Flights of fancy and ornithomancy

Duane Smith over at Abnormal Interests makes mention of The birds in the Iliad - Identities, interactions and functions by Karin Johansson. This is an excellent and welcomed addition to educational resources on the net and I will be going through it to try to gain insight into the religious practice of ornithomancy in Etruria. It's worth learning everything we can about this ancient science made out of observing birds and their paths across the sky because it's a central component in life and faith in Etruria. Without knowing this, we can only understand Etruscan civilization at a distance.

While the author states "The methodologies in bird divination differed in different parts of the world, such as in Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Etruria and Rome," I respectfully doubt that there is enough known about Etrurian religion to be secure with that claim. There is little way thus far to accurately gauge that "difference". More likely there are connections, many connections, that continue to be missed by Etruscanists who as yet still have a hard time deciphering much of the language and rely, perhaps too much, on the second-hand reports of Romans rather than reading the extant Etruscan-language works like the Liber Linteus or Tabula Capuana directly.

Lasa and the transgendered deity

The consensus on the Etruscan term lasa is that it may be equivalent to the Greek concept of 'nymph'. "It might be possible someday to establish some kind of correspondence between Lasa and the Greek concept of nymph," states Roman and European Mythologies by Yves Bonnefoy under the heading Etruscan Daemonology on page 41. However the Bonfantes have cautioned in The Etruscan language: An introduction (2002), "Lasa Sitmica, however, is a male winged figure." At times like this, I find myself briefly chagrining, "Why does everything have to be so complicated?" But then I realize that life wouldn't be so interesting if there wasn't a new puzzle to solve.

First off, I'm toying with the idea that lasa isn't referring to some specific deity or kind of deity but instead might be translated simply as 'lady, woman'. This has benefits. For one thing, back in Anatolia, it's curiously similar to the Lycian word lada with an identical meaning. Second, rather than apply an over-specified meaning without established reasons, applying a more generalized value such as 'lady' can at once explain its use with Venus-like characters on mirrors, its use with some nymphs, and... as I will get to in a moment... possibly the problematic male lasa aforementioned.

This is where the tale of the transgendered deity comes in. Before any of you scough and giggle, there really were transsexual deities in existence in classical times, popular ones. Across Anatolia, there was a particular cult revolving around Attis, Cybele and Agdistis. In one tradition it is said that the handsome vegetation god Attis, who cyclically died every year to be reborn for the benefit of humankind (long before Jesus was invented), was esteemed greatly by Cybele, goddess of fertility. Yet he was also desired by Agdistis, the hermaphroditic deity associated with (of all things) walnuts. This created quite a mythical love triangle. Agdistis, having lost his "walnuts" one fateful day when the fearful gods of Olympus felt the need to "correct" this alternative biology, was magically transformed into a woman for all intents and purposes. Cult worshipers of this tradition were even inspired to become eunuchs in the service of this deity and this must have been one path in ancient society for many naturally transgendered people.

So coming to the mirror in question (ES 115) with the "boy" Lasa Sitmica who appears next to Atunis (= Attis) and Turan (= Cybele), I can only suspect that Lasa Sitmica might be performing the role of Agdistis. I'd be surer if I could nab a photo of that mirror but the available facsimile shown above still gives me the impression that, indeed, lasa might in this very special case be referring to transgendered Agdistis who, upon losing his male genitals, or at the very least his testicles, was considered a lady in the mindset of Etruscan culture, either as a hermaphrodite, or as in the illustration of this mirror where male features are unmistakable, as a possible eunuch.

What then is sitmica in the epithet? No specialists seem to have piped up about it, leaving me to ponder on my own. One guess I thought of is that Lasa Sitmica may mean "The Lady in Sidon". Taking away the phrase-final article -ca, lasa would be 'lady' and Sitmi then could be the locative of *Situm 'Sidon'(?). Sidon was an important Phoenician city where such eastern cults might be easily imported. No guarantees though. It's better than nothing for now and it would be one way of explaining away the curious gender conflicts inherent in the attestation of this term.


UPDATE
(2012 Feb 13) Gazing at and thinking over the mirror some more, I consider a new possibility. How are we entirely sure whether Lasa Sitmica is attributable to her male attendant or whether it is referring back to Turan? Perhaps Turan is described twice, both with her direct name and by the title Lasa Sitmi-ca 'The Lady in Sidon'. Afterall this phrase seems more in line with the historic fame of Sidon as a destination for the worship of the equivalent fertility goddess Ashtarte more than anything. The attendant then would be an unmarked feature of the background, merely a servant aiding Turan (still possibly a eunuch attendant as many chamberlains were and as many men in devotion to the Asian Cybele were).

The holy goddess of sewers

It started with looking up North African terms for 'rainbow' in Berber and Arabic. I confirmed that one Arabic expression is similar to the hypothetical Etruscan expression *Tluscval arcam that might lie behind the aforementioned abbreviation tlusc arc inscribed on the Piacenza Liver where its religious significance might have something to do with a role as messenger between sky and earth. That expression is qaws al-māʔ 'bow of the water', spoken in the Maghreb. Another rainbow expression in Berber, 'bride of the jackal', led me to the Roman Virgo Caelestis, the Latin name given to the Carthaginian goddess of the sky. To the delight of my humour bone, this then led me straight to something I hadn't come across before: Cloācina, goddess of the sewers and of the Cloāca Maxima (ie. The Great Drain of Rome). Yes, the Romans had a goddess of sewers. It's very amusing but also a natural product of a polytheistic religion that maintains that all things great and small, glorious and foul, must have a deity governing it. Stinky as this tale is, something perverse within me needed to dig further.

