Re: Odp: Philistine revisited

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 536
Date: 1999-12-10

 
----- Original Message -----
From: Ivanovas/Milatos
To: cybalist@eGroups.com
Sent: Friday, December 10, 1999 4:08 PM
Subject: [cybalist] Re: Philistine revisited

Sabine writes,
Re: http://www.adventist.org/gc/presidential/bibconf/Articles/Hasel.htm

"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)

... 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 ..."

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')?
Sabine,
 
A change like n > g in a context like that would not take place either in 500 or in 5000 years. The "hardening" of j into g (via ɟ, a palatal stop) would be less unlikely, though it's hardly a common development. But I think there's hope for your etymology. A name with the consonantal skeleton p_t_g_y_h could be directly related to potnia < PIE *pot-n-i:x, but only if ...
 
... p_t_g_y_h were a misspelling or misinterpretation of p_t_n_y_h.

Professor Joseph Naveh of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the author of the translation, is reportedly a renowned epigrapher and as such unlikely to have made such a mistake, but the ancient craftsman's chisel may easily have slipped. It so happens that in all the Semitic writing systems derived from the Proto-Canaanite script (including the Phoenician, Old Hebrew, Aramaic and square Hebrew scripts) the characters g (gimel) and n (nun) are remarkably similar.

The other consonants just couldn't match better. The final h cannot by any stretch of the imagination reflect an IE laryngeal (final *x was lost already in Proto-Greek) but is a so-called mater lectionis representing a word-final long non-high vowel in Aramaic and Hebrew spelling.

If my emendation is acceptable (is there an expert on Semitic scripts out there?) we get a consonantal spelling entirely compatible with the pronunciation potnija:. No need to posit ANY sound changes at all between Mycenaean and that. Would you be happy with it, Sabine?

Piotr