Hi,
Brent wrote about
http://www.adventist.org/gc/presidential/bibconf/Articles/Hasel.htm:
>The article definitely comes down on the side of Mycenaen Greeks. But
>some of the articles sounded to me like they still could be Minoan
>(fertility Goddess etc.) see what you think.
Very interesting article, but I don't find anything specially 'Minoan' in
it. Mycenaean may well be. The most interesting bit is an inscription with
(possible IE) Philistine names. I cite:
"1. The temple (which) he built _'kys_ son of Padi, son of
2. _Ysd_, son of Ada, son of Ya'ir, ruler of Ekron,
3. for _Ptgyh_ his lady. May she bless him, and
4. prote[ct] him, and prolong his days, and bless
5. his [l]and.(63)
/.../ The ruler of that city is identified as Ikausu also mentioned as the
king of Ekron in the Assyrian records of Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal.(65)
Its consonantal spelling is the same as Achish the name of the well-known
king(s) of Gath identified in the Bible during the time of David and Solomon
(1 Sam 21; 27; 28; 29; 1 Kings 2: 39-40)(66) three and half centuries
earlier. Padi, the father of Ikausu, is identified as the king of Ekron in
the annals of Sennacherib in the context of his third campaign in 701
B.C.(67) The additional forefathers identified in the dedicatory inscription
at Ekron appear here for the first time, yet their significance cannot be
overestimated. They indicate a dynastic period of succession that lasted at
least from the eighth through most of the seventh century. /.../
Finally, the mention of Ptgyh, the goddess to whom this temple is dedicated,
provides an important insight into Philistine cultic and religious
practices. The name is of non-Semitic origin, perhaps a Philistine or
Indo-European name, and even though unknown to us she "must have been a
deity of considerable power to safeguard the well-being of the dynasty and
the city."(69)
Notes:
63.Seymour Gitin, Trude Dothan, and Joseph Naveh, "A Royal Dedicatory
Inscription from Ekron," Israel Exploration Journal 47/1-2 (1997): 9
65. A. Leo Oppenheim, "Babylonian and Assyrian Historical Texts," In Ancient
Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, 3rd edition, ed. J. B.
Pritchard (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), 291, 294.
66. The name in the dedicatory inscription has the identical spelling of the
Old Testament Achish. This puts to rest some earlier theories that found a
Trojan origin of this name as Anchises. The translators suggest that the
name derived from Akhayus or Achaean, meaning 'Greek.' This has important
implications for the origin of the Philistines. Gitin, Dothan, and Naveh,
"Royal Dedicatory Inscription," 11. Cf. D. L. Christensen, "Achish," In The
Anchor Bible Dictionary, vol. 1, ed. David Noel Freedman (New York:
Doubleday, 1992), 55-56.
67. Oppenheim, "Babylonian and Assyrian," 287.
69. Gitin, Dothan, and Naveh, "Royal Dedicatory Inscription," 11.
What springs to mind when I read this is first the Mycenaean god 'Pade' and
the Mycenaean goddess (not yet just epitheton as in later ancient Greek)
po-ti-ni-ja - Potnia - (cognate to Indian patni, Lady). In Mycenaean ia/wa
were often exchangeable, the only thing I don't know (because I'm not a
Linguist) is: could the 'g' in 'Ptgyh' have come from Potinijia's (or a
similar Anatolian) 'n' in the 500 years difference between the two writings
(please don't forget the Mycenaeans couldn't have written anything like 'g'
because it didn't exist in their writing - or could the 'g' have 'hardened'
from the softer 'j')?
So, for making out more IE names in Canaan I hand the question back to the
Linguists!
Greetings from Crete, the land of the >da-pu2-ri-to-jo po-ti-ni-ja< (Lady
of the Labyrinth)
Sabine