The name of Cloācina immediately takes hold of my attention because it could be quite easily an Etruscan name. Many Etruscan names end in -na, including those of divine epithets (eg. Aracuna 'Of the hawks', a byname of the death goddess Vanth). In fact, the Cloāca Maxima herself was the ingenious invention of Etruscan engineers to efficiently take away much of the daily filth naturally produced by its inhabitants in the city. Etruscans were master architects and founders of Rome before the Latin-speaking population became dominant so it naturally makes me wonder if the name Cloācīna and the term cloāca 'sewer' could be hidden Etruscan lexical items.

Immediately when looking it up, one will find an ample number of etymologists connecting it with cluēre 'to cleanse, purify'. Perfectly sensible. But... Latin has two homophones here and the other meaning of this verb is  'to hear, be spoken of, be said'. This latter verb is without a shred of doubt traced back to Proto-Indo-European *ḱleu- but does the other verb truly go back to PIE  *ḱleuh₁-  as often claimed by Indoeuropeanists? Etymological dictionary of Latin and the other Italic languages by Michiel de Vaan lends doubt under the heading cloāca:

"Since an original sequence *klowV- would have yielded *clau- (at least, in pretonic
position), Vine 2006a: 2l7f. posits an adj. *kleuH-o- 'clear, clean' from which a
factitive pr. *kleuH-eh₂-ie/o- > *klewāje/o- > *klowā- could have been derived. This
verb might be preserved in the Servius gloss cloare, although its reliability is often
doubted. From *clowā-, the noun cloāca can then be explained. WH and Rix argue
that cluō may have been invented by Plinius to explain Cluācīna but it might also
derive from *cluwere < *klowere < *kleuH₁-e/o-. For the root, Derksen (fthc.) reconstructs *ḱlh₃-u-, whereas Rasmussen posits *ḱleh₁-u-. If one accepts such a root structure, the ablaut *kle/ou(H)- of Latin must represent a secondary full grade based on a zero grade *kluH₁- < *klHu-C-. The short vowel of Greek κλύζω remains unexplained under any account."

So given the limited cognate set (limited to Western IE languages only) and dubious attempts to derive these words using IE-based grammar, there seems to be room for another hypothesis from outside of Indo-European. Is it possible that Etruscan had a verb *cluva 'to cleanse, to purify' that led to an adjective *cluvaχ 'clean, pure'? Through *cluvaχ, we could obtain *Cluvacuna /ˈkluwəkʊˌna/ '(She) of the pure' leading to Latin Cloācīna. We'd also have the basis for Latin cloāca 'sewer', now to be understood as a loanword and nothing to do with Proto-Indo-European. The instance of cluce in the Liber Linteus could be translated as a perfective 'has purified' (< ? earlier *cluvace), a verb to be expected in a ritual text.

Explaining away "tlusc arc"

A commenter reminded me of some unresolved issues regarding tlusc arc, written on the Liver of Piacenza artifact. The inscription in question can be seen inside the blue box in the picture above. To get to properly solving this inscription, we must overcome a few lazy misanalyses that still stifle any progress in the field. First, there's the persistent misanalysis of Tluschva as a "plurality of gods", even though the suffix -cva is already well-known to be grammatically inanimate (see Paleoglot: The nonsense about the Etruscan god Tluschva). The second problem is the whimsical misreading of *tlusc mar instead of reading it simply with respect to a single direction of writing as tlusc arc (see Paleoglot: The "Tlusc Mar" reading error on the Piacenza Liver). In search of a legitimate explanation of this elusive deity that specialists fail to offer, I've come to my own conclusions that Tluscva must be the Etruscan sea god, like Roman Neptune or Greek Poseidon. His name then likely means "Depths" and his positional opposition to Tinia, the highest of all gods in the pantheon, on the outer rim of the same artifact solidifies this interpretation.

Given this new analysis however, we're still left wondering what tlusc arc could refer to. We can see that the first element of the epithet is abbreviated for the full name Tlusχva (as shown on another inscription). Is the second word abbreviated in this cramped space as well? I suspect so. Arcumna and Arcmsna appear to be the only plausible comparisons we can make in the available Etruscan lexicon to date but this in itself tells neither what the epithet should mean nor the names.

Not accepting a dead end, I extended my search further, finding Latin arcus 'bow' in the process. The received wisdom among Indo-Europeanists is that the Latin term must stem from PIE *h₂érkʷo-. However this is one of many roots listed by IEists that fall on tenuous evidence. It could just as well be yet another substrate word passed off as a valid IE term. The compared Germanic neuter *arhwō 'arrow' doesn't entirely match the formation seen in Latin and a purely Germano-Italic term does not make for a strongly argued IE root. This naturally leads those like Donald Ringe to concede doubt of its thinly accepted IE origin and this naturally in turn makes me wonder if an Etrusco-Rhaetic word is at the heart of it.

For the sake of argument, let's assume that Arcumna and Arcmsna are built on a word *arcam 'bow' (later *arcum > *arcm due to syncope). The Germanic word in *-ō then would be a reflex of Old Etruscan /-əm/ in *arcam presuming that the word was borrowed (perhaps through the Veneti) before Grimm's Law had occurred, sometime in the early 1st millennium BCE. The trading of bows and arrows between the Etrusco-Rhaetic population and northern Italian peoples would be historically expected and natural (particularly if we assume an Adriatic point-of-entry of Etrusco-Rhaetic people from the River Po). The above two names would then mean "Of the bow" and "Of the archer" respectively (if *arcamis = 'archer' with agent suffix -is). Coming back to tlusc arc, we might fill this out as *Tlusχval Arcam "The bow of Tluschva". Granted, my idea is cursed with little evidence either way but it's worth a try, if anything, because it will inspire others to come up with something better.

