Francesca Stavrakopoulou

It's probably not.

Literature circulated all over the ancient world.

That's why we've got lots of different versions of Noah's Ark even before Noah was invented, if you like.

That story is much older than Noah himself.

The hero is named other things in Mesopotamian texts.

Psalm 104 does have incredible parallels with certain parts of the great hymn to the Aten that we find.

Yeah.

I mean, lions are a key cultural motif all over the ancient world.

But interestingly, that psalm also has references to Yahweh riding on the clouds, as I mentioned before.

That psalm also has loads of allusions to Baal as a thundering god, as a warrior god.

And so this combination of motifs, it kind of looks like, wow, have they taken poetry from ancient Ugarit up in Syria?

And have they taken poetry from ancient Egypt?

Is this direct influence or borrowing?

Yeah, but I don't think that somebody stood in the court of the temple on which the great hymn to the Atum was written and copied it down and then took it off to ancient Judah and then wrote it down.

Look, lads, look what I've got here.

Yeah, look what I found.

I think we can find clues, the Armana letters, so a 14th century archive of texts.

I've not thought about those texts being compared to Ribita.

But yes, the Amman letters, so 14th century, from various kings of the city-states across the southern Levant are writing to our friend Akhenaten and talking about various things.

And the language they use is doing exactly the same thing as we find in Psalm 104.