>I think I tracked down one of the alternative names for the
>Tyrrhenian moon goddess Lusan, Leukothea.
Cool. If you find any Proto-Tyrrhenian deities let me know. I'm
collecting :) I've got *Din (Sky), *Xastora (Venus), *Gote (Sun)
and *Pelkan (Storm) for now. Are you suggesting that there is
some Tyrrhenian moon deity like *Appa-Leunu "Father Lion", or did
I misunderstand?
Hmm, the whole lion-bull thing is very interesting. Of course,
the bull has long been, even in prehistoric times, a symbol.
As I understand it, the bull's horns are a representation of
the crescent moon and hence there is a connection between the
moon and the bull. From this, we get sky gods and goddesses that
sport some fancy horn ornamentation.
However, I mentioned earlier about the confusion of lions and bulls
due partly to loanwords between different languages. I feel that
the word "lion" itself derives ultimately from a Proto-Vinca
(PreHattic) word for "bull", *Launon (*L = lateral fricative),
which itself was derived from Semitic *Taurum (*T = dental fricative).
From there, I suspect that *Launon was borrowed into Tyrrhenian
as *leunu and came to mean "lion" instead of "bull" where it was
further borrowed by the Greeks. The whole lion-bull confusion
would have occured around 5000-3000 BCE, ample time for a deity to
be created that used the arcane symbol of the "lion" as an
alternative to the "bull" for symbolising the crescent moon.
So, I guess what I'm saying is that a lion-moon connection makes
total sense to me and that a god named *Appa-Leunu as the "moon"
is an intriguing possibility, at least, until someone on this list
shoots down my cutesy ideas with cold, hard facts that I wasn't
aware of yet.
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Glen Gordon
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