But what then would "The bow of Tluschva" refer to, if so? Latin arcus, aside from meaning simply 'bow', has a secondary meaning of 'rainbow' as in pluvius arcus 'rainbow' or literally 'bow of rain'. Even in French we say arc-en-ciel for 'rainbow', literally 'bow-in-sky' and other Romance languages have similar phrases. Perhaps there's a connection. Or perhaps not. However, the inscription's presence in the celestial zone should be noted. Additionally, according to Hesiod's Theogony, the goddess of the rainbow Iris is the daughter of Thaumas, a sea deity. The other daughter of Thaumas, twin sister of Iris, was coincidently named Arke. If this is all innocent coincidence, we have to agree that it's an interesting one to ponder over.

Augury and redundancy

There's a curious sentence in Leland, Etruscan Roman Remains in Popular Tradition (1892), p.344:

"They invented astrology and Etruscan divination, augury, oracles, magic, mythology, and moreover taught men how to make ornate and feigned images of exquisite beauty of kings long passed away, and endowed them with other names." (bold-face mine)

This is the definition of augury. This is the definition of divination.

In what way is augury meaningfully different from divination? In what way are oracles somehow unincluded in the notions of both augury and divination?? Have my reading skills dulled??? Is the LSD catching up with me? Because I could swear that these first three nouns in the above list are reducible to one and that this Victorian-Age writer was trying too hard.

Here's another enigmatic passage I found from
Buckland, The fortune-telling book: The encyclopedia of divination and soothsaying (2003), p.xi

Again, is the author aware of what augury (ie. "the practice of foretelling by means of signs"), divination (ie. "act of foretelling future events") and soothsaying (ie. "the practice of foretelling events") really means and the ridiculous semantic similarities of all these words? His title seems to insist that there's a difference but I'm stumped because the dictionaries are saying something different. Comical stuff!

After Duane on Abnormal Interests mentioned his different understanding of augury as 'bird divination' instead of what I understood to be general omen-seeking of an augur, I came across a bunch of these confusing lines of text in Google. So I wonder, are we all on the same page about the term augury? Are there secondary "niche definitions" lurking about in the crowd that I should be aware of? It seemed to me that Etruscanists are using augury to refer to priestly divination in a general sense while other specialized terms of omen-seeking exist such as auspicy (bird-divination), brontoscopy (divination of lightning and thunder) and haruspicy (liver-divination).

Using augury as a synonym for auspicy on the other hand is simply confusing and, to me, ahistorical. Though I wonder if it has something to do with a long-standing folk-etymology that tries to derive au- in augur from avis 'bird', as is true in auspex, only to be left with an unanalysable portion, -gur. This etymology is certainly a tall tale. Augurs did more than just ornithomancy.

Dice, divination and a third

In Paleoglot: The dicey proof of Etruscan numerals, while a general *tendency* existed for two opposing sides on classical rolling dice to add up to seven, I explain that it wasn't a hard-fast rule in the past. Other possibilities existed.^[1] Nonetheless, quite a few Etruscanists and avid hobbyists will still leap to the over-assertive conclusion that the Etruscan dice *must* follow this pattern. From these sorts of precarious arguments, śa continues to be misinterpreted as 'four' instead of 'six', and huθ is misinterpreted as 'six' instead of 'four'.

In Paleoglot: Truth will shine forth (2), I outlined the Etruscan solar trinity that's directly shown on the Piacenza Liver by the names Tinia Cilensal ('Sun of Darkness' = Jupiter Sommanus), Tinia Θufal ('Sun of Oath' = Jupiter Fidius) and Tinia Θneθ ('Thundering Sun' = Jupiter Tonans). As far as I know, no specialists have bothered to explain these three entities as I have done, nor to even translate their names. All indicates an Etruscan solar triad, parallel to what can be found among the contemporaneous Egyptians (ie. Khepri, Ra and Amon).

Now let's take these two previous ideas and mash them together. We may understand the classical dice in question as exhibiting opposing sides that differ by a value of '3', rather than adding up to '7', making śa = 'six' and huθ = 'four'. Knowing that 'three' is a symbol of the solar triad and that Tinia was a deity governing divination and intellectual illumination much like Greek Apollo or Babylonian Shamash was, could the difference of 'three' between opposing sides of the dice then be a deliberate feature by the die-maker, conceptually linking games of chance with divination?


NOTES
^[1] Trosset, An Introduction to Statistical Inference and Its Applications with R (2009), p.16 (see link); Trager, Studies in linguistics, vol 19-22 (1968), p.65 (see link); The Athenæum: A journal of literature, science, the fine arts, music, and the drama (1874), p.146 (see link); Bonfante covertly admits uncertainty in Bonfante, Etruscan life and afterlife: A handbook of Etruscan studies (1986), p.229 (see link) when she begins, "If the arrangement of dots on Etruscan dice is the same as on ours, [...]" (italic mine).

Phoenician-Etruscan comparisons of iconography

U of Penn's Professor Holly Pittman offers a long list of artifact images for us to peruse at her website. Under one directory, there are two interesting pictures, one labeled "Neo-Assyrian, Nimrud, NW Palace Harem, Pit AJ, Sacred Tree, 8th Phoenician Style" and the other "Neo-Assyrian, Nimrud, Ft Shalmaneser, SW12 Plaque, Phoenician Style". I show both photos below and they show a persistent Tree of Life pattern.



They're very similar to what's found on an Etruscan mirror suggesting Punic artistic influences via ancient Carthage.


Evidently then, if we want to crack the riddle of Etruscan mythology as a whole, we must learn to look past the "safe" but limited Roman and Greek comparisons. Egyptian, Hittite, Babylonian and Phoenician comparisons are also fair game because the Classical Mediterranean boasted a complex network of interrelated cultures which were very good at distributing ideas across surprisingly large distances.

What is that Tages looking at?

