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

No-frills Royal Game of Ur now available on Paleoglot

I whipped up another program - this time the Babylonian Royal Game of Ur. My game doesn't have errorchecking for moves yet and it doesn't even care where you place your pieces but it's still playable with a friend next to you. I'm still thinking about what rules I should code into it so, for now, enjoy.

The following image shows what I think makes the most historical sense about the gamepath. Since the related Egyptian 20-Squares game is an obvious variant of this Royal Game of Ur and shows that the 2x3 square portion of the Babylonian game has merely been "unfolded" into a straight line (or rather the Royal Game of Ur has been "folded" into its shape from the 20-Squares game, depending on whichever came first), it helps to narrow down the possibilities of gamepaths considerably. It seems rather safe to conclude the gamepath below. More on this later but essentially, the first four pieces are a safe zone that aren't shared with the opponent and beyond this the pieces proceed cautiously down symmetrically opposed paths to their respective end points where the pieces are then taken off the board as in the Egyptian game Sínat.