Odp: Semele and Demeter

----- Original Message -----

From: Dennis Poulter

To: cybalist@eGroups.com

Sent: Wednesday, January 12, 2000 1:59 AM

Subject: [cybalist] Semele and Demeter

I have been following your correspondence on Semele and Demeter. Following Heredotos' statements that the names of nearly all the gods came to Greece from Egypt, I offer below a couple of proposals for your consideration:

Semele - from Egyptian sm3(y)t (the 3 stands for the Egyptian double aleph, Vulture hieroglyph, which in Old/Middle Egyptian had a consonantal value sometimes represented by "r" and sometimes by "l" in Egyptian names attested in other languages/scripts).
The meaning is "royal consort". This seems to fit better than "moon goddess" or "earth mother". Surely Hera's punishment was based on the fact that she was not divine.

Linguistically, within Greek, there seems to be no basis for positing lunar connections. And as for "earth", how does one derive "sem-" from "ghem"?

Demeter - from Early West Semitic *gway/gwaye, a reconstructed form reflected in Canaanite "gaye' / ge' ", meaning "land, wide valley". That West Semitic can be reconstructed with labio-velars is based on internal evidence from other Semitic/Ethiopic languages, and that they broke down during the 2^nd millennium is based on evidence of tablets found at Ebla. There is also the Phoenician city named "Byblos/Biblos" in Greek, "Gublu(m)" in Akkadian, "Gebal" in Biblical Hebrew and "Jebeil" in modern Arabic. There is also a (rare) Greek word "gyes" meaning a measure of land. So this word appears to have been borrowed on three separate occasions :

when both WS and Gk. retained labio-velars, giving Gk. "de"
when WS still retained, but Gk. had lost labio-velars, giving Gk. "gyes"
when both languages had lost labio-velars, giving Gk. "ge/gaia".

While there is no problem with meaning, the problem with the IE derivation is again, how does one derive "da/de" from "dhghom/ghem"?

I must admit I am not a professional linguist (just an impassioned amateur), semitist (although I took my degree in Arabic), or Egyptologist (I have tried to study, without much success, hieroglyphs and Coptic), but these etymologies and explanations make more sense to me than those I have seen in this correspondence.

More generally, Greece, Crete and the Aegean were integral parts of an East Mediterranean cultural and economic sphere dominated by Egypt, at least from the founding of the XI Dynasty until the invasions of the Sea Peoples, i.e. for most of the 2^nd millennium BC. Anatolia, dominated as it was by the Hittites the traditional enemies of the Egyptians, was excluded from this sphere. It would therefore seem more useful to look at Egypt and the Levant when seeking elucidations of Greek myths, divine and mythical names and other non-Greek words, rather than Anatolia or even further afield, which, despite intensive scholarship, has proved singularly unproductive.

Dennis Poulter

Miri, Sarawak, Malaysia

Dear Dennis,

Congratulations. Your etymology for De:-/Gaia is very impressive, the best I've seen. It is unassailable semantically and holds water from the formal point of view, which cannot be said of the alleged equation (??) de:-= *dhghom-. (The derivation of Demeter's name from Mt Ida is too fanciful to be taken seriously.)

Greek y stands for etymological *u, so gyes may in fact represent an attempt to assimilate a word beginning in *gwe-. This is, I gather, what you have in mind. Another possibility, however, is that gyes is as old as de, but represents an alternative development of *gwe in Greek (*gwe > gu, with labiality manifesting itself as vowel rounding, as in *kwekwlo- > kuklo- or *gwen- > gun-). The vowel correspondences would need to be laid out in more detail to make the argument more persuasive. I hope the West Semitic side is properly substantiated.

As for Semele, I think a Thracian etymology is still a plausible solution, though your suggestion is certainly worth looking into.

Piotr