gLeN writes about the constellations:
>Unfortunately, I'm not aware of much to speak of concerning
stars in IE in any references I've seen. Surely, IndoEuropeans must have
looked at the stars.
Indeed, yes, and the stars remained constant as the PIE tribe wandered and
spread out through Eurasia. The different star-names and star-stories could
provide some insights into the linguistic and cultural changes of the IE
tribes. For example, according to Brown, Orion the Hunter is derived from
Uru-anna, the Light of Heaven, from the Euphrates Valley. The Hindus regard
the constellation as a Stag. The Arabians call it Al-Jauzah (a giant), and
the ancient Egyptians (from the temple of Denderah) see it as the young or
rising sun, in a boat surrounded by stars. The early Irish called it "The
Armed King." (Information from Olcott's "Star Lore of All Ages," published
in 1912, but still interesting stuff).
I got to wondering when I was doing research for a story set in
pre-Christian Ireland and I needed to know what the Celts called the
constellations. Surely not Hercules and Andromeda? However, I didn't find
much on different cultures' names, only the same Greek-named ones over and
over.
Were the native myths and names in Europe frowned upon by the Christian
church in the Middle Ages, and so forgotten or surpressed? Then in the
Renaissance, when Greek and Roman things were all the rage, did those myths
came in to fill that vacuum, along with the names of the stars from the
Arabian astonomers?
(I did read about one fellow named Schiller who made up his own
constellations in the 1700s or so, all based on figures from the Bible. He
had Noah and the Ark instead of Jason and the Argo, and the twelve disciples
instead of the twelve signs of the zodiac. Nobody adopted his scheme.)
gLeN also says:
"This gets people like me to concluding that if there is anything to say
about IndoEuropean knowledge of stars and constellations, it probably was
all adopted ultimately from the Middle East at a very early date."
Can we accurately date the Middle East cultures as coming first? Was it an
adoption of another culture's myths, or more a mingling or an exchange? And
can we figure out which of those Middle East cultures it was? (I'm trying
to work out a timeline for the different language branchings, and I'm
getting kind of overwhelmed.)
Olcott says that the Egyptians are said to have borrowed their star-lore
from the Chaldeans, and the Greeks learned astronomy from the Egyptians and
Phoenicians. The Phoenicians, as sailors, probably carried their star-lore
far from home. The Arabs are said to have gotten a start in their
astronomy from India, so their stories also might carry traces of the same
myths. To look for something completely different, we either cross the
Atlantic to North America, or go to China.
Thanks for the information on the divinities. Does anybody know when that
conversation happened? I'd like to look it up in the archives.
Janeen