Re: Demeter and Semele.

From: Ivanovas/Milatos
Message: 761
Date: 2000-01-04

��<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD> <META content="text/html; charset=unicode" http-equiv=Content-Type> <META content="MSHTML 5.00.2014.210" name=GENERATOR> <STYLE></STYLE> </HEAD> <BODY bgColor=#ffffff> <DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode">Hello,</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode">sorry for not answering earlier, but I had lost a few mails...</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode">I hope you all had a good beginning of the new millenium!</FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode">As for Semele, Mark wrote:she is
>normally thought of as a lunar goddess<.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode">Mark, are you sure you don't mix her up with Selene? Or if you didn't your reference book may have - it seems to happen more often because of the similarity of the names.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode">As for Ida-mater: I know only one context where this is connected with Demeter, although I don't remember exactly who that was (I'm glad I don't...) Anyway, it belonged to someone's 'translation' of several words from Linear A libation tables. I-da-ma-te as read with the help of Linear B sounds (which is o.k. for me) was understood - I'd say as a real 'academic' 'Volksetymologie': as what it sounds like - nothing else. And then followed by the interpretation (looking for god-names, certainly) that the word might have been an early name for Demeter. This strange 'linguistic' effort seems to have stuck somehow. No further comment (et tout le reste est <EM>makulatur</EM>...)</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode">There is an article by E. Hamp, The Name of Demeter. In: Minos 9/1968, where the author, quite convincingly as far as I can follow as non-linguist, retracts De-meter to the same root as the second part of Posi-daon, both cognates of *dghom (mother of earth, lord of earth).</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode">But I'd love Pjotr to tell us his opinion, too!</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode">As for the twins: having two pairs of twins myself I started reading into that subject some time ago but gave up - it's such a huge field I just couldn't manage. So declaring it as possibly PIE will probably land you between a rock and a hard place - divine twins exist everywhere on the world (often one by the 'real' father, one by a god) and certainly can't be reduced to PIE!</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode">With best wishes from Crete</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode">Sabine</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>