From: Dennis Poulter
Message: 3422
Date: 2000-08-28
----- Original Message -----
From: João Simões Lopes Filho <jodan99@...>
To: <cybalist@egroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, 26 August, 2000 11:06 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] DeneCaucasian numerals, god and the Pelasgians
> OK, I know Pelasgos was an "arbitrary" word, like "Amerindian". I'm also
> believe Pelasgians was a mix of different people.
> So, let's sugest:
> PELAS-GOS ~ PELESHET "philistim" ?
>
> Why Argive Greeks stated a pair ARGOS/PELASGOS? Anything like AR-ZGOS and
> PELA-ZGOS?
> Argos = The Argives ? (The "Egyptianized" Greeks, according to BERNAL)
> Pelasgos = The Arkadians ? (The "barbarian"Greeks).
>
Joao,
Here's an idea on Pelasgos.
Pelasgos is not the original form. The original was in fact *Pelast-. I base
this hypothesis on :
1. that the Pelasgoi are the Sea People attested in Egyptian as /prst/,
/plst/ and as Philistines, which all have /p-l-s-t/ not /p-l-s-g/,
and that these are the earliest attestations of this name;
2. the great dictionary of Hesychios gives "pelastikos" as a variant or
alternative for "pelasgikos";
3. that the sequence /-sg-/ is unlikely to have survived as such in Greek,
the more so if the word is ancient (cf. Tyrsenoi > Tyrrhenoi).
4. that it is not impossible that the letters Tau and Gamma could be
confused. This of course implies that Homer and Hesiod were drawing on
written material, but this is not impossible given that the introduction of
the alphabet to Greece is now dated to around 1000BCE, and may even be
earlier.
This now opens up an intriguing coincidence.
1. The Egyptian word for the Greeks, attested from the time of Thutmosis
III,
is /t?n3yw/ - tanayu, and is always written with determinative of "old
man" - /tn?/. It was the use of this determinative with the later /d3 ?n/ -
Dene - which allowed the identification of Dene with Danaans.
2. The name of the Phoenician Kadmos, whose name is usually taken to mean
"east" or "morning star", comes from the root /qdm/. Another meaning of
this root is "ancient" (cf. mod Arabic /qadiim/).
3. It is not impossible that *pelastos is a corruption of a form such as
*palai-istos, thus also giving the meaning of ancientness.
So, we could have the three names Pelasgos/Danaos/Kadmos all meaning the
same thing, coming from Greek, Egyptian and Semitic respectively.
What significance the meaning of the words can have, I can only speculate.
But, it does suggest to me that Mycenean Greece is to be seen as a synthesis
of the three elements - Greeks, Egyptians and Semites - and that this notion
is ancient, if not fundamental.
So, who were the Pelasgians, or more correctly Pelastoi?
If the term was already in use before the Myceneans, then I think it was
applied to the remnant Early/Middle Helladic population the Greeks found
when they settled in Greece, either in view of their priority or as a term
of respect. The myths and legends suggest that these remnants of what had
been a fairly advanced culture (EHII) became the guides and teachers of the
Greeks, and perhaps also their rulers in certain places, in particular
Argos. If this is the case, I would suggest that their language was
Tyrrhenian, or at least related to the language of the Lemnos stele, and
which I believe would have been the language of Troy I and II, prior to its
destruction around 2250BCE.
The name was later extended to all those natives, Greek and non-Greek, who
remained outside the orbit of the Mycenean cities, and later still to those
Myceneans who either resisted or otherwise remained outside of the control
of the Achaean conquerors of the Mycenean cities. The latter group would be
the origin of the Arkadian and Cretan Pelasgians.
To me, this would account for the Pelasgians being both Greek and non-Greek,
their association with (western) Anatolia, as well as Arkadia whose archaic
dialect is said to be closest to Mycenean. It would also account for the
fact that Danaans are never mentioned in association with Crete, despite the
known take-over of Crete by the Myceneans ca.1470BCE, and that the order of
settlement given by Diodoros Sikeliotes is 1. Eteocretans, 2. Pelasgians, 3.
Achaeans. It also accounts for the fact that the Dorians are not Pelasgians,
while still being Hellenes, and the rather confusing stories concerning the
Pelasgians in Athens.
If, on the other hand, the word *pelastoi was coined in Mycenean times, it
doesn't change the above development much, only that the non-Greek
Pelasgians are now only included as an extension of the meaning to include
all remote, native peoples. However, this leaves the Anatolian connections
unexplained.
So, on the whole I favour the first scenario. However, this in turn implies
that Danaoi is in fact an Egyptian word, a translation of *pelastoi.
The second scenario could envisage and original Greek Danaoi, heard in
Egyptian as tanayu and equated with their word for "old", and this term
being re-translated back into Greek as *pelastoi.
Cheers
Dennis