Homer's secret

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 22.12.2007

Homer's secret is out," announces the FAZ in the Bilder und Zeiten supplement. Writer and translator Raoul Schrott puts together a fresh and multifaceted image of Homer. Homer, he writes, came from Cilicia, in what is South-Eastern Turkey today. "What makes his epos so unique are the parentheses which contain Greek fables and genealogies, Assyrian legal and contractual practices, prayers and sacrifice rituals, the most diverse realities as well as the names of thousands of people and places. His work is an encyclopaedia of its time. To this end, Homer was also a protohistorian and geographer bent on documentation. And as such, Homer emerges as a representative of that elite profession whose job it was to draft written documents of all kinds: a scribe who did his work within the administrative apparatus set up by the Assyrians in Cilicia."

Perhaps it reads better in German :-)

Best wishes for 2008 to all!

Judith

<a href="http://judithweingarten.blogspot.com"> Empress of the East</a>