Prof. Scott B. NoegelChair, Dept. of Near Eastern Languages and CivilizationUniversity of Washington

Book review:Mills, Donald H. The Hero and the Sea: PaUerns of Chaos in Ancient Myth.Wauconda, JL: Bo1chazy-Carducci, 2002.

First Published in:Journal of Near Eastern Studies 65 (2006),140-141.

140 JOURNAL OF NEAR EASTERN STUDIES VOL. 65 NO.2

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in the two literary compositions is not uniqueand corresponds to the semantic relation betweenthe twO types of verbal forms found elsewhere.This finding (which goes against earlier studiesthat dealt with the topic of the ventive in theEpic of Gilgamesh, originating in Landsberger'sabove-mentioned article) proves that as far as theusage of the ventive in literary compositions isconcerned, literary texts (at least the two literaryreuvres examined) do not differ from nonliterarytexts. It appears, therefore, that the rules guidingthe use of the ventive in Akkadian are commonto the entire Akkadian verbal system and thatthis morpheme's behavior is indifferent to genericcategories.

In sum, the reader of this monograph will ben-efit from the interesting introduction, from thecomplete and thorough bibliographical survey,and from the monograph's concluding remarks.A better way of presenting the data, the mainbody of this study, would have made the bookmore accessible and easier to use, but even in thisform Hirsch's work marks an important point inthe long way to a complete comprehension ofthe elusive ventive morpheme.

" / NATHAN WASSERMAN

Hebrew UniversityJerusalem

The Hero and the Sea: Patterns of Chaos in An-cient Myth. By DONALDH. MILLS. Wauconda,Illinois: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, 2003.

pp. viii + 200. $29.This refreshing interdisciplinary book has as

its focus an ancient mythic pattern, or "mytholo-

gem," that involves heroic struggles with wateryforms of chaos. For Mills such a pattern can befound in the Epic of Gilgamesh, Achilles' battlewith the River Schamander (Iliad), Odysseus'sbattle with Poseidon (Odyssey), and four perico-

pes from the Hebrew Bible-the Creation,Deluge, Jacob's wrestling match at the JabbokRiver, and the Exodus.

Since Mil1s is interested foremost by what is

universal about the mythic pattern, questions of

literary or historical influence are not consid-ered. Instead, Mills's methodology is markedly

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functionalist and grounded in the comparativestudy of religion and the field of ritual theory.Thus the observations and influence of Mircea

Eliade, Arnold van Gennep, and Victor Turnerfigure prominently. Eliade informs Mills's under-standing of myth as essentially cosmic in importand his conception of time and space as dividedinto the sacred and profane, a dichotomy thatMills finds at the heart of the "watery chaos"mythologem. Van Gennep and Turner inform his

application of the concept of liminality as anexpression of the chaotic, and his understandingof rituals as marking transformations in socialstatus, both of which he applies judiciously andwith much insight to the characters Gilgamesh,Achilles, Odysseus, and Jacob. Thus, each ofthese characters represents the liminal; each issituated between the mortal and divine worlds,

or in the case of Odysseus and Jacob, are sepa-rated from their homelands. Their struggles withwatery adversaries represent humanity's strugglewith aU that is chaotic in the world. In Gilga-mesh's case, this watery struggle is experiencedvicariously through Utnapishtim's account of thedeluge. Their eventual victories over chaos thus

serve to (re)define for these characters, and byextension the societies to which they belong, thelimits of their own humanity and their roles intheir respective societies. Their return and re-integration into their societies mark the end ofseparation and liminality, of social crisis andgrieving, and, consequently, their transitions backto normative society bear ritual dimensions as

rites of passage. As such, the mythologem may beread through the lens of ritual theory and under-stood as a". . . symbolic expression of the desire

to negate mythically and ritually the perils of so-cial transition and cosmic change" (p. 9). There-fore, these myths not only register the social andcosmic insecurities of the societies representedby these heroes, they function to impose andreify systems of social and cosmic order.

. . . these mythic narratives give vivid expression to theterrifying experience of the chaotic while providing the

conceptual framework by which ancient poets could

ritualize, in ways meaningful to their respective com-

munities, the hero's movement from chaos to victory.Because myth and ritual each serve to make intelligible

social organization and to clarify a multitude of prob-lematic human relationships, the riddle of the chaotic

APRIL 2006 BOOK REVIEWS 141"-../

lies behind every ancient mythmaker's struggle to ex-

press a sense of order in a world where chaos oftenseems to reign (p. vii).

