taras
dicaduca
'scuse my curiosity but I'm looking for the etimo of the word 'taras' as it
is the origin of my hometown (taranto). Is there someone who can shed a
light on it?
Thank you for any contribution
dd
mb
dicaduca
"mb" <azyt...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1161813583.7...@i3g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
>
>
> On Oct 25, 2:15 pm, "dicaduca" <dicaducamad...@dica.com> wrote:
>> hello,
>> 'scuse my curiosity but I'm looking for the etimo of the word 'taras'
> http://dougsmith.ancients.info/feac50tar.html
>
thank you for the interesting link.
Actually I am only looking for the etimo of the word in question , not for
news on the town and its origins, which I already know.
Regards
dd
mb
I thought it mentioned that Taras was the personal name of the
mythologic figure, son of (I think) Poseidon and connected to things
maritime. I also remember wondering about the root and finding only a
blank (and perhaps, as usual, some bold theory in Graves). I'll check
that when I get to my books.
dicaduca
>
> dicaduca wrote:
cut
>> Actually I am only looking for the etimo of the word in question , not
>> for
>> news on the town and its origins, which I already know.
>
> I thought it mentioned that Taras was the personal name of the
> mythologic figure, son of (I think) Poseidon and connected to things
> maritime. I also remember wondering about the root and finding only a
> blank (and perhaps, as usual, some bold theory in Graves). I'll check
> that when I get to my books.
>
Very kind of you. I can't recall where I found that it could draw from
sanskrit 'tarassah' (sea), it could have relations with theresa (name),
zend acva-taras (mule), analogy with a greek island thera (santorini), but
these references aren't very convincing, I admit.
mb
I see now that the remarkable Babiniotis has something different from
the vague suggestions (like the above) that I had seen in old stuff. It
takes us, however, only one step further: The name is that of the river
near the town, and there is a theory of Illyrian origin, < darandos =
oak / acorn [only possibly cognate to drys]. This is a dictionary
entry, so sources are not mentioned.
Two things to add: I seem to remember that my gazetteer (not handy
right now) had another river Taras up North (Epirus? look it up) and
there is a town Darandos in Bithynia (no idea how it would have an
Illyrian name). There is also the naming of the rather obscure male
mythologic figure after a river (if the hero was not invented later by
the Spartan colons and named after the town). There is, I see, a Zeus
tarantaios from Bithynia (if you have the patience,
http://www.oeaw.ac.at/kal/mythos/Syn02.pdf)
Unrelated: The donkey has also become "terési" in Modern Greek slang
up to the last century (now dead), from Turkish slang (insulting)
teres, from possibly the Iranian origin you mention.
dicaduca
There is, I see, a Zeus
tarantaios from Bithynia (if you have the patience,
http://www.oeaw.ac.at/kal/mythos/Syn02.pdf)
Ouch! I am overwhelmed....let me have a glance on it and I'll have you know
thanx, see you later
dd
Douglas G. Kilday
mb wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> I see now that the remarkable Babiniotis has something different from
> the vague suggestions (like the above) that I had seen in old stuff. It
> takes us, however, only one step further: The name is that of the river
> near the town, and there is a theory of Illyrian origin, < darandos =
> oak / acorn [only possibly cognate to drys]. This is a dictionary
> entry, so sources are not mentioned.
> Two things to add: I seem to remember that my gazetteer (not handy
> right now) had another river Taras up North (Epirus? look it up) and
> there is a town Darandos in Bithynia (no idea how it would have an
> Illyrian name). There is also the naming of the rather obscure male
> mythologic figure after a river (if the hero was not invented later by
> the Spartan colons and named after the town). There is, I see, a Zeus
> tarantaios from Bithynia (if you have the patience,
> http://www.oeaw.ac.at/kal/mythos/Syn02.pdf)
I doubt that the place in Bithynia, with its thematic inflection, has
anything to do with Taras in Magna Graecia, which is an nt-stem. This
fact makes me think that Taras is native Greek. A borrowing from
Illyrian or some other indigenous language would be unlikely to have
-a:s (from *-ants) in the nom., -antos in the gen., etc. In fact
<Tara:s> reminds of <tala:s> 'enduring, suffering, wretched' whose
inflection usually follows <mela:s> but which has forms preserved by
Hipponax and Callimachus indicating that it was originally a
participial nt-stem, the verb being represented by <etalasa> 'I
endured' etc., poetic 1st aor. beside the usual 2nd aor. <etle:n>, from
PIE *telH2-. I suspect that <Tara:s> is the participle of an obsolete
Greek verb derived from PIE *terH2- 'to pass through, overcome'.
Applied to the river, Taras could refer to its passing through a range
of hills or other obstacles on its way to the sea, or to its providing
an overland passage for tradesmen wishing to avoid the sea-route
through the Straits of Messina. Applied to the son of Poseidon, the
name might simply be an epithet 'The Overcomer' or the like having
nothing to do with the river or the city named after it.
mb
Douglas G. Kilday wrote:
> mb wrote:
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > I see now that the remarkable Babiniotis has something different from
> > the vague suggestions (like the above) that I had seen in old stuff. It
> > takes us, however, only one step further: The name is that of the river
> > near the town, and there is a theory of Illyrian origin, < darandos =
> > oak / acorn [only possibly cognate to drys]. This is a dictionary
> > entry, so sources are not mentioned.
> > Two things to add: I seem to remember that my gazetteer (not handy
> > right now) had another river Taras up North (Epirus? look it up) and
> > there is a town Darandos in Bithynia (no idea how it would have an
> > Illyrian name). There is also the naming of the rather obscure male
> > mythologic figure after a river (if the hero was not invented later by
> > the Spartan colons and named after the town). There is, I see, a Zeus
> > tarantaios from Bithynia (if you have the patience,
> > http://www.oeaw.ac.at/kal/mythos/Syn02.pdf)
>
> I doubt that the place in Bithynia, with its thematic inflection, has
> anything to do with Taras in Magna Graecia, which is an nt-stem.
Both seem to be -nt- with the same nominative Taras (as reported by
Stephanos and Hermolaos of C/nople), only that the Bithynian had also
explicitly been called "darandos" (same hypothetical "Illyrian" origin
as proposed for the river name). Which doesn't mean much, of course,
given that the nominalization of the root (> -ntas) is not exclusively
modern.
> This
> fact makes me think that Taras is native Greek. A borrowing from
> Illyrian or some other indigenous language would be unlikely to have
> -a:s (from *-ants) in the nom., -antos in the gen., etc.
Agreed, there isn't much to support the Illyrianity etc. of the word,
but not for the reason above. Analogic contraction is as possible as
(re)nominalization of the root.
> In fact
> <Tara:s> reminds of <tala:s> 'enduring, suffering, wretched' whose
> inflection usually follows <mela:s> but which has forms preserved by
> Hipponax and Callimachus indicating that it was originally a
> participial nt-stem, the verb being represented by <etalasa> 'I
> endured' etc., poetic 1st aor. beside the usual 2nd aor. <etle:n>, from
> PIE *telH2-. I suspect that <Tara:s> is the participle of an obsolete
> Greek verb derived from PIE *terH2- 'to pass through, overcome'.
Not impossible either.
> Applied to the river, Taras could refer to its passing through a range
> of hills or other obstacles on its way to the sea, or to its providing
> an overland passage for tradesmen wishing to avoid the sea-route
> through the Straits of Messina. Applied to the son of Poseidon, the
> name might simply be an epithet 'The Overcomer' or the like having
> nothing to do with the river or the city named after it.
Having a hero named for a river seems more likely than an abstract
epithet. Besides, inventing a Poseidonian hero after the fact and
naming him after the city would not be unexpected.
Franz Gnaedinger
Douglas G. Kilday wrote:
>
> I doubt that the place in Bithynia, with its thematic inflection, has
> anything to do with Taras in Magna Graecia, which is an nt-stem. This
> fact makes me think that Taras is native Greek. A borrowing from
> Illyrian or some other indigenous language would be unlikely to have
> -a:s (from *-ants) in the nom., -antos in the gen., etc. In fact
> <Tara:s> reminds of <tala:s> 'enduring, suffering, wretched' whose
> inflection usually follows <mela:s> but which has forms preserved by
> Hipponax and Callimachus indicating that it was originally a
> participial nt-stem, the verb being represented by <etalasa> 'I
> endured' etc., poetic 1st aor. beside the usual 2nd aor. <etle:n>, from
> PIE *telH2-. I suspect that <Tara:s> is the participle of an obsolete
> Greek verb derived from PIE *terH2- 'to pass through, overcome'.
> Applied to the river, Taras could refer to its passing through a range
> of hills or other obstacles on its way to the sea, or to its providing
> an overland passage for tradesmen wishing to avoid the sea-route
> through the Straits of Messina. Applied to the son of Poseidon, the
> name might simply be an epithet 'The Overcomer' or the like having
> nothing to do with the river or the city named after it.
Pleased to read that PIE *terH2- means to pass through,
overcome. Suits me fine, as my hypothetical Magdalenian
TYR means he who overcomes, inverse RYT means a spear
thrower. TYR may be combined with ARC for cave bear:
ARC TYR --- he who overcomes (tyr) a cave bear (arc).
This would be the origin of Arthur, a dragon slayer - remains
of the long extinct cave bear Ursus spelaeus have been
regarded as remains of dragons. TYR would have become
a halfgod of justice and war in the region of Armenia, where
he was linked or even identified with Heracles (see the
Proceedings of the Annual International Indo-European
Conference at the University of California, volume 14 or 15
or 16) This halfgod became the nordic Tyr, god of justice
and war, also Greek tyrant. Inverse RYT became ancient
Greek rhytaer, spear thrower. Tarent lies between the Ionian
Sea and the Mar Piccolo that forms kind of a "cave" on the
map, evoking ARC TYR as the one who overcomes a cave
bear, which, in this case, would have been ships captured in
the Mar Piccolo. The halfgod Taras was the son of Poseidon,
originally a river god, then the god of the seas, alternately
Taras was considered the son of Heracles, who was
associated or even identified with Tyr ...
Regards Franz Gnaedinger
Franz Gnaedinger
An addendum: the mother of Taras was the nymph Satyrion.
Her name contains the word Tyr. You may also think of the
satyrs, who came from wooded mountains and "overcame"
nymphs in their sleep. "Satyr" would combine SA and TYR.
Magdalenian SA means downward, and TYR he who overcomes
- satyrs coming down from their wooded mountains and making
love to sleeping nymphs (overcoming them sexually). There is
still a Torre Satyrion near Torent, reminding of Taras' mother.
Franz Gnaedinger
The original name of the nypmh was Satura. Plautus uses
satura in the sense of pregnant. Saturn may come from
Etruscan saterne. If the name of the God of sawing comes
from SA TYR, he was the one who overcame (with fertility)
from above ...
Peter T. Daniels
<u> and <y> are alternative transliterations of Upsilon. Satura IS
Satyra.
mb
Franz Gnaedinger wrote:
...
> An addendum: the mother of Taras was the nymph Satyrion.
> Her name contains the word Tyr. You may also think of the
> satyrs, who came from wooded mountains and "overcame"
> nymphs in their sleep. "Satyr" would combine SA and TYR.
> Magdalenian SA means downward, and TYR he who overcomes
Car TYRes were so named because they overcome the friction of the soil.
They stopped doing so in the US, though.
dicaduca
"Douglas G. Kilday" <fuf...@chorus.net> wrote in message
news:1161927559.9...@e3g2000cwe.googlegroups.com...
> Applied to the river, Taras could refer to its passing through a range
> of hills or other obstacles on its way to the sea, or to its providing
> an overland passage for tradesmen wishing to avoid the sea-route
> through the Straits of Messina.
This is absolutely to be excluded as the river taras is a little more than a
water runlet, a few yards long and, even in ancient times wouldn't have
allowed a passage neither to a trout
Yusuf B Gursey
IIRC from persian taras "mule"
dicaduca
"Franz Gnaedinger" <fr...@bluemail.ch> wrote in message
news:1161960812.3...@i3g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
>
> An addendum: the mother of Taras was the nymph Satyrion.
> Her name contains the word Tyr. You may also think of the
> satyrs, who came from wooded mountains and "overcame"
> nymphs in their sleep. "Satyr" would combine SA and TYR.
> Magdalenian SA means downward, and TYR he who overcomes
> - satyrs coming down from their wooded mountains and making
> love to sleeping nymphs (overcoming them sexually). There is
> still a Torre Satyrion near Torent, reminding of Taras' mother.
>
with remains of a Roman villa dug in the rocks by the sea. As far as I know
it is one of the two places of the legends on the origin of Taranto (the
other being the river taras). If it can help, I remind that in the local
dialect the pronunciation of the town is * tard' *.
Franz Gnaedinger
dicaduca wrote:
>
> At about ten miles from the town there is still a locality, named Saturo,
> with remains of a Roman villa dug in the rocks by the sea. As far as I know
> it is one of the two places of the legends on the origin of Taranto (the
> other being the river taras). If it can help, I remind that in the local
> dialect the pronunciation of the town is * tard' *.
Thanks for informing me about the locality named Satura.
There is also a village or town named Eracle in the bay
of Tarent. Heracles points to a Greek settlement, while
the Etruscan god Saturn, an Etruscan word is saterne
(or saterna ?), might perhaps indicate Etruscan presence
in the bay. Heracles was associated or even identified
with Tyr the sun archer, as seen in early Armenian art
(Proceedings of the Annual UCLA Indo-European
Conference, volume 14 or 15 or 15). Magdalenian TYR
--- he who overcomes. Inverse RYT was a spear fighter,
or a lance thrower, also an archer. Ancient Greek rhytaer
means archer, also protector. This morning I did a quick
test and found a permutation group, TYR RYT; TRY YRT,
RTY YTR, which confirms the importance of TYR. So
TYR as the archetypical fighter and overcomer must have
been omnipresent in the ancient world, to be found in
the Caucasus and in Italy as well. In Italy he would have
been SA TYR, he who overcomes (tyr) from above (sa),
Etruscan saterne, Roman Saturnus. This god ruled before
Jupiter took over (as Cronos before Zeus took over).
Saturn was originally a very beloved god, his era was
a golden one. He overcame from above, he overcame
the plagues and difficulties and dangers of life, and he
overcame from above with fertility. Plautus used satura
for pregnant. We still have the word saturate, saturated,
to fill and satisfied. A German proverb says Alles Gute
kommt von oben -- all good things come from above,
from God, that is. This must have been true in the era
of Saturn, all good things came from above, from the
supreme god who ruled in the golden era. The sexual
connotation is easy to see: one is overcome by desire.
Just consider the cupidos: they are angels with bow
and arrows, archers who overcome their victims from
above. Another variant of Saturn may have been the
satyrs, incorporating sexual drive, half men half goat,
living on wooded mountains, coming down on the
nymphs in their sleep, overcoming them from above.
The Saturnalia were celebrated in December, when
the new year overcomes the old one, when the sun
sinks the deepest and begins to rise again, from
the winter solstice on. So one might say that Saturn
overcame the destructive forces that tear down the
sun in fall and winter ... I can say that much for the time
being, for more I should delve into the archaeology of
Tarent.
Regards Franz Gnaedinger
PS. Pauly had problems with Walde's derivation of
Saturnus fram sero satus, sow sowed, but accepted
it with grinding teeth because their was no better
explanation available
PPS. I shall publish my permutation group of TYR
next week.
Franz Gnaedinger
mb wrote:
>
> Car TYRes were so named because they overcome the friction of the soil.
> They stopped doing so in the US, though.
Welcome in the Magdalenian club. You are now a provisional
member. If you want to become a regular member in the full
rights please give us a complete deduction of (car) tyres from
Magdalenian TYR --- he who overcomes, inverse of RYT ---
spear fighter, lance thrower, archer. A hint: one may say that
a tyre overcomes the ridge of the wheel over which it is drawn,
metal tyres roll over the rails, and, most important, consider
the double meaning of French tirer, to pull, draw, and to fire,
shoot ...
In the name of the Magdalenian commitee
Franz Gnaedinger
Colin Fine
I will follow Antonio in paying you a compliment, Franz. You have a rare
quality among those who evangelise to unbelievers: you retain a sense of
humour.
Colin
dicaduca
>
> Thanks for informing me about the locality named Satura.
> There is also a village or town named Eracle in the bay
> of Tarent.
The present town's name is Taranto and I never heard about a location named
Eracle in this area. Perhaps you mean Toronto's bay area? In this case you
should consider some movies with Tyrone Power and R*y*ta Hayworth!!! Anyway
your suggestions about the roots 'tyr' and 'ryt' look pretty interesting to
explain the recurrence in several toponyms (Tirana, Tyre, Troy, Rutland,
Beirut, Ryton, etc.)
Thank you and regards
dd
heliogabalus
"dicaduca" <dicaduc...@dica.com> wrote in message
news:1uQ%g.16987$Fk1....@twister2.libero.it...
> hello,
> 'scuse my curiosity but I'm looking for the etimo of the word 'taras'
> as it is the origin of my hometown (taranto). Is there someone who can
> shed a light on it?
taranta=ocean (Cologne Digital Sanskrit Lexicon)
http://webapps.uni-koeln.de/cgi-bin/tamil/recherche
dicaduca
"heliogabalus" <forb...@planet.it> wrote in message
news:yK41h.21314$uv5.1...@twister1.libero.it...
>
> taranta=ocean (Cologne Digital Sanskrit Lexicon)
> http://webapps.uni-koeln.de/cgi-bin/tamil/recherche
Oh! this is very close indeed, even if I wonder why they would have called a
town after a sea... kinda of Atlantic City?
mb
Franz Gnaedinger wrote:
> mb wrote:
> >
> > Car TYRes were so named because they overcome the friction of the soil.
> > They stopped doing so in the US, though.
>
> Welcome in the Magdalenian club. You are now a provisional
> member.
Thanks, I'm flattered.
> If you want to become a regular member in the full
> rights please give us a complete deduction of (car) tyres from
> Magdalenian TYR --- he who overcomes, inverse of RYT ---
> spear fighter, lance thrower, archer.
Uh-unh. The inverse of overcome being undercome, all I need is to
observe that what is "ueberRYTte" *comes under* something.
> A hint: one may say that
> a tyre overcomes the ridge of the wheel over which it is drawn,
> metal tyres roll over the rails, and, most important, consider
> the double meaning of French tirer, to pull, draw, and to fire,
> shoot ...
Before I consider tirare and progeny, I need proof that orthographic
variants with i are kosher.
