Ghost words and anti-dictionaries

I've mused before that what we need is an Etruscan "anti-dictionary" to reference all the words that have been made up over the decades out of thin air due to misanalyses by various scholars. Lazy authors spread these infectious memes the most, of course, but even careful scholars can overlook things. These words end up being taken as 100% fact by more naive readers and it's difficult sometimes to talk them out of their factless stupor. The more everyone shares information however, the more we can crush these little fibs and understand our history just a little better.

Michael Weiss at OHCGL Addenda and Corrigenda likewise has noticed some phantom words in the Hittite lexicon and calls attention to *itar/*itnaš, explaining some details behind that inaccuracy.

Revisiting the lily

Looking back at my personal notes and some previous online conversations concerning the common words for 'lily' or 'flower' that spread across the Mediterranean, I believe there's still some unfinished business.


A conflict arises

Under Hittite alel-, Jaan Puhvel lists off related forms in a multitude of languages showing that this word must have been an important "culture word" since olden times. I surmised and still surmise that Egyptian is the one ultimate source behind all of this. I eventually reasoned to myself that the Ancient Egyptian feminine noun written only as ḥrr.t was once pronounced *ḥalūrat (~  *ḥarūrat) guided in part by the Coptic forms with vowels explicitly written in a Greek-based alphabet.

Everything seemed fine until I started to question when exactly Egyptian *ū evolved into *ē and how. Foreign texts from the Amarna period seem to suggest that a vowel-sound like *ū must still have been spoken at about 1350 BCE. The cuneiform inscription labeled EA 368 records the numeral mu-ṭu (the Egyptian word for 'ten'), leading therefore to Callender's *mūḏaw (whose orthography I simplify to *mūḏu). Clearly the eventual change to *mēḏ- (Sahidic Coptic mēt) hadn't yet taken place.


The Minoan perspective

Meanwhile, the hypothetical Minoan loan *aléri 'lily' had emerged out of the illuminating conversations I had with Minoan Language Blog's Andras Zeke. With the former Egyptian form I've attempted, I can't sensibly explain the connections Zeke had alluded to between a certain Cretan Hieroglyphic plant glyph known as CHIC 031 and its later derivative Lin AB 27 which has been given the value of RE. (See John Younger's The Cretan Hieroglyphic Script: A review article in Minos 31-32, 1996. It's mentioned in the middle of page 397.) A Mycenaean loan from Minoan can cleanly explain later Classical Greek λείριον (léirion) 'lily' and so this serves to doubly assure the term *aléri.

Surely the phonetic value of CHIC 031 and Lin AB 27 reflects the actual Minoan word for a flower or lily but to get *aléri out of *ḥalūrat, I would have to assume that the word was loaned only by the **closing of the 2nd millennium BCE** when the Egyptian vowel shift in question must have taken place! Ironically this is when the Minoan language was also becoming extinct (if not already moribund as the Achaeans swept through). It could never explain the said Cretan Hieroglyph dated to as early as the 17th century BCE.

Ground control, we have a problem.


Everything's coming up roses (or Egyptian lilies)

This all seems remedied however if I simply ammend the Egyptian 'flower' term to *ḥalīrat. Given that, the Egyptian term must be borrowed into Minoan around or before 1700 BCE. Minoan *aléri would acquire a new specialized meaning of 'lily' as well. The Cretan hieroglyphic lily symbol is subsequently created, understandably employed to write LE ~ RE ("l" and "r" not being distinguished in both Linear A and Linear B scripts) since this is afterall the stressed syllable of the surmised word. Sahidic hrēre should also be accounted for in the same way that Egyptian *rīʕa 'sun' likewise produces rē.

At any rate, this is one confusing little word but who knows what new weeds I might yet dig up in this untamed flower garden.

More on Etruscan verb *zil-

To add to my previous rant, Overseeing in Anatolia, it turns out that a quick google search yielded a gem in my favour. To recap, since the attested Etruscan words zilaθ and zilχ strongly imply a verbal root *zil- presumably meaning 'to oversee, to supervise', I considered the possibility that the verb was simply inherited from a Proto-Cyprian form *zila-. I then considered the possibility of a relationship between this word and Hattic zilat 'throne, seat' by way of a cultural exchange between these two unrelated language groups. I asked: Could this latter word be built on a Hattic verbal root -zil? Is there a shared verb pertaining to governance between Hattic and Cyprian? Sadly, Cyprian-Hattic loans seem to be hard to examine given the gaps in present-day linguistic information of that region and time period.

Now to the aforementioned gem. I came across Yasemin Arikan's article, An official in Hittite cult: ^LUtazzelli-, where he surprisingly contemplates precisely this Hattic verb, *-zil, but with the added evidence of another Hattic word, *ta-zil, pertaining to a type of official. If I understand correctly so far, ta- creates derivative nouns as in *ta-parfasu (cf. Hittite taparfasu-, a type of ritual bread), and another noun *t-astup (cf. Hittite tastuppa-). Both of these latter nouns are mentioned in Petra Goedegebuure's article I read previously.

