This article explores the significance of the following fact: in neither the Iliad nor the Odyssey does one find a simile about Zeus. I argue that just as ancient Near Eastern texts characterize a god by declaring it impossible to fashion a comparison about him or her, so the Homeric epics characterize Zeus by avoiding statements in the shape “Zeus (is) like X.”.

This article reconsiders the similarities between Aphrodite's ascent to Olympus and Ishtar's ascent to heaven inIliadBook 5 and the Standard BabylonianGilgameshTablet VI respectively. The widely accepted hypothesis of an Iliadic reception of the Mesopotamian poem is questioned, and the consonance explained as part of a vast stream of tradition encompassing ancient Near Eastern and early Greek narrative poetry. Compositional and conceptual patterns common to the two scenes are first analyzed in a broader early Greek context, and then across further Sumerian, (...) Akkadian, Ugaritic and Hurro-Hittite sources. The shared compositional techniques at work in Mesopotamia and the Eastern Mediterranean can be seen as a function of the largely performative nature of narrative poetry. This contributes to explaining literary transmission within the Near East and onto Greece. (shrink)