Franz Gnaedinger
dicaduca wrote:
>
> The present town's name is Taranto and I never heard about a location named
> Eracle in this area. Perhaps you mean Toronto's bay area? In this case you
> should consider some movies with Tyrone Power and R*y*ta Hayworth!!! Anyway
> your suggestions about the roots 'tyr' and 'ryt' look pretty interesting to
> explain the recurrence in several toponyms (Tirana, Tyre, Troy, Rutland,
> Beirut, Ryton, etc.)
> Thank you and regards
> dd
Heliogalbus gave a link to a Tamil dictionary on the website
of the university of Koeln, unfortunately I can't open the link.
Apparently, the name Taras or a similar word means ocean
in Sanskrit. Will check this in my library. Taras as son of
Poseidon and a nymph must not be a contradiction, Greek
Taras would just be a personification of the ocean, perhaps
of the Mar Piccolo, a he is a boy riding on a dolphin, and
as son of Poseidon also he rules the sea. Even Heracles
might be involved, as he tamed the Hydra -- according to
Eberhard Zangger a symbol of ancient waterworks, taming
and redirecting rivers. For example the river Manesse of
Tiryns caused several heavy floodings of the river plain. After
a catastrophe occurring in the 13th century BC the dwellers
of Tiryns dug a new river bed, directing the Manesse around
a mountain, and achieved this by means of a many kilometers
long and ten meters high dam, truly a Herculean work. Are
there remains of any Doric waterworks in the region of Tarent?
I was wrong about Eracle, the name is Heraclea, near
Scanzano on the ancient mouthing of the river Agri (Aciris)
into the Gulf of Tarent (Sinus Tarentinus), a Doric colony
founded between 750 and 550 BC (Tarent, also Doric,
706 BC). Nearby Siris, an Achaean colony, might be
another variation of TYR. Perhaps hypothetical SA TYR
- he who overcomes from above - was worshipped in all
of Italy before the Greeks took over, and geographical
names in his honor were then replaced with suiting Greek
names. And if the Greeks tamed the mouthing areas of
the rivers flowing into the Gulf they could have replaced
the Tyrrhenian (Etruscan) SA TYR (hypothetical origin
of Saturn) with Heracles, who was associated and even
identified with the god Tyr, a very complex figure, in first
line the sun archer (see the publication I mentioned a couple
of times).
Beware of false cognates. For example it would be tempting
to derive the name of Tiryns from TYR, however, the Middle
Helladic name of Tiryns was Slryns (Derk Ohlenroth), and
the shining town was consecrated to Sseyr, Zeus (Ohlenroth).
The former name of Troy was Taruwisa or Truwisa (the
cuneiforms allow both readings), but I don't know whether
Taruwisa can be claimed as a variant of TYR.
How about Turkey? Syria? or my hometown of Zurich?
The Roman castellum was called Turicum. A couple of years
ago remains of a much older settlement were discovered
under the foundament of the hotel Widder, on the slope of
a flat hill in a then wide river landscape at the end of the lake.
The Roman castellum was built on top of this hill (Lindenhof),
a beautiful place, by then with a view on the alps. The first
name of Zurich could possibly have been TYR AC, land of
a ruler:
TYR --- he who overcomes
AC --- an expanse of land with water
TYR AC Turicum Zürich Zurich - if so, my hometown had been
founded by a powerful personality some five millennia ago.
Regards Franz Gnaedinger
Franz Gnaedinger
mb wrote:
>
> Before I consider tirare and progeny, I need proof that orthographic
> variants with i are kosher.
'Sire' and 'sir' might also be descendants of hypothetical TYR
--- he who overcomes. D-words have comparative forms in
S-words, occasionaly this applies also to T-words.
Franz Gnaedinger
> PS. Pauly had problems with Walde's derivation of
> Saturnus fram sero satus, sow sowed, but accepted
> it with grinding teeth because their was no better
> explanation available
>
> PPS. I shall publish my permutation group of TYR
> next week.
Armenia, homeland of the Etruscans? part 1
--------------------------------------------------------
TYR --- he who overcomes; ancient Greek tyrant,
Armenian sun archer (a very complex figure, man and
woman in one in the second century BC, associated
or even identified with Heracles), Nordic god Tyr,
god of justice and war
RYT --- spear thrower; ancient Greek rhytaer for archer
(...) protector
RTY --- spear; ancient Greek radinos for lean, delicate,
agile, swift, Latin radius (etymology unclear says my
dictionary, then possibly derived from a flying spear)
YTR --- brave, curageous; ancient Greek haetor for
the inner, lungs, heart, liver, courage, mind, soul
YRT --- to survive a fight unharmed; ancient Greek
artemaes for healthy, unhurt, uninjured. Artemis was
the goddess of hunting, shown with bow and arrows.
She protected her maidens, so nothing could hurt them.
Artemis also was the goddess of women and childbirth,
and her "sweet arrows" meant an easy death for women
- she couldn't always grant an easy birth, on the contrary,
children and their mothers often died, but at least she could
ease their death. One may also think of Greek erotika,
pertaining to eros (...) passionate, and of little Eros armed
with bow and arrow - his weapons don't really hurt
TRY --- triumph; ancient Greek thriambos (in Rome).
A successful hunt was certainly rewarded with the love of
some pretty Magdalenian maidens. Recently two English
researchers postulated that nordic women of the late
Magdalenium developed blond hair in order to win the love
of the male hunters -- as these had to travel ever farther,
following the retiring animals, and as hunting became ever
more dangerous, only few men survived and returned,
and were then "fought" over by the Pamela Andersons
of the epoch
SA TYR --- he who rules from above
SA --- downward, from above
TYR --- he who overcomes
CRE NOS --- ruling mind
CRE --- ruler
NOS --- mind, soul, feelings, heart
YTR OSK --- brave people, and masters of building
YTR --- brave
OSK --- the art of building a large tent or hut
YTR UR AC --- colored land of the brave ones
YTR --- brave
UR --- color, colored, of a conspicuous color
AC --- an expanse of land with water
(TYR and permutations are explained above; the further
Magdalenian words are found in my glossaries in other
threads - I didn't make them up here.)
SA TYR would have been the origin of Saturn, CRE NOS
would have been the origin of Kronos / Cronus, YTR OSK
would have been the origin of Etruscan, YTR UR AC would
have been the origin of Etruria, consider the yellow and red
earth of Siena.
In the second part I shall tell a fable of the Etruscans,
who may once have lived in Armenia, in the valley of the
river Araxas / Aras, at the base of the Ararat. In the third
part I shall have a look at the couples Cronus and Rhea,
Saturn and Ops, and the minor couples of satyrs and
nymphs, relying on the Greek word for the Etruscans,
Tyrrhenians, a name that combines Tyr and Rhea.
Regards Franz Gnaedinger
heliogabalus
>Heliogalbus
Galbus is described as a kind of nut in Plinii Naturalis Historia,
15.90: so did I become the sun's nut?
>gave a link to a Tamil dictionary on the website
>of the university of Koeln, unfortunately I can't open the link.
My apologies. Start from http://webapps.uni-koeln.de/tamil/, select in
'Dictionary' 'All Dictionaries', fill 'Word in the Primary Language'
with 'taranta', select 'substring' and go.
>How about Turkey? Syria? or my hometown of Zurich?
Zurich, Romansch Turitg, Latin Turicum.
Assumed to be of Tracian origin according to
http://experts.about.com/e/g/ge/german_placename_etymology.htm.
From 'Tiguriner', a tribe of the Helvetii according to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_placename_etymology.
From the river Thur ('Dura') according to William G. Moulton,
Swiss German Dialect and Romance Patois (jstor).
From TYR AC, land of a ruler, according to Franz Gnaedinger.
I raise a plea to Taras, son of Poseidon, so that he helpeth me to
navigate through the periluos sea of etymologies.
dicaduca
>Heliogalbus gave a link to a Tamil dictionary
Yes, sanskrit 'taranta' meaning ocean would thoroughly match your hypothesis
about the origin of the town's name as dedicated to a sea divinity. In the
meanwhile another idea is chopping my mind, namely that taras + p is the
anagram of the Greek town (Sparta) from where the first settlers of this
Jonian colony came. Odd, isn't it? By the way, do you know of any other
towns whose names are derived from a sea?
>Are
>there remains of any Doric waterworks in the region of Tarent?
The only reference to a 'waterwork' is a Roman aqueduct (IIc.ry b.C.), a
later work with respect to the period of the town's birth (VIIIc.ry b.C),
but I wouldn't swear on previous native works whose
ruins are definitely lost. Incidentally, there are two Doric columns in the
middle of the town's island, that were parts of a temple dedicated to
Poseidon.
>I was wrong about Eracle, the name is Heraclea, near
>Scanzano on the ancient mouthing of the river Agri (Aciris)
>into the Gulf of Tarent (Sinus Tarentinus), a Doric colony
>founded between 750 and 550 BC (Tarent, also Doric,
>706 BC). Nearby Siris, an Achaean colony, might be
>another variation of TYR. Perhaps hypothetical SA TYR
>- he who overcomes from above - was worshipped in all
>of Italy before the Greeks took over, and geographical
>names in his honor were then replaced with suiting Greek
>names. And if the Greeks tamed the mouthing areas of
>the rivers flowing into the Gulf they could have replaced
>the Tyrrhenian (Etruscan) SA TYR (hypothetical origin
>of Saturn) with Heracles, who was associated and even
>identified with the god Tyr, a very complex figure, in first
>line the sun archer (see the publication I mentioned a couple
>of times).
And let's not forget its implications as sex-symbol! After all, the
representations of human mind and heart have produced gods or heroes in all
ages and are explainable as such, in a mixed attitude between sacre and
profane, and this area of southern Italy is really a confused mixture of
peoples who followed one another through centuries since the early
troglodytes: Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Goths, Longobards, Saracens,
Normans, Swabians, the French and the Spanish.
>Beware of false cognates.
I'm afraid I have neither the means of counteracting the suggestions
overlooking the words nor the will (:)) to operate in that direction.
Greetings
Franz Gnaedinger
heliogabalus wrote:
>
> Galbus is described as a kind of nut in Plinii Naturalis Historia,
> 15.90: so did I become the sun's nut?
Sorry, your nickname is not heliogalbus but heliogabalus
- the sun horse, I take it?
> My apologies. Start from http://webapps.uni-koeln.de/tamil/, select in
> 'Dictionary' 'All Dictionaries', fill 'Word in the Primary Language'
> with 'taranta', select 'substring' and go.
Thanks. Yes, Sanskrit taranta means ocean, in one meaning,
another meaning is man. Yesterday was a beautiful warm day
so I went walking and not to the library as promised, but I had
a look at the Sanskrit online dicitonary of the Chicago university
and found these meanings of taras and composites:
taras - speed, energy, activity, force, by force, speedily,
straightway
tarasvat - energetic
tarasvin - swift, impetuous, energetic, bold
Taras goes along with hypothetical TYR --- he who overcomes.
And I think taras is the original form, taranta looks to me like
a genitive, as in the case of tarantula, those nasty animals that
are frequent in the region. Tarent would then mean the town of
Taras, son of the nymph Satura and of Poseidon, or Heracles
who was associated or even identified with the sun archer Tyr.
> Zurich, Romansch Turitg, Latin Turicum.
>
> Assumed to be of Tracian origin according to
> http://experts.about.com/e/g/ge/german_placename_etymology.htm.
> From 'Tiguriner', a tribe of the Helvetii according to
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_placename_etymology.
> From the river Thur ('Dura') according to William G. Moulton,
> Swiss German Dialect and Romance Patois (jstor).
> From TYR AC, land of a ruler, according to Franz Gnaedinger.
>
> I raise a plea to Taras, son of Poseidon, so that he helpeth me to
> navigate through the periluos sea of etymologies.
I will look up the Idiotikon, which is the proper dictionary for me
and my Swiss dialect. TYR AC was but a spontaneous idea.
I like adventures of the mind, you know.
Regards Franz Gnaedinger
Franz Gnaedinger
My apologies for the nonsense. Monsieur sire sir all come from
Latin senior, older. If there should be a connection with TYR
then an indirect one. Magdalenian TYR had a positive meaning,
the one who overcomes, goes ahead, paves the way, copes
with dangers, takes it up even with a cave bear (ARC TYR),
protects his people. The word has become entirely negative
with tyrant. The former positive meaning has gone, leaving
a vacant place in what I call the verbal morphospace, and
this vacuum might have sucked in another word, senior
*seior- (mon)sieur sire sir. But this idea might be too many
for a Magdalenian novice, so please forget it.
Paul J Kriha
> Franz Gnaedinger wrote:
> > mb wrote:
> > >
> > > Car TYRes were so named because they overcome the friction of the soil.
> > > They stopped doing so in the US, though.
> >
> > Welcome in the Magdalenian club. You are now a provisional
> > member.
Who were the first members?
Let me guess, the founding members were two sisters
found and weaned by the wolves, Magda and Lena.
pjk
Franz Gnaedinger
The Greeks called the Etruscans Tyrrhenoi, earlier on
Tyrsenoi / Toursenoi. The latter versions may go back to
TYR SA NOS --- those who live in the mind (follow the
mind) of the one who overcomes from above (overcome
may have had a double meaning of rule and give)
TYR --- he who overcomes
SA --- downward, from above
NOS --- mind, soul, feelings, heart
The Etruscans called themselves Rasenna, syncopated Ras'na,
which may come from
RAA SA NOS --- those who live in the light of the supreme
mind
RAA --- ray of light
SA downward, from above
NOS --- mind, soul, feelings, heart
A small but influential group of later Etruscans may have come
from Armenia, where they (or their ancestors) worshipped the
supreme god CRE NOS, byname SA TYR (NOS). He resided
on top of Mount Ararat, while his consort was present in the
river Araxis, today Aras, at the northern base of the mountain.
The ancient name of the river may have been ORE, from a late
Magdalenian or an Azilian permutation group:
REO --- river, to flow; ancient Greek rheo for I flow, wherefrom
the river names Rhein and Rhone (both originating in Switzerland)
OER --- wife, woman; ancient Greek oar for wife
ROE --- to carry water, a river having water (not just an empty
river bed); ancient Greek rhoae for current, flood
EOR --- feast, celebration; ancient Greek eortae for celebration,
feast, pleasure
ERO --- love; ancient Greek eros
ORE --- beautiful; ancient Greek oraios for beautiful, ripe
ORE would have been the name of the river that became Araxis
and Aras. The original meaning would have been: beautiful.
The form OER makes a woman of it. We know further female
rivers, for example the goddess Holy Ganga, present in the
Indian river Ganges, and the Celtic mother goddess Squan,
Latin Sequana, present in the French river Seine. The form
REO would have become Rhea, wife of CRE NOS Kronos
Cronus. The god, also known as TYR, SA TYR, SA TYR NOS,
ruled on top of Mount Ararat. The name Ararat may come from
ORE RYT, which means protector of the beautiful river ORE.
Saturn overcame from above: the evil forces that plague humans,
and especially the ones that tear down the sun in early winter.
The Saturnalia were celebrated from December 17 onward,
when the sun sinks down to the lowest trajectory. The turning
point is reached on December 21, day of the winter solstice.
>From then on, the sun slowly rises. The evil forces are defeated.
Saturn triumphs. A new year can begin. And this is where time
comes in. Both Kronos and Saturn were the god of time.
Saturn and his wife Ops ruled a golden age. Ops was a fertility
goddess. Her name may come from Magdalenian APS, hide of
a tent where damp condensates and drops down, as image and
model of the heavenly canopy where the rain comes from, filling
the rivers and irrigating the fields. Majestic Saturn and his wife
Ops had popular (comic and idyllic) counterparts in the satyrs
who lived on wooded mountains, and nymphs who lived by
springs and wells.
The Greek name Tyrrhenoi for the Etruscans would combine
TYR from SA TYR (NOS) Saturn with Rhea, wife of Cronos --
well posible, as Cronus and Saturn would have been the same
god right from begin. Tyrrhenoi would then be the name for the
people who believe in Saturn / Cronus and his wife Rhea / Ops,
reflected in satyrs and nymphs.
(ORE and permutations are explained above, RAA and APS
are found in my Glossary of the new Magdalenian words in
my etymological thread.)
Regards Franz Gnaedinger www.seshat.ch
heliogabalus
Franz Gnaedinger wrote:
> heliogabalus wrote:
>> Galbus is described as a kind of nut in Plinii Naturalis Historia,
>> 15.90: so did I become the sun's nut?
>
> Sorry, your nickname is not heliogalbus but heliogabalus
> - the sun horse, I take it?
gabalus〜i [cf. OIr. gabul, AS. gafeluc, gafol, OHG gabala] A gallows,
gibbet. (OED)
I found an etymology that seems uncertain to me:
"This name is derived by the learned from two Syrian words, Ela a God,
and Gabal, to form, the forming or plastic god, a proper, and even happy
epithet for the sun. Wotton's History of Rome, p. 378 Note: The name of
Elagabalus has been disfigured in various ways. Herodian calls him;
Lampridius, and the more modern writers, make him Heliogabalus. Dion
calls him Elegabalus; but Elegabalus was the true name, as it appears on
the medals. (Eckhel. de Doct. num. vet. t. vii. p. 250.) As to its
etymology, that which Gibbon adduces is given by Bochart, Chan. ii. 5;
but Salmasius, on better grounds. (not. in Lamprid. in Elagab.,) derives
the name of Elagabalus from the idol of that god, represented by
Herodian and the medals in the form of a mountain, (gibel in Hebrew,) or
great stone cut to a point, with marks which represent the sun."
http://gutenkarte.org/place/731/15332
> I think taras is the original form, taranta looks to me like
> a genitive
But I read that in Latin:
"We find the root of a noun by taking the ending off the genitive
singular. Why the genitive singular, you ask? Because the nominative
case is often irregular and features a stem not used by any other form
of the noun. The genitive singular is the first form in the list that
features the root word found in all other forms of the noun. Also, the
genitive is a good form to focus on because it also tells us which
declension every noun belongs to. So once you learn the genitive form of
a noun, it becomes very useful indeed."
If this is true for Latin, why not for Greek?
Douglas G. Kilday
Franz Gnaedinger wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> Armenia, homeland of the Etruscans? part 1
> --------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> RTY --- spear; ancient Greek radinos for lean, delicate,
> agile, swift, Latin radius (etymology unclear says my
> dictionary, then possibly derived from a flying spear)
Latin <radius> 'stake, spoke, shuttle, sting, ray of light' may be a
borrowing from late Etruscan *rathi, with the original aspirate
becoming a fricative and acquiring voicing between resonants, [th] >
[þ] > [ð], the last being represented in Latin by -d- (hence Lat.