Overseeing in Ancient Anatolia

A particular Etruscan word currently haunts my mental processes, zil 'to oversee'. It's the verbal base of the participle zilaθ 'supervised' and the noun zilχ 'supervision'. I have some quams against the comparatively exaggerated values given by Larissa and Giuliano Bonfante that would have zilaθ mapped to English 'magistrate' and zilχ equivalent to 'magistracy'. For zilci Larthal Cusuś, which they translate as 'in the magistracy of Larth Cusu', I read less fanfare into it: 'Under the supervision of Larth Cusu'.

As with every morpheme I've entered into my database so far, I ask myself: What's the etymology of this verb zil 'to oversee'? Where does it come from? If inherited from Proto-Cyprian, a form *zila would be indicated for the 2nd millennium BCE. If Proto-Cyprian is also to be located in Cyprus and Western Turkey (including Lydia, as Herodotus had himself prescribed for the ancestors of the Etruscans), it strongly appears as though interaction with the Hattic language, cradled once upon a time in central Turkey, would not just be likely but inevitable.

This is why it's curious that we should find a Hattic word zilat being given the meaning of 'seat' or 'throne'. The Hattic word for 'to sit' is already known to be nifas though. It builds the name Hanfasuit 'She of the throne' (ha- 'down (?)' + -nifas 'to sit' + -it [feminine marker]), an epithet of a goddess that was borrowed into Hittite as Halmasuit. So what morphemes then compose zilat? An understandable hunch enters my head: Could Hattic have had a related verb stem *-zil meaning 'to oversee'? Is this a possible piece of evidence in favour of Hattic-Cyprian language contact?

If so, the proof remains unsatisfying and paltry. I naturally need further evidence to build a stronger case.

Eyeballing Minoanists and the value of A-SA-SA-RA-ME

Minoanist Leonard Palmer once wrote, “[...] for in questions of genetic relationship the linguist rightly attaches small importance to common elements of vocabulary. Decisive are resemblances of morphological procedures, for these are less readily borrowed.”^[1]

Eyeballing is for the bored and desperate

Rational people deal in facts and probabilities, not in mere possibilities and assumptions. If one's translations depend fundamentally on subjective similarities of words between languages, then one's contribution to the field of paleolinguistics is as useful as toxic sludge.

The eyeballing method, if it can be dignified as a 'method' at all, relies primarily on individual perceptions about phonetic similarity and difference. Since subjectivity is in the eye of the beholder, different individuals will reach different conclusions about the same data according to this strategy, making it disordered and unhelpful. It's best to become familiar with this shameless tactic so as to shun it whenever it surfaces in someone's work.

Internal analysis first

A widely applicable statistic known as Zipf's Law adds to what we should already be able to deduce by experienced linguistic intuition. In any given language, the most frequent words tend to be the shortest. Conversely, less frequent words tend to be longer. Afterall, how often do words like osteochondrodysplasia or spatiotemporal pop up in everyday conversation? This relates to the efficiency of information exchange.

The sheer length of Minoan A-SA-SA-RA-ME and its derivatives also hints that it most likely belongs to a core word class, such as a noun or verb. We can see that a five-syllable term is above the average length of attested Minoan vocabulary which implies that, with all things being equal, its typical frequency in random text or conversation should have been comparatively infrequent. Yet to the contrary, its unexpected ubiquity among libation table inscriptions demonstrates in itself a strong link between its genuine semantic value and its evident religious context. If one agrees that the analyzable suffix -NA belongs specifically to nominal morphology, then since our term is found with this very suffix (KN Za 10: YA-SA-SA-RA-MA-NA), it must likewise be nominal. Hence we can make an informed guess that it's likeliest a name or common noun relevant to Minoan religion.

These rational considerations alone then compel us towards the optimal conclusion that the term conveys the name or title of a deity to which these libations must have been dedicated. Palmer's original comparison to a title for a neighbouring Anatolian goddess (or goddesses) merely supplements the strong deductive foundation of this avenue of investigation. So this identification with the divine can't be so easily downplayed as the kind of immature eyeballing method that sensible linguists work hard to avoid. This view has something richer going for it.

In front and in back

This is pretty interesting... Puhvel's Hittite Etymological Dictionary under the term marzai- a curious snippet of Hittite text is cited and translated: "He fritters three flatbreads and crumbles them in front and back of the male gods of the pit, he scatters fatcakes [and] meal, and libates."

The rituals cited here are the same as those of the Etruscans and, even more fun, is the fact that even the phrase "in front and back" is aped by the Liber Linteus where hante-c repine-c conveyed the identical. Common traditions in both religion and writings of the Hittite and Etruscan cultures is evident and gives us another piece of evidence in favour of an Asia Minor origin of the Etruscans (as if it weren't thoroughly proven already).

Back to 'back'

Concerning the etymological 'back' problem I've been having since December, I might have found a decent cure. I had elaborated before that it's long been known that there appears to be a common word for 'back' or 'hip' across ancient Greece and Turkey: Classical Greek ischíon 'hip-joint' and Hittite iskis- 'back'. This pair just can't be a coincidence and an underlying Proto-Aegean term *iskʰis(a) seemed like a plausible fit to me.

