WHAT IS A KATABASIS The Descent Into The PDF
WHAT IS A KATABASIS The Descent Into The PDF
WHAT IS A KATABASIS The Descent Into The PDF
WHAT IS A KATBASIS?
The Descent into the Netherworld
in Greece and the Ancient Near East *
1. Introduction
Katbasis is a reality that is difficult to define, since it knows different
forms, and more often than not it is hard to set out what it is and what it is
not. In a presentation like this one, where the main aim is to introduce the
subject, I have to limit myself to discuss only a few faces of this complex
kaleidoscope.
I shall begin by laying out a provisional definition of katbasis. The
definition is necessary, since modern authors frequently talk about the term
without defining its meaning, as if katbasis would have a net content.
However, defining katbasis and determining which kind of tales may be
included under this name are not obvious or generally agreed upon. Instead,
there is a great diversity in the criteria from author to author. To cite some
examples, M. GANSCHINIETZ (1919) includes in it all kinds of tales related
to the Netherworld (e.g. the myth of Protesilaus, the of
Empedocles or the eschatological myths of Plato). R. J. Clark talks about
the Descent into the Underworld theme and specifies that
the theme itself is [...] inextricably connected with the mythological deeds of
the heroes Gilgamesh, Heracles, Odysseus, Orpheus, Peirithoos, Theseus,
Aeneas, and many other who descended alive and returned from the Land of
the Dead 1.
But Gilgamesh does not descend into the Land of the Dead, and
Peirithoos does not return. Therefore, either there are conflicting elements
in the definition or not all the cited characters lead a katbasis.
* Acknowledgements: This paper has been written thanks to the funding of the re-
search project FFI2013-43126-P. I am deeply thankful to Veronica Walker, who has
translated it into English, and to M. Herrero de Juregui, Ana Isabel Jimnez San
Cristbal, Raquel Martn Hernndez and M. A. Santamara, who read a first version of
the paper and offered many interesting suggestions. The responsibility for any
remaining mistakes is exclusively mine.
1. R. J. CLARK (1978), p. 3.
16 LES TUDES CLASSIQUES
leaves out from his list some of the previously discussed aspects, such as the
success or failure, or the nature of the protagonist.
After seeing these examples of what is defined as a katbasis it appears
that its meaning is taken for granted with too much confidence. Con-
sequently, I have set out to propose a definition of these tales that includes
those led by gods and men. It will take into account the stories where the
traveller fails and remains in the other world for ever, and will try to de-
termine some features characteristic of the katbasis which set it apart from
similar, but different tales. The scope of my study will be focused on the
katbasis in the Near East and the oldest ones from the Greek world, since
they are to some degree homogeneous. Nevertheless, I will also make some
mentions of Egyptian or later Greek material. On the other hand, some vari-
ations that will experience great success in later dates are not included in the
scope of this study and will not be mentioned (for example, experiences in
which the soul is believed to leave the body during a state of altered con-
sciousness or shamanic descents).
2. Points of departure
I shall begin by establishing some points of departure that are just as
obvious as necessary.
(1) Although the katbasis may be connected on a secondary level to a
ritual or religious manifestation of another kind such as the mysteries, it is
above all a tale, a text.
(2) Based on the existing texts, a true katbasis could be defined as: a
tale of the journey to the subterranean world of the dead led by an ex-
traordinary character while alive who has a determined purpose and is keen
on returning. We can only talk about katbasis stricto sensu when all these
elements appear in the tale.
(3) As we will see, the katbasis can be placed in the sphere of a group
of heterogeneous texts with which it shares some characteristics. In some
cases some of these texts that I will refer to further on are also labelled as
katabseis. I would like to emphasize that, although some themes, phrases
or vocabulary can be found in katbasis and in other types of narrative
forms to the point where the lines between one type and the other are blurry,
we can find a set of criteria by which to separate the katbasis from this
group of heterogeneous texts, marking out the analogies and differences that
exist between them.
