#Stephen Berkhoff

[davidsankey]

Speculation on Y. Pestis Bronze Age European plague, and the plague depicted in Sophocles rendition of Oedipus legend - which has gone on to inspire reworkings of the tale down to the present day (including Freud)

The following is PURE SPECULATION.  3 things conjoined -a while ago I greatly enjoyed Mark-Anthony Turnage's "Greek" https://youtu.be/8Tgp3K6TU2Y  , an opera based on Stephen Berkhoff's East End updating of Sophocles  "Oedipus Rex". This "In Our Time" on it reminded me that the story was (1) set in the Bronze Age , and (2) Thebes was suffering with a "plague" that Oedipus's Answer to the riddle of the sphinx cures https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001mlm4   . The thing is - there was indeed a real-life plague in the Bronze Age, which we now know infected people in Britain also,  https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-38393-w and caused by the familiar Yersinnia Pestis bacterium that also caused the Black Death  ..... Could this be the "smoking gun" that traumatised a population who, uncomprehending the scale of the tragedy wove it into a myth that influenced people over centuries (including Freud)   down to the present day?????  We probably will never know, but it is worth considering    

Phylogeny, Cladogram and distribution map from  https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-38393-w/figures/1