This volume gathers proceedings from the fourth interdisciplinary meeting of the Associazione Orientalisti, held in Pavia in April 2007. The collection brings together scholarly essays on ancient Near Eastern languages, texts, and traditions—examining how knowledge of these cultures is transmitted, translated, and sometimes transformed across time and between cultures. The work is fundamentally expository, a series of specialized studies united by a common concern: how written and artistic traditions preserve, alter, and illuminate the ancient world.
“Traduzione di tradizioni e tradizioni di traduzione.”
The Core Argument
The Pavia Orientalisti Meeting and Its Framing
The fourth gathering of the Associazione Orientalisti took place in Pavia from April 19 to 21, 2007, marking a significant moment for the association. This was the first such interdisciplinary meeting held outside Rome and came more than three years after the previous assembly at the IsIAO. During the interval, the mailing list OrientaLista had sustained the association’s intellectual life. Chiara Perì’s introductory essay frames the Pavia days as a “Pavia translation” of the Roman meetings—a rendering into a new context that preserved essential purposes while introducing its own innovations. The chosen theme, emphasizing translation and tradition, served as a lens for evaluating the association’s work over six years of existence.
Perì articulates what the meetings were fundamentally about: not the preservation of anecdotes, but honoring the reasons that moved the founders in 2001 to establish the association in the first place. Scientific discussion, she insists, must remain open and accessible, nourished by genuine confrontation among different positions and disciplines, and welcoming to sincere non-specialists. The association’s members, many of whom held precarious academic positions as part-time researchers, had enriched their approaches through this very precariousness. Perì describes the Orientalisti as traditionalists devoted to the “great” tradition of oriental studies as experienced at the Dipartimento di Studi Orientali of La Sapienza in Rome, though she jokes that they are “no global.” The proceedings were made possible through internet publishing, particularly through Giuseppe Regalzi’s efforts. The volume itself was dedicated to Antonella Spanò and Delfino Ambaglio, the latter mourned by Alfredo Rizza for his role in introducing the Tavola Rotonda.
Marco Toti on Archimandrite Scrima’s Theological Vision
Marco Toti’s essay examines Archimandrite Andrei Scrima (1925–2000), a Romanian monk and major Christian-Orthodox theologian. Toti focuses on Scrima’s Il padre spirituale, originally published in Romanian as Timpul Rugului aprins in Bucharest in 1996, with a partial Italian translation appearing in 2000. Through symbolic hermeneutics and typological comparison, Scrima developed a morphological correspondence between religious forms, attending carefully to theological language. Toti traces Scrima’s life across three periods: his youth in the Roveto Ardente circle, active from 1944 to 1950 and continuing secretly until 1958, founded by S. Tudor under the influence of the starec Ioann Kulighin; his studies with D. Stăniloae and monastic tonsure in July 1956; his time in Benares and the founding of Deir-el-Harf in Beirut in 1959; his maturity as a Vatican II observer for Patriarch Athenagoras I and as a teacher at Le Saulchoir and Saint Joseph; and his final years after returning to Romania in 1992, when he was drawn to the “traditional orientation” and helped inspire the New Europe College.
Scrima’s theological work centered on the “word that opens” and the “word that is open,” exploring the wound in the Logos’s side and revelation as double concealment. His thinking engaged kénosis, the distinction between “Christic” and “Christian,” and apophaticism, grounding what he called “Christian gnosis” in Romans 10:2 and 1 Corinthians 2:14–3:1, with transmission rooted in Christ’s giving of the Spirit at the crucifixion.
Scrima’s Relationship to Traditionalism
Toti argues that evidence exists for Scrima’s “contiguity” with the traditionalist movement beyond his own published writings. He points to Scrima’s preface to Frithjof Schuon’s De l’unité transcendante des religions and testimonies from A. Plesu and A. Manolescu, both close to the “traditional orientation,” who knew Scrima and met with him frequently. A passage commenting on father Ioann’s testament-letter suggests a “topology of concealment”—places and centers where tradition has its sources, guarded by sentinels invested with special responsibility. This consciousness integrates orthodoxy in an exterior sense with what Scrima called Eastern tradition, extending to the borders of Asia, reflecting assonances found in other traditions under the sign of the East.