<lautnida> for late Etr. <lautnitha>, <Lardia> for <Larthia>, <Sadnal>
for <Sathnal>, etc.).
Etr. *rathi in this view is a passive noun like <6uthi> 'site, tomb'
formed from the verbal root *(v)rath- 'to throw, shoot, strike' (itself
with semantic development comparable to Greek <bállein>).
Documentation of this root includes the following:
<vrath tusnutnie> on leaden bullets from San Savino and Gioiella (TLE
526, 527). Torp inferred the meaning to be 'strike the captain!' or
the like.
<rathlth> epithet of Apollo on a mirror from Tuscania, evidently
equivalent to Greek <heke:bólos> 'far-shooting', with the Etr. -l- an
intensive postfix and -(a)th an agential suffix. The formation is
parallel to <zatlath> 'lictor, bodyguard', literally 'one who strikes
hard with an axe', from which Lat. <satelles> was borrowed (prob. in
the 6th cent.).
<rathiu> referring to a ceramic vessel from Chiusi, probably 'thrown'
on the wheel, a passive participle like <6'uthiu> 'stored, located'.
The whole text <thuta thafna rathiu cleu6'ins'l> is in my opinion to be
understood as '(this) propitious vessel (was) thrown for (the god)
Cleusinus' or the like.
>
> [...]
>
> YTR OSK --- brave people, and masters of building
>
> YTR --- brave
> OSK --- the art of building a large tent or hut
>
> YTR UR AC --- colored land of the brave ones
>
> YTR --- brave
> UR --- color, colored, of a conspicuous color
> AC --- an expanse of land with water
>
> (TYR and permutations are explained above; the further
> Magdalenian words are found in my glossaries in other
> threads - I didn't make them up here.)
>
> SA TYR would have been the origin of Saturn, CRE NOS
> would have been the origin of Kronos / Cronus, YTR OSK
> would have been the origin of Etruscan, YTR UR AC would
> have been the origin of Etruria, consider the yellow and red
> earth of Siena.
The most plausible explanation I have seen of <Etru:ria> is that of G.
Alessio, who derived it by haplology from Old Umbrian *Etro-rous-ia,
the first element being Umbrian for 'other', the second being cognate
with Lat. <ru:s>; likewise *Etro-rous-iko:s > *Etrouskor > <Etrusci:>.
In sense this is parallel to the Gaulish tribal name <Allobroges>
'Other-Landers', obviously not a self-name but applied by some other
tribe. In this case it would be the Umbrians of Tuder (itself meaning
'Border') who would have designated the Tyrrhenians across the river as
'Other-Landers'; we know that the Umbrians of Iguvium used the term
<Turskor> derived from the same obscure root *turs- as <Turse:noi>; due
to the long vowel we cannot obtain Etru:s- from Turs-, but Alessio's
derivation explains the /u:/.
Franz Gnaedinger
I read these lines as confirmation of my Magdalenian word RYT
for spear thrower. The etymology of Latin radius is now cleared.
I shall inform the publishing house of Langenscheidt ;-)
> The most plausible explanation I have seen of <Etru:ria> is that of G.
> Alessio, who derived it by haplology from Old Umbrian *Etro-rous-ia,
> the first element being Umbrian for 'other', the second being cognate
> with Lat. <ru:s>; likewise *Etro-rous-iko:s > *Etrouskor > <Etrusci:>.
> In sense this is parallel to the Gaulish tribal name <Allobroges>
> 'Other-Landers', obviously not a self-name but applied by some other
> tribe. In this case it would be the Umbrians of Tuder (itself meaning
> 'Border') who would have designated the Tyrrhenians across the river as
> 'Other-Landers'; we know that the Umbrians of Iguvium used the term
> <Turskor> derived from the same obscure root *turs- as <Turse:noi>; due
> to the long vowel we cannot obtain Etru:s- from Turs-, but Alessio's
> derivation explains the /u:/.
Such information coming from you is certainly worth gold,
for you are doing a brillant job in fine-tuned phonology,
and you are an expert on Etruscan. On the other hand I follow
my way, as it proved very fertile. The highly hypothetical words
I reconstruct are much older than the Etruscans, and could have
been misunderstood in the first millennium BC, especially if there
was a hostile tendency. Place names are often misunderstood
and falsely interpreted, even in the absence of hostile intentions.
My standard example are the villages called Kuessnacht in
Switzerland. They originally were Gallo-Roman places,
Cossiniacum, which I read as expanse of land with water
(Magdalenian AC, Romanized acum, consider also Latin ager)
owned by one Cossinius. The Alemannic tribes who took over
these villages didn't understand the name anymore, and so they
turned it from AC of Cossinius, Cossinii acum, Cossiniacum into
Cossi Niacum - Kuess Nacht - Kissing Night ... Now it made
sense, but the sense was a completely different one. Also my
hypothetical names, TYR SA NOS and TYR REO and TYR OSK
and TYR UR AC could have been misunderstood by the Umbrians
and been read in the way you say above: otherlanders, strangers.
Regards Franz Gnaedinger
lora...@cs.com
Douglas G. Kilday wrote:
> <rathlth> epithet of Apollo on a mirror from Tuscania, evidently
> equivalent to Greek <heke:bólos> 'far-shooting', with the Etr. -l- an
> intensive postfix and -(a)th an agential suffix. The formation is
> parallel to <zatlath> 'lictor, bodyguard', literally 'one who strikes
> hard with an axe', from which Lat. <satelles> was borrowed (prob. in
> the 6th cent.).
>
> <rathiu> referring to a ceramic vessel from Chiusi, probably 'thrown'
> on the wheel, a passive participle like <6'uthiu> 'stored, located'.
> The whole text <thuta thafna rathiu cleu6'ins'l> is in my opinion to be
> understood as '(this) propitious vessel (was) thrown for (the god)
> Cleusinus' or the like.
Looks more likely to mean; 'This xxxxxx is made by Cleusins'.
> The most plausible explanation I have seen of <Etru:ria> is that of G.
> Alessio, who derived it by haplology from Old Umbrian *Etro-rous-ia,
> the first element being Umbrian for 'other', the second being cognate
> with Lat. <ru:s>; likewise *Etro-rous-iko:s > *Etrouskor > <Etrusci:>.
> In sense this is parallel to the Gaulish tribal name <Allobroges>
> 'Other-Landers', obviously not a self-name but applied by some other
> tribe. In this case it would be the Umbrians of Tuder (itself meaning
> 'Border') who would have designated the Tyrrhenians across the river as
> 'Other-Landers'; we know that the Umbrians of Iguvium used the term
> <Turskor> derived from the same obscure root *turs- as <Turse:noi>; due
> to the long vowel we cannot obtain Etru:s- from Turs-, but Alessio's
> derivation explains the /u:/.
Interesting and seemingly plausible, as they called themselves
'Rasenna'.
Franz Gnaedinger
> > Alessio, who derived it by haplology from Old Umbrian *Etro-rous-ia,
> > the first element being Umbrian for 'other', the second being cognate
> > with Lat. <ru:s>; likewise *Etro-rous-iko:s > *Etrouskor > <Etrusci:>.
> > In sense this is parallel to the Gaulish tribal name <Allobroges>
> > 'Other-Landers', obviously not a self-name but applied by some other
> > tribe. In this case it would be the Umbrians of Tuder (itself meaning
> > 'Border') who would have designated the Tyrrhenians across the river as
> > 'Other-Landers'; we know that the Umbrians of Iguvium used the term
> > <Turskor> derived from the same obscure root *turs- as <Turse:noi>; due
> > to the long vowel we cannot obtain Etru:s- from Turs-, but Alessio's
> > derivation explains the /u:/.
>
> Interesting and seemingly plausible, as they called themselves
> 'Rasenna'.
Well, we have now a test case for my hypothesis. I explain Rasenna
via RAA SA NOS, those living in the light from the mind above, the
light coming from CRE NOS Kronos Cronus or SA TYR NOS Saturn,
as explained in previous messages. The obscure root *turs-, for me,
is just a form of TYR (he who overcomes, especially the evil forces
that tear down the sun in early winter).
Let me consider Umbrian etro for other - the same word? I link
hypothetical YTR, a permutation of TYR, with ancient Greek
haetor for the inner, the lungs, the heart, the liver, courage, mind,
soul. We know people from their outside; their inner life is another
side. We know our lives from our own personal experience, but
there is another side, fate, which we don't know. Our fate is only
known to the supreme god, it is the life we lead in god's mind.
The Etruscans were auspices, they observed how birds flew.
By the way: a major passage route of birds leads over Armenia,
another one over Italy, the nods (?) are over Armenia and northern
Italy. The Etruscans also read fate from the shape of a liver they
took from a sheep. A glance into the inside of the sacrificed
animal allowed to have a look at fate, a glimpse at life how it looks
from the other side, within the mind of the supreme god. A famous
oracle (read from the flight of a bird? or from the liver of a sheep?)
predicted that the Etruscans will rule for one thousand years. When
you know that you will rule for such a long time, you can be brave
and courageous. Nothing really bad can happen to you. And courage
might well be rewarded with success. I had this in the background
of my mind when I gave YTR as brave and courageous: brave from
knowing fate. Brave from knowing the other side of life, as I may
now add, considering Umbrian etro for other. Old words branch out
in many ways.
I hope you will go on defending your view, so we can really go for
a test.
Regards Franz Gnaedinger
António Marques
> Interesting and seemingly plausible, as they called themselves
> 'Rasenna'.
The native form of which seems to be rasnna or raSnna.
--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
Franz Gnaedinger
Douglas G. Kilday wrote:
(...)
Douglas, do you know this book: Five Texts in Etruscan,
Early Gothic Language of Tyrrhenians and Ancient Jutes,
Edited and Translated by Ilse Nesbitt Jones, American
University Studies, Vol 35, Peter Lang New York 2002 ???
Etruscan as an early Germanic language, what shall I make
of this ???
Peter T. Daniels
Peter Lang is a vanity press. Anything with that imprint should be
vetted very carefully before taking it seriously.
Franz Gnaedinger
I read the book last evening. The grammar tables that compare
Etruscan with Gothic, and Indo-European with Etruscan, are
striking, and the five texts as translated by Jones make sense.
For example the mummy text of Zagreb gives a detailed
prescription of how to mummify a body. Futhermore, her thesis
goes along with the fact that a major contribution to the Etruscan
gene pool came from northwestern Europe (others from Iberia,
France, western Asia). The Etruscan alphabet was the origin
of the futhark, the alphabet of runes from northern Europe.
I recognize no Germanic element in Etruscan art, which may
be a blend of the elegant local Villanova culture and Greek
influences (Greek artists working for the Etruscans, as Cretan
artists for the Mycenaeans one millennium earlier). I would really
like to read Douglas G. Kilday's opinion on the small book.
My wild hypothesis says that the founding fathers and mothers
of the Etruscan civilization came from Armenia, perhaps around
1 200 BC, yet some of my linguistic derivations are far fetched
compared with the one Douglas informed me about: Etrusci
from Umbrian etro (other) and Latin rus (land) is very plausible,
other-land-ers, a name given to the people across the river
by an Umbrian tribe. Rus also explains Rusenna Rus'na,
perhaps owners of the land, or people in the land? Saturn
is no longer considered an Etruscan god but a genuine Latin
god. I must abandon or modify my hypothesis, and will say more
later.
Regards Franz Gnaedinger
Peter T. Daniels
Franz Gnaedinger wrote:
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > Franz Gnaedinger wrote:
> > > Douglas G. Kilday wrote:
> > >
> > > (...)
> > >
> > > Douglas, do you know this book: Five Texts in Etruscan,
> > > Early Gothic Language of Tyrrhenians and Ancient Jutes,
> > > Edited and Translated by Ilse Nesbitt Jones, American
> > > University Studies, Vol 35, Peter Lang New York 2002 ???
> > >
> > > Etruscan as an early Germanic language, what shall I make
> > > of this ???
> >
> > Peter Lang is a vanity press. Anything with that imprint should be
> > vetted very carefully before taking it seriously.
>
> I read the book last evening. The grammar tables that compare
> Etruscan with Gothic, and Indo-European with Etruscan, are
> striking, and the five texts as translated by Jones make sense.
Of course. That's the hallmark of "decipherments" of ununderstood
languages.
Are you familiar enough with the IE and Go. data, let alone the Etr.
data, to know whether her representations are even accurate, let alone
whether they bear the interpretations she puts on them?
> For example the mummy text of Zagreb gives a detailed
> prescription of how to mummify a body. Futhermore, her thesis
> goes along with the fact that a major contribution to the Etruscan
> gene pool came from northwestern Europe (others from Iberia,
> France, western Asia). The Etruscan alphabet was the origin
> of the futhark, the alphabet of runes from northern Europe.
The Etruscan alphabet was the source of _all_ the Italic alphabets with
a few peripheral exceptions, and the runes are best traced to a
northern Italic alphabet.
Franz Gnaedinger
Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> Are you familiar enough with the IE and Go. data, let alone the Etr.
> data, to know whether her representations are even accurate, let alone
> whether they bear the interpretations she puts on them?
No, and that is why I ask Douglas G. Kilday to have a look
at her small book. Follows a quote from page 23, the middle
section, from Text C, The Traveling Recruitment Directive,
words: zusle rithnai tul tei snuzaintehamaithi cuveis. Jones
gives first the English translation, then the Etruscan words,
then roots and cognates. I can't render italics and the many
special signs, for example the horizontal bar above the 'e'
of the first *sneu-, but my simplified transscription may at least
give an impression of the level and quality of her work:
associated
connected rider-carrier(s) of the
zusle rithnai tul tei
*ieu- 'to bind, *reidh- *tul(o)-
connect' (yoke) 'to travel, 'dilatori and
*ieug- Gmc. set in motion' tedious'
*yukam OE ridan Icel. paul-reid
Goth., OS juk ON reid 'continuous,
AS geoc GK. -ai unceasing ride'
Gk. zeuktos *tel- 'to carry,
-s-lo endure'
BR. 198, 208, OL tulo, tulere
211 'to carry, bring'
weaver's
weaving one's home place of coves
snuzaintehamaithi cuveis
*sneu- *sneu- *geu- 'to
'to turn, twist bend, arch'
especially to Dutch dial.
fasten thread' cuve 'crest'
OBg. snuja, 'to Norw. kuv
set up the warp -eis
on a loom' Goth. gen.
*kei- 'to lie, be masc.
located' -ja stem n.
GK. keimai
AS ham, 'home'
*dhe- 'to set,
place, lay'
Mistakes are mine. The above is just one third of a page,
her translations of the five texts including the whole Zagreb
text occupy over sixty pages in this style. I have seen many
books in my life, and even read some of them, so I can say
when a book derserves a second glance and being taken
seriously. The book Five Texts in Etruscan, Early Gothic
Language of Tyrrhenians and Ancient Jutes, Edited and
Translated by Ilse Nesbitt Jones, American University
Studies, Peter Lang 2002, ISBN 0-8204-4025-6, ISSN
0893-6935, does deserve a second glance.
Regards Franz Gnaedinger
Peter T. Daniels
Well, I don't know what "weaving one's home place of coves" might be
supposed to mean, but given that Gothic is a very well understood
language, and very familiar to just about every Indo-Europeanist, with
(as these things go) a very extensive corpus, isn't it odd that no one
has thought to consider Etruscan to be a Germanic language before?
Franz Gnaedinger
Separate the words:
snuzaintehamaithi -- weaver one's home
cuvais -- place of coves
(roots, deductions and cognates above)
Early Gothic as main component of Etruscan is baffling. On the
other hand it goes along with a major contribution to the Etruscan
gene pool that came from NW Europe, and a tenacious problem
that withstands every plausible approach can't have but a surprising
solution. Do you know all ideas regarding Etruscan? perhaps others
noticed Gothic elements before? but were discouraged, ridiculed
and excluded from publishing? Happens time and again in the
humanities.
Regards Franz Gnaedinger
Peter T. Daniels
Is that somehow supposed to make the meaning clearer?
Franz Gnaedinger
Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> Is that somehow supposed to make the meaning clearer?
Yes, it makes clear what each word means, while not making
clear what the sentence is about, as I just chose five words that,
coincidentally, appear in the middle section of page 23. If I chose
five words from any sentence, for example
is about as I just
they don't make sense either, but in the context above they do
make sense. You can't hope that I copy the hole book by Jones
here in sci.lang, You have to read it yourself. Here just the end of
Chapter 1, Background and Exposition, page 12, as it contains no
extra signs, and demonstrates well her sec style (French for dry),
very much to the point, brief and concise:
"Text A was wound around a pottery vessel, it is a call to sowing.
Text B lists family names linking two courtiers' families. Text C
concerns acquisition of young people to serve in traveling, and
of women to serve in position as cooks, seamstresses, weavers
and baby sitters. Text D is a recipe with a dedication. // Text E,
written in Etruscan, was discovered on the wrapping of a mummy
which a Zagreb, Yugoslavia director acquired for his museum.
Originally a book, it was made into strips and wound around the
body. The Egyptian process of mummification included a cut
around the end joint of the finger in order that the nail, which was
then tied on or furnished with a metal cap, be preserved during
soaking. After discontinuance of this practice in Egypt and other
countries, the cut was still made as a tradition; it is a universal,
identifying mark. Mention of it appears in the mummy wrapping,
which is a description of the means of preserving lifelike appearance
of the individual through Egyptian mummification; the mummy
wrapping is the key to Etruscan language in that it deals with
a known process. The texts are in what was probably reasonably
literary style, and all had some practical leaning or intent. // In
Text A, *qw, *gw and *kw appear as k. The text is connected to
a meal-sowing event such as were well known among early people.
It rhymes. 'Gothic' is to be understood as Ulfilas' Gothic. Words
above the line of the translation reflect current usage."
"... the mummy wrapping is the key to Etruscan language in that
it deals with a known process." Please don't expect the mummy
wrapping text here, it comprises some 1,200 words. Read the
book yourself: Five Texts in Etruscan, Early Gothic Language
of Tyrrhenians and Ancient Jutes, Edited and Translated by
Ilse Nesbitt Jones, American University Studies, Series XIX,
General Literature, Vol 35, Peter Lang Publications Inc. New
York 2002.
