Kronos, and the Centaurs and Cyclopes. Finally the
question of ' modern myths' is entirely omitted. I am convinced
that, because of the crucial part in their formation played by
sophisticated values and extreme literacy, Franz Boas was mis-
taken in his assertion that ' we have no reason to believe that the
myth-forming processes of the last ten thousand years have differed
materially from modern myth-forming processes' (Tsimshian
Mythology, 1916, 809). This is not to deny that the correct under-
standing of bastard modern forms may be helped by the study of
the real thing.
I have been careful not to overload the text with learned refer-
ences or to multiply footnotes for mere scholarship's sake, especially
since I prefer to regard the book as an essay in interpretation, or a
critical venture into the history and philosophy of thought, rather
than as a work of agglomerative learning. Anyone who labours
in this field has to plough through a good deal of stubble, and there
seemed little advantage in piling up allusions to the extensive
literature of myth and religion in the late nineteenth century or
sociology in the mid-twentieth. I am no less anxious to avoid the
implication of having exhaustively covered the bibliography of
this vast subject. At a few points my reading has been highly
selective. It should also be plain that I have no direct knowledge
of either Sumerian or Akkadian, not to mention the languages of
the Bororo, the Tsimshian, or the Trobriand islanders. For the
translation of their texts or reports of their myths I have to depend
on experts in these tongues. Those who believe that this completely
disqualifies one from making judgements about content—a quite
mistaken view in my opinion—need go no further.
viii Preface
In a few places the connexion between the book and the Sather
lectures obtrudes itself—a connexion that I have not tried to dis-
guise completely. The book was written with the lectures in mind,
and each of its chapters corresponds, although on a much larger
scale, with one of the six lectures. I am grateful to the Berkeley
audience for their feeling that other forms of irrationalism in the
environment were less interesting than myth itself.
I have particularly benefited from some long discussions in
Cambridge with G. E. R. Lloyd, on Lévi-Strauss, and Mrs
Stephanie (Page) Dalley, on ancient Near-Eastern literature.
Others who helped me over the same topics (and who of course
bear no responsibility for the results) are Louis Orlin, W. Heimpel,
and W. G. Runciman. To these, and also to Adam and Anne
Parry, Hugh Lloyd-Jones, Simon Pembroke and Moses Finley for
other contributions, I am most grateful. Michael Grant should
also be mentioned here, because I think it was his Myths of the
Greeks and Romans (1962) that originally sharpened my interest in
these matters. I am doubly in the debt of G. E. R. Lloyd, since he
also read through the proofs and suggested many improvements of
the kind that could be made at that stage. At Berkeley the forth-
right and amiable criticisms of Alan Dundes and his folklore
seminar were immensely useful, and Joseph Fontenrose offered
some valuable comments on the text as a whole. The members of
the Classics Department there and their wives, and above all
Professor and Mrs W. K. Pritchett, helped to make the delivery
of the lectures and the final preparation of the book an exceptionally
pleasant task. In this last respect I must thank also, and very
warmly, two classical graduate students, Christopher Gill at Yale
and Mrs Caroline Dewald at Berkeley, who contributed much
more in the way of perceptive criticism than I had any right to
expect. Finally I should express my gratitude to the two university
presses for a rapid and accurate transatlantic operation.
G. S. K.
Cambridge
October ig6g