18 LES TUDES CLASSIQUES
3. Types of narrative
3.1. Non-relevant criteria for this study
It is obvious that although some parameters like whether the form in
which the katbasis has survived is prose or verse, or a long or short tale ,
are relevant to any literary study, they cannot be taken into account in this
study since the texts have survived through secondary sources or in a frag-
mentary state, which prevents us from knowing its structure and other fun-
damental characteristics.
3.2. Narratives
Two kinds of narratives can be found:
(a) First person narrative, where the voice of the traveller can be heard.
This is the case of the Nkyia of the Odyssey, where Odysseus refers to the
characters that he sees along his travel 7.
The katbasis of Orpheus, of which only references remain, could have
had the same type of narrative judging from a passage from the Orphic
Argonautica whose anonymous author, impersonating Orpheus, refers to his
own work in first person 8.
I told you also what I saw and perceived
when I went the dark way of Taenarum into Hades
trusting in my lyre and driven by love for my wife.
A text of this type has survived albeit fragmentarily to our days, a
Papyrus of Bologna, with descriptions that are very similar to those found
in Book VI of Virgils Aeneid: the poem is narrated in first person by
someone who is in the Netherworld, perhaps accompanied by a guide. The
narrator sees a series of sinners, as well as a judgment of the souls and the
situation of some of the souls of the blessed. The basic narrative outline
appears to be a sequence of sentences that start by a relative he who
and would be followed by the description of the punishments that are
applied to the different kinds of sins 9.
(b) A second type of narrative is a tale where an omniscient narrator
conducts the story, using the third person. He does not appear as a witness,
as it happens in the descent of Inanna.
of Orpheus. Most of the time the traveller must be a demi-god, mortal son
of a god, like Heracles, Theseus, or Orpheus. But this status is not usually
enough, since the protagonist normally requires divine assistance. When di-
vine assistance that may legitimize the transgression is not provided, it is
very difficult to attain one of the determinant factors of the katbasis: to re-
turn from the realm of the dead.
In this sense, it is usually relevant to the success or failure of the jour-
ney whether the katbasis arises from a decision of the traveller or if it is
due to a request, since this usually has a relation with legitimating the trip.
5. Motivations
5.1. Determining factors and varieties
The motivations of the katbasis can be very different, since they are
affected by cultural factors. These factors are different in Greece and in cul-
tures from the Near East and may vary even depending on the nature of the
tale. When I talk about motivations, I use the word in two ways: (a) the mo-
tivations of the traveller (internal to the text), by which I mean the defined
purpose of a hero or a god for starting such a journey to the Netherworld, or
(b) motivations of the text (external to it), that is, the reasons that lead the
author to compose a tale showing these characteristics.
5.2. Motivations of the traveller
In the provisional definition of katbasis I have insisted that the travel-
ler has a purpose. Since the katbasis is the Great Journey, these purposes
are of great importance: it may grant possession of special goods, access to
superior knowledge, etc. The most common intention of the traveller is to
bring something from the Underworld. The repertoire of things to obtain is
very wide.
(a) It may be an inhabitant of the Underworld. Within this group there is
also a great variety, from the extreme case of Peirithoos, who wants to bring
back the queen of Hades, Persephone; to Heracles, who seeks to bring one
of the monsters that guard the land Cerberus , and Orpheus, who wants
to get back his beloved deceased wife. In the case of Dionysus, he is trying
to transform Semele into a goddess, or to recover an admired poet like
Euripides for Athens, in The Frogs. Curiously, in the descent of Inanna there
is an inversion of the motive: a beloved person has to travel to the
Underworld in her place because her return to the world has to be
compensated. This introduces us to another typical characteristic: nothing
can be extracted with impunity from the Netherworld. That is why Heracles
has to take Cerberus back to its place.