Regards Franz Gnaedinger
Douglas G. Kilday
The quoted passage is from line 9 of the late archaic Tile of Capua, a
ritual calendar. The definitive source on this text is Mauro
Cristofani, _Tabula Capuana: Un calendario festivo di età arcaica_
[Firenze 1995]. Jones's division of the words is arbitrary. The first
few clauses of this section of text are divided by Cristofani as
follows, points being syllabic punctuation:
i6vei.tule ilucve a.pirase letham.sul. ilucu cuies.chu per.pri cipen.
a.pires. rac.vanies. huth. zus.le rithnai.tul.tei. snuza in.te
hamai.thi cuvei.s. cathnis. f[a]nir[i] mar.za in.te hamai.thi ital.
sac.ri u.tus. e.cun.zai. iti al.chu scuv.se rithnai.tul.tei. ci zus.le
a.cun. siricima nun.theri .....
Cristofani understands the first five words as 'alle idi di aprile,
festa di Lethams' and to my knowledge most Etruscanists are in
agreement. <i6veitule> 'during the Ides' is an earlier form of
<e6'vitle> 'id.' found in the Liber Linteus; it is instrumental case
(confusingly called "locative" by some scholars) with appended article.
<ilucve> is an instrumental in agreement, literally 'during feasts'
but weakened in sense so that it adds almost nothing to the collocation
with <i6veitule>. <apirase> is another instrumental in agreement; its
zero-case <apirasa> corresponds to the Latin adjective <Aprilis>.
<lethamsul> is the genitive of the god's name Lethams. <ilucu> is the
zero-case 'feast' whose inst. pl. is <ilucve>. <cuieschu> appears to
agree with <ilucu>, specifying the type of feast, and <perpri> is a
necessitative 'must be held' or the like which probably ends the first
clause.
The next clause is more difficult. If <cipen> 'priest' is the subject,
<huth zusle> must be the direct object. <huth> is the numeral 'four';
<zusle> is some type of sacrificial animal (or a sacrificial animal in
general). <apires racvanies> appears to be an ablative. My conjecture
is that <apira> means 'pasture' or the like, <apirasa> 'Aprilis'
literally 'pertaining to the pasture' referring here to the month when
animals were returned to pasture, <racvania> some adjective modifying
'pasture'. The priest is thus being instructed to remove four animals
(sheep?) from a particular pasture (or enclosure or whatever).
<rithnaitultei> is an instrumental, presumably of manner or
accompaniment, of a noun <rithna> with an article and another
demonstrative appended. Olzscha conjectured that <rithna> might be a
borrowing from Oscan, related to Latin <rite> 'properly'; this is
possible if it represents metathesis and syncope from *rihti-na, Oscan
*rihti corresponding to Umbrian <rehte>. Then <rithnaitultei> would
mean 'in the ... proper way' or the like, but of course it could mean
something else if <rithna> has nothing to do with Oscan. It is not
clear whether this clause ends with <sacri>, with <faniri>, or with
some other word, so even the structure of the clause is guesswork.
<snuza> and <marza> look like nouns (as <turza> is further on), but
without certainty about the clause structure, they might be
future/conditional verbs ('the priest will/may ...'). <inte> is most
likely a relative pronoun with appended demonstrative; <hamaithi> is
definitely a true locative, but it is not clear whether <hama> is an
appellative or the proper name of a place (as Cristofani thought).
Jones's attempt to read all these words as Indo-European is sheer
baseless conjecture. If Olzscha was right, then <rithna> is an IE
loanword, but has to do with PIE *reg-, not *reidh-. In a later
section <lavtun> is certainly an IE loanword, and probably <turza>, but
most Etruscan words cannot be analyzed as IE. What Jones is doing is
not analysis, but a visual form of Kling-Klang. The fact that she
finds instructions for mummification in the Liber Linteus (the Zagreb
text) shows that she is willing to force _a priori_ readings without
even a cursory knowledge of the material. If she would bother studying
the literature, even A.J. Pfiffig's very outdated but still insightful
monograph of 1963 on the LL, she would know better than to look for
such nonsense. The LL is an imperfect copy (possibly a calator's copy,
not the priest's) of a set of ritual instructions broadly parallel to
the Umbrian Iguvine Tables or the rituals preserved by Cato; the fact
that it ended up on a mummy in Egypt has nothing to do with its
contents.
The glance at the book which you provided is more than enough. Let's
all observe a moment of silence for the trees sacrificed in printing it!
António Marques
> Do you know all ideas regarding Etruscan? perhaps others
> noticed Gothic elements before? but were discouraged, ridiculed
> and excluded from publishing? Happens time and again in the
> humanities.
Many attempts to link Etruscan with IE were made before the general idea
settled in that it really is an isolate (except for Lemnian, of course).
So, it's not a matter of having been 'discouraged, ridiculed and
excluded from publishing'.
Franz Gnaedinger
> The quoted passage is from line 9 of the late archaic Tile of Capua, a
Thank you very much for this detailed reply and enlightening
lecture on Etruscan. Makes me feel sorry for Jones. What
a labor it must have been to comb the whole of the Zagreb text
her way! On the other hand all possibilities must be explored
in the sciences. We learn from mistakes, and owe as much
to those who go astray as to the ones who succeed.
Regards Franz Gnaedinger
Peter T. Daniels
Franz Gnaedinger wrote:
> Douglas G. Kilday wrote:
> > The glance at the book which you provided is more than enough. Let's
> > all observe a moment of silence for the trees sacrificed in printing it!
>
> Thank you very much for this detailed reply and enlightening
> lecture on Etruscan. Makes me feel sorry for Jones. What
> a labor it must have been to comb the whole of the Zagreb text
> her way! On the other hand all possibilities must be explored
> in the sciences. We learn from mistakes, and owe as much
> to those who go astray as to the ones who succeed.
But really, why would anyone (Jones, or anyone else) who knew that the
LL had been torn up to use in a mummy wrapping in a distant country
where there was no knowledge of Etruscan suppose that the LL had
anything to do with mummies? When 17th-century European bookbinders
tore up old manuscripts to use the parchment as stiffeners, did they
pay any attention to the content of what they were reusing?
dicaduca
-- Tarentum, sir.
-- Very good. Well?
-- There was a battle, sir.
-- Very good. Where?
The boy's blank face asked the blank window.
Fabled by the daughters of memory. And yet it was in some way if not
as memory fabled it. A phrase, then, of impatience, thud of Blake's wings of
excess. I hear the ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry,
and time one livid final flame. What's left us then?
-- I forget the place, sir. 279 B. C.
-- Asculum, Stephen said, glancing at the name and date in the gorescarred
book.
-- Yes, sir. And he said: Another victory like that and we are done for.
*from Ulysses
Franz Gnaedinger
Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> But really, why would anyone (Jones, or anyone else) who knew that the
> LL had been torn up to use in a mummy wrapping in a distant country
> where there was no knowledge of Etruscan suppose that the LL had
> anything to do with mummies? When 17th-century European bookbinders
> tore up old manuscripts to use the parchment as stiffeners, did they
> pay any attention to the content of what they were reusing?
Please understand my naive approach. I believe what people
tell me (as a consequence I am being told the craziest stories,
very entertaining). I immerse in situations, delve into books,
and give an author credit. Your above notion also crossed my
mind, knowing that old manuscripts have been (ab)used for
binding books whith which they had nothing to do. On the other
hand, I remember having wrapped parcels in newpapers,
choosing pages with matching articles for additional meaning
and wit, so perhaps using a mummification text for wrapping
a mummy added somehow to the magic of preserving a body?
Another point nugged me even more: why didn't Jones proudly
give a readable version of her translations at the begin or end
of her small book? But I found an excuse also for this: perhaps
she had not enough money for a more voluminous book.
Anyway, as the Gothic approach to Etruscan failed, I'm gonna
revive my Armenian approach. Naive as I am, I also believe
myself, immersing in my own ideas, giving credit to my onw
inspiration ...
Helmut Rix - our Douglas G. Kilday, so to say - wrote a book
on the Etruscan texts, another on Oscan-Umbrian, a further
on Sabellinian (hope the spelling is right), and a booklet on
Raetic and Etruscan. In the latter he says that both languages
came from an ur-Tyrrhenian that was spoken at the turn of
the second and first millennium BC, while he can't say more
on the origin of the Tyrrhenians. Well then, let me try by
telling a fable.
In Armenia lived a proud tribe in the river plain of the ORE,
north of the majestic mountain ORE RYT, which means
protector (also spear thrower, later archer) of the river
ORE, whose name means beautiful. The mountain, known
to us under the biblical name Ararat, was the abode of
the supreme god TYR, whose name means: he who
overcomes, in the double sense of rule and give. The
god was also worshipped under these composite names:
TYR SA NOS and SA TYR NOS, which mean about: mind
(nos) of the one who overcomes, rules and gives (tyr) from
above (sa). ORE was his consort, a beautiful river, later
called Araxis, and, in our time, Aras. ORE survived also
in the name of the Roman mountain nymph Oreas (from
a Greek loanword). ORE is a permutation of REO that
means to flow as verb, river as noun. Those people living
in Armenia were among the first to melt and cast iron, using
winds that rush down a mountain slope in autumn to heaten
up a fire to the required temperature of above 1,500 degrees
Celsius. In other words: they were excellent smiths and paved
the way for the Iron Age. In around 1 200 BC, the collapse
of the Hittite empire had repercussions also for Armenia,
and so a tribe decided to leave their home. Armed with iron
weapons for protection, and supplied with gold from a local
mine, they went on a long journey along the northern shore
of the Black Sea, settled on the isle of Lemnos before Troy,
travesed the Balkans, and reached the Swiss Alps where
they liked it, as the snow mountains reminded them of their
home. The Swiss Alps are full of rivers, and they called
them simply with their word REO, These rivers became
Rhenos Rhine, Rhodanos Rhone, and Reuss. One river -
the one that flows through the region that offers the most
gorgeous view on the snow capped mountains - they called
ORE, as their own river at home in Armenia, and this river
became Arura in Roman times, Aare in our days (the Reuss
mouthes into the Aare, and this one into the Rhine). The
land they called REO TYR, for their supreme goddess and
their supreme god. This name survived in Raetia, name of
the Roman province that included the Swiss Alps. Now some
of the Armenians traveled further to Italy, were a few of them
settled in Etruria, where they were known as Tyrsenoi, later
as Tyrrhenians. Still others traveled farther down in Italy,
bringing with them their god SA TYR NOS who became
Saturn, ruler of a golden age: he who overcomes from above,
especially the evil forces that tear down the sun in early winter.
His main feast was celebrated from December 17 onward,
which are the final days of the fight of the god and spear thrower
against those evil forces. The fight ends with the winter solstice
on December 21. A popular version of Saturn were the satyrs,
who lived on wooded mountains, and overcame nymphs, who
lived on wells and springs, in their sleep ... One of the nymphs
was Satura; she got pregnant either by Poseidon, originally
the god of the rivers, alternately by Heracles, Etruscan Hercle,
who was associated or even identified with the god Tyr in
Armenia and elsewhere, and the son of Satura and Tyr was
called Taras, a boy on a dolphin, while the Estruscan Venus
was Turan. Turan could also be a boy armed with bow and
arrow, elsewhere known as Eros ...
Regards Franz Gnaedinger
Peter T. Daniels
Franz Gnaedinger wrote:
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> >
> > But really, why would anyone (Jones, or anyone else) who knew that the
> > LL had been torn up to use in a mummy wrapping in a distant country
> > where there was no knowledge of Etruscan suppose that the LL had
> > anything to do with mummies? When 17th-century European bookbinders
> > tore up old manuscripts to use the parchment as stiffeners, did they
> > pay any attention to the content of what they were reusing?
>
> Please understand my naive approach. I believe what people
> tell me (as a consequence I am being told the craziest stories,
> very entertaining). I immerse in situations, delve into books,
> and give an author credit. Your above notion also crossed my
> mind, knowing that old manuscripts have been (ab)used for
> binding books whith which they had nothing to do. On the other
> hand, I remember having wrapped parcels in newpapers,
> choosing pages with matching articles for additional meaning
> and wit,
Upon receiving a music book wrapped in a local sports section, in my
email acknowledging receipt I asked the dealer whether she'd considered
thematic wrapping, with, say, the arts section of the local paper for a
music book. She pointed out that far too many books, with a limited
supply of yesterday's paper, made that rather impractical.
> so perhaps using a mummification text for wrapping
> a mummy added somehow to the magic of preserving a body?
If you'd stop to consider for even a moment the amount of labor and
time that goes into preparing a manuscript; the total number of mss.
dealing with mummification; the total number of corpses requiring
mummification; and the total inability of an Egyptian mummifier to read
an Etruscan text, you wouldn't contemplate that possibility for a
moment.
> Another point nugged me even more: why didn't Jones proudly
> give a readable version of her translations at the begin or end
> of her small book? But I found an excuse also for this: perhaps
> she had not enough money for a more voluminous book.
At least you recognize that the only way it got published was by her
paying for it ...
But yes, you didn't mention that she failed to include a connected
text. Even our P.D. gang provide connected texts resulting from their
attempts!
> Anyway, as the Gothic approach to Etruscan failed, I'm gonna
> revive my Armenian approach. Naive as I am, I also believe
> myself, immersing in my own ideas, giving credit to my onw
> inspiration ...
Many, many years ago I read a book called *The Etruscans Begin to
Speak* (I think the author's name begins with M), which must have had
considerable currency in the 1960s because every usedbook store in
Chicago and IIRC New York seemed to have a copy, which seemed to make a
plausible case for connecting Etruscan with Armenian (if it was
Etruscan/Albanian, then Never Mind!), so one day I asked Eric Hamp
about it, and he explained clearly why it's nonsense.
(Note, BTW, that if you want to make a specifically Armenian
connection, you're making a specifically Greek connection as well.)
Brian M. Scott
<gram...@verizon.net> wrote in sci.lang:
[...]
> Many, many years ago I read a book called *The Etruscans Begin
> to Speak* (I think the author's name begins with M), which
> must have had considerable currency in the 1960s because every
> usedbook store in Chicago and IIRC New York seemed to have a
> copy, which seemed to make a plausible case for connecting
> Etruscan with Armenian (if it was Etruscan/Albanian, then
> Never Mind!), so one day I asked Eric Hamp about it, and he
> explained clearly why it's nonsense.
Zacharie Mayani, 1961, translated from the French by Patrick
Evans, 1964, reviewed in American Anthropologist by Romolo A.
Staccioli in 1965. After very briefly chewing it up and spitting
it out, he concludes:
There is no point in further examination of Mayani's
book, either for its results or its details (and it contains
pure fantasies, especially in the chapter on historical
conclusions). One cannot even avoid the suspicion
that the author himself recognized these imaginings as
such, perhaps only intending to entertain (as he admits
between the lines). There remains only the sad thought
that all this work could have been directed towards a
better purpose.
[...]
Brian
Franz Gnaedinger
Thanks for this information. We got the book in our library,
which is closed now; we can't get books from 18:00 onward,
but I found some information on Mayani on the web. He links
Etruscan with Albanian, not with Armenian, so I never mind,
as Peter told me in brackets. Armenia was a pocket of
languages in between the Hittites and Assyrians, Indo-
European and Semitic, and as Armenian contains some
peculiar linguistic forms, there is some free space for me
to speculate. Meanwhile I also consider the possibility
that Yerevan comes from ORE. The Tirol - Tyrolean Alps -
were also part of the Roman province of Raetia. If Raetia
comes from REO TYR, then Tyrolean, perhaps also Tirano,
Tarent and Tarentino (a region) may come from the inverse
form TYR REO. As I know nothing of Armenian, this works
as a test. I make daring assumptions, and look how far I get
before someone opposes ...
;-) Franz Gnaedinger
PS. My speculations don't come out of the blue, I am since
a long time convinced that the early Greek dramas involving
Kronos, his consort Rhea, Prometheus and others, were
happening in the Caucasus or in Armenia. The fire stolen
by Prometheus was not our ordinary fire but the fire that
makes metals melt, first tin and copper, then iron. The
latter was done first in the Caucasus, or in Armenia, or
somewhere between Syria and the Ukraine. Wood cole
was filled in ovens on mountain slopes, and the cole was
lit when the autumn winds rushed down the mountain slopes,
thus one got the required temperature of over 1,500 degrees
Celsius. The Troyan war marked the begin of the end of the
Bronze Age, while iron casting in the Caucasus or Armenia
or the wider region around them marked the begin of the
Iron Age. Note also that the Etruscans settled in a part
of Italy that is rich in metals.
Peter T. Daniels
Uh, no, Armenian's closest relative is Greek, and any contact between
Etruscan and proto-Armeno-Greek (or whatever) would have been long
before it got to the areas south of the Caucasus (today's eastern
Turkey) where it used to prevail.
> and as Armenian contains some
> peculiar linguistic forms, there is some free space for me
> to speculate.
No, there isn't. Armenian's independence from Indo-Iranian was
recognized in the 1880s; it's a perfectly good IE language with lots of
borrowings from its neighbors (including Urartian).
Colin Fine
fewer commonalities between Armenian and Greek that between Armenian and
other branches. I can't find the book at the moment, but IIRC both II
and Germanic score higher by his measure.
Colin
Peter T. Daniels
Eric Hamp pretty well took care of that book, too. I don't know whether
he published a review of it in a journal, but his paper at the last or
next-to-last Non-Slavic Languages of the Former Soviet Union Conference
(a biennial affair organized by Howie Aronson in Chicago) was one, and
the regular publication of the Proceedings was private but adequately
distributed.
Douglas G. Kilday
Franz Gnaedinger wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> Thank you very much for this detailed reply and enlightening
> lecture on Etruscan. Makes me feel sorry for Jones. What
> a labor it must have been to comb the whole of the Zagreb text
> her way! On the other hand all possibilities must be explored
> in the sciences. We learn from mistakes, and owe as much
> to those who go astray as to the ones who succeed.