However, I kept on feeling that unlike the previous words I've suspected to be Proto-Aegean, this one comes across as a little extra odd. Firstly I can't find a way of analysing the expected Aegean root into smaller meaningful morphemes and secondly the structure of the root seems unexpected for Proto-Aegean (eg. *s in syllable codae). Yet I know that this is at least better than the horrid attempts by Indo-Europeanists to reconstruct *h₁isgʰís- based only on two items from a very restricted geographical area. Surely this can't be correct either.

It was a tough problem so I did some yoga, smoked a spliff, watched some TV and then once my mind was distanced from the problem, I experienced a profound synaptic event. I realized that my subconscious mind had been wrestling with that initial i- for some reason. I was slow to heed my inner eye telling me of a common Hittite pattern. There's a long list of Hittite words which are the products of prothetic i- breaking up original clusters of the *sC(C)- sort. For example, ispant- 'to libate' < *spend-. So why then wouldn't iskis- be approached by IEists this way too? I suspect the answer is disturbingly circular since if one is hell-bent to deny the probability of a Greek loan from Hittite and is equally determined to make this a common IE root at all costs, then one must reconstruct this silly onset, *h₁i-.

Brainstorm time! Let's start from scratch and try this again. We have a common Greek and Hittite term for 'back' or 'hip'. Let's now just assume that the Greek word is a loan from Hittite, leaving only a single term to play with. Let's also assume that the initial i- in Hittite is prothetic like these other words. This gives us a Pre-Hittite term *skis-. Let's analyse this term as a native s-stem like some other body part terms implying that it's built on a verb stem *skei-. It just so happens that there is an identical IE root *skei- 'to cut, split'. Now, if this term originally referred to the 'spine' then it indeed 'splits' the back into two halves. Thus Pre-Hittite *skei-s- > iskis- would be 'that which divides' or 'that which is divided'. I suppose then that an Aegean or Minoan intermediary is unnecessary if the loan happened towards the closing of the 2nd millennium BCE.

A Mediterranean term for 'lower back' and 'loins'

I was messaged the other day about an interesting word with a mystery etymology. In Greek, there is ἴσχιον or ἰσχίον 'hip, hip-joint, haunches' which may be compared with the Hittite s-stem iskis- 'back'. This pair of comparanda seems to be where most inquiry stops however.

The OED mentions that this Greek word is "probably from iskhi 'loin,' of unknown origin" yet I can't find this word in Perseus online. Perhaps the editor rather meant an underlying root iskhi-, as in the word ἰσχιάζω 'move the hips', but there's no mention of the Hittite term. Many like Anna Prins (Hittite neuter singular - neuter plural: Some evidence for a connection [1997], p.218) have however acknowledged the Hittite link that establishes that this word at the very least straddled a Greco-Anatolian region, even if its exact source is unknown. Predictably forced attempts have been made by some IEists to explain this away through a hypothetical s-stem *h₁isgʰís-. This is unlikely to be true since the zerograded accented syllable dates it to Late IE at best and the word's meaning and derivation appears obscure (not to mention the severely restricted attestation of the word).

Exploring a possible Proto-Aegean (PAeg) term, we might note that the Greek evidence points to a specifically voiceless, aspirate velar stop. Aegean languages are notable for their lack of voiced stops and use of aspiration contrast in its place. Thus PAeg *iskʰis(a) 'lower back, hips, loin' might explain both although I must admit that the shape of the word seems as odd for this language just as *h₁isgʰís- does for PIE. Maybe there's a third possibility in all this that I'm not considering.

Of course I'm exploring conjectures here but it's always worth pondering alternative ideas to either illuminate further possibilities or to fully expose the absurdity of the path of thought. So far, the word for 'back' isn't known in Etruscan nor do I have the foggiest clue what it might have been, but there does seem to be an Etruscan derivational suffix -is. I'll keep my eye out for further info on this term, of course.

A new post on Pre-Greek place-names

Mr Zeke has scribed a new post Pre-Greek place-names of the Aegean complete with detailed surveys like the one above that history buffs will delight in. As I discovered with Italian placenames and Etruscan's involvement in many of them, toponyms can be a source of endless fascination and learning about the impact that substrate languages have had on their region.

In the case of the toponyms in the environs of Greece, the Aegean islands and Turkey, there's an ever-going quest to tease out the Minoan (and also Hattic) threads that inevitably must exist here. What hampers our knowledge is the lack of information about these forgotten languages but it's also precisely that aching riddle that compels us to crack it.

The saga of the sea-faring house

I can't help but notice that the word for 'house' has traveled far and wide around the Eastern Mediterranean in the earliest times:

• Egyptian par 'house' (written pr)
• Hattic wel 'house' (< Proto-Hattic *pel ?)
• Hittite pir 'house'
• Luwian parnas 'house'

My spidey senses tell me that it all stems from the Egyptian language. I suspect the word also entered Proto-Aegean as *par hence some attested nouns in Etruscan that I interpret as likely temple-related derivatives: parχ (TLE 169) and parniχ (TLE 131).