WHAT IS A KATBASIS? 23
(b) It can also be a special object. It is not the case of the Greek kat-
basis, but we find this in the katbasis of Enkidu, who travels to the Nether-
world to find the marvellous ball and mallet of Gilgamesh, or in the
Egyptian katbasis of Setne, where the protagonist and his foster brother
Inaros go inside the tomb of the prince Nanepherkaptah in search of a
magical book written by the god Thoth and find the mummy of the prince
and the ghosts (akh) of his sister, his wife, and his son. Since Setne brings
the book to the world of the living, there are a series of misfortunes until he
gives back the book of magic to its legitimate owner.
(c) The purpose of the journey may be more abstract; very often the
traveller seeks to gain knowledge or information of the Underworld, or de-
termined details that a specific deceased may know, considering that the
dead may have special knowledge that is banned to men. Since the dead are
out of the realm of time, those who have not lost their capabilities may be
able to unite present, past, and future. This purpose is evident in the Nkyia
of the Odyssey, and even clearer in Aeneass descent, although in this case it
contains strong political implications. Prestige could also be another ab-
stract purpose. Undoubtedly the hero who undertakes a katbasis sees his
prestige increase notably. Prestige or power is precisely what Inanna seems
to look for in her descent.
5.3. Motivations external to the text
The text may have other motivations.
(a) In the case of heroic protagonists, the katbasis frequently allows to
explore the limitations of the human being or the relationships with the
gods 17. The hero is presented before the Great Test that will highlight his
extraordinary qualities or, on the contrary, may transform him in the
paradigm of the Great Mistake to secure the differences between men and
god. This is the case of Enkidu, in the tablet XII of Gilgamesh, and
similarly that of the katbasis of Theseus and Peirithoos. It can even be
connected to an apotheosis, like in the case of Semele after the descent of
Dionysus.
(b) In the case of poets or philosophers, it served to increase the prestige
of their knowledge or the works of the protagonist who has had access to
new religious or philosophical experiences through the katbasis.
Pythagorass katbasis together with his knowledge of his previous
existences had to contribute to the prestige of the character. For this
reason, the most drastic way to counteract these purposes was to accuse of
18. Zalmoxis: Hdt., IV, 94-96. Pythagoras: Hermipp., 20 Wehrli; Hieronym., Phil.,
42 Wehrli. Cf. Raquel MARTN, J. A. LVAREZ-PEDROSA (2011), p. 167-173.
19. Gilgamesh, XII, 102ff.
20. London, P. BM 604, cf. M. LICHTEIM (1980), p. 140.
21. PMich. inv. 7 (III-IV AD). Cf. H. D. BETZ (1980).
22. About the Getty Hexameters, cf. Ch. A. FARAONE, D. OBBINK (ed.) (2013).
23. Sarah Iles JOHNSTON (2013), cf. A. BERNAB, Raquel MARTN-HERNNDEZ
(2013).
WHAT IS A KATBASIS? 25
6. Successes and failures
The purposes of the traveller may be fulfilled or not. The hero who sets
forth on a katbasis can reach absolute success, that is, obtain the objec-
tives. That is the case of Heracles: he descends to find Cerberus, attains his
goal, returns safely, and continues with his activities. In other cases, the
journey may end in absolute failure, like in the case of Enkidu in the tablet
XII of Gilgamesh, where Enkidu fails to recover Gilgameshs objects and is
trapped in Hell. Peirithooss audacity to find a wife in Hades is punished: he
remains there as a deceased person, forever. There may be intermediate
results, like that of Inanna, who suffers a partial failure. She did not succeed
in gaining power, which seemed to be her main purpose, but she managed to
be rescued and have someone die in her place. The purpose of Odysseus is
to question Tiresias on how to get back to Ithaka (Od., XI, 164-167). He
does not obtain this information through Tiresias (it will be Circe who will
tell him), but nevertheless it cannot be said that his journey was in vain,
since he finds out relevant information about the fate of mankind and his
own death.