The explanation of this mirror is always the same among Etruscanists and consistently comprised of the following elements:

• Pava Tarχies is assumed to mean 'Child of Tages' (cf. Latin puer 'child' and Tages).
• Veltune is assumed to be Roman Vertumnus, god of seasons and change.
• Tages is assumed to be teaching Aule of Tarchon (Avl Tarχunus) the art of haruspicial divination.
• The woman marked by Ucernei is a mystery.
• Raθlθ is another head-scratcher.

First, I will not accept the value of pava as 'child' based only on these idle look-alikes with an unrelated language like Latin. This is unmethodological. I take pava to mean instead 'prophecy' or 'divination' and thus 'The Prophecy of Tarchiie'. This fits much better with context and grammar. Note that Tarχies ends in the type-I genitive ending and so it can only ever mean 'X of Tarchiie', whatever value we decide to give pava. Certainly then, the phrase neither means 'Child Tages' nor 'Child of Tages' which both conflict with context and/or grammar. So clearly this hypothesis is already suspicious.

Second, how are we certain (aside from depending on more idle phonetic look-alikes) that Tarχies refers somehow to 'Tages'? Another hypothesis based on the much frowned-upon eyeballing technique, hmm? How to explain the missing 'r' then in the reported Roman name?

Lastly, it annoys me that despite describing the mirror repeatedly over the decades, all authors I've read insist on leaving the overall meaning of this mirror an unexplained mystery without bravely asking new questions or providing new interpretations. If the same unproven assumptions are repeated over and over without progress (as among Jean-René Jannot, Nancy De Grummond and Suzanne Rasmussen), maybe we're not asking enough questions.

Quite honestly I remain a little confused about this mirror myself but I have questions that I don't see anyone addressing so I'll just throw out some ideas I've been pondering on recently:

• What do the two nude male deities represent? They seem almost to suggest opposites: one young, the other mature; one on the left, the other to the right; one is attached to Apollonian icons (eg. laurel), the other to Martial ones (eg. spear). Are they the "young sun" (beginning of the year) versus the "old sun" (end of the year)? Are they Jove versus Anti-Jove (Veiovis)? Peace and War? North and south?


• Is the haruspex looking at something more specific than just the liver as a whole? I've been noticing that he's looking at a specific region of the liver more closely. Perhaps he spies the pyramid region displayed prominently on one side of the Piacenza Liver. Do the prophecies from this particular region of the liver suggest a more specific kind of prophecy such as the future of a city and its ruler?
  
  
• Is the sun rising in the east or setting in the west? How can we determine the orientation of this scene knowing that Etruscans considered the proper orientation of cardinal directions important to their rites? Is this a specific rite meant to convey something specific? Does it need to be performed at a certain point of day for a symbolic reason?
  
  

That Lemnian inscription again...

My philosophy is that thought is never done and conclusions are often temporary. This is how adaptive learning works. So I continue to revisit things, always looking for a better answer. That Lemnian inscription I previously talked about here and here is still weighing on my head and I just thought of another possible interpretation worth considering.

Previously, I suggested that hktaiunuśi may refer to a personal name and thus 'on behalf of Hektaion'. However I stumbled on another Greek comparison that shows promise: Ἑκάταιον 'temple or statue of Hecate'. Such a loanword would give a different value for hktaiunusi, 'on behalf of/for (-śi) the temple of Hecate (hktaiun-) ', implying that the stone base in question was bearing a statue of the goddess Hecate. Indeed, Hecate was known to be an important deity in Samothrace^[1], right next door. What a nice coincidence. So I could just shoot myself for not piecing this together before.

Keeping with my understanding of heluke as 'has slain' and assuming Suffixaufnahme, the indirect object of the action is *śurum aśil in unmarked form (ergo, a double-marked genitive śurum-s aśl-as). The phrase then must refer specifically to a sacrifice being offered up to Hecate. This might bear fruit considering Aramaic *šōr [šwr] 'ox' and the Greek sacrifices known as hecatombs.

But what then is *aśil? My Etruscan database calls up one instance of exactly this word in TLE 205 although I've been unsure whether it was simply a transliteration error for acil or not. Other Etruscanists seem likewise confused and I have no photo of it. Helmut Rix transcribes the second line as asil sacni and I notice that Paul Kretschmer had once translated it has 'holy altar'. I wonder if this is close to the mark. By giving Etruscan asil the value 'altar', asil sacni becomes 'altar (of the) sacred' and then the Lemnian inscription, Hktaiunuśi heluke śurums aślas, becomes "For the statue of Hekate an ox (or hecatomb?) for the altar has been slain."


NOTES
^[1] Rice/Stambaugh, Sources for the study of Greek religion (1979), p.161 (see link).

The nonsense about the Etruscan god Tluschva

Rex Wallace generously posted another picture of an artifact online in Etruscan Inscription from Campo della Fiera and sensibly parsed the continuous script that wraps around the column as follows:

kanuta larecenas lauteniθa aranθia pinies puia turuce
tlusχval marveθul faliaθere

He then provides his overall interpretation.

"The basic structure of the inscription is clear. It is a votive dedication to the Tluskhva divinities on the part of a woman named Kanuta, who was the wife of Aranth Pinie and a freedwoman of the Larecena family."

Since countless inscriptions are structured this same way, it's a cinch to read the first line: "Kanuta, freewoman of the Larecena, Aranth Pinie's wife has given ...". But the modern myth about "Tluskhva divinities" that he and other Etruscanists keep shovelling aches to be ridiculed. Before the second line can be cracked, Tlusχva must finally be confronted, competently and thoroughly.

Wallace analyses the structure of the name Tlusχva as follows:

"Tlusχval is an inanimate genitive plural form (tlus-χva-l) that refers, insofar as we can determine, to a group of divinities whose spheres of activity are not particularly clear. In a talk given last year in New York City at a conference on Etruscan Myth (November 21, 2009), Adriano Maggiani reported that the word tlusχval is attested on an inscription recently recovered from Caere and he speculated that the word may refer to divinities associated with the cult of Dionysius^[sic]. Even so it is disturbing that divinities are inanimate in gender given that the word for ‘god’ is an animate and takes r-plural inflection, e.g., aiser."