In Il padre spirituale, Scrima’s entire “cosmogonic” reference supporting the metaphysical value of the “blessing of grace” is drawn almost literally from René Guénon’s Le symbolisme de la Croix, though without source citation. Montanari argues this borrowing is problematic not merely for the missing attribution but substantively, since Scrima extrapolates passages from a text addressing a different question—the symbolic modalities of the swastika—and Le symbolisme de la Croix itself treats Islamic metaphysics and the esoteric science of the aissàwi, emanating from the prophet ‘Aissà as understood in Islam, particularly as practiced by shaykh Al-‘Alawi and shaykh Elish El-Kebir. This proximity appears close to Schuonian “supraformal syntheses,” though in a context of “symbolic hermeneutics” rather than expressly “operative” practice.
Scrima’s Critique and Adoption of Traditionalist Positions
Scrima criticized Guénon’s thesis regarding the conservation of authentic initiatic ways in Christian context, yet he adopted positions comparable to—and firmer than—Schuon’s regarding baptism’s and blessing’s “virtually initiatic” character, aligning also with J. Borella’s views. He affirmed Schuon’s thesis on the “particular” aspect of the incarnate Logos’s manifested form, citing Schuon’s claim that had Christ been the Logos’s unique manifestation, his birth would have instantly transformed the universe to ash. Scrima deemed this assertion “reasonable” yet erroneous somewhere.
Rizza’s Conclusion on Hittite Cuneiform and Translation Method
Alfredo Rizza brings to a close his examination of the Hittite cuneiform sequence AN US UN by proposing an interpretation centered on what he terms “hyperinformative deviation.” Rather than reading the sequence as a straightforward phonetic or grammatical construction, Rizza argues that the scribe may have deliberately explained the term ene—understood as syntactically isolated—by reference to the literary context and the underlying cosmological framework. This reading links DINGIR (“god”) to its conceptual counterpart UN (“man”), mirroring the logographic pairing AN.KI (“heaven and earth”). The insertion of US as phonetic complementation would prevent UN from being read as a phonetic complement of the accusative singular siun. Rizza acknowledges that his interpretation remains “rather hypothetical,” constrained by textual and evidentiary limitations that prevent establishing a high degree of probability. He notes that Bachvarova’s doctoral dissertation translates the same sequence as “A god is a person,” though he could not examine her detailed argumentation. Rizza frames his contribution as an opening rather than a closure, positioning the analysis as part of a larger scholarly conversation about how translation techniques in ancient Near Eastern texts reveal both grammatical particulars and broader cultural contexts. The ramifications of this interpretive fracture extend from linguistic specifics to the general literary and cultural background of the ancient world, legitimizing research that must confront the fundamental problem of translating across different traditions and different traditions of translation themselves.
Frulla on Hebrew Text and Greek Traditions in Exodus
Giovanni Frulla shifts the discussion to the relationship between the Hebrew biblical text and Greek traditions, particularly those circulating around the book of Exodus. He acknowledges the difficulty and complexity of this scholarly terrain, where authoritative studies and lively debate continue to examine the tensions between Hebrew and Greek versions, original texts and parallel traditions. Frulla proposes to offer simple reflections on how translation and tradition interact, using specific examples from Exodus. He begins with the Letter of Aristea, which in paragraph 310 declares that because the text was translated well, holily, and precisely in every detail, it should remain unchanged; the following paragraph curses anyone who would alter it, insisting the translation must be “preserved always imperishable and durable.” The letter’s purpose appears to be establishing an authoritative, incontrovertible text—yet this very insistence indirectly reveals that parallel and sometimes conflicting texts circulated in the Hellenistic era. Despite Aristea’s wish for textual stability, comparison of the Hebrew text, the LXX Greek translation, and other Greek traditions shows points where this enterprise fails, where different versions diverge significantly.
