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Crossing the water (1)

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Topics (move over topic to see place in topic list)

01 Religious and ideological doctrines and imagery
04 Religious and philosophical literature and poetry



 		Keywords
netherworld
rivers
Period
5th century BCE
Greek Classical Age 		Channel
Greek poets
Old Testament

Text
Theodicy 16-17:
Certainly our fathers are given over, and go the way of death: they cross the river Hubur, according to the ancient saying.

Job 33:28:
He has redeemed my soul from crossing the watercourse, and my life will see the light.

Aeschylus, Seven against Thebes 854-860:
But sail upon the wind of lamentation, my friends, and about your head row with your hands’ rapid stroke in conveyance of the dead, that stroke which always causes the sacred slack-sailed, black-clothed ship to pass over Acheron to the unseen land where Apollo does not walk, the sunless land that receives all men.

Sources (list of abbreviations) (source links will open in a new browser window)
Aeschylus, Seven against Thebes 854-860
Job 33:28
Theodicy 16-17

Bibliography

West 1997, 155-156West, Martin L. The East Face of Helicon. West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth. Oxford: Clarendon Press 1997.

Amar Annus


URL for this entry: http://www.aakkl.helsinki.fi/melammu/database/gen_html/a0001215.php

Illustrations (click an image to view the full-size version in a new window)

Fig. 1: The Greek god Hermes, who escorted the shades of dead mortals down to the banks of the River Styx, conducting a dead youth to Charon’s boat. White-ground Lekythos (oil flask) attributed to the Sabouroff Painter, ca. 450 BCE (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 21.88.17).

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