One may wonder why such a word would travel so far and wide or why it would emanate specifically from the Egyptians, but 'house' may often refer also to a politico-religious building or institution, eg. a 'temple-house', 'White House', 'House of Representatives', etc. The Egyptians often used 'house' to refer to temples, as was the association among the Luwians^[1]. If I interpret the historicity of this word correctly, then it emphasizes the influence of Egypt on religious faith throughout the 2nd millennium BCE. Even the name Egypt, a Greek name, was adapted (probably via Minoan *Aikupita) from the name for a prominent temple in Memphis, the *Ḥáʔat-Kuʔ-Patáḥ. 'House of the spirit of Ptah'. Note in this latter etymon, we have yet another word for 'house' being used in Egyptian to convey 'temple': *ḥáʔat (written ḥȝ.t).




NOTES
^[1] Huxley, Crete and the Luwians (1961), p.26 (see link).

Edward Sapir and the Philistine headdress

Browsing the web as usual I came across something that captured by attention. It turns out that Edward Sapir in his 1937 article Hebrew "Helmet," A loanword, and its bearing on Indo-European phonology had reconstructed a Philistine word *kaubaɣ- 'helmet' based on the Christian story of Goliath (1 Samuel 17:5). There in Samuel, the word for 'helmet' is recorded as either kōbáʕ (כובע) or qōbáʕ (קובע), a rather curious word of non-Semitic origin whose mystery has cultivated much academic curiosity. It's certainly connected with Hittite kupahis 'headdress' although exactly how this word was transmitted between Semitic and Anatolian groups is a riddle to solve. Note easterly Hurrian kuwahi too although seeking an origin of this word in Eastern Turkey seems most unlikely despite what Puhvel suggests (see Puhvel, Hittite Etymological Dictionary: Words beginning with K (1997), p.257).

Quite eerily, I've already suggested a Minoan word for 'head' or 'summit', *kaupaθa (read Paleoglot: A hidden story behind Cybele the Earth Mother?), but I was ignorant at the time of Sapir's published hypothesis. This Minoan etymon is my attempt at better explaining (via expected Etruscan *caupaθ) the source of both Germanic *haubida- and Latin caput in a way that an over-cited Indo-European root (*)*kaput- just can't convincingly accomplish without fiddling with the phonetics. Surely, given this particular set of uncannily similar yet phonetically irregular reflexes, we should seriously be thinking about recent loan transmission rather than leaping to the comparatively more contrived assumption of some long-ago Proto-Indo-European utterance. Add to this Greek κύπτω (kúpto) 'to bend forth, stoop forth' for which Beekes fails to find a credible Indo-European etymology and suggests Pre-Greek origin, much to my bookish delight. Nonetheless, some do try even to loosely etymologize the aforementioned Philistine word in Indo-European terms with no noteworthy success.


Matching the spirit of Sapir's whimsy while in honest desire to crack this Mediterranean puzzle, I wonder sometimes about the elusive Philistine language and its origins which scream 'Aegean' all over it. Unfortunately, the Philistine civilization also still screams 'mystery' all over it and with no forthcoming answers in sight. We must remember though the mention of the *Pirastu [prst.w] in Egyptian records, one of the 'Sea Peoples' listed to have attempted a minor coup on Egypt at the end of the 2nd millennium BCE.

Now, would it be unfathomable to posit the idea that the Philistine language could be a direct descendant of Minoan (or perhaps a Minoanized language) in which the word for 'head' (and subsequently for 'headdress' through metonymy) became, for the sake of public brainstorming, *kopað in this dialect? Semites, Hittites or some other intermediary might perhaps have misheard the voiced dental fricative /ð/ as a voiced pharyngeal fricative /ʕ/ (ie. ayin) or a voiced glottal /ɦ/. Stranger things have happened in loanwords, eg. the Semitic name of the famed North African city of Carthage which entered into Greek as Καρχηδών (Karchēdṓn), into Latin as Carthāgo, and into Etruscan as *Carθaza.

Translating Etruscan zuci

After revisiting the noun zuci, I think I've settled on an uneventful translation of 'incense', for many reasons that I'll explain. Naturally its derivatives like zuciana and the verb root zuc- should likewise then revolve around incense and smoke.

My first reason, as always, concerns what fits the semantic context best. In this way, for example, the sentence Zea zucieneś ci aθumi-cś Afunaś penθna ama in the Cippus Perusinus (TLE 570) may mean '[They] light fire (zea) to [the] three incense-burners (zucieneś ci) for the sky (aθumi-cś) [and] for the Apuna [family] (Afunaś) who are underneath (penθna ama).' Also, on the Lead of Magliano (TLE 359), we find the short sentence towards the center of the spiral script: Eθ zuci am ar. This might be translated 'Herein (eθ) incense (zuci) is (am[a]) to be raised up (ar) (ie. to be burned).'

Beyond Etruscan however, I've recently discovered Hittite tuhhi- 'incense' and I'm starting to suspect that it has something to do with this. It's not the first evidence of Hittite substrate in Etruscan I've found and this could help date the word back to the 2nd millennium BCE, at a time when the ancestor of the Etruscan language was still in Asia Minor. Here, the replacement of word-medial -h- with a velar stop is what we'd expect of Aegean languages which bar this sound in these positions. The eventual change of Hittite's /t/ to Etruscan z (ie. /tʃ/) would be a matter of some sort of lenition (unless there's an additional hidden intermediary here).

