Mary Bachvarova

Willamette University · College of Liberal Arts

A body of theory has developed about the role and function of memory in creating and maintaining cultural identity. Yet there has been no consideration of the rich Mediterranean and Near Eastern traditions of laments for fallen cities in commemorating or resolving communal trauma. This volume offers new insights into the trope of the fallen city in...

A body of theory has developed about the role and function of memory in creating and maintaining cultural identity. Yet there has been no consideration of the rich Mediterranean and Near Eastern traditions of laments for fallen cities in commemorating or resolving communal trauma. This volume offers new insights into the trope of the fallen city in...

The combined evidence of ancient Greek gynecological treatises, tragedies (Aeschylus’s Suppliants, Euripides’ Ion and Electra) and myths (Io, Perseus and Medusa) shows that women engaging in illicit or unwanted sexual activity were considered to suffer specific gynecological disorders that negatively affected their fertility or ability to give birt...

AbstractI examine the literary and conceptual background of a Hurro-Hittite ritual calling on divinized royal ancestors (dšarrena), characters from Hurro-Hittite song, members of the Sargonic dynasty, a variety of kings from far-off lands, and the “lord of Hatti” (KUB 27.38). I show that the ritual provides a unique glimpse of the complex Near East...

The Hurrian version of the Song of Release is shown to have the same metrical structure as the Hittite version. Therefore, it is argued that the meter of the Hittite instantiation of Hurro-Hittite narrative song is adapted from the Hurrian tradition.

The first detailed portrait of Hecate, in Hesiod's Theogony (411-52), strikingly fails to mention any of the features for which she was later known: witch, helper in childbirth, goddess of borders and crossings, associated with the underworld, often depicted carrying a torch. I provide here a new explanation of Hesiod's prayer, connecting it to Hec...

Recent linguistic research into how languages express situation-types, speaker's point of view, and transitivity affects how we should understand and teach the aspectual distinctions of Greek. I present here some ways in which to teach about the distinctions between the imperfect, aorist, and perfect; the thematic second aorist: and the interplay b...

A survey of Bronze Age Akkadian prayers and Hittite arkuwars, and Iron Age Anatolian, Greek and Latin curses shows a wide-spread conflation of prayer and forensic speech. The evidence is sufficiently abundant to allow us to trace an evolution in the conventions of prayer which keeps pace with changes in judicial procedure. Furthermore, the Hittite...

Recently published fragments of Hittite and other Near Eastern epics provide parallels for elements of debate scenes in the Iliad, and suggest the ways in which Bronze-Age story-traditions were reshaped as they crossed linguistic boundaries.

A new analysis of the metrical structure of the so-called poetic inscriptions of the Lydian corpus is undertaken, using a stress-counting analysis instead of a syllable-counting analysis. Previous attempts are briefly surveyed and put into the context of the diachronic study of IE versification. The syllable structure of Lydian is then examined, ba...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Committee on the History of Culture, August 2002. Includes bibliographical references.