Yes, we do, and one of the advantages of living in these times is that
we have large libraries at major universities where we can investigate
the history of areas of research which interest us, and learn from the
mistakes of our forebears, seeing how they went astray. But this is
something which Miss Jones has clearly not done in regard to Etruscan
hermeneutics. Attempts to read Etruscan texts as Indo-European,
Finno-Ugric, Basque, etc., by plugging in "translations" of
superficially similar words in a known language which are selected in
order to make overall sense, go back well over a century and have never
been accepted by mainstream scholars. Indeed the methodology used by
Miss Jones (and others with similar publications) is miserably
misguided. Every year or two I find myself quoting what Alf Torp wrote
in 1905 concerning an attempt by Wilhelm Deecke (himself a published
philologist and antiquarian, not an unknown like Jones) to read the
leaden plate of Magliano on the basis of superficial similarity of the
Etruscan words to Latin words:
"This most enigmatic inscription has been almost completely translated
by the late Dr. Deecke. One wonders how he has managed to believe in a
single word of his interpretation! His so-called translation is the
result of a comparison of the Etruscan words with such Latin ones as
are somewhat similar in sound. The resemblance is made greater, ---
or, if it does not exist at all, it is established, by freely adding
new syllables and letters to the Etruscan words, which are supposed to
be abbreviated in writing. It is superfluous to say that if we had to
suppose them to be thus abbreviated, we might as well spare ourselves
the trouble of trying to interpret them. Nor need I further explain
how hopeless the comparative method is in interpreting a text in an
unknown language. Even if we knew with certainty that the Etruscan and
the Latin languages were cognate, we should fail utterly in trying to
understand an Etruscan text by means of our knowledge of Latin."
Another thing which Miss Jones has clearly not done is to investigate
poorly attested languages whose pedigree is known, such as South
Picene, which is an Italic language, spoken by the eastern branch of
the Sabines. After decades of study, many words in the South Picene
inscriptions remain enigmatic and disputed. The word <kduíú> has
been interpreted by one group of scholars as the syncopated preterit of
a verb *ke-deH3- corresponding to the defective Latin verb cedu- (in
class. Lat. only as imperatives <cedo>, <cette> 'give here!'). Another
group sees <kduíú> as 1st sg. pres. ind. 'I hear myself called, I am
named, I am' cognate with Lat. <clueo:>. (I favor the second
interpretation, since the shift kl- > kd- agrees with what I postulated
for the discrepancy Clustumini/Crustumerium in western Sabine.)
Anyhow, only a fool would attempt to explain _every word_ in the South
Picene corpus on the basis of Latin cognates, even though Lat. and S.
Pic. are rather closely related as languages go. And our Miss Jones
explains _every word_ of Etruscan texts on the basis of IE roots? She
has presented herself to the world as a fool's fool. Fortunately,
should she ever smarten up about Etruscan, all she has to do is change
her _nom de plume_. Quintus Curtius Snodgrass, perhaps?
P.S.: Sophus Bugge attempted to explain Etruscan as Armenian (or
closely related) about 130 years ago. Bugge was an established
philologist, but the systematic modern study of Etruscan was in its
infancy. I'm not trying to tell you what to do, but I think you might
end up reinventing a broken wheel by pursuing such a connection.
Colin Fine
there a way I can get hold of it?
Colin
Franz Gnaedinger
Thank you very much for your long reply. I found your comment
on Bugge yesterday, googling for Etruscan and Armenian. So
I will be careful. I wonder about the word rheo, to flow, present
in many river names that spring from the Swiss Alps: Rhenus
Rhine, Rhodanus Rhone, also Reuss, and then Arura Arula
Aare, which may be a form of my permutation group REO,
namely ORE, beautiful, a beautiful river, a river flowing through
a gorgeous landscape (as our Aare), personified by a lovely
goddess. The name of the goddess Raetia may also come from
REO. Now I find the word vowel--R--vowel in Armenia: in the
early Arattu culture, in the later Urartu civilization, in the river
name Araxis Aras, in the Greek name of the mountain Ararat.
Then the name of TYR, alter ego of Hermes in Armenia in
the second century BC. It may be present in Saturn, Satyr,
in Turan, and in more words (while Trento and Trentino fall
away, as coming from Tridentum, and I find no ancient name
corresponding to the Tyrolean Alps). Strictly speaking I don't
need the excurse via Armenia, but it would add color, and
I am personally convinced that the Iron Age began in the
Caucasus or in Armenia, that Cronus resided on the Mount
Ararat, that Prometheus brought the fire needed for melting
and casting iron, and so on. Tyrrhenian, a word which would
combine TYR and REO, might have originated in the region,
somewhere between the empires of the Hittites and the
Assyrians, and it might have been spoken by a mountain tribe
in Armenia, which country, I assume, was inhabited by a rather
wild mixture of people and tribes. Or I might be completely
wrong. I always consider also this possibility. I risk being wrong,
and if it is the case, it won't really hurt anyone. My glance at
Armenia is not new, I know that. What is new are my permutation
groups of short words that appear to me when I focus on the
Magdalenian and partly also on the Azilian level of time. This new
possibility must also be explored. I find nothing in the libraries
about such experiments - apart from Richard Fester, who
considered inverse forms and further permutations in a not very
systematic way. I go for them in a systematic way, I think that
I found results, and it is great fun. So if I fail I had at least fun.
When my mother was young she worked as nurse in a hospital
and saw many people die. Those who did their thing and dared
follow a crazy notion, not caring what other people may think
and say, could let go; the others, who always obeyed, could not
let go: was that all?, they asked. So I do my thing, I learned
that lesson from my mother. But I also hope not to lead others
astray: it is a risky thing I am doing, I might completely fail.
I am well aware of that. But it's fun ...
Thank you again, and my compliments for your careful work
based on a profound knowledge
Franz Gnaedinger
PS. Derk Ohlenroth sees connections between Etruria, Lemnos
and Crete, archaeological ones perhaps reflected in language,
and he asks whether the mysterious Pelasgians were involved
in the case of Tyrrhenian
Peter T. Daniels
As an academic without such access (other than the New York Public), I
doubt it!
You could start by searching catalogs for author name Howard I.
Aronson. (I wouldn't be at all surprised if the whole run -- I think
there were 10 or 11 meetings over 20 years -- is on line somewhere.)
Peter T. Daniels
Douglas G. Kilday wrote:
> Anyhow, only a fool would attempt to explain _every word_ in the South
> Picene corpus on the basis of Latin cognates, even though Lat. and S.
> Pic. are rather closely related as languages go. And our Miss Jones
> explains _every word_ of Etruscan texts on the basis of IE roots? She
> has presented herself to the world as a fool's fool.
Yet exactly that practice doesn't keep Dravidianists (and
megalocomparativists, and archeologists) from accepting David McAlpin's
alleged "Elamo-Dravidian" -- he explains _every_ Elamite morpheme from
Dravidian. No Elamitologist (there are at least half a dozen in the
world) accepts the connection. (See, e.g., Reiner in Bright's
International Encyclopedia of Linguistics.)
Colin Fine
Oops. Looking for this I've found last time we had this exchange (well,
I said I thought I'd mentioned it before). Almost exactly 7 years ago I
mentioned Clackson and you said
"Hamp shows that Clackson is simply wrong -- he praises him for gathering
all sorts of important data, and missing their significance entirely.
Now if I could only remember where he published the review ... but hey,
that's what bibliographic databases are for. (He presented his review at
the last Non-Slavic Languages of the Former USSR conference in Chicago,
in May 97, but it's in a journal somewhere."
Colin
Peter T. Daniels
That's long enough ago that it'll now be included in the Linguistic
Bibliography. Would you believe the New York Public Library keeps only
about the last five volumes of that on the shelf in the Main Reading
Room, with the rest in storage in Princeton, NJ? I had to get a
day-pass for the Columbia University Libraries to use it.
Franz Gnaedinger
>
> P.S.: Sophus Bugge attempted to explain Etruscan as Armenian (or
> closely related) about 130 years ago. Bugge was an established
> philologist, but the systematic modern study of Etruscan was in its
> infancy. I'm not trying to tell you what to do, but I think you might
> end up reinventing a broken wheel by pursuing such a connection.
I uphold my Armenian hypothesis - with a crucial modification.
Yesterday I found this book: Armenian and Iranian Studies,
by James R. Russel, Harvard Armenian Texts and Studies 9,
Armenian Heritage Press, Harvard University Press 2004.
On page 1,369, in a footnote, in the tiniest print, and in
brackets he says that he had been very badly attacked for
agreeing on the late academician Igor Dyanakov's opinion
that Armenian is no autochthonous language. This carefully
hidden remark didn't escape me, and set my phantasy in
motion: what happened with the autochthonous language?
Here you are with a new fable of mine:
Magdalenian survived in Göbekli Tepe, Urfa region,
southeast Anatolia, 11 600 till 9 500 BC. The ancient name
of the place was AC CA --- where the earth (ac) is met by
the sky (ca). In the course of two millennia, the people of
Göbekli Tepe built nineteen circular stone pillar temples
(four of which are now excavated). The pillars are covered
with reliefs and even hieroglyphs. The circular temples
were used for ritual purposes, as mortuary temples, for
the deification of a worthy ruler, and as lunisolar calendars
based on these numbers: a year had 12 periods of 30 days
plus 5 and occasionally 6 days, while 63 continuous periods
of 30 days yield 1,890 days and correspond to 64 lunations.
The supreme god of Goebekli Tepe was CRE NOS --- ruler,
ruling (cre) mind (nos). He was visualized in an ingenious
way, by means of big stone rings placed on walls, the outer
form was perfectly round, while the inner one offered a face
ex negativo: look through such a ring at the sky and you see
the god with the arc of the skull, the ears, cheeks, and the
chin, just made of air and light. This emanation of CRE NOS
was called AAR RAA, short ARA --- heavenly being made
of air (aar) and sunlight (raa), while CRE NOS is known to
us in the form of Kronos or Cronus, god of time.
9,500 years ago the stone pillar temples were carefully filled
up and abandoned. A village was founded south of AC CA,
and was called ARA, known to us as Haran and Harran.
A pious man lived in ARA somewhere between 9,000 and
8,000 years ago. He called himself NOS ARA --- I live
according to the mind (nos) of the heavenly being (ara).
He had a big family, many friends and neighbours, and
owned a wealth in animals, dogs, sheep and goats. One
day he sacrificed a sheep and consulted the liver for an
oracle. This day it were bad news: a heavy rain will gona
fall, and a river flood will annihilate ARA. He gathered family,
friends, neighbours and animals and prepared himself to
leave. Many laughed at him: look at the bright sky, what
do you fear? But the man and his people and animals left.
It began to rain, heavily, fourty days and nights, the rivers
were filled with water, flooded the fields and village, and
killed almost all of those who remained.
NOS ARA, known to us in the form of Noah, followed the
river Euphrates upward, climbed over a mountain range,
descended on the other side, settled in a new river valley,
north of a majestic mountain, and founded a new ARA.
We know it as Yerevan, and in recent times the district
of ARA gave its name also to the mountain we call Ararat.
The successors of NOS ARA called themselves ARA MAN
--- right hand (man) of the heavenly being (ara), as they
carried out the will of CRE NOS. This one resided now on
top of the mountain. His consort was REO, known to us
in the form of Rhea. The permutation ORE 'beautiful' was
used for the river, younger names are Hrazdan Araxis Aras.
A further god was TYR --- he who overcomes, rules and
gives. He was fighting the evil forces that tear down the sun
in early winter, and kept away further evils. The Aramani
celebrated their gods and goddesses with big fires on hills
and mountain slopes. And they were the first ones who
melted copper in their hot fires. This caused a revolution,
first in the Eurasian steppes, then in the whole ancient world
-- especially when the Indo-Europeans living betweeen the
Caucasus and the Altai began to alloy copper with tin and
cast much harder bronze they used for weapons.
The Aramani were severely punished for their invention:
the conflicts raised by the use of weapons gave way to mass
wanderings that escalated in the time around 1 200 BC and
made the dwellers of the beautiful ORE valley leave their
home once again. This time they wandered westward, along
the northern shore of the Black Sea, traversed the Balkans,
arrived in the mountains of Europe, in the Swiss Alps where
they named the rivers for REO and ORE (Rhenos Rhine,
Rhodanos Rhone, Reuss, Arura Arula Aare), and the land
as well (Raetia), then they wandered southward, arrived in
the land called Etruria, where most of them settled, while
others wandered further southward. They were known as
worshippers of TYR and REO, also of TYR SA NOS and
SA TYR NOS --- we who live according to the mind (nos)
of the one who overcomes, rules and gives (tyr) from above
(sa). On their long and dangerous wanderings they were
protected by an alter ego of TYR, namely CER CLE ---
protector of the sun (cer) and judge (cle), known as Hercle
in Etruria, as Herakles to the Greeks.
The former home of the Armenians was invaded by Indo-
Europeans. Tyr survived in Tir, god of sleep and dreams
(overcoming us in his own way), and in Armenian Ter for
Lord. The Greeks remembered the first melting and casting
of copper as deed of Prometheus. Zeus punished him by
chaining him to a mountain and allowing an eagle to feed
on his liver: this means the Aramani were a victim of the
weapons they had helped to create, were invaded, forced
to live in ever higher and more secluded mountainous
regions, and the livers they read their fortune from were
eaten by the eagle, promised no luck anymore.
Finally, Prometheus was released by Herakles, alter ego
of TYR who adviced him to leave and wander westward.
Doing so, he or rather his son Deucalion had to cope with
a new flood, this time a symbolical one, namely the mass
wanderings occurring in the time of the Trojan War, around
1 200 BC. Homer equated attacking armies with flooding
rivers. The talking river Xanthos is nothing else than the
Trojan army marching along the river Skamander, xanthos
being a color that covers all hues of copper ores, yellow,
brown, red, and also the color of bronze when painted in
a fresco. So the river Xanthos was the army of the Trojans
clad in bronze marching toward and storming the wall of
the Achaeans.
Prometheus brought many gifts to the humans, and so did
the Etruscans in Italy. He also formed a man of clay and
made him live, which refers to the lively terracotta figurines
of the Etruscans. Deucalion married Pyrra whose name
means 'fire red' and may both refer to the Etruscans as
smiths and clay bakers ...
My phantasy, set in motion by Russel's hidden remark,
carried me thus far. It was fun. Now comes the work.
I must check my ideas. What is known of Prometheus
and Deucalion? Do their other features fit into the vision?
Or did I go astray and make a fool of myself?
We shall see.
Franz Gnaedinger
Peter T. Daniels
Franz Gnaedinger wrote:
> Douglas G. Kilday wrote:
> >
> > P.S.: Sophus Bugge attempted to explain Etruscan as Armenian (or
> > closely related) about 130 years ago. Bugge was an established
> > philologist, but the systematic modern study of Etruscan was in its
> > infancy. I'm not trying to tell you what to do, but I think you might
> > end up reinventing a broken wheel by pursuing such a connection.
>
> I uphold my Armenian hypothesis - with a crucial modification.
>
> Yesterday I found this book: Armenian and Iranian Studies,
> by James R. Russel, Harvard Armenian Texts and Studies 9,
> Armenian Heritage Press, Harvard University Press 2004.
> On page 1,369, in a footnote, in the tiniest print, and in
> brackets he says that he had been very badly attacked for
> agreeing on the late academician Igor Dyanakov's opinion
> that Armenian is no autochthonous language. This carefully
> hidden remark didn't escape me, and set my phantasy in
> motion: what happened with the autochthonous language?
What does "is no autochthonous language" mean?
That's clearly your rephrasing of something a native speaker of English
could not have written, so what he actually said could be illuminating.
Franz Gnaedinger
Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> Franz Gnaedinger wrote:
> >
> > by James R. Russel, Harvard Armenian Texts and Studies 9,
> > Armenian Heritage Press, Harvard University Press 2004.
> > On page 1,369, in a footnote, in the tiniest print, and in
> > brackets he says that he had been very badly attacked for
> > agreeing on the late academician Igor Dyanakov's opinion
> > that Armenian is no autochthonous language. This carefully
> > hidden remark didn't escape me, and set my phantasy in
> > motion: what happened with the autochthonous language?
>
> What does "is no autochthonous language" mean?
>
> That's clearly your rephrasing of something a native speaker of English
> could not have written, so what he actually said could be illuminating.
The bulky volume compiles 91 articles by Russel, mostly
photomechanical reprints of articles published between
1980 and 1997, plus photomechanical reproductions of
some typescripts: four lectures, and a couple of previously
unpublished papers. In the said footnote he tells that he
wrote a biographical essay on the Armenian poet Yegishe
Ch'arents', but his statement about the poet's bisexuality
(apparently well known in Armenia) was not welcome to
the publisher, so he withdrew all his material and published
it instead in the Ararat Quarterly. Quote of the bracket:
(Subsequently, a friend of his whom I had met and
befriended in New York published an _ad hominem_
critique of all my Armenological work in the once-
scholarly _Patma-banasirakan Handes_. My ostensible
crime is this instance was to have agreed with the late
Academician Igor Dyakanov's position that the Armenian
language is not autochthonous.)
I leaved through almost all of the 1,462 pages and found
no typo, not even in the typescripts from the 1980s, when
there were not yet computers with a correction program.
But if I am correct, there is a typo in the above quote:
"is this instance" - methinks it should read: in this instance.
If it is a typo, then it might testify to the emotional stress
he suffered from remembering that accusation. Now
a quote from the Acknowledgements, page xxix:
At a dark midpoint of my life and career, when all doors
seemed shut, Professor Michel Stone and the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem welcomed me with open arms,
returning the dignity of work and shelter, their generous
collegiality renewing inspiration and nourishing imagination.
Without them, most of the studies in this volume would
never have been written. _Im nin'alu daltei nedivim, daltei
marom lo nin'alu_. So in these days vexed by war and
hatred, yet in hope of a just and peaceful future of true
enlightenment for all sentient beings, I account it an honor
to dedicate this book, with great love, to the people of Israel.
James R. Russel / Cambridge, Massachusetts / 19 January
2004.
At first I linked the episode regarding Ch'arents' with
the "dark midpoint" mentioned above, but I was wrong in
doing so, because the midpoint of his life and carrier must
have occurred somewhere in the 1980s or early 1990s,
while the "_ad hominem_ critique" appeared in 1998.
Anyway, Russel "agreed with the late Academician Igor
Dyanakov's position that the Armenian language is
not autochthonous" - and this made my phantasy run wild ...
Regards Franz Gnaedinger
Franz Gnaedinger
Herakles, the Sun-God-Archer, Tyr, and Kerberos, by
Gregory E. Areshian, University of California, Los Angeles,
in: Proceedings of the Fifteenth Annual UCLA Conference,
Los Angeles, November 7-8, 2003, Edited by Karlene
Jones-Bley, Martin E. Huld, Angela Della Volpe, Miriam
Robbins Dexter, Journal of Indo-European Monograph
Series, No. 49, Institute for the Study of Man, Washington,
DC, 2004. The androgynous bronze figurine of Herakles
with Kerberos from Shirakavan in northwestern Armenia
on the border with Turkey, shown and bespoken by
Areshian, dates from between 1 400 and 1 100 BC.
