Oannes

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Apkallu on a bas-relief from Ḫorsabad

According to Berossus, Oannes is the Babylonian name for a mythical hybrid of fish and man. It should have been the first culture bringer .

Tradition of the Berossos

The report on Oannes given by the Marduk priest Berossos in his Babyloniaka , a three-volume work on Babylonian history, has only survived in fragments of the extracts from Alexander Polyhistor in the chronicles of Eusebius of Caesarea and Synkellos . Furthermore, an excerpt from the Chrestomathy of the Greek grammarist Helladios, preserved in the library (codes 279) of Patriarch Photios , reports on the fish man. The portrayal of Berossus reflects older Mesopotamian tradition, for confirming that seven come from the 1st millennium BC. Chr. Originating cuneiform evidence of Oannes added.

According to Berossos, Oannes appeared in the first year of the first antediluvian primal king Aloros from the Erythrean Sea (by which the Persian Gulf is meant here ). In addition to a fish head, Oannes is said to have had a human head, and in addition to a fish tail, human feet and a human voice. Every morning he rose from the sea and taught the people cultural techniques such as writing , science and various arts, as well as the foundation of cities and sanctuaries, law and agriculture . While Oannes was among the people, he took no food, in the evening he went back to the sea. He is also said to have given people a work written by him on the history of the creation of the world . After his disappearance nothing important had been invented, but at a later point in time six other hybrid creatures appeared, which detailed what Oannes had drawn up the main features.

Interpretations

Georg Friedrich Creuzer sees Oannes in a line of development from the Indian Vishnu , who brings back the Vedas in one of his transformations as a fish , to the Roman god Janus , who no longer has an animal shape, but two faces. Baring-Gould equated Oannes with the Philistine- Syrian Dagān and took him for a sun deity who appears on earth in the morning and sinks into the sea in the evening; matching the double figure: half fish, half human. Equating it with Ea was also considered, but according to Borger it cannot be maintained.

An equation with the Sumerian human-fish hybrid creature kulullu U-An (na) (Akkadian Um-Anu) with the surname Adapa , who had come from the sea with others of his kind to bring culture to humans, is considered likely .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Josef Sturm: Ὠάννης . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume XVII, 2, Stuttgart 1937, Col. 1677–1679 (here: 1677).
  2. ↑ a b Michael P. Streck: Oannes , in: Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie , Vol. 10 (2005), pp. 1–3, here: p. 1.
  3. ↑ Josef Sturm: Ὠάννης . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume XVII, 2, Stuttgart 1937, Sp. 1677–1679 (here: 1677 f.).
  4. ↑ Georg Friedrich Creuzer 1812, pp. 59–60 at google books
  5. ^ Sabine Baring-Gould : Curious myths of the Middle Ages . London 1877, p. 494 online
  6. ↑ a b Rykle Borger, The Summoning Series Bīt mēseri and the Ascension of Enoch. Journal of Near Eastern Studies 33/2, 1974, 186
  7. ^ Lambert, Archive for Orient Research 19, 1959-60, 64