The success or failure has to do with whether the journey is legitimate
or not and it seems to be clear that those who set out for a lawful katbasis
and have divine assistance can return and may obtain their goals, whilst
those who initiate it with illicit purposes fail and are forced to stay in the
Netherworld. Those who do not follow the instructions also fail the task,
like Enkidu in Gilgamesh XII. Orpheuss katbasis presents some
exceptional features, as we will see further on.
Lastly, some unexpected effects unrelated to the hero may derive from
the katbasis, some sort of collateral damages that falls upon others. That is
the case of an episode of the Descent of Ishtar in its Akkadian version (in
the Sumerian myth of the descent of Inanna this situation is supposed but
not explicit). When the goddess is imprisoned in the Netherworld, there are
harmful effects in the world which have to do with her positive influence,
that is, sexual desire, which threaten the existence of the world.
cision by Orpheus to engage in the journey with the purpose to rescue his
wife, a task that disrupts the order of things. The poet disturbs the Nether-
world and threatens it, given that he intends to erase the borders between
life and death. It is for this reason that his endeavour cannot succeed. How-
ever, the result of this travel is a twofold paradox. Firstly, Orpheus manages
to legitimize his journey by persuading Hades and Persephone with the use
of his music, who granted him his request. Therefore, even if for only a
short period of time, his power to transgress nature is sanctioned by the
gods with the liberation of Eurydice. What was not given to him beforehand
was granted to him afterwards.
Nonetheless, from a Greek perspective, the subjugation or weakening of
the infernal gods will cannot be total: in the intentionality and finality of the
tale the prevention against any alteration of the natural order is included.
For these reasons, the rescue is conditioned like in many popular tales to
the fulfilment of a specific action. Orpheus cannot turn to look back until he
is out of the Netherworld this topic has been studied superbly by
J. BREMMER (2004). The singer breaches this condition and looses
Eurydice. He can return to the world of the living, but alone.
The second paradox is that a determined religious group that we call the
Orphics speculated on the fate of the souls after death and took Orpheus as
the ideal candidate through which to expose their ideas, appealing to his
prestige as a privileged witness, as a singer, and as a poet. Not only did
Orpheus experience the Netherworld, he was also capable of telling the
world about it. In this way, the acquisition of knowledge regarding the fate
of the souls becomes the greatest achievement of Orpheuss travel, although
this was not the original purpose. In the hands of the Orphics, he becomes a
transmitter of truths from the Netherworld, a mediator between gods and
men, and the voice that dictates to the mortals how they should behave if
they wish to attain a privileged position in the afterlife.
In the lyric poetry we can also find descriptions of the Netherworld, es-
pecially in some Pindaric fragments of threnoi 25 where the will to console
the relatives of the deceased may lead the poet to give an idyllic description
of what awaits the deceased in the other world. We also find a brilliant
description in the Second Olympian, 66-80.
This last case shares with the katbasis the desire to transmit a determi-
ned ideology and to serve as a dissuasive element against bad ritual or
moral behaviour. What distinguishes these productions from the katbasis is
the absence of a traveller that is alive, and the absence of a direct
connection between the living and the dead.
8.2. The extraordinary or dangerous journey
A genre that is particularly related to the katbasis is the extraordinary
journey, often to the margins of the world. The tablet IX of the Gilgamesh
has many components of a katbasis: the hero starts a journey in search of
the extraordinary gift of immortality. He must cross nearly impassable
obstacles like the door of the Masu Mountain guarded by scorpion men. He
has people who assist him in his journey, like Siduri who takes him before
the boatman Ursanabi. The boatman then navigates the waters of death car-
rying the hero to the presence of Utnapishtim. The journey ends with a
partial failure: Gilgamesh obtains the plant of eternal youth but it is taken
away from him by a snake while the hero is bathing in a fountain. It is
paradigmatic in so far as it marks the borders between god and men,
between mortals and immortals that the hero can transgress in a certain way,
but his failure is an indication that the state of things cannot be modified.
These are all the elements of a katbasis except for the main one:
Gilgamesh does not descend to the Netherworld nor the realm of the deads.
Instead he travels to remote spaces, to the margins of the world.