Concerning Göbekli Tepe I recommend the book by the
excavator of that unique site since 1994, Klaus Schmidt,
Sie bauten die ersten Tempel -- available only in German,
but with many photographs and site maps.
Peter T. Daniels
Setting aside all the irrelevant psychobabble, Mr. Russell is simply
stating the obvious: Armenian is an Indo-European language, and so came
from somwhere else.
"Academician Igor Dyakanov" (whom you concealed behind "Igor Dyanakov")
is of course the great Russian linguist I. M. Diakonoff, and he had
nothing to do with the above assertion.
Mr. Russell is the author of an utterly loony article on the origin of
the Armenian alphabet in Le Museon 107 (1994): 317-33 -- he scrabbles
it together from every alphabet in the area, including some that aren't
attested until after Armenian is.
Dusan Vukotic
> mb wrote:
> >
> > Car TYRes were so named because they overcome the friction of the soil.
> > They stopped doing so in the US, though.
>
> Welcome in the Magdalenian club. You are now a provisional
> member. If you want to become a regular member in the full
> rights please give us a complete deduction of (car) tyres from
> Magdalenian TYR --- he who overcomes, inverse of RYT ---
> spear fighter, lance thrower, archer. A hint: one may say that
> a tyre overcomes the ridge of the wheel over which it is drawn,
> metal tyres roll over the rails, and, most important, consider
> the double meaning of French tirer, to pull, draw, and to fire,
> shoot ...
>
> In the name of the Magdalenian commitee
>
> Franz Gnaedinger
As matter of fact, RYT did not come as an inversion of TYR because the
both words originated from the Ur-basis HOR-GON. For instance, the
Serbian vocabulary has the word 'TERANJE' (driving, drift; cf. tyranny)
whose history is very interesting; it appeared from 'gurkanje' (guranje
/pushing/ > ceranje /driving/ > teranje /drive, drift/. In a
combination with the ancient syllable BEL (HOR_BEL_GON) we acquired the
Serbian word 'uguravanje' (ugurivanje > ucerivanje > UTERIVANJE to
push in, to drive in). Modern scientists claim that the word 'drive'
(O.Eng. 'drifan', Goth. 'dreiban', Ger. 'treiben') cannot be found
outside the Germanic, but we can see now that this was a false
presumption (Serb. UTERIVANjE > DRIFAN > DRIVING).
On the other side are the Serbian words 'RITANJE' (buck, jerking) and
'RIDANJE' (blubber, sob) which originated from the same HOR-GON basis
(hurricane), ORIDANJE (great disorder) and the verb 'ORITI' (big
noise, clatter). Of course, I think it would be unnecessary to remind
you of other words likewise the Serbian 'uredenje' (order) and the
Latin 'regno' (reign). There are a great number of the Serbian words
coming from the "horgon" source: 'RAÐANJE' (birth), RAÐENJE, RAD
(work), REÐANJE (rotation, sequence), RUŠENJE (subversion,
disintegration, ravage), RUŽENJE (blemish), RIKANJE (roaring).
When prefixed with the primeval syllable BEL this words would obtain
other meanings, usually adjectival: 'poroden' (born), 'poredano'
(arrayed), 'porušeno' (broken, ruinous) etc.
Compare Serbian 'POROD' (family, offspring, confinement, delivery,
accouchement) and English BIRTH, either Serbian 'UREÐENO' and English
ARRAYED (ARRANGED) or REÐANJE and ROTATION; Serb. RUGATI (monkey,
gibe, sneer, jeer, roast, outrage, deride) and Eng. RAGGED (rag,
ragging; harass with persistent criticism or carping).
Franz, I hope this is in accordance with your Magdalenian rules.
DV
Dusan Vukotic
Secondary ancient TYR syllable (from the "horgon" basis) could be found
in different words in the whole IE area. Russian 'дорога/ doroga'
has the meaning 'way', 'road' (there is no such a word in Serbian) and
'дорогой' / dorogoy' means 'expensive, darling, costly, dear'
(Serb. 'dragi' dear, darling). Let us compare it with the Englesh word
'drag' and Latin 'trahere'. Is there anything in common among the
Serbian 'trag' (trace!!), 'traganje / traženje' (tracing), 'držanje'
(holding), 'draženje' (irritation), 'drug' (friend) and English 'drag'
(Lat. trahere).
Is the English 'riding' (road) an equivalent to the Serbian 'ritanje'
(jerky movement of an animal, horse for instant)? Maybe, it is a
cognate of the Serbian 'krenuti'; /go, move/ (imp. K-RENI! > German
'rennen'; race, run, English 'run'), where the initial 'k' is being
excluded. Actually, we shall see that the Serbian 'ritanje' is derived
from the noun 'KRUG' (HOR-GON, circle; Lat. circus); i.e. KRUŽENJE
(circling) > KRETANJE (movement). The Greek γεράκι (falcon) is in
fact the bird, which flies in circles similar to the Serbian 'orao'
(eagle, Lat. aquila; hole, Serb. 'okolo' around?).
Now, it became clear that the Serbian 'KRUG' (from HOR_GON) was the
central word for all the other words connected with all the kinds of
repeating movements (KRETANJE walking, going, KRUŽENJE going in
circles like falcon, TRAGANJE tracing, TRAŽENJE searching, TRČANJE
running, KORAK pace, KORAČANJE walking).
Furthermore, we are going to see that the Serbian word 'druženje'
(intimacy) is immanently linked to 'kruženje' (KRUG circle). Any
social association, with the selected members, represents the one
isolated circle (KRUŽENJE - DRUŽENJE). Of course, all the members of
such a circle are the friends (DRUG) to each other.
DV
Dusan Vukotic
> "Franz Gnaedinger" <fr...@bluemail.ch> wrote in message
> news:1161960812.3...@i3g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> >
> > An addendum: the mother of Taras was the nymph Satyrion.
> > Her name contains the word Tyr. You may also think of the
> > satyrs, who came from wooded mountains and "overcame"
> > nymphs in their sleep. "Satyr" would combine SA and TYR.
> > Magdalenian SA means downward, and TYR he who overcomes
> > - satyrs coming down from their wooded mountains and making
> > love to sleeping nymphs (overcoming them sexually). There is
> > still a Torre Satyrion near Torent, reminding of Taras' mother.
> >
> At about ten miles from the town there is still a locality, named Saturo,
> with remains of a Roman villa dug in the rocks by the sea. As far as I know
> it is one of the two places of the legends on the origin of Taranto (the
> other being the river taras). If it can help, I remind that in the local
> dialect the pronunciation of the town is * tard' *.
Beside the Serbian 'teranje' (driving) there are the words as ISTERATI
(force to live, to evict, expel), ISTERIVANJE (expelling, eviction),
SATERATI (to corner), SATIRANJE (destruction) and ZATIRANJE
(eradication) with the Ur-basis SUR-HOR-GON. Older variants of the
above words were IŠCERATI and SACERATI. It is the reason why we have
the Serbian word IZGURATI (expel, extrude). Sometimes I have to use
these older Serbian words to clear some other etymologies, for instant,
the history of the Serbian word CORAV (blind), which has come from
the verb IŠCERIVATI (expelling; Serbian syntagma 'išcerati oko'
take out an eye).
Some of the words derived from the basis SUR-HOR are very interesting;
compare the Serbian word SUŠARA (dehydration room; Serb. 'sušiti'
drying up), with the Arab çahra (Sahara; Lat. sicco, siccare). It
seems no body connects the etymology of the English word 'dry' (O.E.
dryge, drygan; drígian, ðú drígast to suffer, endure, Lat.
indurare, durus) with the other words as 'drain', 'drainage', 'terrain'
and 'endurance'. Obviously all these words sprung from the secondary
ur-syllabic basis - TYR-GON (originally HOR-GON) and their central
meaning was TERANJE (driving). The man who had been subjected to hard
work was also exposed to great suffering (Serb. DURANJE, Eng.
endurance) and, of course, those people who could endure a hard toil
were called 'duratos' (the hard one).
Now we can clearly see where the Latin 'terra' came from, because the
'terra' is a solid (hard, Lat. duratos) part of the planet Earth.
Finally, who would ever have supposed that the English 'drinker' would
have anything to do with either hard soil (terra and terrain) or with
the Serbian word 'duranje' (endurance)?
There is another Serbian word - 'po/DRIGNUTI' (belch, eruct) -
which is equal to the Serbian verb 'poterati' (TERANJE driving, in this
case expelling gas from the stomach). Among the Serbs there is a
proverbial saying 'TRGNI jadnu' (drink one) when offering a booze.
DV
Franz Gnaedinger
Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> Setting aside all the irrelevant psychobabble, Mr. Russell is simply
> stating the obvious: Armenian is an Indo-European language, and so came
> from somwhere else.
>
> "Academician Igor Dyakanov" (whom you concealed behind "Igor Dyanakov")
> is of course the great Russian linguist I. M. Diakonoff, and he had
> nothing to do with the above assertion.
Sorry for my typo.
> Mr. Russell is the author of an utterly loony article on the origin of
> the Armenian alphabet in Le Museon 107 (1994): 317-33 -- he scrabbles
> it together from every alphabet in the area, including some that aren't
> attested until after Armenian is.
The article is included in the book, together with 90 more papers
by Russel from 1980 till 2004 (not just 1997, as I wrongly stated)
and sails now under the proud flag of Havard. Is it that bad as
you say? or do you linguists just like to call each other loonies?
I pondered the consequences of my fable, and here are my new
ideas, first concerning the supreme deities of Greek mythology,
then the sons of Japheth in the Bible, then Greek Japetos and
Prometheus.
Chaos -- end of the Magdalenian order
Uranos and Gaia -- heaven and earth, Göbekli Tepe, original
name AC CA meaning where the earth (ac) meets the sky (ca),
written as a lying H whose horizontal bars mean earth and sky
Cronos and Rhea -- hunting life gives way to agriculture
Zeus and Hera -- supreme deities of the Bronze Age
Noah belongs to the era of Cronos and Rhea. His son Japheth
would represent Armenia. The sons of Japheth are Gomer,
Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech, Tiras (in this order,
Genesis X, 1 Chronicles I). Madai is considered a symbol of
the Medes, Javan a symbol of the Greeks. Now let me try
a more complete interpretation:
1) Gomer -- Russia, Komerova culture Ukraine, Kimmerians
north of the Caucasus
2) Magog -- Armenia in the hands of Indo-Europeans?
3) Madai -- Persia, Medes
4) Javan -- Greece, Ahhijava, Achaia
5) Tubal -- Anatolia, named for the region of Tabal Tubal on
the upper course of the river Hyalis, Kappadokia
6) Meshech -- Asia, Massagetes east of the Caspian Sea,
heirs of the Andranova culture, Indo-European homeland
7) Tiras -- Etruria? combining TYR and REO, as Tyrrhenian
Ancient Greek iapto means I throw. The word is present in
the name of the titan Japetos, whom I equate with Japheth
in the Genesis. As a thrower he was the spear thrower,
the one who protected the sun against the evil forces of
the dark, hence an alter ego of TYR. His son Prometheus
brought fire to the humans: in my opinion the hot fire that
melts metals. He symbolizes those Armenians who, some
8,000 years ago, succeeded in melting copper - and thus
opened Pandora's box, for melting copper led to the alloy
of copper and tin, hence the invention of Bronze, perhaps
about 6,000 years ago, somewhere between Anatolia (rich
in copper and other metals, lacking tin) and Central Asia (rich
in tin). Bronze allowed to cast weapons, and bridals to tame
horses, which started the Indo-European revolution that also
run over Armenia, repressing the former culture (Japetos,
Prometheus) to some mountain valleys in Armenia and into
the steep mountains of the Caucasus.
7a) Prometheus -- secluded mountain valleys of Armenia,
Caucasus
7b) Tiras -- Etruria, new home of the Promethean culture
While all the other sons of Japheth are Indo-Europeans,
Tiras, the last son, the smallest one, a Benjamin, remained
faithful to his father and grandfather, he was suppressed
by his strong Indo-European brothers, survived in secluded
mountain valleys (Prometheus chained to a mountain) and
finally left Armenia and the Caucasus, finding a new home
in Etruria ... Note well: Tiras would represent the former
Armenian culture, not the Armenian people - the main
contribution to the gene pool of the Etruscans came from
Iberia, France, NW Europa, and western Asia (Aramaea).
The impact would have been a cultural one, as in the case
of the some 200 farmers who brought agriculture to Western
Europe, leaving their innovation but no genetic traces, being
quickly absorbed by the local populations.
Now get me a ticket for Harvard ...
Franz Gnaedinger
Franz Gnaedinger
Thank you for the three replies, and let me answer the first
one. You are of course free to go for your experiments,
if you can stand the criticism that is necessarily the more
violent the farther you deviate from the given ways.
My concern is language on the Magdalenian level of time,
your concern seems to be a younger time level. Magdalenian
words began to branch out in the Azilian period of time, and
even more in the subsequent Neolithic I (Göbekli Tepe, Anatolia),
and Neolithic II (the epoch as understood previously, before
the discovery of Göbekli Tepe). There can be many levels of
meaning in a single word or word group, and different words
can overlay each other. I told you before that if you want to
survive in sci.lang you must concentrate on single words and
give a detailed story of that word. You can't impress people
here with hundreds of words. Not the number counts, so please
exemplify your ideas by means of the best word you got. I can't
defend people in sci.lang, I am just fighting for the freedom of
developing new ideas in a scientific forum. Critique is inevitable,
and you must be prepared. It will come thick and fast. You have
already tasted the bitter smell, so you know what I'm speaking of.
Wishing you good luck
Franz Gnaedinger
Peter T. Daniels
Franz Gnaedinger wrote:
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> >
> > Setting aside all the irrelevant psychobabble, Mr. Russell is simply
> > stating the obvious: Armenian is an Indo-European language, and so came
> > from somwhere else.
> >
> > "Academician Igor Dyakanov" (whom you concealed behind "Igor Dyanakov")
> > is of course the great Russian linguist I. M. Diakonoff, and he had
> > nothing to do with the above assertion.
>
> Sorry for my typo.
>
> > Mr. Russell is the author of an utterly loony article on the origin of
> > the Armenian alphabet in Le Museon 107 (1994): 317-33 -- he scrabbles
> > it together from every alphabet in the area, including some that aren't
> > attested until after Armenian is.
>
> The article is included in the book, together with 90 more papers
> by Russel from 1980 till 2004 (not just 1997, as I wrongly stated)
> and sails now under the proud flag of Havard. Is it that bad as
> you say? or do you linguists just like to call each other loonies?
How would I know anything about his qualifications as an Armenologist?
The article on the Armenian alphabet is loony.
Franz Gnaedinger
Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> How would I know anything about his qualifications as an Armenologist?
> The article on the Armenian alphabet is loony.
Would you kindly say the same of my Magdalenian,
so that I can send my applications to Harvard?
Dusan Vukotic
Franz Gnaedinger wrote:
> Dusan Vukotic wrote:
> >
> > As matter of fact, RYT did not come as an inversion of TYR because the
> > both words originated from the Ur-basis HOR-GON. For instance, the
> > Serbian vocabulary has the word 'TERANJE' (driving, drift; cf. tyranny)
> > which history is very interesting; it appeared from 'gurkanje' (guranje
Thanks, but I would be happy to hear critics from the members of this
forum; positive or negative - all the same.
I hoped you would understand this post, but... (:
As matter of fact, RYT did not come as an inversion of TYR because the
> > both words originated from the Ur-basis HOR-GON. For instance, the
> > Serbian vocabulary has the word 'TERANJE' (driving, drift; cf. tyranny)
> > which history is very interesting; it appeared from 'gurkanje' (guranje
> > /pushing/ > ćeranje /driving/ > teranje /drive, drift/. In a
> > combination with the ancient syllable BEL (HOR_BEL_GON) we acquired the
> > Serbian word 'uguravanje' (ugurivanje > ućerivanje > UTERIVANJE to
> > push in, to drive in). Modern scientists claim that the word 'drive'
> > (O.Eng. 'drifan', Goth. 'dreiban', Ger. 'treiben') cannot be found
> > outside the Germanic, but we can see now that this was a false
> > presumption (Serb. UTERIVANjE > DRIFAN > DRIVING).
Regards,
Dušan Vukotić
Franz Gnaedinger
Dusan Vukotic wrote:
>
> Thanks, but I would be happy to hear critics from the members of this
> forum; positive or negative - all the same.
> I hoped you would understand this post, but... (:
>
> As matter of fact, RYT did not come as an inversion of TYR because the
> > > both words originated from the Ur-basis HOR-GON. For instance, the
> > > Serbian vocabulary has the word 'TERANJE' (driving, drift; cf. tyranny)
> > > which history is very interesting; it appeared from 'gurkanje' (guranje
> > > /pushing/ > ćeranje /driving/ > teranje /drive, drift/. In a
> > > combination with the ancient syllable BEL (HOR_BEL_GON) we acquired the
> > > Serbian word 'uguravanje' (ugurivanje > ućerivanje > UTERIVANJE to
> > > push in, to drive in). Modern scientists claim that the word 'drive'
> > > (O.Eng. 'drifan', Goth. 'dreiban', Ger. 'treiben') cannot be found
> > > outside the Germanic, but we can see now that this was a false
> > > presumption (Serb. UTERIVANjE > DRIFAN > DRIVING).
>
>
> Regards,
> Dušan Vukotić
Please explain where you got your words HOR and GON
and BEL from. I just looked up cognates of RYT in my
library, and here is what I found. First my hypotheses.
TYR means he who overcomes (as ruler and giver), the
hypothetical word survives in many forms, as tyr- Tir Ter
tar, Tur-.Tork was an Anatolian polyphem, a one-eyed
monster who protected the shores by throwing boulders
at pirates, Inverse RYT means spear-thrower, protector.
Ancient Greek rhytaer for one who draws or stretches,
for example a bow, an arrow. A Magdalenian spear-
thrower was a device that held the spear - one drew
it back over the head, and then quickly and with all one's
force forward. Rhytaer as noun means savior, deliverer,
defender. Sanskrit rudh means to obstruct,, check, arrest,
stop, restrain, prevent, keep back, withhold, avert, keep off,
repel, to shut, lock up, confine ... pretty much the business
of a protector. In Serbian you got rat for war, and red for
order, may also be variants of hypothetical RYT, rat in
any case, perhaps also red, as order is the first you learn
in the army. Just a few cognates of many more. Especially
Sanskrit rudh can be counted as confirmation of RYT.
