--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Tavi" wrote:
>
> The forms axo(n)ias, axonis are attested on lead foil inscriptions
found
> at the thermal station Amélie-les-Bains/Banys d'Arles
> (Rosselló). They're Italoid votive texts directed to water godesses
> called kantas niskas 'sacred girls'. These inscriptions, discovered at
> the beggining of the 20th, have been studied by Coromines in a 1976
> article, but are mostly unknown to the rest of the world:
>
> KANTAS NISKAS ROGAMOS ET DEP(R)ECAMUS VOS OT SANETE NON LERANCE (E)
DEUS
> ET NESCA PETEIA ET ELETA NESCA SLA(T) SNUKU AS M(E)
> [...]
>
I'm really puzzled by the *null* interest shown by IE-ists, even in this
list.
Of course, kantas is a femenine plural from IE *k´wen-to- 'holy'.
From the Germanic semantics (e.g. Gothic hunsl 'sacrifice', English
housel), I gather the original meaning could be 'offer', as in Iberian
eguan (surely a deverbative noun from an unrecorded verb *e-guan-).