Käte Hamburger Kolleg

Lecture

Guest Lecture: Jan N. Bremmer (Groningen)

15 June 2015, 06:15 p.m. – 07:45 p.m.
FNO 02/ 40-46

Descents to the Underworld from Gilgamesh to Christian Late Antiquity

The lecture will trace the development of the idea of a descent into the underworld. It will argue that Assyria had an important influence both on Greece and Israel; witness figures like Odysseus, Heracles, Orpheus, but also Ezekiel and Enoch. The two traditions of Greece and Israel, originally separate, come together in early Christianity, where the genre of the descent to Hell developed through Late Antiquity, before gradually disintegrating during the earlier and High Middle Ages.