Orphic literature Orphism is the name given to a set of religious beliefs and practices originating in the ancient Greece, ancient Greek and Hellenistic world, associated with literature ascribed to the mythical poet Orpheus, who descended into the Greek underwo ...

, Erikepaios (), also spelled Ericepaeus, was a title for the god

Phanes In Orphic cosmogony Phanes (, genitive ) or Protogonos () is a primeval deity who was born from the cosmic egg at the beginning of creation. He is referred by various names, including Erikepaios "Power" () and Metis "Thought". Mythology ...

, mentioned in Orphic poetry and the associated

Dionysian Mysteries The Dionysian Mysteries were a ritual of ancient Greece and Rome which sometimes used intoxicants and other trance-inducing techniques (like dance and music) to remove inhibitions. It also provided some liberation for people marginalized by Gre ...

. It is a non-Greek name for which no certain interpretation has been found.

Discussion

Scholars have long been perplexed by the name ''Erikepaios'', and naturally, most of them have attempted to derive it from Greek etymology, however this seems questionable linguistically. The name has also been thought to have Hebrew origins because of its resemblance to ''erekh appayim'', "slow to anger." It has been argued, even in antiquity, that the name ''Erikepaios'' was an Oriental import. Thus,

John Malalas John Malalas (; ; – 578) was a Byzantine chronicler from Antioch in Asia Minor. Life Of Syrian descent, Malalas was a native speaker of Syriac who learned how to write in Greek later in his life. The name ''Malalas'' probably derive ...

, the 6th century CE Antiotian

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human species; as well as the ...

, derives the name from the language spoken in his region. The name is first mentioned with certainty in the Gurôb papyrus, a

text of the late 3rd century BCE. The mythographer

Otto Gruppe Otto Gruppe (18 July 1851, Berlin – 27 November 1921, Berlin) was a German mythographer, remembered for his ''Griechische Mythologie und Religion-Geschichte'' (1906), in which used surviving texts to survey the historical development of Gr ...

suggested the Phanes-myth appeared in its original form in

Babylonia Babylonia (; , ) was an Ancient history, ancient Akkadian language, Akkadian-speaking state and cultural area based in the city of Babylon in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq and parts of Kuwait, Syria and Iran). It emerged as a ...

. Thence it spread over the Near East, and took root particularly in

Syria Syria, officially the Syrian Arab Republic, is a country in West Asia located in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to Syria–Turkey border, the north, Iraq to Iraq–Syria border, t ...

and

Asia Minor Anatolia (), also known as Asia Minor, is a peninsula in West Asia that makes up the majority of the land area of Turkey. It is the westernmost protrusion of Asia and is geographically bounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Aegean ...

. The gods of Babylon themselves were not imported, but the myth was attached to the local deities of the districts to which it spread. Erikepaios became important in a now-lost Orphic theogony referring to by modern scholars as the "

Rhapsodic Theogony Orphism is the name given to a set of religious beliefs and practices originating in the ancient Greek and Hellenistic world, associated with literature ascribed to the mythical poet Orpheus, who descended into the Greek underworld and returned ...

", which was likely composed in the 1st century BC or AD.Meisner, p. 1. It is known through summaries in later

neo-Platonist Neoplatonism is a version of Platonic philosophy that emerged in the 3rd century AD against the background of Hellenistic philosophy and religion. The term does not encapsulate a set of ideas as much as a series of thinkers. Among the common id ...

authors.

Notes

References

* Meisner, Dwayne A., ''Orphic Tradition and the Birth of the Gods'',

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the publishing house of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world. Its first book was printed in Oxford in 1478, with the Press officially granted the legal right to print books ...

, 2018.
Online version at Oxford University PressGoogle Books
Greek gods Ancient Greek religion {{Greek-deity-stub