Hyalos

--- In cybalist@..., "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:

> --- In cybalist@..., "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
> >
> > I found an interesting book The Crystal Sun by Robert Temple on
> finds
> > of ancient lenses and of glass and rock crystal spheres used as
> > magnifying glasses and for illuminating text and other minute

work.

> >
> > It seems the ancient view of the sun was that it was a body fixed
> on
> > the outmost sphere (or heaven), not producing, but concentrating
> the
> > light of the universal fire beyond that sphere, in other words a
> type
> > of crystal sphere.
> >
> > Herodotus uses 'hyalos' for "rock crystal" (III, 24). According

to

> > Temple, Paul Jablonsky (Opuscula, 1804) believed the word to be

of

> > Egyptian origin. But I thought I recognized *sH2w-l/n- "sun" (>
> *swal-
> > o-?) ?
> >
>
> Temple doesn't mention it. but I thought the idea of the sun as
> transparent refractory body would occur to anybody who'd dissected

an

> eye (vitreous body), as any sacerdos might have.
>
> Therefore: "eye of the sun", an idea which occurs also in, well

never

> mind. But if 'hyalos' is indeed IE, that would point some IA, not
> Iranian, l-dialect, so there the trail points east.
>

Philolaos, who is credited with this idea by various anthologists in
antiquity, was a Pythagorean. Cf.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/16369

Who knows what Pythagoras might have heard from his Thracian slave,
Zalmoxis? (and now we're down to the distance between Thrace and the
Maeotian Sea, where the Indic-speakers lived.

> >
> > Torsten