The Problem of Moses and Aaron’s Birth Order
Frulla presents his first case: Greek traditions attempting to make the biblical text coherent. At Exodus 7:7, after Moses’ flight to Midian, his theophany, God’s mission, and his return to Egypt, the verse provides temporal coordinates placing Moses and Aaron together and specifying their ages. The Greek version adds a phrase identifying Aaron as Moses’ brother and, more significantly, as the older brother. To understand this addition, Frulla returns to Exodus 2:1–2, where Moses’ birth is narrated. The phrase “the woman conceived and gave birth to a son” appears to suggest Moses is the firstborn, yet verses 4 and 7 mention a presumed older sister, creating an inconsistency. Scholars like Durham note this contradiction, attributing Aaron’s apparent seniority (mentioned in Exodus 4:14 and 7:7 as three years older) to the Priestly source. Propp hypothesizes that years passed between verses 1 and 2, observing that the formula in Exodus 2:2 appears elsewhere for Cain, Enoch, and Isaac—none of whom were their fathers’ firstborns. Jacob and Leah’s four sons in Genesis 29 all use this formula, as do Rachel’s slave and Rachel herself in Genesis 30, and Judah’s sons in Genesis 38. The formula appears three times for the prophet Hosea’s three sons. In each case, the action preceding the formula indicates union and physical contact between man and woman, with Exodus 2:1 suggesting consequentiality between marriage and conception. These parallels confirm the hypothesis that Moses was the firstborn, yet the problem of Aaron’s presence and role remains unresolved in the biblical narrative.
Ezekiel the Tragedian’s Reworking of Elim
Frulla examines how Jewish-Hellenistic traditions confirm and expand the biblical account. Demetrius mentions an unspecified number of springs and seventy palms at Elim. Ezekiel the Tragedian, in surviving fragments of his tragedy Exagoge, devotes verses to Elim (fragment 16, lines 243–253), remaining consistent with the Hebrew text while reworking it significantly. Ezekiel omits the Song of Moses, the Song of Miriam, and the desert journey with the waters of Mara—episodes that, as Jacobson suggests, might cast Jews unfavorably. Elim instead becomes a moment where God’s intervention shines clearly. Ezekiel expands a single biblical verse into a full scene: the Hebrews, exhausted from flight, discover rest in a comfortable place. In the next fragment, a strange bird resembling the Phoenix appears. Ezekiel assigns the oasis description to an explorer, probably sent to inspect the place and report to Moses, enriching the biblical version with vivid descriptive details. The explorer addresses Moses as “O eccelso Mosè,” describing a well-ventilated valley, a light like a column of fire at night, a shady meadow, flowing waters, rich deep earth yielding twelve springs from one rock, and many fruitful palm trunks—ten times seven—surrounded by waters with grass for animals.
The Oasis as Paradise and Divine Presence
The oasis description evokes Paradise and Eden through its common elements of trees and water. The explorer speaks of a euaet valley, best translated as “well-ventilated,” evoking divine presence through trees, water, and a wind recalling the breeze accompanying Elijah.
The Horned Serpent in Ancient Near Eastern Art
Benedetta Bellucci traces the iconographic journey of the horned serpent motif across ancient Near Eastern cultures, beginning with stamp seals from Falaika and the Rosen collection that depict serpents with distinctive horned features. She proposes that this image originated in southern Mesopotamia before traveling to Nuzi, where it became the canonical representation of a monstrous serpent used to illustrate myths such as Hedammu. Once absorbed into Mitannian artistic tradition, the motif spread to other cultures, where it continued to represent the monstrous serpent even when the specific mythological narrative changed. This pattern of transmission reveals how artistic conventions could persist across cultures while their mythological referents shifted, suggesting a complex relationship between image and narrative in the ancient world.