This possible loanword is also interesting considering that we see the same Hittite word loaned into Ugaritic as dġṯ 'incense'^[1] and that it has already been noted as a Mediterranean Wanderwort. The word gets around! As far as I've read so far, the Ugaritic word has no Semitic cognates and so this implies a vocalism of *duɣiθu, mirroring the Hittite nominative form tuhhis.

It's probably not the final word on this but I venture on to search for better translations.


NOTES
^[1] Margalit, The Ugaritic poem of Aqht: Text, translation, commentary (1989), p.446 (see link).

A Minoan word for red dye

Here's an interesting set of reflexes for discussion. It hints at yet another Wanderwort possibly eminating out of Minoan Crete regarding materials used for red dye:

• Hittite midis ~ mi[d/t]as 'red'
• Mycenaean *miltos 'red mineral' (> Gk μίλτος 'red chalk')
• Egyptian mnš.t 'red ochre'
• Latin minium 'red lead'

The second syllable of the Hittite form alternates between -i- and -a- and the internal stop is sometimes written out in the script as -t- (/d/) or -tt- (/tʰ/). Its large variation in spelling might hint at a post-Proto-Anatolian borrowing. The Mycenaean reflex is attested in a feminine adjective spelled out in Linear B as mi-to-we-sa 'red-painted' and combined with later Classical Greek μίλτος points to the root *milto-. The vocalism of the Egyptian word is unattested due to the nature of its script but if we reconstruct *mīnašat, it agrees better with the Hittite and Mycenaean material while still resembling the Latin reflex enough to pursue this hypothetical relationship further. Finally, it's impossible for Latin to have acquired a Minoan word directly but if Etruscan brought related cognates to Latin, we have here a full package of evidence pointing to a general Aegean word describing minerals used for bright red or red-orange dye. Given the ambivalence of the exact mineral, we might surmise that it was the colour that was most important in the word's semantics and not the chemical structure (something the ancients could hardly know about anyway). Thus, whether red lead (Pb₃O₄) or red ochre (Fe₂O₃), the word must have described any mineral which could be used to make bright-red or red-orange dye.

Now if we accept that there is a Minoan word here, what is its likeliest form? This has got me thinking hard and long because while there appears to be a relationship between the above words, finding a common etymon behind them all is tricky. For me, Hittite, Egyptian and Mycenaean all point to a general structure of *miN(T)- (N = resonant, T = coronal). The Latin word, which we might assume is from Etruscan, strangely doesn't reflect the expected coronal. At this point, it's understandable that one might decide to abandon this idea altogether due to a lack of consistency. However, for the sake of brainstorming, I thought of one elaborate possibility.

Let's suppose that there was an Aegean root *minyu 'red-orange mineral dye'. From this, let's also suppose that Minoan added an optional suffix *-zo (cf. Etruscan diminutive *-za), thus Minoan *mĩyuzo. This can then yield all of the Hittite, Egyptian and Mycenaean reflexes at once. In Etruscan however, inherited *miniu, without suffix, would yield Latin minium 'red lead'. Now we just might be able to explain this whole package of possible substrate. Maybe outlandish but it was worth a shot.

New info on 'lily'

After my last post just beforehand I ended up finding a slew of more 'lily' loanwords and relevant info. A new pattern is starting to reveal itself that adds to what I previously said. Previously I justified a Minoan reconstruction *léri (Lat lilium, Gk leirion) with *e rather than a possible alternative *ai and this is helped along by the Greek geographical name Lerna which may specifically attest to *e if meaning '(Place) of Lillies'. If this turns out to be off the mark, nonetheless ne'er a critic can question the power of my imagination.

But check this out now:

• Hittite alel 'flower'
• Egyptian ḥrr.t 'flower'

Despite displaying a more generalized meaning 'flower', the words may very well be related to 'lily' as many argue^[1]. But exactly how? The curse here is the persistent ignorance and avoidance of establishing Egyptian vocalism in words. The chic thing to do is simply write the consonants and leave any mention of vowel reconstructions to stuffy academics who publish obscure works well beyond the hands of the general public, hidden somewhere in some journal perhaps rather than out in the open in general references which opt to err on such a safe side as to shun any informative position altogether on the etymology, assigning it nebulous catch-all phrases like "from Pre-Greek" or "from an unknown Mediterranean source". WHY??? What on earth is wrong with being accurate? Aside from Adolf Erman's casual attempt of *ḥréret, I see no other mention online of what the vowels in this particular word may be. All these purely consonantal transcriptions do is mire everything in artificial mystery. Let's piece this together ourselves then.

In the Sahidic dialect of Coptic, the word has become ϩρⲏρⲉ with its feminine termination -ⲉ securely from Middle Egyptian *-at /-aʔ/. Its letter eta may be traced back ultimately to Old Egyptian *ū but, somewhere in the second millenium BCE, Loprieno educates us that it had already become *ē^[2]. This points me then to an original *ḥarūrat becoming *ḥarērat /ħə'ɾe:ɾəʔ/ at precisely the time we need to source the lurking Minoan term with just a slight modification: *aléri. I had missed the unaccented initial vowel so common in Minoan and which must reflect the Egyptian first syllable /ħə/. This then establishes the Hittite form as a borrowing directly from Minoan and which in turn implies that specialization to 'lily' came after this time. Lerna can now point to earlier *Alérina without problems considering Diktē < *Adíkituna.


