Re: Odp: Goliath and Uriah the Hittite as IE -

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 489
Date: 1999-12-08

 
----- Original Message -----
From: Ivanovas/Milatos
To: cybalist@eGroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, December 08, 1999 5:50 PM
Subject: [cybalist] Re: Goliath and Uriah the Hittite as IE -

Hello,
Brent you wrote in your very interesting connection to the Bible:

>The timing seems  early for Hittite expansion<

I wasn't talking about Hittite expansion, but about contacts of (in the case
of the Minoans: possibly) IE peoples with the Levant. Archaeological records
do give us possibilities for that, look at the well established trade routes
from Mari times through the Ulu Burun shipwreck until times after Ramesses.
As for Abar I don't know - the only thing that just springs to mind is
Avaris - but it's late and I can't think clearly right now for more.
As for sizes, or giants, all is relative:
I'm 162 cm small (I found out: this is small - especially compared to people
as Mark, who doesn't think himself to be particularly tall with six feet ...
Now the average Minoan was at most my size. But sometimes people were
larger, too. The 'priest' who did the sacrifice of a human at Anemospilia
near Knossos around 16?? B.C. was unusually tall- just as tall as Mark. Was
that a reason for choosing him as a priest (may be representatives were just
as large - to give a 'large' impression...). Other people of that time also
were rather my size (cf. archaeological records for that period). I believe
it unscholarly to hypothesize about size in connection with fertilizers,
food etc. - that's just that or getting rid of the subject. The point is:
there were - at that time as always - people more powerful (or just
larger/taller) than others. I think we ought to accept this first without
asking what they r e a l l y meant by that (it's a well known fact of
psychopathology that small/tiny people have to make up for the lack of their
size - like Napoleon Bonaparte, to seem so much the larger ... Mark: that's
not my problem :-)).
I'll think about the 'Abar', Brent, before we publish the whole idea! ;-)
Nichts fuer ungut!
Best wishes from Crete
Sabine
Sabine,
 
The name is Arba, not Abar! By the bye, Avaris would have a beautiful Anatolian etymology if it were a Hyksos name and if the Hyksos had had anything to do with the southern Luwians. (I suppose Brent could comment on those "ifs".) Hittite awaris means 'watchtower, border sentry', and is derived from the verb au-/aus- 'see'.
OBITER DICTUM
All those giants remind me of the Slavic word for 'giant', which is ... *obr-, derived from the name of the Avars, who made themselves so notorious from the Volga to Thuringia and from the Baltic to Byzantium that those who knew them regarded them as titanic whatever their actual average height. They were finally crushed by Charlemagne -- another giant, (I believe he was in fact a really tall man) whose Frankish name (Karl) gave rise to the Slavic word for 'king'. I certainly do not wish to claim that the 6th-9th c. Turko-Mongolian Avars have anything to do with Avaris, but it's interesting to see, in the case of Slavic, how historically attested peoples are mythicised as supernatural giants and how the name of an eminent man may become a generic term for a ruler.
Piotr