‘Silver’: A Hurrian Phaethon

Abstract

It is proposed that the story of the Hurrian deity ‘Silver’, as portrayed in the Late Bronze Age Song of Silver, is a plausible precursor to the classical myth of Phaethon. Shared motifs include the teasing of the young hero, the revelation by his mother of his father’s divine identity, a temporary assumption of power in heaven, a clash with the god of thunder, a disastrous episode involving the Sun and the Moon, and an etymology meaning ‘radiance’. As the Phaethon myth also seems to contain Semitic elements, it is argued that the source of the classical story was the region of northern Phoenicia to Cilicia, or Cyprus.

The Fall of Phaethon in Context: A New Synthesis of Mythological, Archaeological and Geological Evidence

“…On one hand, an extensive body of comparable themes is found in global mythology. On the other, scholars have long sought the origins of the Phaethon tale in the Near East-a line of reasoning we endorse (for references, see van der Sluijs 2006;2009a;James & van der Sluijs 2012; van der Sluijs & James 2013: 306-308). We will review the evidence for both categories of data in turn.…”