UPDATES
(2010 Apr 13) Correction in "In the Sahidic dialect of Coptic, the word has become xrere [...]". Should be hrēre, a plain /h/. Thanks to fiosachd. And upon closer inspection, unaccented *a in Egyptian should be /ə/, not /a/. As I say, it's nice to be accurate.
(2010 Apr 14) Chuck Coleman corrects further: /hrerə/ (eta = short /e/ in Coptic). Upon reading further, this may indeed be more accurate and yet it dangerously strays us off topic. Ergo, all indication of Coptic phonetics in my above account has been eradicated in order to return to the main matters: 1) the etymology of 'lily', and 2) the vocalism of ḥrr.t 'flower' in the 2nd millennium BCE.


NOTES
^[1] Brown, Israel and Hellas - Vol. 3 (2001), p.46 (see link); Puhvel, Hittite etymological dictionary - Vol. 1 Words beginning with A (1984), p.33.
^[2] Loprieno, Ancient Egyptian: A linguistic introduction (1995), p.38 (see link).

Indo-European (*)*ǵalak- 'milk'

This is another rant about hideous Proto-Indo-European roots still reconstructed in the 21st century that should have been dumped in the 1960s along with Woodstock. I love Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and am fascinated by it but I also hate unjustified reconstructions and "junk linguistics". On that subject, let's now talk about (*)*ǵalak- or similar forms designated as the PIE word for 'milk' in addition to the more substantiated root *melǵ-. I don't think a person truly understands PIE until they recognize the myriad of shoddy reconstructions out there in its name that need to be dismissed.

We have Greek γάλα (gen. γάλακτος) & γλάγος 'milk' along with Latin lac 'milk' (gen. lactis). Based primarily on this, Douglas and Adams have reconstructed *ǵl̥lákt- , have then attempted to add dubious cognates from Indo-Iranian loaded with assumptions, and have concluded (or merely asserted without firm basis rather) that "[...] both the archaic morphological shape and the geographical distribution would seem to guarantee this item as at least a regional word in PIE."^[1]

In my view, a more reasonable, alternative view is that the Greek and subsequent Latin forms are from Hittite kalaktar meaning more generally 'nutriment'^[2] and have nothing to do with PIE at all. This would be one of those Greco-Anatolian Wanderworts which spread during the 2nd millennium BCE along μέλι 'honey' which I've just talked about before. Whether directly or through an intermediary, this must be where internal -kt- comes from while word-final -r has been deleted in the Greek loan. The Latin form must then be from Greek. The word even finds its way into Egyptian as ỉrṯ.t 'milk' (*yarāṯat /jəˈɾɑ:cəʔ/).^[3] We know that the word must be from Hittite or similar Anatolian dialect because it can be further derived from the native verb root kala(n)k- 'to soothe, satiate, satisfy'. Reconstructing a protolanguage root that's unanalysable despite an etymology already available with a clear historical source is the kind of sloppy, unacademic nonsense I loathe with a passion.


NOTES
^[1] Douglas/Adams, Encyclopedia of Indo-European culture (1997), p.381 (see link).
^[2] Puhvel, Hittite Etymological Dictionary: Words beginning with K (1997), p.19: "kal(l)aktar, galaktar (n.) 'soothing substance, balm, nutriment'" (see link).
^[3] Woodard, The Ancient Languages of Mesopotamia, Egypt and Aksum (2008), p.181 (see link).

My sweet honey bee

The Indo-European word for 'honey', I have to confess, has always bothered me. Technically *mélit displays proper form with full-grade in the accented syllable and zero-grade in the unaccented and it also is supported by reflexes in Celtic, Germanic, Latin, Greek and Anatolian languages. Yet...

Douglas and Adams inadvertently uncovers a problem with this irreproachable hypothesis at the bottom of page 262 of The Oxford introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European world (2006): "The noun *mélit is found widely in the West and Centre (e.g. OIr mil 'honey', Lat mel 'honey', NE mildew [< *'sweet sap'], Alb bletë 'honey-bee', Grk méli 'honey', mélissa 'honey-bee', Arm melr 'honey', including Anatolian, e.g. Hit militt- 'honey') and has one Iranian cognate in the form of a reference to melition, a drink of the Scythians."

Naturally we should ask: Why is the distribution of this word west and center? And you've probably surmised that I'm thinking of a possible Aegean explanation for what appears to be nothing more than a wanderword. A more valid PIE root for 'honey' might best be sought in the more-fully-attested root *médʰu, normally assigned the value of 'mead', a wine made from fermented honey.

What I'm pondering on is the possibility that only the Anatolian forms for 'honey' are truly Indo-European but which represent some innovative derivative from a native root. From there, Anatolian *mélit would be borrowed into Aegean as *méli with other related borrowings like *malítu 'sweet' (cf. Britomartis) which would in turn be borrowed into Greek. By the onset of the 1st millenium BCE, Proto-Cyprian *meli 'honey' and *mlitu 'sweet' would yield Old Etruscan *mel and *mliθ via early syncope. Once the Etruscans arrived in Italy, the early Latini could have easily borrowed the Etruscan term, thus Latin mel. These terms, along with their Etruscan-derived runes, could then have also travelled eventually to the Germani and among the Celts.