(Note that Wallace meant to type Dionysus the god, not Dionysius the historian, though it's fun to imagine ancient "historian cults" for idle comedy.)

His paradox should be all too self-evident: If the term contains an inanimate plural, it's scantly possible that it'd be used for a group of gods. So why not accept that and move forward? Why continue to insist on the improbable? And the fact that an entire conference of historians was held on these subjects with nothing resolved makes it sound like its participants were just there for the buffet. The solution is so simple: Tlusχva is a label for a single god referring to a pluralized inanimate concept. This is what its grammar is telling us if we dare to pay attention.

Consulting the Piacenza Liver where this same deity is inscribed, we find the god on the rim at a position directly opposite to that of the highest of the high, Tinia Thufal (equivalent to Roman Jupiter Fidius), representing the zenith of the day and of the year (see Paleoglot: Truth will shine forth (2)). The rim represents two dimensions at once, ie. it represents the flat horizon as well as the sun's daily path which sweeps above and below the earth. It's sensible to reason then that if Tinia Thufal symbolizes the highest point in the sky, Tlusχva contrastively must represent the deepest point of the Etruscan world-view. Hence we have our answer already: Tlusχva = 'Depths'. This is the pluralized concept we're looking for to crack this mostly artificial mystery. That wasn't hard was it? We didn't even need a conference. Sometimes it's better to be self-sufficient.

So Tluschva, being representative of the watery deep, is equatable with Greek Poseidon, god of the seas, or Okeanos, the primordial ocean. As such, Adriano Maggiani would be on the right track by sensing a chthonic function through the image of Dionysus. Now we have a greater hope of cracking the meaning of the second line of the inscription in question.

Abundance of Hecate

The name Ἑκάτη (Hekátē) is so often claimed to mean 'far(-darter)' presumably based on the feminine form of ἕκατος 'far' (hékatos) but I find myself starting to question this because this title really doesn't get to the heart of her fundamental nature. It's merely the obscure being explained with the obscure. It begs the question: Why 'far-darter'? And this leads to long tales about her Artemesian arrows which only beg further questions about how all these metaphors and concepts were mashed together like this in the first place.

One thing is certain though. Where religious beliefs are involved, we must expect poetic creativity to have superceded literal reality. Any religious etymologies will unavoidably be quite meaningful, artful and multilayered. They may even transcend individual cultures and languages. A conservative approach remains important but we can't be stunted either.

Other available wordpuns shaping her name could be:

• ἕξ 'six' (hex) and ἕκτος 'sixth' (héktos)
• ἑκατόν 'hundred' (hekatón)
• ἑκατόμβα 'hecatomb, sacrifice of 100 oxen' (hekatómba)

However if it's already suggested that Hecate may be of non-Greek origin, are there important foreign connections that we're missing? I've recently noticed how similar Hecate is to an Etruscan goddess by the name of Catha. I reason that Catha must have literally meant 'She of Abundance' (< *caθ 'to be full, to be abundant' + -θa [feminine]), a name designed simultaneously to allude to the bounty of the earth and to the abundant appearance of the full moon.

The Piacenza Liver and the contents of TLE 131 (Laris Pulena's sarcophagus) show that Catha sits beside the lord of the underworld Pacha (aka Bacchus, Fufluns) as consort. As such the pair are equivalent to the Greek xenologisms Aita and Phersipnai (Hades and Persephone). So Catha is a goddess of earthly abundance and associated with the underworld^[1], much like Hecate (as well as like Egyptian Isis). The similarity in name between Catha and Hecate only makes me ponder further about an unexplored link.

NOTES
^[1] Popular Etruscanists like Larissa Bonfante, Jean-René Janot and Nancy de Grummond all continue to misinform us that Catha was a sun goddess based only on contrived comparisons like Martianus Capella's obscure philosophical poetry of 400 AD and Dioscerides' equation of the Etruscan floral term *cauθa 'chamomile' with a Latin idiom 'eye of the sun'; see De Grummond/Simon, The religion of the Etruscans (2006), p.11 and Chapin, Charis: Essays in honor of Sara A. Immerwahr (2004), p.361 . This is pretentious erudition which deceitfully avoids examining Etruscan material in perverse favour of secondhand Roman sources which aren't even of the period in question.

Charun Number Six

Charun Number Six is not a perfume nor a sci-fi novel. It's coming straight from pages 214 and 215 of Nancy De Grummond and Erika Simon's book Etruscan Myth, Sacred History and Legend (2006):

"Thus we have Charun Chunchules and Charun Huths [...] as well as, perhaps, Charun Lufe [...]; little is understood about their names, though Charun Huths may mean Charun Number Six (reinforcing the interpretation of the deity as a plurality), and it is also evident that the name Charun or Charu here has a generic quality, rather like the name Lasa."

This paragraph has irritated me for years. How can Etruscanists take four names that they're unable to translate word for word and, from this, casually assume that the god Charun "has a generic quality" or that it's "reinforcing the interpretation of the deity as a plurality"? If one can't translate these simple phrases, one cannot assume much from them until one can. It turns out that the title Charun Number Six is a complete fabrication and indeed may as well be a sci-fi or cologne. De Grummond and her circle fail to offer their readers any useful historical parallel for this concocted epithet.

When grammar is properly heeded, Charun Huths can't mean Charun Number Six. It literally means Charun of the Four since the trailing genitive marker -s means 'of' and huθ means '4', not '6'. Judging by Greek Charōn (Χάρων), Charun is an imported name for the Etruscan god of death and so The Four likely pertain to this role.