Within the Greek world we can cite the Argonautica, although little is
known of the ancient versions of this fabulous journey. The outline of the
journey to a far away land in search of a valuable object, the extraordinary
obstacles like the Symplegades, or the Sirens with their seductive song of
death, are very much infernal.
On another level, although within the same section, there is an interest-
ing paper by M. HERRERO (2011), that proves that Priams journey to
Achilless quarters in Iliad, 24 is depicted at several points as a journey to
Hades.
8.3. Instructions to the deceased: gold tablets and Egyptian mortuary texts
The katbasis also has common features with a very particular type of
literature: the instructions to the deceased to reach the Netherworld found in
Egyptian literature, especially in the Book of the Dead, and in the Greek
sphere, especially in the Orphic gold tablets associated with the Bacchic
mysteries. In both cases death is conceived as a journey. There is a transit
around the infernal geography, with obstacles for the travellers and dia-
logues between the deceased and the characters he encounters, and there is a
goal to attain. For this reason, Ch. Riedweg proposes that there may be a
katbasis underlying in these texts 26.
However, what radically differentiates the texts on the gold tablets from
a katbasis is that the characters on the lamellae are not extraordinary living
beings travelling alive to the Netherworld and having the intention to return.
They are deceased persons that wish for the opposite; to stay there and free
themselves from the unending cycle of reincarnation. This would
correspond very well with what J. Assmann calls mortuary texts 27, i. e.
texts intended primarily to aid a deceased person in attaining a blissful
afterlife and which have been studied in relation to them by
Th. M. Dousa 28. An example of this form of presentation would be the gold
tablet from Hipponion (OF 474.6-10) 29. A very similar scene can be read in
the Egyptian Book of the Dead (Spell 58) 30.
On the other hand, similarities have been found between the gold tablets
and the book of the dead in the Hittite text called The Voyage of the Immor-
tal Human Soul (KBo 22. 178 + KUB 43.109), where a divinity accompa-
nies what appears to be the soul of the first man to a precise location, in
order to grant him a position of privilege, as a paradigm of the path that
certain deceased must follow, perhaps those to whom specific rites were
conducted for this purpose 31. The text seems to say that the deceased who
do not fulfil certain requirements will have an unhappy life in the
Netherworld.
8.4. Dialogues with the dead: euocationes, apparitions and dreams
The conversation with the dead is common also between the katbasis
and the euocationes, like the apparition of the ghost of Darius to his wife
34. Str., IX, 5, 17; IG IV, 2, 1, 128: l. 2930; cf. Yulia U STINOVA (2009), p. 98, with
bibliography.
35. Yulia USTINOVA (2009), p. 191-199.
36. Bodily, not only in only in soul, as Yulia USTINOVA (2009, p. 189) points out. Cf.
W. BURKERT (1969), (2008).
37. H. A. HOFFNER (1988), p. 15.
WHAT IS A KATBASIS? 31
enraged and leaves to the steppe, and barley and wheat no longer ripen;
cattle, sheep, and humans no longer become pregnant. We also find similar
elements in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter (305-313). When the goddess
fails in her attempt to create a god from the human child Demophon after
her daughter is raped by Hades and taken to the Underworld, she becomes
enraged and this has disastrous consequences. It is unnecessary to point out
the differences between these texts and a true katbasis. There is no journey
to the world of the dead, nor a dialogue with them. There is no attempt to
obtain something, and no intention to return. All in all, the similarity is
merely an accessory detail.
9. Conclusions
The katbasis is a literary theme that can be used in different spheres
and for various purposes. The journey to the absolute Other, the world of
darkness, of the dead, outside the here and now, provides a special perspec-
tive, a vision from outside ourselves. The difficulty of the travel to the Neth-
erworld, the communication with death and the god, and the access to a spe-
cial form of knowledge make the visit to the world of the dead a feat re-
served only to a few chosen ones. It is therefore fundamental that the travel-
ler has divine assistance that will legitimize in some way a trip that contra -
venes the order of the world. Likewise, the extraordinary journey may entail
some benefits to the traveller though it may be cause of the opposite: his or
her doom. It is also a test for the heroism that brings about prestige; it is di-
rect access to true knowledge, since it originates from the Other World. It is
also an ideological guarantee that legitimates determined literary, ritual, or
religious realities. It may even affect human behaviour, exhorting people to
be pious or inhibit them from engaging in negative actions out of fear of a
punishment waiting for them in the Underworld.