That would certainly explain the distribution a lot better than the standard Indo-European-based theory.

A deeper source of Cretan Britomartis

Solinus spoke of Βριτόμαρτις Britómartis as a native Cretan name for Artemis, the Greek goddess of moon and hunt, which he claimed had underlyingly meant virgo dulcis 'sweet maiden'^[1] and Hesychius doubly equates his Cretan gloss βριτύ with Greek γλυκύ 'sweet'.

Apparently though, from what I've dug up so far, this is all that's ever written on the subject of the etymology of her name, an important question that's tossed aside for airy interpretations of local mythology to fill up the latest tome weighed by the pound. Out of desperate curiosity, I consulted Wikipedia to see if any of those busy bees had found just a smidge more than the status quo but predictably the groupThink swarm proved once again worthless. There's far more to the origins of this name but the following exploration is curiously absent in any book I'm aware of on the subject despite being, I believe, highly illuminating.

The first element, brito-, may remind us of the Greek example of ἄμβροτος 'immortal' from Proto-Indo-European *n̥-mr̥tós 'non-dying' showing how easy it is for /m/ to strengthen to /b/ before another resonant. In light of Hittite militu- '(honey)sweet'^[2], a characteristically Indo-European u-stem adjective derived from milit- 'honey', there should be no doubt where the first element comes from. The second part of the compound, -marti-, is contrastingly sourceable to Assyrian mārtu 'daughter, girl', a purely Semitic feminine form of māru 'son, boy'. These linguistic connections complement the already well-known Anatolian and Near-Eastern influences on Crete.


NOTES
^[1] Solinus, Polyhistor, 11.8.
^[2] Puhvel, Hittite Etymological Dictionary, version 6 (2004), p.155: miliddu-, maliddu 'honeyed, (honey)sweet'.


SEE ALSO
Paleoglot: My sweet honey bee

Etruscan Tarchon and Hittite Tarhun: Crazy or no?

Tarchon is the name of the legendary hero of the Etruscan city of Tarquinia, mentioned by Vergil. Tarḫun on the other hand is the Hittite god of weather and storm. There seems to be a commonly cited etymology that attempts to link the former with the latter^[1] and while I'm always cautious of these unproven claims, maybe this isn't so crazy. I just thought of something that adds to that connection so forgive me for brainstorming out loud.

Assuming that this etymology is sound, early Etruscans would have borrowed this term from the Hittites when they were still in Asia Minor in the second millenium BCE. This is an interesting idea because it ties in so well with my previous observation that Pre-Etruscan medial *-h- surfaces as the velar aspirated stop -χ- in Etruscan when following another consonant (cf. The loss of mediofinal 'h' in Pre-Proto-Etruscan). So does this mean that Hittite Tarḫun, a safely Indo-European name derived from Hittite tarḫ- "to conquer", was borrowed into the pre-Etruscan vocabulary as *Tarhun and later became Etruscan *Tarχun (attested on the bronze mirror indexed as NRIE 759 in the genitive case: Tarχunus "of Tarchon")?


NOTES
^[1] Dreyfus/Schraudolph, Pergamon: The Telephos Frieze From The Great Altar (1997), p.113 (see link).

Bronze Age Areal influence in Anatolia and Etruscan

Here's an interesting quote from Calvert Watkins on page 52 of Areal Diffusion and Genetic Inheritance: Problems in Comparative Linguistics (2001) edited by Aikhenvald and Dixon (see link):

"Consider the system of stop consonants. Proto-Indo-European had the traditional three series t d dh; already in Common Anatolian the latter two merged, yielding t and d. The correlation of voice was replaced by one of intensity (tense : lax), with the tense member realized with relative length, thus a tendency to an opposition geminate : simple. Word-finally there was probably since Indo-European times neutralization in favour of the voiced member. But more strikingly it appears that word-initially in Anatolian and there alone among all the Indo-European languages there was neutralization in favour of the unvoiced (tense) member. This explains why when the cuneiform syllabary was borrowed from Semitic, the Semitic voicing oppositions (e.g. TI vs. DI; the capitals denote values of syllabic signs) were ignored in favour of geminate versus simple: word-initial TI or DI to write the same word, but contrasting AT-TI or AD-DI vs. A-TI or A-DI. This system, and the same writing convention, is found in all the cuneiform languages, Indo-European and non-Indo-European alike."

The book goes on to mention that Hittite, Luwian, Palaic and Hurrian all show the same overall typological constraints. That is, they all seem to be pushed towards neutralization in word-initial and word-final positions with a contrast of lax and tense stops being maintained medially. So in initial position all stops tend to become lax (/t/) while in final position they all tend to become tense (such as /t:/ or /tʰ/, let's say).

