Re: Easter
Gegory wrote
> Some wild-looking
> cognates were suggested by the New Age sites (such as Egyptian
> Astarte) but also some reasonable ones, such as Aurora , from
> PIE "aus-", for "east".
Gregory, Astarte was not an Egyptian, but a Syro-Phoenician Goddess.
In Hebrew she was known as Ashtoreth, which seems to have been a
deliberate pun on her name to turn her into an abomination. In
Babylon she was none other than Ishtar, who appears in Iranian as
Esther, from which she re-entered into the Bible in the story of
Ruth, and hence into modern names.
Ishtar was the favourite goddess of Sargon of Akkad, who, especially
through the writings of his daughter, Enheduanna, equated her with
the older Sumerian divinity Innana. Despite attempts (since at least
Sumerian times) to give Innana a Sumerian etymology (eg. Nin-Anu =
Queen of Heaven), Innana has a pre-Sumerian name, part of the fabled
pre-Sumerian substrata problem. It is linked, it would seem with the
Khattic substratum goddess of the Hittites, Hannahanna, and reappears
in the Iranian goddess Anah-ita, and the Biblical Hannah, from whence
comes the Christian Anne.
There seems to be an Indo-European version of this Goddess. Nanna
was the mother of Baldr, and the *Danua found throughout IE people
from the Tuatha de Danaans in Ireland to Danu in India (with Diana
Nemorensis the inspiration of Sir James Frazer's "The Golden Bough"),
as a great Indo-European fertility goddess (associated with such
rivers as the Donau, Dneipr and Dneistr etc), seems fairly sound I
think. She appears in Greek mythology as the minor goddess
Dione. Some have suggested that she may also be Da-meter (despite
attempts to give this another different origin).
By the way, is the Ausora-Aurora shift another of the s-r replacement
we found in Tyrsenoi-Tyrrhenoi I wonder.
John