Pit worship and common Cypro-Minoan rites

Albert Grenier in The Roman spirit in religion, thought, and art (1926) described this important type of Etrusco-Roman ritual space quite succinctly^[1]:

"The mundus is really a mouth of hell, a way of communication between the upper earth, the abode of the living, and the subterranean world, the dwelling of the dead."

As I said before, chapter 12 of the Liber Linteus shows a case alternation between muθ hilarθ une (with locative un-e) and muθ hilarθ una (with commitative un-a). Cross-correlating the context of each of these words with other Etruscan inscriptions, I read "The mundus (muθ) is enclosed (hilarθ) with libation (une/una)." The slight variation in case of the last word must nonetheless convey the same thing, much like the creative case choices seen in the main religious formula of the Liber Linteus that likewise suggest only nuanced semantic differences if any despite different case endings. The phrase mut-ti ceśasi in LL 10 refers then to depositing (ceśasi) a holy offering 'in the pit' (mut-ti).

Additionally, considering that Indo-Europeanists haven't identified a native source for Latin mundus,^[2] it may very well be loaned from Etruscan muθ. Afterall, a large portion of Roman religious rites has already been attributed to the Etruscans before them whose traditions are simultaneously linked to similar rites like those of the influential Hittites of yore.^[3] This further contributes to the plausibility of interpreting muθ as a ritual pit.

Given the existence of this important Etruscan word, and charging forward with my previous identification of a Minoan accusative-declined noun phrase on libation table KN Za 10, tan muti Asásaramana 'the pit of Asasarama' (as per John Younger's transliteration), a common Proto-Aegean word *muti meaning 'pit, hole' is a natural sequitur. The reduction of final vowel and concommitant aspiration of plosive in Etruscan is already explained by Cyprian Syncope.

Finally there's the matter of what kind of goddess Asásarama would have represented to the Minoans. I get the impression of an archetypal fertility and earth goddess paralleling Isis and Ashtarte. If we follow the recurring themes of the religions hugging the eastern Mediterranean during the 2nd mill. BCE, this would lead me to suspect that she was also the wife of a local god of storm and/or underworld, like Egyptian Osiris or Hattic Wurun-Katte. If a fertile earth goddess, the link between Asásarama and a word 'pit', already noted as a chthonian symbolism in Hittite rites, is all the more promising.

I plan on elaborating more on the nature of Asásarama and other possible intercultural connections in a future post.

Aegean phonotactics and more about Cyprian Syncope

After I posted Adapting the rule of Cyprian Syncope, Tropylium strove hard to paint it as linguistically unnatural or unoptimal while pushing some alternatives that I don't believe he researched. Being stubborn and fierce about my linguistics, I challenge his reasons for objection. Disbelief is no less in need of firm basis than belief. Let's quickly go over my theory some more to see why it's indeed natural, or at least more natural than anything I've seen anyone come up with.

Since stress accent must fall on one of the first two syllables in Aegean (and in later Minoan) we might say that accent placement is left-handed. By dividing the Aegean protoword into feet of two syllables consisting of trochees (or strong followed by weak syllables), then we see how Cyprian consistently erodes weak syllables towards the left and how this explains Etruscan's later shape. Let's simply make up some example forms to illustrate my theory at work, without being obstructed for now by the separate issue of the validity of any of my reconstructions:

Aegean		Cyprian
**áinatʰo [ˈai . na . ˌtʰo] ( ¯ ˘ | ¯ )	→	**áinatʰu [ˈai. na . tʰu] ( ¯ ˘ | ¯)
**táḳalimi [ˈta . kˤa . ˌli . mi] ( ¯ ˘ | ¯ ˘ )	→	**táklim [ˈtak . lim] ( ¯ ˘ )
**kápari [ˈka . pa . ˌri] ( ¯ ˘ | ¯ )	→	**kápri [ˈkap . ri] ( ¯ ˘ )
**sarópa [sa . ˈro . pa] ( ˘ | ¯ ˘ )	→	**srupʰ [ˈsrupʰ] ( ¯ )

In the above examples, the weak syllables all nicely squish into a previous syllable except for the first example whose diphthong blocks syncope (as per my previous post on this). The next example shows why stress shift is not just a plausible phonotactic-correcting strategy, but possibly the most optimal one to avoid unacceptable onsets, given the specific qualities of this protolanguage.

