OMNIKA

“My child, why do you weep? What grief has come upon your phrenes (φρένες)? Speak—conceal not in noos (νόος) in order that we both may know,” so speaks Achilles’ mother Thetis as the fierce warrior weeps tears of wrath on the beaches of Troy (Il. 1.362-363). To be sure, noos likely translates as mind in English in the above passage. However, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey include a total of eight such words that may be rendered as mind, heart, or spirit: noos (νόος), thymos (θυμός), psykhe (ψυχή), phrenes (φρένες), prapides (πρᾰπῐ́δες), kardia (κᾰρδῐ́ᾱ), kradie (κρᾰδῐ́η), ker (κῆρ), and etor (ἦτορ). This complicated situation with Greek translations of mind is at the heart of this study’s empirical investigation. To wit, what is mind in the Il. compared to the Od.? The present investigation sought to quantify and compare the use of mental language in the Homeric epics by means of computational linguistics. Prior scholarly investigations have been mostly qualitative; the few quantitative studies conducted utilized miniscule sample sizes of English translations. Two studies were conducted. 17 translators who translated both the Il. and Od. into English were selected (within-subjects design). The texts were sanitized and compiled for lexical frequency analyses in Voyant, a digital linguistic analysis tool. Study 1 compared how often mental language terms appeared in both works. Results showed that total word density of mental language increased significantly from the Il. to the Od. in both English translations as well as in the original Greek version. Study 2 compiled an English glossary of mental language terms and counted the frequencies for the 34 total works. A paired-samples t-test was conducted to compare the mean mental language densities of the Il. and Od. across 17 translators. There was a significant difference in the mean densities for the Il. (M = 68.2, SD = 8.9) and Od. (M = 91.9, SD = 11.6) conditions; t(16) = -17.798, N = 17, p .001, d = -4.317. Further correlational tests as well as ANCOVA were conducted in order to determine if various factors could explain the large effect size. No significant results were observed or relevant. All hypotheses were supported. These data suggest that the Od. contains much more mental language than the Il. Implications and limitations are discussed.

An ancient Sumerian proverb may be read as “good fortune [is embedded in] organisation and wisdom.” The present centennial survey is solely about organizing the last one hundred years of scholarship for a Sumerian afterlife myth named “Inanna’s Descent to the Netherworld.” The initial discovery of artifacts with snippets of the myth can be dated to as early as 1889. English translations of the myth emerged around 1920 and were followed by numerous archaeological expeditions and subsequent translation efforts. Such efforts, by many scholars and institutions, resulted in an authoritative 2001 version of the myth published by the University of Oxford via the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (ETCSL). The 2001 version, titled “Inana’s descent to the nether world” is 412 lines long and utilizes over fifty cuneiform artifacts (sources). The impact of this work has been mainstream and interdisciplinary interest in Inanna, the myth, and her role in antiquity. However, the technical nature of studying ancient Sumer may alienate a broader audience. The survey contained herein attempts to organize and explain the key people, concepts, events, and institutions involved with the discovery of “Inanna’s Descent.” Non-technical readers can expect to learn how and why we arrived at the likely complete translation we have today. Light background information and a chronology of scholarly work are followed by a brief discussion on promising areas of further research. The appendix contains a comprehensive catalog of referenced artifact data.

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828) was a famous Spanish painter who is credited with painting a work titled Saturn Devouring One of His Sons. This work was one of over ten others known as the “Black Paintings,” which were painted on the walls of his Quinta home in Spain. The painting’s contents have been widely accepted as depicting a deity named Saturn, whose Greek equivalent is Cronus (Κρόνος). It is widely believed that the painting depicts a passage from the Greek mythological story known as the Theogony, attributed to Hesiod (ca. 700 BCE). The title and attribution stated above were assigned posthumously, not by Goya himself. No other authorship sources seem to be available. Prior investigations have relied on psychological inferences about Goya. The present investigation conducted an exhaustive literature review and then compared the painting's contents to Greek and English versions of Hesiod's Theogony. All three posited hypotheses were supported: (a) prior investigators seemed to rely on psychological analyses concerned with Goya’s mental state, despite a lack of objective evidence from the time period in question; (b) textual evidence from Hesiod’s Theogony did not provide support for Cronus being the figure depicted in the Saturn painting, and; (c) Grendel’s depiction in Beowulf aligned with the Saturn painting’s contents, textually and graphically. Further probing was conducted with regard to whether Goya could have profited from the materials and concepts found in the manuscript during his lifetime. The Beowulf manuscript was available to an artist between 1820-1823, and the plot of Beowulf was written about in European publications. Finally, the Beowulf manuscript’s contents included the Biblical story of Judith and Beowulf in the same spine, which corresponds to the adjacent location of the Judith and Saturn paintings in Goya’s Quinta home. Implications and limitations are discussed.