The Ashara Stele and Divine Triumph
On the Stele of Ashara, a horned serpent writhes in the grip of the storm god, its bull horns marking it as monstrous or divine. The serpent’s closed mouth and protruding tongue signal its defeat—no longer aggressive but already subdued before the god delivers the final blow with an axe. Unlike the Nuzi seal, which may illustrate a specific mythical episode, the Ashara composition emphasizes the god’s overwhelming power against Evil itself. The inscription, added later, transforms the scene into allegory: the defeat of the country of Laqè, compared to a serpent, becomes the triumph of the Assyrian sovereign aided by the god Assur. The image thus inspired the text’s language, transferring the political struggle between Assyrian kingship and Laqè onto a supernatural plane where divine order conquers chaos.
The Malatya Relief and Multiple Interpretations
Relief H from Malatya presents two deities confronting a gigantic serpent, inviting scholarly debate about its composition. Güterbock proposed a “cinematic” representation showing the storm god in two moments of action, while others identify the second figure as Tasmisu, the storm god’s brother, though mythological sources suggest different divine helpers. The storm god bears a lasso or rope, connecting to the binding motif found in the Illuyanka myth, where the seduced mortal Hupasiya wraps the monster in ropes. The serpent extends horizontally with its tail coiling in three spirals, and its back bears globules and vertical bands interpreted either as rain and hail—atmospheric elements the storm god weaponizes—or as sulfur stones and flames representing destructive chaos. Three figures wrapped in flames may symbolize the world consumed by chaos, saved only through divine intervention. Rather than narrating a particular myth, the relief may depict the generic struggle of order against chaos, a theme whose placement in the Lion Gate or temple precinct would reinforce its cosmic significance.
Neo-Assyrian Transmission and the Morgan Seal
The horizontal positioning of monstrous serpents appears again on Neo-Assyrian seals, notably Morgan 688, initially interpreted as Marduk fighting Tiàmat. Porada connects this seal with Nuzi 738, proposing that the dragon’s horizontal orientation reflects a “translation” from Mitannian to Neo-Assyrian representational contexts. The seal is now identified with a tale linked to Ninurta, though the female figure with tambourine recalls Ishtar’s seductions. Porada concluded in 1947 that regardless of which specific myth underlies these Assyrian representations, “the inspiration for their pictorial expression was received from the Mitannians.” Thus Nuzi 738, the Rosen seal, Morgan 688, and possibly Malatya relief H may represent three different mythical tales with three different serpentine antagonists, yet their artistic expression shares a common Mitannian matrix.
Myth, Iconography, and Human Intention
Bellucci addresses fundamental questions about the relationship between myth and seal imagery. Why did Puhi-senni, owner of Nuzi 738, choose to depict a mythological combat on his personal seal? Why did Neo-Assyrian commissioners select poorly carved frit seals depicting divine archers defeating the basmu serpent? These questions remain largely unanswered. In Near Eastern mythology, battles between divine forces and monstrous antagonists explain cosmic and atmospheric phenomena epically; a god’s victory represents the establishment of order against chaos—storms, floods, sandstorms—and explains human suffering, illness, and misfortune. Bellucci asks whether seal commissioners perceived this deeper meaning, whether they wished to transfer mythological truths onto the human plane through their chosen imagery. Mythical tales undergo constant variation, contamination, and re-elaboration, as do their artistic translations, but additional factors intervene for seals, particularly the taste of the commissioner and engraver. The relationship between myth and image thus remains complex and multivalent.
