Peter James and Anthony Marinus van der Sluijs

      This paper is devoted to compare the figure of the classical mythological figure of Phaethon (from Ovid's Metamorphoses 1. 750–2. 400) with his possible precursor, i.e. the Hurrian deity 'Silver', mentioned in the Song of Silver .
      Despite a possible origin of the myth has been already retraced by Gantz in some fragments of a drama by Euripides entitled Phaethon , the authors of the present contribution try to highlight some possible comparisons with the Near Eastern 'God Silver', attested in the aforementioned Song of Silver preserved in a Hittite version from Ḫattuša and in other parallels.
      A direct connection of this god with the city of Urkesh is established thanks to the mention of his father Kumarbi defined in the text as “the Father of the city Urkesh“ furthermore, as Phaethon searched his father throughout the land of the sunrise which bordered on his Ethiopian home, thus Silver reached the city of Urkesh in quest of his father Kumarbi.
      Last but not least, the authors underline how “the Hurrians localised at least some of the Silver story in the region around Urkeš in northern Mesopotamia, the only placename mentioned, and Buccellati & Kelly–Buccellati 2009 (67–69) have argued that the montains that Silver wandered in search of his father would have been the range north of Iraq” (p. 245). In the end, the whole myth regarding Silver could be strictly located in the vicinity of Urkesh, as stressed by Archi, who recognized that “the songs of Silver and Ullikummi refer to Urkeš as the residence of Kumarbi” (p. 246). Thus, the myths related to Silver can be seen for sure as a excellent specimen of the Hurrian culture.

[M. De Pietri – November 2019]