Travelling Heroes by Robin Lane Fox

Author:Robin Lane Fox
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141889863
Publisher: Penguin Adult
Published: 2008-03-07T16:00:00+00:00

II

One fact is certain about Greeks’ interaction with this mountain: they did not learn its name from the Phoenicians who came up to its southern side at Ras el-Bassit or passed it at sea on their way up to southern Cilicia and its plain. Phoenicians called the Jebel Aqra by the old Semitic name Saphon, which was familiar from Canaanite poems about the gods, whereas the Greeks called it Kasios. They adapted this name from the ancient name Hazzi which Hittite conquerors had picked up from Hurrian settlers in north Syria and had used in their texts between c. 1400 and 1200 BC. The two names diverged in their foreign impact. In the later eighth century, from the 730s onwards, Saphon is the name which the conquering Assyrians and their scribes adapted. The Greeks always held fast to Kasios and ignored Saphon.31

The reasons for this divergence can be explained. The Greek name ‘Kasios’ perhaps goes back to a contact in the Bronze Age, c. 1200 BC, when the neo-Hittite kings were still very powerful and Greek visitors to the nearby site at Sabouni on the Orontes heard the name ‘Hazzi’ from the locals. However, its survival among Greeks through the ‘dark’ centuries from c. 1150 to 950, when Greek visitors to the coast dwindled, or ceased altogether, is not attested. We should also look to the period c. 950–750, when Greek goods returned to the site of Ras el-Bassit near the mountain’s south side and then Greeks settled Al Mina at its northern foot. We have seen how even after the old Hittite kingdom’s fall, Hittite culture survived among the neighbouring kings of the north Syrian plain which lies to the Jebel Aqra’s north and east. These were the years when the neo-Hittite kingdom of Patina flourished inland behind Al Mina and its capital at Kinalua on the bend of the Orontes was unscathed. The name ‘Mount Kasios’ prevailed because of Greek contacts on the north side of the mountain, the site, above all, of the Euboean presence at Al Mina from c. 780 BC onwards. By contrast, the Assyrian scribes and compilers of place names listed sites as if they were coming up northwards from the far Phoenician side of the mountain: they adopted the name ‘Sapanu’ from the West Semitic speakers on that part of their conquered territory.

A mountain is a static landmark, unlike a travelling hero, a Daedalus or Heracles who could find so many homes. Yet it is most remarkable how this god, and even the mountain, travelled abroad. At first their relocations were not Greek at all, but Greek travellers then followed lines which Egyptians and Levantines had already laid. The travels of Mount Kasios remind us that Greeks were only one type of traveller on these busy east Mediterranean sea-lanes.

Long before any Greeks arrived in north Syria, the god of the mountain had travelled with visitors between Egypt and the coast of the Levant. His travels went far back in time and it is not surprising to find that c.

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