Kinyras

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Myrrha and Kinyras. Woodcut by Virgil Solis for Ovid's Metamorphoses , 1569.

Kinyras ( Greek  Κινύρας ) is a person from Greek mythology . The name belongs to the Semitic consonant root knr , as does the biblical lyre Kinnor . At times Kinyras was considered a musician; his close relationship with Orpheus and Thamyris shows him as a lyre player.

myth

After Ovid's Metamorphoses , he was the son of Paphos , grandson of Pygmalion and a king of Cyprus . His wife was Kenchreis , their daughter the beautiful Myrrha .

Many suitors asked for Myrrha's hand, but she had fallen in love with her own father. Desperate, she decided to hang herself with her belt, but was stopped by her faithful nurse. After confessing her carnal love for her father, she promised to help her. While Kenchreis was attending a festival for Ceres , at which the believers had to abstain from love and touch by men for nine days and nights, the nurse told the drunken king about a girl who had fallen in love with him. Kinyras told her to bring the girl to him.

Myrrha had bad premonitions, stumbled three times on the way and heard three times the unfortunate cry of the owl . In spite of these bad omens, she crept to her father that night, guided by the nurse, who offered her to the king in the dark. She slept with him the following night too, but eventually the curious king lit a lamp and found his own daughter in his bed! He drew his sword to kill the unnatural daughter, but she escaped. Desperate and plagued by remorse, she wandered east, beyond the palm-lined lands of Arabae and the fields of the fabulous island of Panchaea for nine months. Finally she reached Sabaea , heavily pregnant . She prayed for a different nature, which the gods heard and turned her into a tree. In Ovid's portrayal of Arachne , Kinyras killed his daughter and then mourned her on the marble steps of the temple, while in his story on Myrrha the daughter is prevented from attempting suicide and flees, but is finally transformed into myrrh by the gods according to her wishes . Adonis , the son of Kinyras and Myrrha, avenged his mother's tragic fate on Aphrodite by filling her with unrequited love.

When Homer is only reported that Kinyras on the rumor of an impending campaign of the Greeks against Troy toward Agamemnon is a breastplate as a gift, which this contributes in the fight.

With Pindar Kinyras was a favorite of Apollo and a priest of Aphrodite. After the library of Apollodorus , Kinyras came from Kelenderis in Cilicia . He sailed with his faithful to Cyprus and founded the city of Paphos there . He promised a Greek embassy consisting of Menelaus , Odysseus and Talthybios to provide 50 ships for the war against Troy , but sent only one and formed the other 49 and their crew out of clay, thus fulfilling the wording, if not the meaning of his oath . His wife was Metharme , the daughter of King Pygmalion . Their children were Oxyporus , Adonis, Orsedike , Laogore and Braesia . The daughters incurred the wrath of Aphrodite, became involved with foreigners, and ended their lives in Egypt.

According to Strabo , Kinyras had a palace in Byblos . Eusthatios reports in his Homer Commentary that Kinyras was the son of Theias , a wealthy Cypriot king who provided the Danes with food and promised them to deliver Victualia to Troy . When he failed to do so, he was cursed by Agamemnon . He challenged Apollo to a singing contest, which he, like Marsyas , did not survive. His fifty daughters threw themselves into the sea and became kingfishers .

According to Pliny , Kinyras was the inventor of ceramics, ore mining, tongs, levers and the anvil.

role models

According to John Pairman Brown , Kinyras is to be equated with the Aramaic Kuthar and the Ugaritic Kothar , the divine blacksmith . This equation is found in a text by Melito von Sardis , an early apologist from the 2nd century, and is confirmed by Pliny.

swell

literature

  • John Pairman Brown : Kothar, Kinyras, and Kythereia. In: Journal of Semitic Studies. 10, 1965, ISSN  0022-4480 , pp. 197-219.
  • Mitchell J. Dahood: Ancient Semitic Deities in Syria and Palestine. In: Sabatino Moscati (ed.): Le antiche divinita semitici. = Les divinités sémitiques anciennes. = Ancient Semitic dieties. Centro di studi semitici, Rome 1958, pp. 81-83 ( Studi semitici 1, ZDB -ID 131080-x ).

Web links

Commons : Kinyras  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ Ovid, Metamorphoses 10.298
  2. ^ Ovid, Metamorphoses 6.98.
  3. ↑ Ovid, Metamorphoses 10.380-502.
  4. ^ Ovid, Metamorphoses 10, 522.
  5. ↑ Homer, Iliad XI, 19-22
  6. ↑ Pindar, Pythien 2: 15-17.
  7. ^ Libraries of Apollodorus 3, 183.
  8. ^ Libraries of Apollodorus , Epitome 3, 9.
  9. ^ Strabo, Geography 16, 2, 18.
  10. ↑ Pliny, Naturalis historia 7, 195.