Kinyras: The Divine Lyre by John C. Franklin (review)

Franklin's Kinyrasis an unusual book in more than one way. At over 800 pages, it is an unusually lengthy discussion of an ostensibly single topic, the legendary Cypriot king best known to Classicists from brief references in Homer and a few later authors. At the same time, it is remarkably wide-ranging in its lines of enquiry, pursuing its subject and the related theme of divinised musical instruments from Mesopotamia to the shores of the eastern Mediterranean, and considering en route numerous related issues that variously require literary, philological, archaeological, art-historical, and ethnomusicological approaches. It is rare to find an academic work prepared to delve into such a large array of sources, and in this case the result is an effective synthesis of information that constructs a composite picture not only of the elusive Kinyras and his Near Eastern counterparts but also of connections and interactivity across the eastern Mediterranean and the Near Eastern cultural spheres. The scope of enquiry is nevertheless used as a multifaceted tool to address a central problem, namely "the specific historical and cultural conditions" in which the Cypriot Kinyras can be connected with the deity Kinnaru attested in the cuneiform documentation of Ugarit (7), leading to the reconstruction of "the complete lifecycle of a mythological figure" (9).

From the outset the author presents this as a work that he hopes, despite its "Cyprocentric focus and special attention to musical matters, will be of more general interest as a detailed case-study of cultural interactions in the eastern Mediterranean" ( xx). Indeed, to some extent it is also a case-study in how to go about such research, highlighting the often unexploited potential for comparative studies and syntheses to enrich our understanding of relationships and communication between cultures—particularly in regard to questions like the one in focus here, which relies on quite a limited body of literary material from the Classical world (all the more so the further one goes back in time) and can be much illuminated by turning towards the ancient Near East. Despite referring to his forays into Near Eastern scholarship as "disciplinary trespassing," the author makes the point that Classicists cannot afford to ignore the Near East now that a number of collections aimed at non-specialists are available ( xxi), and it is certainly true that despite some important growth in this area both Classicists and Assyriologists still have more to learn about how best to work together to address research questions that traverse the Levantine seaboard. But to put the emphasis on the availability of works aimed at non-specialistsbelies the kind of engagement with Near Eastern scholarship on offer in this book. On the contrary, Franklin engages with the fine details of philological and historical scholarship on a wide array of Near Eastern as well as Greek texts, and if he sometimes does so from a non-specialist point of view (having limited knowledge of some of the Near Eastern languages as he freely admits, xx) this does not prevent him from consulting original materials, evaluating translations, weighing up informed conclusions and citing his sources quite meticulously.

The interdisciplinary methodology underlying the investigation does not in itself, however, guarantee the study's success. The sheer length of this book is a result of the multiple stages of enquiry Franklin uses to build up his case, with each section of the discussion contributing a point that will turn out to be relevant to the cumulative argument being constructed. The main body is divided into three parts, each comprising multiple chapters, and these are followed by a number of lengthy appendices treating aspects of the work that were less directly relevant to the book's central thesis.

Following a preface and introduction, Part One starts with divinised instruments in the Near East as a way into the cultural background of Kinyras, whose traits and whose...