The katbasis has to be defined as a specific type of narrative character-
ized by the following features: an extraordinary protagonist that is better off
with the assistance of a god, who travels alive to the subterranean world of
the dead with a well defined purpose and with the intention to return (irre-
spectively of whether his purposes or the return are fulfilled). Each author
plays in his tale with the parameters of legitimacy, violence, success or fail-
ure, or collateral damage, always within the precise ideological contexts of
their culture and time.
Nevertheless, the katbasis can also be placed within the typology of
texts about extraordinary voyages from which it nurtures and over which it
exerts influence in a complex game of various texts: the epic and lyric in-
fernal descriptions, the extraordinary voyages, the instructions to the dead,
the evocations, apparitions or dreams where the deceased intervene, the des-
32 LES TUDES CLASSIQUES
Alberto BERNAB
Universidad Complutense
[email protected]
WHAT IS A KATBASIS? 33
References
Ch. A. FARAONE, D. OBBINK (ed.) (2013): The Getty Hexameters. Poetry, Magic
and Mystery in Ancient Selinus, Oxford.
M. GANSCHINIETZ (1919): Katbasis, RE X, 2 , col. 2359-2449.
F. GRAF, Sarah Iles JOHNSTON (2013): Ritual Texts for the Afterlife: Orpheus and the
Bacchic Gold Tablets, 2nd ed., London - New York.
M. HERRERO (2011): Priams Catabasis: Traces of the Epic Journey to Hades in
Iliad 24, TAPA 141, p. 37-68.
H. A. HOFFNER (1988): A Scene in the Realm of the Dead, in E. LEICHTY,
M. J. ELLIS, P. GERARDI (ed.), A Scientific Humanist. Studies in Memory of
Abraham Sachs, Philadelphia, p. 191-199.
Sarah Iles JOHNSTON (2013): Myth and the Getty Hexameters, in Ch. A. FARAONE,
D. OBBINK (ed.) (2013), p. 121-156.
M. LICHTEIM (1980): Ancient Egyptian Literature. A Book of Readings III,
Berkeley - Los Angeles - London.
W. LUPPE (1978): Abermals das Goldblttchen von Hipponion, ZPE 30, p. 23-26.
Raquel MARTN, J. A. LVAREZ-PEDROSA (2011): Creencias escatolgicas de los
pueblos tracios, in A. BERNAB, M. KAHLE, M. A. SANTAMARA (ed.),
Reencarnacin. La transmigracin de las almas, entre oriente y occidente,
Madrid, p. 163-178.
Ch. RIEDWEG (1998): Initiation - Tod - Unterwelt: Beobachtungen zur Komunika-
tionssituation und narrativen Technik der orphisch-bakchischen Gold-
blttchen, in F. GRAF (ed.), Ansichten griechischer Rituale. Geburtstag-
Symposium fr W. Burkert, Stuttgart - Leipzig, p. 359-398.
Anna-Leena SIIKALA, F. DEZ DE VELASCO (2005): Descent into the Underworld,
in Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd ed., IV, 2295-2300.
O. TSAGARAKIS (2000): Studies in Odyssey 11, Stuttgart.
Yulia USTINOVA (2009): Caves and the Ancient Greek Mind, Oxford.
C. WATKINS (1995): Orphic Gold Leaves and the Great Way of the Soul: Strophic
Style, Funeray Ritual Formula, and Eschatology, in ID., How to Kill a Dra-
gon. Aspects of Indo-European Poetics, Oxford, p. 277-291.