Likely, "the four" references the four winds or directions that had to be evoked in Etruscan funeral rites by the priest but it's also interesting to note that, according to Homer at least (Odyssey 10.513), there were four underworld rivers: Akhérōn, Stux, Puriphlegéthōn and Kōkutós. We know that the Etruscans were aware of at least one of them (TLE 334: Aχrum) but certainly some educated Etruscans must have read Homer's famed works too. Then again, the legend of the four rivers may simply be built on these four cardinal directions. To the Greeks, the winds were known as Nótos (south), Eurús (east), Zéphuros (west) and Boréas (north). The Romans referred to them collectively as the Venti 'The Winds'.

The death taboo as a form of protection

An interesting observation is made in The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Book of Going Forth by Day (2008)^[1]:

"The idea behind such euphemisms involved more than not speaking ill of the dead: an effort was made not to even speak of a person's death at all. People who are called simply 'dead' in Egyptian religious contexts often seem to be the damned or unhappy dead. To mention death would be confirm death's power over the departed, so we today euphemistically speak of 'the departed' or say that someone has 'passed away.'"

I suppose this is also true for expressions for death in Etruscan which likewise speak of 'crossing over' (lup) rather than overt death. Are any of the words that we assign to death in these inscriptions true words for death and dying or are they all circumlocutions? How might we tell if we've found the *genuine* word for 'death' in Etruscan amidst all these superstitions and euphemistic circumlocutions?


NOTES
^[1] Faulkner/Andrews/Wasserman, The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Book of Going Forth by Day (2008), p.150 (see link).

Different kinds of triads

A variety of triads in Etruscan and Roman mythology are available to the imagination of the mythologist. Among Romanists, one speaks of a Capitoline triad (Jupiter, Juno and Minerva), an Archaic Triad (Jupiter, Mars and Quirinus) and an Avertine Triad (Ceres, Liber and Libera). Even the festival of Suovetaurilia is split in three - a sacrifice is made of a pig, a ram and a bull to Mars in order to sanctify the land. Amongst Etruscans, we can identify the Trinity of Tinia (Tinia Cilensal, Tinia Thufal, Tinia Thneth), the Trinity of Maris (Maris Husiurnana, Maris Halna, Maris Isminthians) and the Chimeric Triad (snake, lion, goat). The list seems to go on indefinitely. Our modern understanding is no doubt blurred by the mists of time and hampered by organizational laziness. There must have been a greater structure and meaning in all of this. Something clearer, more verstaile and not so complex. But what?

In my search, I find it handy to reclassify these triads into flexible categories, recognizing that these religions were so prone to creative symbolism and lateral-thinking analogy. So I'd like to suggest some helpful groupings as follows:

Solar triad:
The sun is divided into three parts: three seasons (winter, spring-summer, autumn) and three daytime periods (morning, noon, evening). Think "Father Time". This stems from the heliocentricity of Etruscan religion.

Etruscan: Tinia Cilensal, Tinia Thufal, Tinia Thneth (Trinity of Tinia); Snake, lion, goat (Chimeric Triad).

Roman: Jupiter Summanus, Jupiter Fidius, Jupiter Tonans.

Seasonal triad:
The year is divided into three seasons (winter, spring-summer, autumn) with focus on agriculture and cyclical climate changes. Think "Mother Nature".

Etruscan: Maris Husiurnana, Maris Halna, Maris Isminthians (Trinity of Maris).

Roman: Jupiter, Mars and Quirinus (Archaic Triad); Ceres, Liber and Libera (Avertine Triad).

Astral triad:
The three brightest bodies in the sky happen to be the sun, moon and Venus (in that order). Thus: Tinia the sun, Menarva the moon and Uni the planet Venus. This is a twist on the pre-existing Babylonian triad.

Etruscan: Tinia, Uni, and Menarva (Capitoline Triad).

Roman: Jupiter, Juno and Minerva (Capitoline Triad).

The Etruscan soul through Egyptian eyes

Continuing with some thoughts I pursued in What sort of 'soul' is the Egyptian ka? in which I searched for a more comprehensible understanding of the Egyptian concept of a three-part soul, I wanted to delve into the Etruscan notion of soul as it can be glimpsed by various clues in the historical record.

As stated in previous posts, the comparison between Etruscan and Egyptian ontology is motivated by the Egyptian influence quite apparent in Etruscan scarabs found as tomb offerings, invoking the Egyptian god Khepri which, because of the convenient pun in the Egyptian language between *ḫāpar 'becoming' and *ḫapúri 'beetle', had led to the creation of this curious beetle-headed entity representing the rebirth of the sun in the morning horizon and simultaneously also the rebirth of the human soul after death. Therefore, the source of this hope in the deceased soul's rebirth can be asserted with certainty to be Egyptian. Yet if so, this implies that other ontological concepts also were welcomed into Etruria from this North African civilization.

So if the Egyptian believed in the ka, ba and akh and if I'm further correct that they represent subsets of each other rather than equal portions of a soul, then what were the Etruscan equivalents if any?

If the ka is the soul when unified with the living body, with a representative image, with a statue or with some other sort of physical vessel (as per my previous entry), then it's interesting to note the difference of burial practices between Egyptians and Etruscans. To the Egyptian, the destruction of body in a cremation must have seemed horrible since it denied the ability for the deceased soul to ever reunite with its body again. Yet this consideration must not have fazed the Etruscans. The repeated mention in the Liber Linteus of cletram srencve 'lectica with icons', a portable litter filled with representations of their honoured gods, as well as the habit of leaving useful articles for the dead as if they lived on in the physical realm suggests that nonetheless the Etruscans must have believed that a soul, whether of a deity or a human being, had the ability to reside in physical things much like the Egyptians. The Etruscans believed in their own version of a ka.