**takíru [ta . 'ki . ru] ( ˘ | ¯ ˘ )

→

**tákru ['tak . ru] ( ¯ ˘ )

Without shift, **takíru becomes Cyprian **tkir yet this disobeys constraints on onset clusters and unacceptably overloads the inherited and highly strict rules of syllabic structure. Or succinctly: "(Too much) change is scary." Certainly it takes more than a few generations before a Japanese-like language turns into a Kartvelian-like one, そうですか?

Since stop+stop sequences are simply not found in Etruscan or related languages, some rule or rules must have repaired or avoided these logically inevitable conflicts. Simple onset deletion is a common cluster-fighting strategy in world languages and this would produce **kir, although this would also surely create a tsunami of homophones! (That is, we'd see that a long list of terms like **takíru, **kʰakíra, **pakíri, etc. had all merged to **kir. Surely not.) Seeing it from this angle, onset deletion doesn't pass muster.

Lenition of the offending onset is barely a better strategy to avoid conflict in this respect because similar issues resurface. While **takíru could always plausibly yield **skír if lenition were so, what about a word like **pakíri which couldn't possibly produce **fkír in Etruscan! We might appeal to a mixture of lenition and onset deletion, I suppose, but now we're already multiplying hypotheses and assuming much too much.

By contrast, accent shift is in this case far more natural than wholesale onset deletion or piecemeal lenition. It also offers some added benefits besides its simplicity, obviously one of them being avoidance of homophony if nothing else. Also since the stress was already largely on the first syllable, this leftward stress shift would only help to pin an occasionally wandering accent permanently onto the first syllable (as in Proto-Germanic).

So accent regularization, solving cluster conflicts, preserving inherited consonantism, and avoiding troublesome homophony are a lot of things this strategy of simple stress accent shift has to offer that make it a win-win over other ideas pushed by Tropylium in my commentbox. Thus **takíru becomes Cyprian **tákru (not **tkir, **kir, or **zkir).

Never judge a book by its nom de plume

Just today, a fellow by the name of "Brian Damage" gave me a comment in my box:

"Bravo!!!! Perhaps the most insightful work on Etruscan Extispicy I have ever read."

I would have taken it at face value and been very flattered if it weren't for that suspicious name of his and my overanalytical mentality which gave me the hasty impression that this was some sort of joke at my expense similar to what Language Hat's peanut-gallery commenters were doing to me recently. So into the reject bin it went. Whoops! Unfortunately, once something is rejected, Blogger doesn't allow you to undo the function.

Upon review of Brian's blog where he indeed mentioned my work on Etruscan haruspical traditions in all intellectual seriousness and in relation to his personal explorations into paganism and modern heathenry, it seems that I've made yet another booboo in judgment (let's just add it to my long list, hahaha). So it turns out this is not a practical joke afterall despite his deceptively jocular username. Therefore, I'm very sorry, Brian, for rejecting your comment and thank you very much for enjoying my blog rants.

He adds an interesting thought about the connection between Rhaetic and Southern Germanic peoples. This is something that I'm interested in too after my recent investigation of the name Arretium, which I've begun to believe is in origin a Germanic name (not Etruscan as often claimed without concrete proof despite attested Aritim-i "in Arretium"). I'm starting to think this is one historical, archaeological and linguistic aspect that I'm still missing in my knowledge of the involvement of Etrusco-Rhaetic speaking peoples in Italy. I've yet to find a published account of this topic that's satisfying though. My sense is that there's a bunch of little bits of information strewn about that one needs to assemble together oneself to get a better picture of things. The easter egg hunt continues.