For Mills, the struggle to achieve a sense oforder in a chaotic world is not limited to antiq-uity but is a timeless universal, paralleling themost recent advances in the field of chaostheory-a subject to which he turns in depth inthe final chapter. Here Mills argues that recentscientific discoveries of well-defined and often

predictable patterns and processes in chaotic.occurrences represent the modern equivalent ofancient mythmakers' attempts to make sense ofthe coexistence of order and chaos in the worldaround them.

This dynamic model of a universe as a chaotic system,neither random nor deterministic, has much in common

with the mythic worldview of the ancient storytellers,

who similarly saw the cosmos infused with chaotic

elements yet also working in a predictable and orderlyfashion (p. 177).

We are thus, inextricably linked to the ancientsby our desire to establish systems of order in as~emingly chaotic universe.

This work is clearly the result of a long period'--' of contemplation, both on the meaning of the re-

spective myths and on ritual theory. It is eruditebut easy to read, and it makes accessible anduseful much theory on the nature of myth andritual that too often escapes the attention ofscholars working on these ancient texts. To besure, not every scholar will find everything in thebook convincing. The chapter on the Epic ofGilgamesh is particularly in need of greater dia-logue with current scholarship, I and, at any rate,

I For example, Mills's discussion of Ishtar's ad-vances to Gilgamesh (pp. 32-40) should be read inconsultation with Tzvi Abusch, "Ishtar's Proposal andGilgamesh's Refusal: An Interpretation of The Gilga-mesh Epic. Tablet 6, Lines 1-79," Histo"ry of Religions26 (1986): 143-87, which in turn would provide evencloser parallels to the myth of Odysseus and Calypsoas Mills understands it (pp. 107-8, 124). I also notethat Enuma Elish might have provided Mills with aclearer example of the "watery chaos" mythologem,since while Gilgamesh indeed struggles with thoughtsof his own mortality, a struggle defined in part by Vt-napishtim's account of the chaotic deluge, he nowherestruggles directly with a watery adversary.

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like the chapter on the biblical myths, does notoffer the kind of linguistic depth found in thechapters on the Greek myths (Mills is a Clas-sicist by training). In addition, Mills appears un-aware of previous applications of van Gennep'stheories to Assyriological texts.2 The book alsodoes not integrate the historical contexts of thesemyths, despite that in some cases the historicalcontexts might support the author's understand-ing of the narrative as serving to ameliorate ormediate a period of social crisis. These criticismsnotwithstanding, Mills offers scholarly and layreaders alike a number of provocative insightsinto the meaning and function of these mythsand in so doing also makes a subtle, but power-ful, argument for the value of studying ancienttexts in the modern world.

SCOTT B. NOEGEL

University of Washington

2 See, for example, the treatment of the Adapa mythby Piotr Michalowski, "Adapa and the Ritual Process,"Rocznik Orientalistyczny 41 (1980): 77-82, and byShlomo Izre'el, "The Initiation of Adapa in Heaven,"in Jiri Prosecky, ed., Intellectual Life in the AncientNear East: Papers Presented at the 43rd Rencontreassyriologique internationale. Prague. July 1-5. 1996(Prague, 1998), pp. 183-87, and of Gilgamesh by Wil-liam L. Moran, "The Gilgamesh Epic: A Masterpiecefrom Ancient Mesopotamia," in Jack M. Sasson, ed.,Civilizations of the Ancient Near East (New York,1995), pp. 2327-36.

The Pantheon of Uruk during the Neo-Babylonian

Period. By PAUL-ALAIN BEAULIEU.CuneiformMonographs 23. Leiden and Boston: Brill/Styx, 2003. Pp. xxvi + 424 + 29 pIs. $1l8.This is a major contribution to the study of an-

cient Mesopotamia. I consider the several days ittook me to read it from cover to cover to be timewell spent.

The principal deities residing in the Eannatemple were IStar, Nanaya, Beltu-sa-Res, U~ur-amassu, UrkayHu, Gula, and dIGI.DU, in thisorder of importance.

A good bit of space is given to discussions ofthe clothing ceremony, the dates of which atUruk do not coincide with dates for it at Sippar,