Textual Reconstruction and the Hittite Archive
Matteo Vigo’s examination of Hittite textual restoration begins with a fundamental problem: determining authorship of military events recorded in historical introductions. The expression “sara isparzasta,” referring to Suppiluliuma I, has been translated variously as “he became of age” or “he came to power,” producing radically different chronologies. Goetze’s 1940 reading establishes a terminus ante quem suggesting the sovereign participated in his father’s campaigns before accession, while Heinhold-Krahmer’s 1977 interpretation places these events at the moment of kingship itself. This single phrase’s meaning cascades into competing historical narratives, illustrating how translation choices reshape understanding of dynastic succession and military authority.
The burning of Hattusa presents another interpretive crux. The text records that Kizzuwatna became a border and the capital burned, yet a hesta-house was spared. Vigo argues that Goetze’s proposed integration “ak-kanta”—meaning “the dead” or “ancestors”—suggests a cult building, perhaps a cemetery, necessarily located outside city walls. If the hesta-house stood within the city, one must insert an adverb “only” to preserve logical coherence. Haas identifies it with the temple of the goddess Lelwani at Büyükkale, while Archi proposes metaphorical reading: the devastation reduced the capital to a “house of the dead.” Each interpretation carries archaeological and religious implications.
Yazilikaya and the Storm God’s Sanctuary
Whether the hesta-house connects to Yazilikaya remains uncertain. Singer’s integration proposal gains credibility from tablet photographs suggesting space for three additional signs at line 17’s beginning. One might theoretically propose that the NA huwasi of the Storm God of Hatti designated Yazilikaya’s sanctuary, yet this remains speculative. Fundamental questions persist: which sovereign between Tuthaliya IV and Suppiluliuma II built the NA huwasi, and why would such a monument appear in a treaty with Cyprus? These gaps reveal how fragmentary evidence forces scholars into educated guessing.
Bemporad’s Reattribution and the Nihriya Campaign
Andrea Bemporad’s 2002 reexamination of KBo IV 14 proposes reassigning it to Suppiluliuma II rather than earlier kings. The text emerges as a confidential letter from the already-crowned Suppiluliuma to a high-ranking military official who had served on the eastern front and fought alongside him at Nihriya. The letter’s function fits a project of strengthening kingship after accession. Bemporad’s analysis reveals that the Hittite-Assyrian conflict at Nihriya resolved in stalemate rather than victory. Tuthaliya IV may never have directly commanded operations, instead entrusting his second-born Suppiluliyama with conducting them. Bemporad identifies B\J-Sarrwna with Arnuwanda III, Suppiluliuma II’s elder brother, establishing a family structure previously obscured.
Integration and Attribution Dilemmas
Vigo proposes integrating line 17 as “The king of Assyria [who has dared to challenge him?]” to attribute KBo XII 39 to Suppiluliuma II. This hypothesis proves bold: a reigning Hittite king would scarcely reference in a Cyprus treaty an event predating his accession. If instead attributed to Tuthaliya IV, the emphasis on a militarily inconclusive event becomes incomprehensible. The reference to the goddess Istar as treaty guardian may not be casual; fragmentary Ugaritic documents record royal verdicts by Ini-Tesub and Tuthaliya IV regarding deportations to Alasiya, where Istar guarantees deportees’ oaths. These scattered textual echoes suggest broader patterns of divine witness and royal obligation.
The Delicate Art of Restoration
Vigo concludes that integration—the scholarly practice of restoring broken or missing text—remains profoundly delicate. Objective comparison of texts with each other and with archaeological data proves essential. The example of KBo XII 39 demonstrates how different integrations generate entirely different historical scenarios: one reading places events under Tuthaliya IV, another under Suppiluliuma II, each implying distinct political circumstances and military outcomes. This methodological reflection crystallizes the fundamental tension: scholars must translate texts faithfully while acknowledging that restoration choices inevitably shape historical interpretation, requiring perpetual critical vigilance to translate without betrayal.