With the ba translated as the spirit itself (regardless of containment within a physical host), we can be certain that the Etruscans believed this too and so this needs no further explanation. One of the Etruscan terms used for 'soul' appears to be sacni, literally 'sacred one'. We might also translate it as hinθial 'that which is below' which alludes to the soul's destined path through the underworld.


The most intriguing part of this comparison though is how the Etruscans might have perceived the Egyptian akh, the most obscure part of their conception of the soul which I suspect might be best understood as 'life-force' or 'will' and thus a component of the larger ba. Its connection with stars is particularly interesting because we know that Etruscans conceived of stars as nails hammered in the sky. We also know that nails were employed in ritual (nb. Roman accounts of the goddess Nortia) and that they had a connection with fate and the tracking of time.

We know that the nail was associated with the human soul but the confusing imagery of the death god Charun seemingly hitting dead people with hammers as if they were nails befuddles De Grummond who thinks that the hammer was "his weapon of choice" against all who die! Surely not. This is *not* to be taken literally or a sign of Charun's malevolence. This is simply a metaphor of death. Quite simply, when someone died, it must have been believed that a new star would be tapped into the vault of heaven. We can only sensibly interpret the hammering of the star-nail in the sky, the pulum, as being synonymous with the reception of the soul within the gates of the City of the Dead. Yet if so, this parallels the joining of the Egyptian akh to the field of stars that Egyptologists know as the Akhet.

What sort of 'soul' is the Egyptian ka?

Oddly enough, all this latest talk in my commentbox of the European Urnfield culture and Etruscan cremation practices led me to thinking about Egyptian beliefs about the afterlife. I suppose that lacking comprehensive resources on the Etruscan concept of death and afterlife, something which I doubt exists yet, I look to the Egyptians for even a shade of insight, particularly since there are so many connections to be made. (Remember that the Etruscans used scarabs as tomb offerings directly proving that they were affected by Egyptian beliefs in some form or fashion.)

Now, as I understand it, the Egyptian spirit is often said to be divided into three parts: the ka, the ba and the akh . These names are modern Budgisms based on the vowelless spelling of the Egyptians but I gather that they were pronounced more like *kuˀ, *baˀ and *ˀaḫ respectively at around 1500 BCE. I notice the Wikipedia under Egyptian soul currently claims there are five components of the Egyptian soul but then piles on even more concepts in its schizophrenic, multi-author account. Added is the sheut 'shadow' (or rather *šawīt), the ib 'heart' (*ˀib) and the ren 'name' (more accurately *rin), helping to thoroughly confuse the reader rather than elucidate. I consider these last three related but incidental to the fundamental Egyptian notion of 'soul'. In the following I want to explore a new idea that came to me.

The ka is sometimes translated 'soul', sometimes 'image' and sometimes 'double'. Many other translations are also attempted. Yet I wonder recently if this odd translation confusion exists because this term wasn't just referring to the spirit itself as modern theologians might understand it but instead to the containment of the spirit in a vessel, a vessel such as a body or statue. If so, this gives a whole new nuance to the *Ḥáˀat-Kuˀ-Patáḥ, a famous temple in the city of Memphis. It would then suggest that this temple wasn't just housing the 'soul of Ptah' (*kuˀ Patáḥ) but that it was so named because it was believed, at least by its cult leaders, to be the temple in which the very body *and* soul of Ptah was present. This gives me a vision of a grand building within which an impressive, monumental statue of Ptah sits, around which rituals were enacted by its devout priesthood as if he were the living article, all for the wonder of the entranced commonfolk. Such a subtle notion of the word *kuˀ would emphasize this particular temple's central importance to the worship of this god of death and resurrection. Why go to just any temple of Ptah when one can experience Ptah's holy spirit 'in the flesh'? It would certainly have been great temple marketing if my perception here is realistic.

Also by reconceiving of the ka as the 'soul' specifically when contained in its physical manifestation rather than just 'soul' proper, contrastively then the ba must be the spirit itself, particularly when it was separate from the *ẖīˀat or body. It would be the ba, I think, that is most appropriately translated as the English-speaking notion of 'soul'. So maybe we can get away with thinking of the ba as a *subset* of the ka rather than on a par with it.

This theoretical structure of an ancient belief system leads me to wonder if the akh was in turn yet another subset (of the ba, that is). In the resulting reinterpretation, the soul really isn't divided into three parts, or even five. Instead the soul is composed of three layers with the akh, as 'life-force' or 'will', being the innermost of the three metaphysical strata. In this ontology, the 'will' (akh) is a component of the 'soul' (ba) which is further merely an ingredient in the union of body and soul (ka).

I'll have to explore this idea further and see what evidence is in its favour or against it.

An old children's tale for the modern era

Slagsmålsklubben - Sponsored by destiny (by Tomas Nilsson)

You all need to check out this amazing video above. It's the famous tale of Little Red Riding Hood with a modern media twist. When I saw it, I was struck by how clever it is in conveying a story without words and, what's more, in a highly non-linear way using a fun, visual barrage of data. (Did I just say "a fun, visual barrage of data"?? Yes I did!) It'll all make sense when you click play.

The hidden one

In his Glossai, we attribute Hesychius to writing that Γέλχανος (Gélchanos) was the name of Zeus on Crete (ὁ Ζεύς, παρὰ Κρησίν) and Ἐλχάνιος (Elchánios), the name of a month in the Cretan city of Knossos.^[1] Further we read that Velchania was a Cretan spring festival in honour of the god, mentioned in inscriptions from Lyttos and Gortyn.^[2] Understanding the initial gamma of Γέλχανος as a subtle typo for digamma, thus *Ϝέλχανος (Wélchanos), there's a common theme in all of this: a Pre-Greek Cretan god named *Welkʰan. This god is in turn surely related to Etruscan *Velχan which is already accepted by Etruscan specialists to be the unattested source of the Latin name Vulcānus, also of non-Indo-European origin.

