The Epic of Gilgamesh exerted substantial influence on the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems written in ancient Greek during the eighth century BC. According to Barry B. Powell, an American classical scholar, early Greeks were probably exposed to Mesopotamian oral traditions through their extensive connections to the civilizations of the ancient Near East and this exposure resulted in the similarities that are seen between the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Homeric epics. Walter Burkert, a German classicist, observes that the scene in Tablet VI of the Epic of Gilgamesh in which Gilgamesh rejects Ishtar's advances and she complains before her mother Antu, but is mildly rebuked by her father Anu, is directly paralleled in Book V of the Iliad. In this scene, Aphrodite, the later Greek adaptation of Ishtar, is wounded by the hero Diomedes and flees to Mount Olympus, where she cries to her mother Dione and is mildly rebuked by her father Zeus.