Walter Burkert (born Neuendettelsau (Bavaria), February 2, 1931), the most eminent living scholar of Greek myth and cult, is an emeritus professor of classics at the University of Zurich, Switzerland who has also taught in the United Kingdom and the United States. He has influenced generations of students of mythology since the 1960s, combining in the modern way, the findings of archaeology and epigraphy with the work of the poets, historians and philosophers. He has published books on the balance between lore and science in the followers of Pythagoras and more extensively on ritual and archaic cult survival, on the ritual killing at the heart of religion, on mystery religions, and on the reception in the Hellenic world of Near Eastern and Persian culture, which sets Greek religion in its wider Aegean and Near Eastern context. With an area of 70,553 km² (27,241 square miles) and 12. ... February 2 is the 33rd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1931 is a common year starting on Thursday. ... In religion and sociology, a cult is a group of people devoted to beliefs and goals which are not held by the majority of society, often religious in nature. ... The University of Zurich (in German: Universität Zürich) is the largest university of Switzerland. ... This article is about a system of myths. ... Events and trends The 1960s was a turbulent decade of change around the world. ... Archaeology or archæology or sometimes in American English archeology (from the Greek words αρχαίος = ancient and λόγος = word/speech) is the study of human cultures through the recovery, documentation and analysis of cultural and environmental data, including architecture, artefacts, biofacts, human remains, and landscapes. ... Epigraphy (Greek, επιγραφή - written upon) is the study of inscriptions engraved into stone or other permanent materials, or cast in metal, the science of classifying them, elucidating them and assessing what conclusions can be deduced from them. ... Pythagoras (582 BC – 496 BC, Greek: Πυθαγόρας) was an Ionian mathematician and philosopher, known best for formulating the Pythagorean theorem. ... Greece, officaly called the Hellenic Republic (Greek: Ελληνική Δημοκρατία), is a country in the southeast of Europe on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula. ... A map showing countries commonly considered to be part of the Middle East The Middle East is a region comprising the lands around the southern and eastern parts of the Mediterranean Sea, a territory that extends from the eastern Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf. ... Persia or Persian most often refer to: Persia The Persians, an ethnic group, also called Tajiks Persian language Persian (Pokémon) See also Iranian, Iranian peoples, Iranian languages and Aryan. ...

He is an impressive polyglot, being fluent in about 50 languages. Polyglot can mean: The property of speaking multiple languages A person that can speak many languages A book that contains the same text in more than one language, usually a bible such as the first polyglot bible the Complutensian Polyglot Bible A language that is a combination of other languages...

See also

• Greek religion

Greek religion is the polytheistic religion practiced in ancient Greece in form of cult practices, thus the practical counterpart of Greek mythology. ...

Further reading

• Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth, 1972.
• Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual, Translation, University of California, 1979.
• Ancient Mystery Cults, Harvard University Press, 1987: based on his Jackson Lectures at Harvard, 1982.
• The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age, 1998.
• Greek Religion (in German, 1977. Translated, Harvard University Press, 1987 ISBN: 0674362810. This has been widely accepted as a standard work in the field.
• Savage Energies: Lessons of Myth and Ritual in Ancient Greece, 2001.
• Babylon Memphis Persepolis: Eastern contexts of Greek culture, Havard University Press, 2004.

1972 was a leap year that started on a Saturday. ... 1998 is a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year of the Ocean. ... 1977 was a common year starting on Saturday (the link is to a full 1977 calendar). ...

External links