If the inherently imprecise comparisons between *Welkʰan and Greek Zeus are based only on a prominent position in the pantheon, and if we already have evidence of an Etruscan solar trinity, the identity of this god and his meaning becomes clear. *Welkʰan appears to be just another name for an aspect of the sun as it passes through the underworld at night. He is then also symbolic of the hope of afterlife and of the sun's re-emergence out of winter's darkness in the spring. This explains the spring festival in his honour and also implies that in Classical Greek times, Pelasgian solar cults and an underlying trinity were still alive and well in Crete, just as in Etruria. Note also the names of Egyptian Amon, the god of the setting sun, and Greek Hades, lord of the underworld, which both fundamentally mean "the Hidden One" or "the Unseen One".


NOTES
^[1] Perseus Online: ϝέλχανος and Γελχάνος; Flensted-Jensen/Hansen/Nielsen/Rubinstein, Polis & politics: Studies in ancient Greek history (2000), p.88 (see link): "The remaining three month names are Welchanios (I.Cret.IV 3.1; 184.3), Eleusinios (I.Cret.IV 232 + Inv. GO 352; Magnelli [1998]), and Ionios (I.Cret.IV 181.3). Welchanos appears to have been an indigenous Cretan (perhaps Minoan?) god who was later identified with Zeus (Hesych. s.v. Γέλχανος; Willetts [1962] 250-251; Capdeville [1995] 155-288)." (boldface mine)
^[2] Dietrich, The origins of Greek religion (1974), p.16 (see link).

Truth will shine forth (2)

(Continued from Truth will shine forth (1).)

Isn't this medieval Christian image glorious? I don't mean glorious in a faith sense since I'm a heartless atheist who equates baseless faith with cognitive dysfunction. No, I mean glorious in how it captures the solar divinity in Etruscan mythology. Oh wait, I forgot, I have to explain this currently unknown trinity before you're let in on this exquisitely divine joke.

According to my previous blog entry, the supreme god of the Etruscan pantheon, Tinia, was split into three specialized functions by ancient priests: Tin Thufl, Tin Thneth and Tin Cilensl. I reject the overwhelmingly popular mistranslation of tin as 'sky' which has led to stupid yet unchallenged paradoxes by numerous noted specialists. As will be seen, 'sun' is the correct value, thereby making this ancient trinity a solar one with its ultimate origin lying in Asia Minor and Egypt.


Tin Thufl 'Sun of Oath'

Tin Thufl is the sun in his function as lord of justice. With Etruscan θuf properly translated as 'oath' and equated with Latin fidius, Tin Thufl too may be equated with Fidius, the Roman god. This aspect may be associated not only with oath and testimony but with truth and justice as a whole (cf. Greek Ζεὺς Πίστιος, Sabine Sancus). He might remind us of Babylonian Shamash and his like position as supreme judge. We might also infer that he was, like Shamash, the source of omen and patron of augurs. He is also connected with sacral boundaries, their disputes and their resolutions (cf. Roman Iupiter Terminus). He is the daytime sun at zenith, in all its glory, highest of high (cf. Roman Iupiter Optimus Maximus). Thus it makes sense that he takes central position on the liver between his other two facets. He reigns directly above within the glowing face of the sky as its All-Seeing Eye atop a conceptual, triadic pyramid but this is hardly the New World Order; it's rather quite old actually. In a Dumézilian sense, if I'm permitted to indulge, this is clearly Tinia's judicio-religious function.


Tin Thneth 'Thundering Sun'

Tin Thneth may be conceived of as fundamentally the sun towards the evening with aggressive elements of storm, thunder and lightning added to emphasize a warrior role. The giver of rain and reliever of droughts (cf. also Roman Iupiter Pluvius). I interpret θne as an abbreviation for the word *θneθ 'thundering', a stative participle of *θun 'to thunder' which in turn is an early borrowing from Latin tonēre. In this way, Tin Thneth means precisely the same as Latin Iupiter Tonans and refers to the same specific god, an originally Etruscan one.


Tin Cilensl 'Sun from Darkness'

From its meaning, Tin Cilensl must be the sun rising out of the darkness of night and the darkness of the underworld below. After shining over the dead in Aita (Hades) during the night, the sun emerges from Cilens, the Darkness. One may confidently identify the many Etruscan scarabs found as indicative of this protective, afterworld solar aspect also popular in Ancient Egypt under the name Khepri 'the Becoming One' with his death-rebirth symbolism. Tin Cilens may be summarized as Tinia in his earthly life-giving role, particularly in spring.


Yet one more reason why Etruscan tin cannot mean 'sky'

Note, if tin meant 'sky' as is the current mistranslation of all famed Etruscanists to date, there is therefore no meaningful semantic difference between Tin Cilensl *'Sky of Night' and Cilens 'Night', yet we know they're different gods because they're placed side-by-side each with their own distinct sections on the border of the Piacenza Liver. This is how the explanations offered by current specialists are stagnant and incompetent. For example, notice how De Grummond and company trip over their own reasoning when claiming that *both* Cilens and Tin Cilens are God of Night between page 149 and page 48 of Etruscan myth, sacred history, and legend (2006) without addressing the paradox. Jannot in his Religion in ancient Etruria (2005) likewise lumps Cilens and Tin Cilens under a same lazy "Underworld conceptual blob" on page 164 wasting the ink of two long paragraphs and the reader's time by essentially saying, "I have no clue." Nothing new in Etruscan mythology has been learned for the past 60 years? It's hard to believe.

So let's now separate ourselves from the clueless and finally understand that Cilens himself is the true Night Sky while Tin Cilensl is the hidden Underworld Sun, also expressed by Tinia Calusna 'Underwordly Tinia'. Furthermore, let's now stop misinterpreting Tin Cilensl as the God of Death par excellence, which is already represented by Aita.