I tell you this in order to show you that you must proceed
carefully. Explain how you found your basic words, and
how you derive Serbian words from them. As said before,
there are many layers of words, my explanation and yours
can well co-exist.
Good luck again
Franz Gnaedinger
Dusan Vukotic
I am talking about the most ancient syllables, which were the common
wellspring of the all IE tongues. In this case, SUR and HOR seem to be
two words that had been split from the common ancestor wich erstwhile
sounded similar to X (ks, hs, gz; XUR). The ancient "rivalry" between
Sur and Hor was the basis for the later satem-centum division. Of
course, SUR, HOR and BEL are the sun gods well known in ancient
religions. In the further developing of speech, these primeval
syllables were combined with the fourth ur-syllable GON, the one that
represented different kind of motion or movement.
For instance, the Serbian SUNCE and the English SUN are the "products"
of SURGON (Sargon from Akkad!); first SUR-GNE > SUR-NKE > SUR-NCE and
at last SUNCE. The similar process could be seen in the other Serbian
word (ZORA dawn), but this time from the HOR-GON basis (GORENJE
/flaming, glowing/, ŽARENJE heating, burning, ZORNJAČA /morning
star/). We can see that ZORA (dawn) kept the original sound 'R' while
te same sound had been removed in case of the word SUNCE (sun). The
sound R elision is the one of the important rules for the understanding
of the IE speech evolution.
All the words in the IE realm could be reduced to the basic form
XUR-BEL-GON-UM (UM denotes human and divine mind) and the other
possible combinations among those syllables.
Your RYT and TYR belong to the secondary layer of ancient syllables.
Dentals are the younger group of consonants (velar to dental changes).
In fact, TYR syllable should not be observed independently because it
always goes back to a certain compound word. For example, in Serbian we
have the word RITANJE (buck), but it is clear that this word came from
OKRETANJE (rotation, slew), KRETANJE (movement) where the initial K had
been elided. In English there are the words ROAD and CROWD (O.E.
CRUDAN); what do you think, are they in any relation with the word
CRUSH (Serb. KRŠENJE = CRUSHING; the same meaning)? Of course, you see
that they are closely related, because O.E CRUDAN has the meaning
'crush'. On the other side, we have the Serbian ORIDANJE (a CRASHING
noise;) with the initial velar being removed.
The German 'Ritter' and your 'Rhytaer', I suppose, have the same
meaning – knight. In fact, even the noblest knight is just a simple
RIDER who is RIDING his HORS down the ROAD. I hope, now you are able to
see the cognate relation among all the words that have been mentioned
here - HORS included (HOR_GON).
Best regards,
Dušan Vukotić
Dusan Vukotic
Dusan Vukotic wrote:
You told me a few times that I should have concentrated myself on
explaining one single word if I had wanted to attract someone
attention. Of course, I need someone to talk with me as any other
member of this group, but it is absolutely impossible to explain one
single word without the use of plenty of other words.
All my recent messages, which have been addressed to you and your
RYT-TYR reflections, had been written in order to explain one SINGLE
WORD, and that word is the Serbian KRUG, English CIRKLE, Greek GIROS
γύρος, Hungarian KOR, Latin CIRCA (from the basis HOR-GON).
Franz Gnaedinger
Dusan Vukotic wrote:
>
> I am talking about the most ancient syllables, which were the common
> wellspring of the all IE tongues. In this case, SUR and HOR seem to be
> two words that had been split from the common ancestor wich erstwhile
> sounded similar to X (ks, hs, gz; XUR). The ancient "rivalry" between
> Sur and Hor was the basis for the later satem-centum division. Of
> course, SUR, HOR and BEL are the sun gods well known in ancient
> religions. In the further developing of speech, these primeval
> syllables were combined with the fourth ur-syllable GON, the one that
> represented different kind of motion or movement.
>
> For instance, the Serbian SUNCE and the English SUN are the "products"
> of SURGON (Sargon from Akkad!); first SUR-GNE > SUR-NKE > SUR-NCE and
> at last SUNCE. The similar process could be seen in the other Serbian
> word (ZORA dawn), but this time from the HOR-GON basis (GORENJE
> /flaming, glowing/, ŽARENJE heating, burning, ZORNJAČA /morning
> star/). We can see that ZORA (dawn) kept the original sound 'R' while
> te same sound had been removed in case of the word SUNCE (sun). The
> sound R elision is the one of the important rules for the understanding
> of the IE speech evolution.
Thank you for the explanation, but it is not sufficient.
Are _you_ proposing the ur-words SUR HOR BEL GON ?
Is someone else proposing them? and if so, who?
And do you, or that other person, or that group of persons,
believe that the earliest language consisted of just four
words? How do you say: Attention, a lion on the left side!
How could the ancient hunters communicate with just
these four words? Or are they words of an early religious
language? if so, what was the profane language, for they
must have used a form of language. Your answer raises
many more questions - questions I would also pose
Prof. Dr. Richard Fester: how did people communicate
using just the five ur-words BA KALL TAL ACQ TAG ?
And if there have been such ur-words, whom should we
follow? Fester or you? Why didn't you find the same words?
You must answer all these questions, otherwise nobody
can follow you, and nobody will follow you, especially here
in sci.lang.
Regards Franz Gnaedinger
Franz Gnaedinger
MI SURIS CAVATHA
According to my hypothesis, the dwellers of Neolithic Armenia
worshipped TYR --- he who overcomes (in the double meaning
of rule and give) and his consort REO --- to flow, river, also
present in ORE --- beautiful, and in further permutations. Tyr,
according to Areshian, was the Sun-God-Archer. In my opinion
he overcame all forces of the dark - be they the forces that
tear down the sun in early winter, or the forces that menace
the sun traversing the Underworld. TYR would have resided
on top of the volcanic Mount Ararat.
Etruscan versions of TYR would have been Turan, goddess
of love (who overcomes us with heavenly power, so to say),
equivalent of Greek Aphrodite and Roman Venus, and her
son Turnu, equivalent of Greek Eros, Roman Amor or Cupido,
armed with bow and arrows. A further variation of TYR would
have been Etruscan Turms, equivalent of Greek Hermaes
who could cast sleep on everyone (overcoming us in another
way). Then we have the moon Tivr, also Tuir. The sun god
was Usil, shown with a bow on a bronze mirror. Connected
with Usil was Apulu, Etruscan Apollo. Apollo Soranus was
connected with Usil, and was the sun god Suri, also Sur,
present in the village name of Surrina, better known as
Viterbo, and in the name of Mount Soracte, a volcanic
mountain, sanctuary of Apollo Soranus, and this Apollo
Soranus was Sur, descendant of TYR ...
Now for a most fascinating Etruscan inscription on a kalix
from altar Lambda at Pyrgi, ca. 480 - 470 BC:
mi suri cavatha --- I belong to Suri and Cavatha
Cavatha (also known as Catha Kavatha Cath) is considered
either the wife or daughter of Suri. Reading her name with
Magdalenian eyes, I get CA VAD --- sky water, rain. Cavatha
is then another name of REO, consort of TYR. Combine TYR
and REO and you obtain Tyrrhenian. So the inscription says
nothing else than that the kalix belongs to the supreme deities
of old, TYR and Reo. The Latin version of TYR would be
SA TYR NOS --- the mind of the one who overcomes (rules
and gives) from above. Saturn's consort was Ops, whose
name I derive from Magdalenian APS --- hide of a tent, where
damp condensates and trickles and drops down, as model of
the heavenly canopy where the rain comes from. Comical and
idyllic versions of Saturn and Ops would have been satyrs
and nymphs: the satyrs living on wooded mountains, lusting
for nymphs, overcoming them in their sleep, while the lovely
nymphs lived near springs and wells - again the element of
water.
Altar Lamda at Pyrgi is in a depression, so Suri and Cavatha
are linked to the Underworld and regarded as equivalents of
Pluto and Persephones in the Greek Hades. I'd say that
hypothetical TYR and his consort REO were the sun - or
protector of the sun - during day and night, and water both
in heaven, on Earth, and in the Underworld.
TYR was an alter ego of CRE NOS --- ruling mind, known
as Cronos, god of time. It is interesting that both the Etruscan
names of moon and sun are derivates of TYR, namely Tivr Tiur
and Suri Sur (Apollo Sorianus connected with Usil). So let us
look whether there is a connection with time.
The lunisolar calendar of Göbekli Tepe was based on these
elementary numbers: a month had 30 days, 12 months plus
5 and occasionally 6 days yield a solar year of 365 and
sometimes 366 days, while 63 periods of 30 days, counted
continuously, yield 1,890 days and correspond to 64 lunations.
The Neolithic Armenians, worshippers of TYR and REO,
might have used the same calendar, which they could then
have improved. A hint as to what numbers may have been
involved is given by the division of the Etruscan sky into
16 sectors. This number is confirmed by the 16 fields
on the margin of the famous bronze liver from Piacenza.
All in all, there are 51 names written on the liver (some
occur two or even three times, but the total number of
written names is 51). Let us compose a lunisolar calendar
from these numbers. 16 periods of 22 days yield 352 days.
Add 13 and sometimes 14 days and you get a solar year
of 365 and occasionally 366 days. For practical purposes
you can consider this relation: 4 periods of 22 days are
88 days and correspond to 3 lunations. Better numbers:
51 periods of 22 days are 1,122 days and correspond to
38 lunations. Excellent numbers: 200 periods of 22 days
are 4,400 days and correspond to 149 lunations. The
latter definition yields a marvellous value for the synodic
month or lunation. Now comes another surprise. 200
(periods of time) minus 149 (lunations) are again 51,
the number of names on the life-size bronze model of
a sheep liver used for divinatory purposes ...
16 periods of 22 days yield 253 days, add 13 and
sometimes 14 days and you get a solar year of 365
and occasionally 366 days. 200 continuous periods
of 22 days yield 4,400 days and equal 149 lunations
(200 minus 149 equals 51). You may check the value
of a lunation coming from these numbers by yourself:
a modern synodic month or lunation lasts 29 days
12 hours 44 minutes 2.9 seconds. (Divide 4,400 days
by 149, transform the result in days, hours, minutes
and seconds, and compare the numbers.)
The Etruscans used a calendar of ten months beginning
in March. The calendar of thunder omina was based on
twelve lunar months of 30 days. The various Etruscan
cities probably used local calendars. Yet the above
hypothetical calendar might have been remembered
by priests and used for secret rituals in honor of TYR
and REO whose Etruscan alter egos would have been
Suri and Cavatha, Roman Saturn and Ops, popular satyr
and nymph.
Regards Franz Gnaedinger
Franz Gnaedinger
I found the above names of Etruscan deities and the
inscription "mi suris cavatha" in the highly recommendable
book: The Religion of the Etruscans, Nancy Thomson de
Grummond and Erika Simon, Editors, University of Texas
Press, Austin, 2006.
Unfortunately, the 2 volumes of Etruscan texts by Helmut
Rix are no longer in our library, might have been stolen.
I would like to know more about similar inscriptions such
as "mi suris cavatha" and further words that may have
come from hypothetical TYR. Douglas G. Kilday?
Regards Franz Gnaedinger
Dusan Vukotic
Franz Gnaedinger wrote:
You are right, it is not sufficient, but I am working on it to prove
that my XUR-BEL-GON hypothesis is the correct one. It is a huge
undertaking which demands hunderds of pages in sense of a clear and
undoubtful explanation. Fester's BA KALL TAL ACQ TAG ur-syllables could
be presented in an inverted version and they would be still eqally
valid as the original one. I told you that Mar's "monogenetic theory"
(SAL-BER-ROSH-YON) is the closest one to my SHURBELANUM
self-generating wellspring of words.
Best regards,
Dušan Vukotić
Franz Gnaedinger
AD --- toward
AS --- upward
DA --- away from
SA --- downward, from above
EN --- in, inside
NE --- out, outside
EP --- on, at
PE --- near, nearby
The first four Magdalenian and Azilian prepositions are fairly
well established, while the subsequent ones are tentative.
LAD means hill, slope, the comparative form LAS means cliff.
steep slope, mountain range, or simply mountain. AD LAS
means toward mountain, especially the Eurasian steppes
oriented toward the southern mountain ranges, for example
the Caucasus. PE LAS means near mountain, for example
the habitable land in Georgia and Armenia, near the mountains
of the Caucasus - Elbrus 5633 m, Kazbek 5047 m -, and of
Armenia - Ararat 5166 m. The Atlantians were simply the
Flatlanders of the Eurasian steppes, and the Pelasgians the
Highlanders of mountaineous Georgia and Armenia.
The mountains are rich in metals, which may have been the
reason why the AD LAS people of the Eurasian steppes claimed
the Caucasus, Atlas carrying the sky, whereupon at least some
of the PE LAS people would have left home. Can we hope to find
out where they went? Maybe they left linguistic traces? Let us
look out for names of rivers and regions that remind of REO and
permutations, TYR, ARA, and PE LAS.
We find the river Rhyndakos in Lydia, today Kirmasti. Herodot
tells us that the Tyrrhenians came from Lydia.
Then there is the river Rha in southern Russia, today Volga,
mouthing into the Caspian Sea, and the river Tyras, today Siret,
mouthing into the Black Sea.
Herodot says that the Pelasgians once dwelt in Thessalia.
There we find a region called Pelasgiotis, namely the plain
of Larisa at the feet of the mountains Ossa, 1978 m, and
Olympus, 2917 m. A little northward we find the villages
Tyrissa, today Kazani, and Eratyra, the regions Orestis
and Eordaialmopia, and the river Rhoidias.
In nearby Illyria the river Eordaikos, farther north the river
Arrab, mouthing into the Danube at Gyor, between Bratislava
and Budapest. Farther west we got Raetia with the sources
of the rivers Rhenus Rhine, Rhodanus Rhone, Reuss, and
Arura Arula Aare in the Swiss Alps.
Herodot says that the Pelasgians of his time lived in Creston
above the Tyrrhenians. Creston is assumed to perhaps be
Crotona, Etruscan Curtun, a town on the slope of a mountain.
If so, the Tyrrhenians were the Etruscans living on the shore
of the Tyrrhenian Sea, and the Pelasgians were the Etruscans
living higher up, between mountains of the Apennino. By the
way: a river Rhenus is flowing from the Etruscan mountains
into the Padovan plain, once mouthing into the Padus Po,
today called Reno and mouthing into the Adriatic Sea.
Regards Franz Gnaedinger
Dusan Vukotic
> Who were the Pelasgians?
>
> AD --- toward
> AS --- upward
> DA --- away from
> SA --- downward, from above
> EN --- in, inside
> NE --- out, outside
> EP --- on, at
> PE --- near, nearby
>
> The first four Magdalenian and Azilian prepositions are fairly
> well established, while the subsequent ones are tentative.
>
> LAD means hill, slope, the comparative form LAS means cliff.
> steep slope, mountain range, or simply mountain. AD LAS
> means toward mountain, especially the Eurasian steppes
> oriented toward the southern mountain ranges, for example
> the Caucasus. PE LAS means near mountain, for example
> the habitable land in Georgia and Armenia, near the mountains
> of the Caucasus - Elbrus 5633 m, Kazbek 5047 m -, and of
> Armenia - Ararat 5166 m. The Atlantians were simply the
> Flatlanders of the Eurasian steppes, and the Pelasgians the
> Highlanders of mountaineous Georgia and Armenia
>
"PE LAS means near mountain"
PELAS is the compound word that sprung directly from the primeval
BEL-GON basis. The names of the Balkan Peninsula, Pelagonija
(Πελαγονíα ) and Paionia (Παίονες) also emerged from
BEL-GON wellspring. It is supposed that Slavs entered the Balkan in the
VI century and we know a significant number of the Slavic tribe names
from that period. Interesting, among those Slavic tribes there was the
one called VELEGEZITES. Obviously, Pelasgoí and Velegezi were the
names from the same stem, although there was a time-span of more than
10 centuries.
DV
Douglas G. Kilday
Franz Gnaedinger wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> I found the above names of Etruscan deities and the
> inscription "mi suris cavatha" in the highly recommendable
> book: The Religion of the Etruscans, Nancy Thomson de
> Grummond and Erika Simon, Editors, University of Texas
> Press, Austin, 2006.
>
> Unfortunately, the 2 volumes of Etruscan texts by Helmut
> Rix are no longer in our library, might have been stolen.
> I would like to know more about similar inscriptions such
> as "mi suris cavatha" and further words that may have
> come from hypothetical TYR. Douglas G. Kilday?
The correct text appears to be:
mi : 6uris : cavathas
I use <6> for the sibilant which does not form genitives, and <th> for
theta. Several objects found at Pyrgi have fragments of similar text,
reported in _Studi Etruschi_ vol. 56.
Scholars regard <cavatha> as a divine name, so the text can be read
either as 'I am the shuris of Cavatha' (i.e. <6uris> means 'kylix' or
whatever) or 'I am the object of shuri Cavatha' (i.e. <6uri> is an
epithet of Cavatha). I do not see how a dedicated object could belong
to two deities, so I must reject the reading 'I belong to Shuri and
Cavatha'. I consider the second option more likely. <6uris> occurs on
the leaden plate of Magliano (TLE 359) in an opaque context, but
reference to a vessel seems improbable. I would guess something like
'venerable' for <6uri>, which appears to have the necessitative suffix
-ri (as in <s'ucri> 'to-be-chosen', <thezeri> 'to-be-led', <zichri>
'to-be-written'), so it could mean 'to-be-venerated'.
The oldest of this group of fragments (late VI cent.) is <...uma
cavuth...>, suggesting that <cavutha> was the earlier form of the
divine name. It is odd that a V-cent. skyphos from the Volsinian area
reads <cavutha sechis>, apparently 'the cavutha of the daughter', with
<cavutha> being a mere term for 'skyphos'. Or has this been falsely
divided; should we read <cavuthas echis> 'the echis of Cavutha' when no
such word <echis> is otherwise known?
A votive inscription from Vulci, ca. 300, reads <muras . arnth . thufl
. 6uuris> where <thufl> can be understood as an abbreviation for
<thuflthas>, genitive of a deity, and <6uuris> as a variant of <6uris>.
I would interpret it as 'Arnth Muras (dedicated this) to venerable(?)
Thufltha'.
