The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth: this is the kind of book Dr. Casaubon was trying so hard to write ("A Key to all Mythologies"). It was fascinating to get to know the Near Eastern gods, whom I had previously encountered as mere faceless villains in the Hebrew Bible, and fascinating to come across traces of polytheism in the Hebrew Bible. The chapter on the epic of Gilgamesh as a source of the Iliad was especially moving. The book's length and critical apparatus may look intimidating, but in fact it's for anyone interested in mythology or philology. One had the thrilling sense that this is as far as we can go — West follows certain threads all the way to Sumerian literature, which is over 4000 years old. Beyond we'll never know.

Last summer I met a Palestinian, a translator by profession, who told me that the Hebrew word for grain or cereals, "dganim," is related to the Philistine god's name "Dagon." He was a god of agriculture and of the harvest. And the Hebrew word for "sun" is practically identical to the name of the Babylonian sun god. And one of the Hebrew months, Tammuz, is named after Dumuzi, the Sumerian goddess's Inanna's shepherd lover — analogues of Venus and Adonis, according to West.