Paola Poli and Neo-Hittite Iconography
Paola Poli shifts focus to Neo-Hittite monuments, arguing that these works best exemplify the phenomenon of translating traditions across cultures. Classification of reliefs variously termed Neo-Hittite, Syro-Hittite, Luwian, and Aramaic has long rested on subjective iconographic and stylistic criteria. The prevailing interpretive framework assumes monuments reflecting Assyrian artistic tradition date late, while those lacking such features are archaic. Yet improved epigraphic-philological analysis and new archaeological discoveries have clarified the Late Bronze to early Iron Age transition, opening perspectives requiring revision of earlier hypotheses.
Malatya as Emblematic Case
Malatya and its territory exemplify this interpretive complexity. Monuments there combine figurative elements with hieroglyphic Luwian inscriptions: the Lion Gate reliefs, stelae from Darende and Ispekçur, and rock inscriptions at GÜRÜN and KÖTÜKALE. J.D. Hawkins’s paleographic and philological reexamination established a genealogy of rulers claiming descent from Kuzi-Teshub, last attested king of Karkemish. Hawkins proposed a new dynastic sequence covering roughly one hundred years from the early 12th to early 11th century. Consequently, monuments bearing these rulers’ names must date to that span, not the 10th–8th centuries as iconographic-stylistic studies had suggested. Hawkins’s reconstructions immediately became fixed points in studying the so-called “dark age,”
Artapan’s Polemic Against Manetho
Caterina Moro’s scholarly reconstruction of the historian Artapan reveals a writer engaged in deliberate polemical work against Manetho’s account of the Exodus. Where Manetho had identified the departing Jews with the Hyksos invaders, Artapan presents Moses not as a military aggressor but as a benefactor of Egypt, a man who turns against his adopted homeland only when betrayed by his adoptive father’s envy. The choice to set this narrative during the reign of Sebekhotep IV appears integral to this strategy: by placing Moses in an era before Egyptian-Asiatic conflict emerged, Artapan neutralizes Manetho’s equation of Jews with destructive foreign occupation. The raids attributed to the “Arabs”—men of Moses’ father-in-law Raguel—are mentioned only briefly and lack Moses’ sanction, further distancing the Jewish leader from any association with invasion or conquest.
Moro argues that Artapan drew upon an Egyptian source now lost, likely a Greek translation of propaganda material from the Late Period, to construct this alternative history. The figure of Sebekhotep IV himself was historically significant—a king who perhaps ruled all Egypt for up to nine years, mounted expeditions to Nubia, and commissioned temples at Karnak. Yet beyond Artapan’s notice, knowledge of this pharaoh survives only through contemporary monuments, making the historian’s choice of this particular reign a deliberate scholarly move rather than an accident of transmission.
Artapan’s Double Apologetic Project
Interwoven with Artapan’s polemic against Manetho runs a second apologetic aim common to many Greek-writing Jewish authors: demonstrating the chronological priority and superiority of Jewish thought over Greek philosophy. This aim emerges against the background of the first book of Diodorus Siculus’ Bibliotheca Storica, formerly attributed to Hecataeus of Abdera but now recognized by scholars like Spoerri as reflecting first-century BC Stoic ideas. Moro identifies in Artapan’s text numerous allusions corresponding to passages throughout book I, suggesting that this source formed Artapan’s subtext. The historian does not quote verbatim, yet both authors survive indirectly through their influence on later writers.
In Artapan’s account, the deeds attributed to Moses—including his divinization—parallel achievements ascribed in book I partly to Osiris in his earthly life and partly to Sesostris, the idealized great king of Egypt. Artapan’s description of Moses’ Ethiopian expedition is notably more “realistic” than the grandiose campaigns attributed to Sesostris, suggesting it may derive from an earlier Jewish tradition about Moses circulating among the first Jews settled in Egypt. By presenting Moses as Orpheus’ teacher, and Orpheus as the figure who brought Egyptian cults and culture to the Greeks, Artapan accomplishes something remarkable: he places Moses at the origin not merely of Egyptian civilization but of Greek culture itself. In this way, demonstrating Moses’ authorship of Egyptian wisdom becomes equivalent to establishing Jewish priority over the entire Greek intellectual tradition.
