Re: Odin as a Trojan Prince

--- In cybalist@..., cas111jd@... wrote:

> --- In cybalist@..., MrCaws@... wrote:
> > --- In cybalist@..., tgpedersen@... wrote:
> > > --- In cybalist@..., MrCaws@... wrote:
> > > > --- In cybalist@..., cas111jd@... wrote:
> > > >
>
> Well, we would need one of our resident know-it-alls to fill in the
> details more accurately than I can recall without digging through

my

> notes, but these theories have major problems:
>
> 1. the Trojan war occurred around 1250 BC. This would have been the
> time of Aeneas, who first settled amongst kindred Thracian tribes

of

> northern Greece.
> 2. the collapse of the Mycenaean culture nearby bronze age cultures
> occurred about 1200 BC, followed by a depopulation of Greece and

much

> of Anatolia, and the Mycenaean colonization of Cyprus, Pamphylia,

and

> the attack of the Sea Peoples across the eastern Mediterranean

until

> their defeat against Egypt. Some may have ended up sailing into the
> western Mediterranean, but that is another subject.
> 3. No significant Aegean-Anatolian cultural influence is

discernable

> in the western Mediterranean until centuries later. As I recall,

the

> metallurgy of Sardinia (it was a source of copper) improved after
> 1200 BC, but that's about it.
>
> First Phoenician and then Greek traders and settlers opened up the
> western Mediterranean after the 'Dark Age' ended around 800 BC.

Only

> after this time in the "Orientalizing" period did significant Greek
> influence reach Etruria. This included Greek deities such as

Apollo,

> who we also find in Hittite records as Apulianas of the vassal

state

> of Wilusa (Ilion). Only in the Iron Age did the Etruscan alphabet
> appear. If we are to believe that the Etruscans are descended from
> the people of Lemnos, some explanations are necessary:
>
> How did the population of a tiny island like Lemnos come to

populate

> a large state like Tuscany?
> Given that Etruscan was a non-IE language, how did its parent
> population ever manage to survive the waves of Anatolians,

Thracians,

> and Greeks through the Mediterranean? Not even the Minoans could do
> that. Herodotus says the Tuscans were descended from a faction of
> Lydians that left in a drought in the 9th century BC. Lydia was, I

am

> certain, an IE Anatolian-speaking state since Middle Bronze Age
> times.
>
> Now, the only way to explain any of this, as far as I can tell,

would

> have to include arguments such as:
>
> the Etruscan alphabet was written only on perishable materials such
> as leather and papyrus before it is found carved in stone in the
> eighth (or whichever) century.
>
> the refugees from Anatolia were too few in number to impact the
> indigenous early Etruscan language.
>
> the Lemnos stele is not necessarily proof of Etruscan language or
> origin. After all, about every city in Anatolia had its own, if
> similar, script that lasted into Roman times. This shows the
> fractured nature of the Anatolian city-states that apparently were
> more worried about keeping their own distinct identities than
> communicating with each other. Perhaps some day some more evidence

of

> Anatolian alphabets will be uncovered showing a clearer picture of
> the place. Unfortunately, the Greeks and Romans used old buildings
> and cities as quarries for their new buildings and cities, so lotsa
> luck on that!
>
> Besides the Lemnos stele and its obvious similarity to the Tuscan
> alphabet, there are the names of the Tuscan rulers of Rome.

Tarquinas

> Superbus and Tarquinas Priscus are, IMO, titles. They relate to the
> name of the Armenian king Tigranes, the Greek word tyrant, and the
> name of an early Welsh king whose name I cannot recall at the

moment.

> Anyways, I believe the name translates as something like 'lord',

but

> in any event is for a sovereign. The Tuscan city of Tarquina was
> located on the coast of southern Tuscany, which may have been a
> landing spot for the Anatolian refugees, no matter what ethnic
> identity or century of arrival you believe them to be.

Snorri's Turks.

>
> As for Aeneas: the Romans grafted a lot of Greek mythology onto

their

> own. Indeed, they shamelessly adopted wholesale the Greek myths of
> Zeus, Hera, Aphrodite, etc to their deities Jupiter, Juno, Venus,

and

> so on. Why should we not believe Aeneas was also adopted?

Your concept of cultural transmission here is the traditional one
Greek > Etruscan > Roman. But if the Lemnians were Pelasgians, as
some classical writers wrote, and if Lemnian and Etruscan culture
were the same (the identity of these two cultures is not based on
similarity in alphabet, but on similarity of the texts themselves,
which is not found anywhere else in Anatolia) then it would sense to
believe instead in a transmission Etruscan(-Lemnian) > Greek, Etruscan
(-Lemnian) > Rome. Hercle > Heracles, Hercle > Hercules makes more
I thought briefly of a Etruscan(-Lemnian) etymology *ays-na- > *ays-
nya- for Aeneas, but it doesn't look right.

After all,

> the archaeology of Rome shows little more than some wattle and daub
> huts before the Tuscans took over the place in the eighth century.

Well, sometimes the lowlier the huts, the more extravagant the
mythology.


Way back, and I forgot the details, I saw a theory that there was a
massive fault in the dating of prehistoric events. The revision
proposed shrank the dark ages after 1200 BCE to a very short time. As
far as I can see, this (and only this) would save the incorporation
of Aeneas story, like this:

Troy consists of a city and the surrounding land. After Troy is
sacked, people try to live on, but because of disasters (and because
of loss of income from the city) are forced to leave. This would make
both the Aeneas and the Ulysses legend part of the Sea People
campaign.