Thanks Hakan for your refutation of Bernal. Like you I can see I am
going to have to read both books
John
> Dennis wrote -
> 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-/.
>
> 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.
>
> Explaining Athena as coming from Egyptian Ht Nt, "temple of Neit",
is just what Bernal does in Black Athena. According to Jasanoff's and
Nussbaum's examination of Bernal's etymologies (Word Games, in the
anthology Black Athena Revisited) this is false. They write:
> It is - - - an excellent example with which to end our survey of
Bernal's "name" etymologies, as it perfectly illustrates the
deficiencies of his method. Morphologically, the derivation of
"Athens" from Ht Nt is suspect for the same reason that the above
explanation of "Mycenae" is suspect: it forces us to find separate ad
hoc explanations for a recurring sequence ( -a:nai / -a:na ) that is
better explained as a unitary suffix. Phonetically, the only feature
the names Atha:na and Ht Nt have in common is an n preceded by a
t(h).
Even this agreement is deceptive, for while in Egyptian the t and n
are (Bernal's claims notwithstanding) in direct contact, in Greek the
corresponding consonants are separated by an accented long vowel
which
is neither predicted nor explained. On the semantic side, the Atha:na
: Ht Nt equation shows the customary lack of rigor. The simple fact
is
that the original meaning of "Athens" and "Athena" is unknown;
"temple
of Neit" is no more likely, a priori, than "olive grove," rocky
crag,"
or countless other possible glosses. The most that Bernal can say in
favor of comparing the two goddesses is that "in Antiquity, Athena
was
consistently identified with... Neit" and that "both were virgin
divinities of warfare, weaving and wisdom." The latter description is
a highly misleading characterisation of Neit, whose association with
weaving and wisdom was less conspicuous, as far as we can judge, than
her role as patroness of the hunt and mother of the crocodile god
Sobek. - - - The all-important fact is that under the rules of the
game as laid down in Black Athena, any eye-catching or merely
convenient etymological proposal is as good as any other. (p. 193-94)
> After reading their essay Bernal has lost all credibility.
> Hakan