The Nomes and the Sacred Animals
A striking example of how Artapan’s two polemical aims interweave appears in his account of Moses dividing Egypt into thirty-six nomes, assigning each an animal deity to worship. This number matches the division attributed to Sesostris in the Bibliotheca Storica, yet Artapan’s motivation differs significantly. Moses institutes this arrangement, the historian explains, to keep the kingdom secure for Chenefres: by organizing the masses into regional groups with distinct animal cults, he renders them incapable of unified revolt against royal authority. The parallel to book I of Diodorus is unmistakable—a king decreeing diverse animal worship and dietary taboos to prevent the people from conspiring against power. Yet simultaneously, this account performs a reversal of Manetho’s accusation: the Hyksos, in that hostile account, had killed and eaten sacred animals. By making Moses the founder of the very cults protecting these creatures, Artapan transforms the charge of sacrilege into proof of reverence.
The Tablets and the Problem of Transmission
Elio Jucci’s concluding essay opens by contemplating the tablets written by God’s finger on stone, inscribed perhaps in fiery letters, as described in Exodus. These tablets never reached the people of Israel except through Moses’ own transcription after he shattered them—whether God or Moses authored them remains ambiguous. Jucci compares this tangled genealogy to a forensic investigation of biological traces, noting that DNA itself is often described through the metaphor of writing and transcription errors. Behind such metaphors may lurk the hope or illusion of finally possessing a language beyond all human tongues—the language of which Lord Chandos spoke, a language in which mute things speak and in which perhaps in the tomb one will answer an unknown judge.
Voices at Sinai
The problem of translation becomes inseparable from the transmission of revelation itself. Jewish tradition’s reflections on the meaning of qoloth in Exodus—whether these were voices, words, thunders, or perhaps Qol as a divine hypostasis parallel to the Name, the Giona, or the Shekinah—pose the fundamental question: what did the people of Israel truly hear? Joseph Smith, founder of the Latter-day Saints, received from the angel Moroni eight golden tablets written in reformed hieroglyphics, along with the urìm and tummim—two transparent stones set in the rim of a breastplate like eyeglasses—enabling instantaneous translation. His Book of Mormon was printed in 1829 and presented publicly in 1830. Yet even at Sinai, Jucci notes, Jewish and Christian traditions often presuppose an angelic mediator, functioning much like the angel interpreters of prophetic and apocalyptic tradition. From the beginning, however, some viewed such mediation with suspicion, fearing—perhaps polemicizing against Gnostic tendencies—that the mediator’s presence signaled degradation, as the maxim warns: “translator, traitor.”
Inside the Book
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Key Ideas
The volume explores several interconnected concepts. Translation emerges not merely as linguistic transfer but as interpretive act—the rendering of a text or image from one medium, language, or cultural context to another inevitably involves choices that reshape meaning. Tradition refers both to the content transmitted (mythological narratives, religious practices, historical records) and to the mechanisms of transmission themselves. The essays repeatedly ask: when a myth is illustrated on a seal, when a Hebrew text is rendered into Greek, when an ancient Hittite treaty is reconstructed from fragments, what is preserved and what is lost or altered?
Several studies focus on bilingual and multilingual texts—documents in which two languages appear side by side, offering rare windows into how ancient scribes understood equivalence and difference. Rizza’s analysis of a Hittite-Hurrian passage from the Epic of Liberation examines the scribe’s choices in rendering conditional structures, repetition, and theological language from one language to another, arguing that apparent “errors” or deviations may reflect deliberate interpretive strategies rather than incompetence.
