Re: [tied] Athene

From: Dennis Poulter
Message: 3246
Date: 2000-08-18

Is it so very far Piotr? Final t's were dropped both in Greek and in Late (New Kingdom) Egyptian. A prothetic vowel or contamination from the obviously related Semitic Anat could provide an explanation of the initial a. So we have a possible ath-a-nei-.
It's not as if we're discussing two entirely unrelated words. Notwithstanding John's claim of 6c political machinations, there is a consensus in classical literature identifying Athena with Neit.
 
I have heard of the Berber adrar as a possible source of Atlas. The question is though, was Atlas originally the mountain or the ocean? He seems to have many similarities with Okeanos. So maybe what we have is two different names, from different sources, for the same thing - the ocean that encircles the world.
 
----- Original Message -----
From: Piotr Gasiorowski
To: cybalist@egroups.com
Sent: Friday, 18 August, 2000 4:48 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Athene

 
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, August 18, 2000 5:52 AM
Subject: Re: [tied] Athene

Dennis,
 
You're right, of course. Athe:na: is a relatively late contraction of Athe:naa: < Atha:naia:. Still, there is a long way to go from Neit to -(a:)naia: -- far too long, IMO, for the former to be a plausible starting point.
 
Talking of Africa, (Mt) Atlas, has been connected with Berber adrâr 'mountain' (cf. Herodotus's mention of the Atarantes 'Highlanders?', a tribe in N Africa), though some specialists question this etymology.
 
Piotr
 
 
The problem of deriving Athena from Hanahana is to my mind not so much that of the origin of the Greek theta, but that of the final syllable. The earlier Greek forms, in inscriptions before 4c, and attested in Homer, Aeschylus, Aristophanes and others, has this as /-naie:/, /naia/, or /naa/. This would suggest that Neit is a more plausible source than (Ha)-na. Further, after a somewhat cursory check, I cannot find "a great number of Greek divine and semi-divine names" (John) that begin with At-, other than Atlas and all his derivatives, and that cannot be analysed as a-, e.g. A-tropos, A-talanta. There is however a possible Egyptian source in /Ht/ "temple or abode of a god", or "tomb", which, although not attested for Neit, has been transcribed elsewhere in Greek and Coptic as /At-/ or /Ath-/. There is of course the statement by Charax of Pergamon in the 2c AD that "the Saitians called their city Athe:nai".