Abstract

The early Presocratic philosophers at times viewed both earth and water as . However, there are a number of problems connected with discovering the exact ideas of these thinkers on this subject. In order to study these problems, the works of five Ionian Presocratic philosophers, Thales, Xenophanes, Anaximander, Anaximenes, and Heraclitus, were considered and analyzed. ;In Part I this work shows that previous analyses of the ideas of these five philosophers on water and earth cannot produce a consist- ent theory which explains all of the relevant fragments, due to a lack of a consistent method of analysis and the absence of context. The method used in this work is structuralism. ;In Part II the historical background of the Mediterranean area is considered. In Part III two creation myths are analyzed using struc- turalist techniques. The Enuma Elish is analyzed first because it is nearly complete. Using the information acquired in this analysis, the Baal and Anat Cycle from Ugarit is analyzed. It is shown that water and earth were considered in the Semitic-speaking Near East to be the primordial entities of which the universe is made. However, these two elements are seen to have had an ambivalent image, being both life-giving, fertilizing, and beneficial and sterile, chaotic, and destructive. ;In the Conclusion it is shown that the relationships between water and earth in the Near Eastern myths are the same as those in the Ionian fragments. In both systems water and earth have ambivalent images, being both life-giving and chaotic, both linked to becoming and the underworld. It is further shown that the Ionian Presocratics added to this opposition one between water-earth and another sign composed of , , and fire. The Ionians are then shown to have postulated a universe similar to that of Plato's Timaeus. This view of the Ionian Presocratics makes it possible to understand the views of Thales, Xenophanes, Anaximander, and Heraclitus in a consistent way