Iconography and myth form another recurring theme. Bellucci traces how a single image—a horned serpent in combat with a storm god—appears across multiple cultures and time periods, each iteration subtly altered by its new context. The motif travels from southern Mesopotamia to Mitanni to Neo-Assyria, and in each place it may represent a different myth, yet the visual formula persists. This suggests that artistic “translation” operates by different rules than textual translation; the image carries authority even when its mythological referent shifts.
The essays also engage textual fragmentation and reconstruction. Ancient documents survive in pieces—broken tablets, worn inscriptions, incomplete manuscripts. Scholars must integrate missing portions to make sense of what remains. Vigo argues that the choice of how to fill a lacuna can fundamentally alter historical interpretation, determining whether a text belongs to one king’s reign or another’s. Translation and integration thus become acts of historical judgment.
Themes
A deeper current runs through these studies: the instability of tradition. The volume’s title—Traduzione di tradizioni e tradizioni di traduzione (Translation of Traditions and Traditions of Translation)—captures a paradox. Traditions are meant to preserve; yet every act of preservation (writing down an oral myth, rendering a text in another language, depicting a narrative in art) changes it. Frulla’s examination of the Hebrew Bible and its Greek translations shows how the effort to stabilize a text—the Letter of Aristea‘s insistence that the Septuagint be preserved unchanged—itself reveals that multiple, conflicting versions were already in circulation. The Greek traditions “correct” the Hebrew text, making it coherent; in doing so, they create new meanings.
This touches on a crisis of fidelity. The classical translator’s dilemma—whether to render word-for-word or sense-for-sense—haunts these essays. Vigo invokes the old paronomasia “translator = traitor,” yet argues that some infidelity is necessary and even productive. A wooden literalism may betray the original’s intent; a free interpretation may illuminate it. The volume suggests that translation is not a failure to preserve but an inevitable and generative aspect of how traditions survive.
There is also an implicit theology of tradition at work, especially in Toti’s essay on Scrima. The Romanian theologian’s engagement with Guénon and Schuon raises questions about the relationship between exoteric (public, accessible) and esoteric (hidden, initiatic) knowledge. How is sacred tradition guarded and transmitted? What is lost when a tradition descends into the merely exoteric, and what is gained? These questions, rooted in Christian and Islamic mysticism, inflect the entire volume’s concern with how knowledge moves—or fails to move—across boundaries.
Finally, the essays reflect on disciplinary practice itself. The Orientalisti association, as Perì notes in her introduction, was founded by precarious scholars—part-time researchers whose marginality paradoxically enriched their work. The volume honors this tradition of open, interdisciplinary discussion, insisting that rigorous scholarship need not be isolated or dogmatic. The meeting in Pavia, held outside Rome and after a three-year pause, is itself a “translation” of earlier Roman gatherings, adapted to new circumstances yet faithful to founding principles.
Why It Matters
These essays matter because they model how ancient knowledge survives and transforms. In an era of digital reproduction and instant access, it is easy to imagine that texts and images are stable, transparent windows onto the past. This volume insists otherwise. Every ancient document we read has been copied, translated, integrated, interpreted, and reinterpreted. Understanding how that process works—how a scribe chooses between two Hurrian words, how an artist adapts a mythological motif, how a scholar fills a lacuna—is not pedantic antiquarianism but essential to historical literacy.
The volume also speaks to contemporary concerns about cultural transmission and translation. In a globalized world where texts, images, and ideas circulate rapidly across linguistic and cultural boundaries, the ancient examples studied here offer perspective. Translation is not a technical problem to be solved but a fundamental condition of cultural life. Traditions survive precisely by being translated, adapted, and reinterpreted; the alternative is not purity but death.
Finally, the work honors a particular scholarly community and ethos. The Associazione Orientalisti, as described here, represents a commitment to rigorous, open-minded study of the ancient Near East—a region whose languages, myths, and histories have shaped Western civilization yet remain partially obscure. By gathering specialists to discuss how traditions are transmitted and how translation works, the association insists that understanding the ancient world is not a luxury but a necessity for understanding ourselves.
