--- In cybalist@..., jdcroft@... wrote:
> Regarding the post from Anders and Torsten
>
> > > The allies of Priam also included Ethiopians under Memnon;14
the
> > > Ethiopian allies of Priam must date in all probability to the
> > period
> > > when the Ethiopians were one of the most honored nations,
highly
> > > regarded for their military prowess.
>
> There is another possibility that must be considered.
>
> The Greek Memnon was the Egyptian Pharaoh Amenhotep III, the
> Magnificent. This was the pinacle of Egyptian power in the Middle
> East. Two great statues of this Pharaoh were called by the Greeks,
> the Collossi of Memnon, and were damaged by an earthquake roughly
at
> the time of the fall of Troy. Greeks claimed that it was damage
done
> by Poseidon in grief over what happened. For centuries after, one
of
> the statues would utter a strange call as the rising son of the
> morning heated the air within. Eventually (I think it was during
> Roman times), the statue was repaired, and it greeted the sun no
more.
>
> Amenhotep fought campaigns against the Medjay in Nubia, who were
> subsequently incorporated as troops into the Egyptian
army. "King's
> Son of Cush" or "Pi Nehesy" was the name given to the Egyptian
crown
> prince (a little like "Prince of Wales" is the title of the English
> Crown Prince), and the Nubian regiments were placed under his
> control. This title travelled into the Bible as "Phineas" (today
the
> Jewish surname Pincus).
>
> Redford demonstrates that under Amenhotep III a periplus of the
> Eastern Mediterranean was translated into hieroglyphics, and the
> names Knossos, Amnissos, Pylos and Mycenae were translated into
> Egyptian. The Amarna letters speak of the king of Mycenae as one
of
> the "Great Kings". Amenhotep III is an interesting king, as his
> mother Mutemwiya, was daughter of the King of the Hurrians, who
also
> exerted significant power in the Hittite Kingdom at that time.
This
> system of international alliances, that was strengthened after the
> Battle of Kadesh, brought peace and security to the whole Middle
East.
>
> At the same time, Lukku, Sharden, Danuana and Meshwesh, the "People
> of the Sea" who made such trouble for Egypt later, are first
> mentioned in the reign of Amenhotep III. The Danuana are the
Homeric
> Danaos, the men of Argos under Diomedes who took such a prominant
> place in the seige of Troy. There are memories in Greece of a
> post "Trojan" expedition against Egypt (supposedly to recover Helen
> who had really been "protected" in Egypt during the course of the
> Trojan war by the Pharaoh of that country, a monarch
> called "Proteus"). TRWS ("Tarusha", or "Troas" people were amongst
> the "Peoples of the Sea" under the reign of Pharaoh Merenptah.
>
> It has been suggested that the Trojan War contains a memory of an
> Achaean campaign against the Hittite dependency of Wilusa, just
> before the collapse of the Hittite Empire at the hands of the
Peoples
> of the Sea, and their Gasga and Phrygian allies. It is quite
> possible that Memnon and his Ethiopians also contains distorted
> memories of these events.
>
> Regards
>
> John
Hi John,
Wow,
I must admit that I really like this theory!
I have read about the Memnon statues in encyclopaedias many times,
but not connected them to the Illiad stories, because they were
earlier than the said wars.
I've also suspected a little while that there was something fishy
about Homeros "by Schliemann proved true" stories and therefore also
the Troy part in the prologue of the Snorri Edda
It would seem that the Achaeans, Mycaeneans, Aegaeans, Minoans etc.
are just interchangable terms for all the non-anatolian peoples
living in Peloponese, Agaean islands and the west coast of Asia Minor.
Ekwesh could then well be the Ahhiyawa, and Homers Achaean's and
danaans then the sea peoples Dan- and Ekwesh, then perhaps non-
greekspeakers.
Since they lateron ( between1100 and 950 ) apparently were forced
out of their homelands by the greek-speaking Dorians they were
probably also greek-haters.
Torsten then seems to be right that the ancestors of Odin pehaps was
these Greek-hating scythian achaeans. It doesn't seem farfetched that
they could have gotten to the other end of the Black Sea to get away
from the greek-speakers.
Perhaps also this partly explains Dudo's Dane-investigations.
However since the Danaans/Danuna seems to have stayed longer in Asia
Minor ( I'm thinking of the bilingual phoenician/luwian Karatepe
inscription), there is perhaps more to tell.
I read that Diodorus Siculus wrote this:
"This nation prospered more and more and had kings that were very
famous, from whom the Sacans and the Massagetae and the Arimaspians
and many others, called by other names, derive their origin amongst
others. There were two remarkable colonies that were drawn out of the
conquered nations by those kings. The one they brought out of Assyria
and settled in the country lying between Paphlagonia and Pontus. The
other was drawn out of Media, which they placed near the river Tanais
which people are called Sauromatians"
I took it from this site (because it was the longest I could find on
the web):
http://www.childrenofyahweh.com/Comparet/historic_proof.htm
This said to have been in the scythians raids to egypt and Palestine
in 625 BC
Even though this could be a connection to Dudo's Daci, Assyria seems
to be a little far away from the Danuna, however. And I haven't
decided what to think about this guy's theory about the cimmerians:
http://www.christianbiblestudy.org/OPS/CIMMER.htm
BTW, regarding Media and Assyria I have quite some time been thinkig
of the Swedish word afton/aftom
I read in Våre Arveord by Harald Bjorvand and Fredrik Otto lindeman
that it's a nordic word wich, couldn't be related to abend, evening
etc, but is related to the word after. I translate:
----------
" the word exists otherwise in the following forms:
norse aptann/eptann, gda aftaen nisl. aftann faer. aftan
osv.afton/aftan/apton da. aften sv. afton
Norse aptann/eptann , means normally "afternoon from 3 pm until the
end of the day (kveld)" but exists also in the meaning "evening of
day before holiday" in eg jolaptann. These forms points inthe first
back on the urn. *aftanaR, *aftinaR, aftunaR, and they appear to be
specific for the north germanic languages see below"
------
The funny thing is that I find aftom/aptom also as an aramaic word in
Ezra 4:13
Soundfile:
http://bible.crosswalk.com/cgi-bin/lexicon.pl?id=0674h
http://bible.crosswalk.com/Lexicons/Hebrew/heb.cgi?
number=0674&version=
in the web dictionary based on Brown Driver Briggs Gesenius it is
said to mean revenue or trasury but in Koehler Baumgartner from 2000
the meaning is said to be surely, finally from pers. apatam <
akkadian ana piti meaning finally
I have two questions regarding this:
1) how old is the swedish form aftom?
2) Is this a plausible ethymology?
Best wishes
Anders