Wine, Women, and Revenge in Near Eastern Historiography: The Tales of Tomyris, Judith, Zenobia, and Jalila

Johan Weststeijn, 
University of Amsterdam

Introduction

This paper deals with the remarkable similarities between stories from three different cultural traditions: the Greco-Roman story of Tomyris, the biblical story of Judith, and two Arabic stories—one about Zenobia, queen of Palmyra, and another about Jalila, the cousin of the epic folk hero al-Zir. I will use the comparison between these four Near Eastern tales as an exegetical tool, and study them as a group in order to better understand the individual versions. In the words of the folklorist William Hansen:

The juxtaposition of narratives belonging to the same family is in itself a cognitively and aesthetically pleasurable experience for the investigator, revealing creative surprises that emerge when clusters of similar narrative ideas are shaped in unpredictable ways by different narrators in different societies in different times, each text lending insight into a neighboring formulation.

These four stories deal with wine, blood, and revenge,and in each of them a woman, the heroine, plays an important role in exacting this revenge. I will analyze William Hansen, Ariadne’s Thread: A Guide to International Tales Found in Classical Literature (Ithaca, 2002), 25. the relationship between these elements,and use anthropological literature to study the symbolic meaning and ritual role of wine, blood, revenge and women in the cultures of Near Eastern antiquity.
In her structuralist analysis of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry on vengeance, Suzanne Stetkevych has argued that in such poems, blood vengeance is presented as an inverted commensal meal.3
 Here I will argue that in these prose narratives from various Near Eastern backgrounds, blood vengeance by women is presented as inverted childbirth or as an inverted wedding. When placed in this network of metaphorical relationships,curious details from the individual tales that have hitherto puzzled modern readers will become more intelligible.
https://pure.uva.nl/ws/files/2781357/173984_Johan_Weststeijn_Wine_Women_and_Revenge_in_Near_Eastern_Historiography_.pdf

I WOULD SUGGEST THAT THE SOURCE OF THESE TALES ORIGINATE IN VARIATIONS OF THE SUMERIAN MYTH/TALE ABOUT THE GODDESS ANAT'S BANQUET, WHERE THE GODDESS ANAT INVITES AN NUMBER OF THE GODS TO A BANQUET WHERE UPON SHE TAKES DELIGHT IN SLAUGHTERING THEM FOR BETRAYING HER AND HER FATHER