Too bad Watkins didn't push this areal convergeance to its furthest logical limit because it unfortunately overlooks the Aegean languages in my view. Other languages in the area at that time which are often ignored in inquiry also, I think, demonstrate a similar pattern. Putting aside Minoan, one of the most important languages of that area during the Bronze Age, surely the Etrusco-Cypriot languages must have been present during that period, centering around the ancient territories of Arzawa and Alashiya (a.k.a. the island of Cyprus). Of the Etrusco-Cypriot grouping I propose, we may easily demonstrate Anatolia's possible influences on Etruscan, if nothing else.

Etruscan shows the same distribution of lax versus tense stops in words. The habits of Etruscan scribes when it came to spelling their language show us that unaspirated stops are the unmarked series while aspirated stops are less frequent and marked. We can see that unaspirated stops are probably "lenis" (i.e. requiring comparatively less articulatory effort) while aspirated stops are "fortis". This assertion fits well with crosslinguistic patterns and it helps to connect Etruscan's phonology with the areal convergeance described for the general area of Anatolia during the early second millenium BCE. Word-initial φ- in Etruscan is quite rare, used for foreign names and words it seems, and the other aspirated consonants are much less frequent in this position when compared to their unaspirated counterparts, as can be seen in the results thus far of my dictionary project. In word-final position, it has been noted that there is a tendency of neutralization of stop contrasts, favouring aspiration (a.k.a. "fortis"). Word-final neutralization towards fortis consonants is precisely what we expect from the patterns we see in world languages. Lenition in such circumstances on the other hand is quite rare (e.g. Lezghian's unusual word-final neutralization of stops to voiced ones). Examples in Etruscan showing word-final neutralization are flanaχ (LL 10.iii) vs. flanac (LL 11.xxix), śeχ (TLE 583) vs. śec (CIE 2611) and zilχ (TLE 126) vs. zilc (TLE 137). These spelling alternations suggest that aspiration is not a contrastive feature word-finally so that Etruscan -c and -χ are both pronounced as /-kʰ/, for example.

This adds to the heap of evidence already showing that the Etruscan language, mythos and culture originated in Anatolia just as Herodotus had wrote millenia ago.

The odd inessive of Etruscan *hantha

I'm still plugging away at my Etruscan database, entering in new data and continuously pondering on new connections and insights that I seem to be the only one caring about. Grrr!

I just noticed another oddity in the Liber Linteus, a long text which people presume concerns Etruscan rites. It was written on linen which was wrapped around a mummy but as far as I know, no one yet has bothered to translate it so there's a lot of fruitless hearsay that still floats around. But let's face it: Compared to learning history, isn't it far more fascinating what Paris Hilton is getting arrested for today? Bah!

Anyways, there's one word which is repeated over and over in a particular formulaic phrase of apparent ritual significance. Despite historians recognizing this pattern, no one for decades and decades has bothered to nail down what it means for some bizarre reason. It's spelled and inflected in various ways, such as:

Cis-um pute tul θans, hate-c repine-c. (LL 3.xxiii-xxiv)
Cis-um pute tul θans, haθe-c repine-c. (LL 9.xi-xii)
Cis-um pute tul θansur, hatr-θi repin-θi-c. (LL 2.xv-xvi)

Thus far, I've recorded the word as *hanθa "front" in my personal database with the following inflected forms as we can see in some of the phrases above:

hanθin [LL 11.iii, 11.vii], hante-c [LL 3.xxiv], haθe [LL 9.iv], hate-c [LL 4.vi, 4.xvi], haθe-c [LL 9.xii, 9.xx] (loc.sg.) // haθr-θi [LL 2.iv, 2.xvi, 5.v, 5.xii] (iness.sg.)

Larissa Bonfante likewise claimed hanθin to mean "in front". Some may be tempted to connect the etymon haphazardly to Egyptian [ḥȝt] 'foremost' (Sahidic xach) or to Hittite hanti 'front' but I think we need to resist that temptation unless no internal etymology can be found. From what I see the above shows a variously-declined derivative noun *hanθa meaning "front" which in turn can be based on a postpositional particle han "before, in front of" (hen [CPer A.v, A.xxiv]; ce-hen [TLE 619] "this here") .

Inspired in part by Bomhard's views expressed in Indo-European and the Nostratic Hypothesis (1996), I would personally conjecture that any similarities here between Hittite and Etruscan are the product of individual inheritance from an Indo-Aegean protolanguage circa 7000 BCE that would later produce Indo-European (including Hittite of its Anatolian branch) and Aegean (producing Etruscan, Rhaetic, Lemnian, Eteo-Cypriot and Minoan). But that's just me.

What I'm interested in here is not so much the etymology but a curious loss of medial -n- as well as an otherwise unattested alternation (at least as far as I know) between locative haθe and inessive haθr-θi. If the loss of -n- can be explained here, the locative form is otherwise the natural result of Old Etruscan -ai (stem-final -a plus locative ending -i) turning to -e. However the inessive throws me for a loop. Where on earth is that -r- coming from? It's placed so consistently in the Liber Linteus between the stem and the inessive ending that it can't be an error.

I have no firm answers yet (nor do I believe that many Etruscologists have even noticed this yet or really thought about it), but the only answer I can give right now is that maybe this is what happens when a vowel is squeezed between two aspirate stops. Thus, what we would expect to be *haθe-θi is transformed by some as-yet obscure morphophonetic rule to haθr-θi with syllabic liquid.