Franz Gnaedinger
Thank you very much for the reply. Yes, I forgot the final -s
of cavathas and wanted to correct my mistake today; now
you have done it before me. The inscription is read as
dedication to both Sur(i) and Cavatha by Erika Simon,
and I follow her. Suri was recently identified as a sun god
with chthonic components. Also the Latin sun god Sol of
middle Italy had chthonic aspects. Sur(i) and Sol would then
have been the same god, in my opinion a descendant of Tyr,
also present in Saturn. I will study the earlier form of Cavatha,
namely Cavutha. Thanks for the information. I still uphold my
idea that she was the consort of Tyr / Cronos / Saturn,
namely Rhea / Ops, in the more special meaning of heavenly
water filling deep wells --- CA for sky, VAD for water, vuth
for water from a deep well, perhaps with a sexual connotation,
as she was a fertility goddess in every of her many emanations,
even as nymph, consort of satyr. The inscription given above,
cavutha sechis, may go along with my reading. Skyphos and
cavutha would then be equated: the goddess of the heavenly
water - she who who fills up deep wells and the caverns of the
Underworld - present in the deep drinking cup, a symbol of her
fertile womb, so to say. The chthonic Sur(i) / Sol represents
the sun god by night, when traversing the Underworld, and
Cavutha would then be his consort in the Hades, an equivalent
of Persephoneia, as Erika Simon believes, while Sur(i) is an
equivalent of Pluto. Couples had a higher status in the Etruscan
civilization than in the Greek one, and so I could well imagine
that this respect for couples is mirrored in a double dedication
to man and woman, the once supreme couple now living in the
Underworld, and still guaranteeing fertility on earth, as the water
of Rhea / Cavutha wells up in springs. The skyphos you mention
above, a deep drinking cup, would then symbolize such a spring.
The fact that the once supreme couple lives in the Underworld
also mirrors the shift from Cronos to Zeus, Saturn to Jupiter,
Sur(i) to Tin(nia), Rhea to Ops - no longer ruling, but still
worshipped.
Regards Franz Gnaedinger
Franz Gnaedinger
Hera Pelagis belonged to Thessaly with Mount Olympos,
and Zeus Pelagikos to Dodona with the beautiful scenery
of the Tamaros mountain. Pelasgians also lived in the
mountainous island of Lemnos, furthermore in Athens,
in the Peloponnese, and in Crete. If 'Piraeus' was of
Tyrrhenian origin, it might once have been PE REO
--- near the surf (surf and surge as a form of flowing).
Following TYR- and ARA-names we find from Attika to
western and southern Crete via Megara, Arantia (near
Nemea), the Arachnaia mountain range (between Dendra
and Leissa), Tyros and maybe Zarax on the western shore
of the Argivian gulf, the Tityros peninsula of northwestern
Crete, the villages or towns of Polyrrhenia, Rhetymna and
Araden in western Crete, and the Mesara plain in southern
Crete. These places mark a coherent trail from the Attika
to Crete and may thus testify to the Pelasgian wanderings
as we know them from ancient sources (Thukydides et al.).
The hypothetical exodus from Armenia and the Caucasus
would then have happened earlier than previously assumed,
before or in around 3,500 BC? or might there have been
two waves of migrations?
Pelasgoi would come from PE LAS --- near (pe) mountain
(las). The original meaning of similar pelagos was field,
according to Kretschmer, approved of by Pauly. In the light
of PE LAS we can now go farther back in time. I see the
possible root of pelagos as a combination of PE and LAK.
KAL was a cave, also the underworld. Inverse LAK was
a pond, a deep hole in the ground filled with water, a lake,
also the river of the Underworld. PE LAK would then mean:
near water, and this would have been the still older origin
of pelagos. Pelagones: water people. Pelasgoi: mountain
people.
Regards Franz Gnaedinger
Franz Gnaedinger
> Erika Simon
Sorry for another mistake. The dedication of the kylix from
altar Lamda at Pyrgi to both Suri and Cavatha is proposed
by Giovanni Colonna: An
even more important inscription from the same deposit
- placed on the foot of an Attic kylix (the rest is lost) -
gives the name of Suri, associating it with that of the
goddess Cav(a)tha, omitting a connection: _mi suris
cavathas_, "I am of Suri (and of) Cavatha." // The names
of the gods Suri and Cav(a)tha, both already noted in other
sanctuaries but up until recently often misunderstood,
reappear separately in numerous inscriptions on vases
found at many points in the South Area. Given the absence,
now well confirmed, of different gods' names, there can be
no doubt that reference here is to the two gods who were
titulars of the cult in that area. Added to the explicit references
are obvious epithets, which for the god are Apa, "Father,"
and perhaps Lapse, given on two small bronze plaques
probably once attached to offerings. For the goddess we
might think of the name Ecile, painted on the bottom of
the foot of a late, local black-glazed cup, through a phonetic
sequence *Eicle>*Ecle>Ecile, to the Greek Aiglae, "The
Shining One," a name borne by, among others, a wife or
daughter of Helios. This name is all the more suitable for
Cavtha, given that a plant with a similar name (kautam, known
as the Millefolia or Achillea), is called _Solis oculus_ ("Eye of
the Sun") in a gloss of Dioskorides. Since Suri, whose name
appears at Orvieto in the variant Sur (ET, Vs 0.6) is certainly
identical to the Soranus of the Faliscans, and through him
not only to Apollo but also Dis Pater of the Romans and to
the Greek Hades, his female companion has a great likelihood
of being a hypostasis of Persephone/Proserpina. // Dis Pater
and Proserpina were venerated together in Rome near the
Comitium, in relation to a _mundus_ going back to the origins
of the city, and at the Tarentum of the Campus Martius, where
the _Ludi saeculares_ were celebrated throughout Imperial
times, with nocturnal rituals at _arae temporales_, perhaps
at the beginning not unlike those of rubble in the South Area
of Pyrgi. The verification of the identity proposed for Cavtha
comes from the epithet seX, "Daughter" (clearly a calc of the
Greek appellative Kore), given to the goddess in an Orvietan
dedication of the mid fifth century BCE. Also instructive is the
later dedication of a bronze cone to "Espi, mother of Ca(v)atha,"
or, which is equivalent, to "Espi, the mother (and) Ca(v)tha,"
published by Larissa Bonfante. In this inscription Espi can only
be an appellative, up to now unknown, of Vei/Demeter.
We have then the male gods
TYR - Saturn (Cronos) Suri Sur Soranus Sol
and the female ones
REO - Ops (Rhea) Ecile Espi Cavutha Cavatha.
TYR and REO would go back to Azilian times in Anatolia,
Armenia and the Caucasus. I explain Ops, the consort of
Saturn, via Magdalenian APS --- hides of a tent where
vapor condensates and trickles and drops from, as model
of the heavenly canopy where rain comes from. If so, the
fertility goddess Ops would represent the heavenly vault
as origin of rain. The epithet Ecile, the Shining One, suits.
Epsi may come from a permutation of APS, namely ASP,
meaning impenetrable as a shield: the impenetrable heavenly
canopy where vapor condensates and falls down from as rain;
while Cavatha as daughter of Epsi would be cavities filled with
heavenly water - wells and springs, symbolized in a skyphos,
a deep drinking cup, hence the equation of skyphos Cavatha.
I read Cavatha as CA VAD --- sky water, rain, and the original
form Cavutha as combination of sky and an u-form for water,
testified to by Sanskrit udan and Umbrian utur. TYR and REO
and their many emanations once ruled the sky; now they are
overcome by Tin(ia) Jupiter Zeus and survive in the Underworld,
the realm of the sun during night. The double meaning of cosmos
and gate to the Underworld is preserved in mundus:
Latin term with multiple meanings, probably sometimes
overlapping: (1) the universe or cosmos, (2) the adornment
of a woman and/or the instruments of adornment (_mundus
muliebris_), (3) a pit for offerings, made at the center point
of a new colony, and (4) a gateway to the Underworld.
Quotes from: The Religion of the Etruscans, Nancy Thomson
de Grummond and Erika Simon, Editors, University of Texas
Press Austin 2006.
Thank you for the help, Douglas. There are a few people one
can work with in the Usenet - you in sci.lang, Daryl Krupa in
sci.archaeology. (For newbies: Douglas G. Kilday is in no way
responsible for the nonsense I might say, errors are entirely
mine.)
Regards Franz Gnaedinger
Daryl Krupa
Franz Gnaedinger wrote:
<snip>
> Thank you for the help, Douglas. There are a few people one
> can work with in the Usenet - you in sci.lang, Daryl Krupa in
> sci.archaeology.
Franz Gnaedinger:
You're very kind.
Thank you.
-
Daryl Krupa
Franz Gnaedinger
Daryl Krupa wrote:
>
> Franz Gnaedinger:
> You're very kind.
> Thank you.
Pas de quoi. I thankfully remember our long discussion
in the thread 7-foot-Robot Used in Black Sea Expedition.
I am a generalist, and can't know everything in every
discipline, so I rely on different experts. You helped me
develop my ideas regarding Noah and the Flood. With
your support I abandoned the Black Sea Flood, directed
my attention to Sumer, and finally identified Unug / Uruk
of the cattle enclosure as Noah's Ark. Meanwhile
I returned to the northern area, here in this thread,
based on a linguistic adventure of mine. You may read
my messages in this subthread - or wait a couple of days,
I shall write a new fable wherein I give it all more simply.
Floodings occured and occur everywhere, and thus many
different events may have contributed to the ancient reports
we know from the Bible and other sources.
Regards Franz Gnaedinger
Franz Gnaedinger
I changed my mind and will publish my fable "From Noah
to the Etruscans" in my etymological thread. My killraters
will certainly follow me there. Meanwhile I consulted the
six volumes of "Italia ante Imperium Romanum" (Italy
before the Roman Empire) by Giovanni Colonna, and
feel confident enough to go for my fable. The sciences
and the various disciplines of the humanities reached
such a degree of separation and specialization that
someone should try bringing them together again.
Let me be that someone. I encountered only one major
problem with my fable. If the migrating TYR REO people
known as Tyrrhenians or the PE LAS people known as
Pelasgians left a trail of TYR, REO, ORE, ARA names,
why are there no such names in Etruria? But I found an
answer. You may know the anis liquor called Pastis in
France, Ouzo in Greece. Pour water into the transparent
liquor and it becomes opaque, turning into a milky white
- an effect that always fascinated me. Now something
quite similar may have happened when the culture of
the migrating TYR REO / PE LAS people met the local
culture of the Villanova people: a reaction took place,
a new culture rised, and it modified both religion and
language. TYR would have became tur- and sur- etc.,
surviving in many names and words, also in the name
of Mount Soracte, and perhaps of Tarento (in Armenia
there are all forms of TYR derivates, tir tur ter tar tor),
while ARA and ORE may perhaps survive in Arretium.
If my "vision" holds, the settling of the TYR REO or
PE LAS people in middle Italy was not so much an
occupation but more like a happy marriage, and the
Etruscan civilization would have been the child of that
lucky couple: different from the parents, but still sharing
enough features with them both.
Regards Franz Gnaedinger
dicaduca
>TYR would have became tur- and sur- etc.,
> surviving in many names and words, also in the name
> of Mount Soracte, and perhaps of Tarento (in Armenia
> there are all forms of TYR derivates, tir tur ter tar tor),
> while ARA and ORE may perhaps survive in Arretium.
> If my "vision" holds, the settling of the TYR REO or
> PE LAS people in middle Italy was not so much an
> occupation but more like a happy marriage, and the
> Etruscan civilization would have been the child of that
> lucky couple: different from the parents, but still sharing
> enough features with them both.
I wonder if this can be related, but the birth of Taras, according to the
myth of Phalantus, a Spartan hero, tells of the answer the oraculum of
Delphi gave him on the location to be founded: "When you see rain coming
from a cloudless sky, you will conquer the land and the city". After a sleep
on his wife's womb, Phalantus awoke and looking at Ethra (the woman's name
meaning 'clear sky' in Greek), who was weeping, he considered that the
oraculum had been accomplished and set about the foundation of the city
which he called Saturo, that, as I already said in an earlier post, is a
place a few kilometers far from the modern Taranto.
ciao
mb
dicaduca wrote:
> I wonder if this can be related, but the birth of Taras, according to the
> myth of Phalantus, a Spartan hero, tells of the answer the oraculum of
Coming back on the old discussion, there is a recent post by the
well-informed Abdullah Konusevci to confirm the Illyrian origin of
Tar-untum (and probably Phal-untum etc), with a list of names/words:
Franz Gnaedinger
dicaduca wrote:
>
> I wonder if this can be related, but the birth of Taras, according to the
> myth of Phalantus, a Spartan hero, tells of the answer the oraculum of
> Delphi gave him on the location to be founded: "When you see rain coming
> from a cloudless sky, you will conquer the land and the city". After a sleep
> on his wife's womb, Phalantus awoke and looking at Ethra (the woman's name
> meaning 'clear sky' in Greek), who was weeping, he considered that the
> oraculum had been accomplished and set about the foundation of the city
> which he called Saturo, that, as I already said in an earlier post, is a
> place a few kilometers far from the modern Taranto.
>
> ciao
This is nice, thank you. The weeping wife could well be another aspect
of REO Rhea. I modeled the pair of TYR and REO for a befriended couple
whom I dubbed Mr. Rock and Mrs. Wave -- he solid, stable and reliable
as a rock, she lievely and always in motion, a surf playing around the
rock, so to say ...
Douglas G. Kilday
Franz Gnaedinger wrote:
> > Erika Simon
>
> Sorry for another mistake. The dedication of the kylix from
> altar Lamda at Pyrgi to both Suri and Cavatha is proposed
> by Giovanni Colonna: An
I have great respect for Giovanni Colonna, but reasonable persons can
disagree. It is problematic to dedicate something to two gods. When a
Roman general wanted to dedicate a temple to Honos and Virtus, it
created a big theological uproar. The only exception to this rule was
the temple of Castor and Pollux. Indeed, Colonna himself proposed a
brilliant analysis of <thuluter>, a peculiar Etruscan epithet of the
Dioscuri, as 'the one-templed ones', plural of a compound adjective
formed from <thu> 'one' and <lut(h)> 'temple'.
> even more important inscription from the same deposit
> - placed on the foot of an Attic kylix (the rest is lost) -
> gives the name of Suri, associating it with that of the
> goddess Cav(a)tha, omitting a connection: _mi suris
> cavathas_, "I am of Suri (and of) Cavatha." // The names
> of the gods Suri and Cav(a)tha, both already noted in other
> sanctuaries but up until recently often misunderstood,
> reappear separately in numerous inscriptions on vases
> found at many points in the South Area. Given the absence,
> now well confirmed, of different gods' names, there can be
> no doubt that reference here is to the two gods who were
> titulars of the cult in that area. Added to the explicit references
> are obvious epithets, which for the god are Apa, "Father,"
> and perhaps Lapse, given on two small bronze plaques
> probably once attached to offerings. For the goddess we
> might think of the name Ecile, painted on the bottom of
> the foot of a late, local black-glazed cup, through a phonetic
> sequence *Eicle>*Ecle>Ecile, to the Greek Aiglae, "The
> Shining One," a name borne by, among others, a wife or
> daughter of Helios. This name is all the more suitable for
> Cavtha, given that a plant with a similar name (kautam, known
> as the Millefolia or Achillea), is called _Solis oculus_ ("Eye of
> the Sun") in a gloss of Dioskorides.
This plant's name (which D. gives in the Latin acc.) survives as modern
Tuscan <cota>. However, it probably has nothing to do with the deity
Cav(a)tha. Instead, <cauta> was the Tuscan dialectal form of Lat.
<caltha>, from Doric *kaltha:, from *khaltha, from PIE *g^hel- 'to
shine'. Similarly, Ital. <mota> 'mud, mire' comes from Greek <maltha>
'caulk made from wax and pitch'.
Since Suri, whose name
> appears at Orvieto in the variant Sur (ET, Vs 0.6) is certainly
> identical to the Soranus of the Faliscans, and through him
> not only to Apollo but also Dis Pater of the Romans and to
> the Greek Hades, his female companion has a great likelihood
> of being a hypostasis of Persephone/Proserpina.
One cannot arbitrarily add or remove endings. There is no "certainly"
about connecting "Sur(i)" with (Apollo) Soranus or with Mt. Soracte,
which is not an Etruscan name; these are kling-klang connections. I
say not "certainly", but more "plausibly" than other interpretations,
that <6uri> is an epithet of the deity Cav(a)tha.
A different epithet appears on the bronze handle of San Feliciano (TLE
622, V/IV c.):
eka kauthas' : achuias' : ver6'ie
avle numnas' turke
'This (is) the firepot of Achuia Kautha.
Aule Numnas dedicated (it).'
And on the bronze plate of Sorrina (CIE 10498, IV/III c.) we have:
savcnes . 6uris
This appears to be the genitive of a deity Saucne with the same epithet
as Cavatha (which I guessed as 'Venerable'(??), no matter here). Why
don't these authors claim that this object was dedicated to Saucne
_and_ "Suri"? Why don't they claim that the firepot was dedicated to
Kautha _and_ "Achuia"?
// Dis Pater
> and Proserpina were venerated together in Rome near the
> Comitium, in relation to a _mundus_ going back to the origins
> of the city, and at the Tarentum of the Campus Martius, where
> the _Ludi saeculares_ were celebrated throughout Imperial
> times, with nocturnal rituals at _arae temporales_, perhaps
> at the beginning not unlike those of rubble in the South Area
> of Pyrgi. The verification of the identity proposed for Cavtha
> comes from the epithet seX, "Daughter" (clearly a calc of the
> Greek appellative Kore), given to the goddess in an Orvietan
> dedication of the mid fifth century BCE.
I mentioned this one (REE 56n339), the skyphos reading <cavutha
sechis>, and <sechis> is the genitive of 'daughter', so this is
'Cavutha of the daughter' (perhaps elliptical for 'Cavutha received
this gift of the daughter'??). Colonna didn't write this stuff. The
interpretation doesn't fit the actual text.
Also instructive is the
> later dedication of a bronze cone to "Espi, mother of Ca(v)atha,"
> or, which is equivalent, to "Espi, the mother (and) Ca(v)tha,"
> published by Larissa Bonfante. In this inscription Espi can only
> be an appellative, up to now unknown, of Vei/Demeter.
"Only", baloney. These two authors of the Etruscan religion book have
only superficial knowledge of all the languages involved (Greek, Latin,
Etruscan) and indulge in groundless speculations as though they were
"certainly" the "only" way to interpret whatever material they have
scavenged out of serious publications by Colonna, Bonfante, and the
like. They don't even know what an "appellative" is in a philological
context. It's pointless to try to base further research on this
coffee-table stuff.