Re: [tied] Danaans [was Poseidon]

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

From: Mark Odegard

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Tuesday, August 22, 2000 2:37 PM

Subject: [tied] Danaans [was Poseidon]

 

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

From: Piotr Gasiorowski

 

The variation Potei-/Poti:-/Posei-/Posi:- would have resulted from chaotic attempts to level out the irregularity of posis vs. potei

 

Piotr

From another article in the current JIES, this by A.L. Katona, "Proto-Greeks and the Kurgan Theory". This is a review of the work of the Greek archaeologist Michael B. Sakellariou.

 

If the second part of this compound name could be connected to the IE root *da-/dan (c.f. Mycenaean po-se-da-o-ni do-so-mo without the digamma) one might ask if the Danaans, or any other ethnic component later to become Greeks, brought this deity with them as especially theirs. [p. 70]

 

Just as a thought, Poseidon might perhaps be better analyzed as 'Lord of the Danaans', 'Lord of the Flowing-Water-People' rather than 'Lord of the Water'.

 

As for the Danaans, the da-/dan- root is certainly the river-word. They were the people of flowing water. The article I mentioned suggests this is probably the oldest ethnonym for Greeks that we have, one they applied to themselves. It is probably too much to say the Danaans were the proto-Greeks, much as it is too much to say just the Angles were the proto-English.

 

The Danaans certainly contributed a distinct component to Greek mythology, one that does not completely agree with the usual Olympian version. The river-god stories are mostly *their* stories. The Egyptian motifs in this cycle of myths is suggested to be something late, a re-association and relocation of certain elements after the 800-1000 year old North Pontic origin had been utterly forgotten; but it's *still* the marriage of the river god and his children. The article leans to North Pontic origin origin for the Danaans.