Crete - The Land of Pillars

Yep this is all confirming my thoughts.

From my own impression, I'd simply say that there was
some kingdom or area known as *Kuptar and that this
was perhaps the name the Minoans called their own thalassic
empire which was but a distant memory by 1000 BC. We
then should expect references to /ku-pa3(-rV)/ in Linear A,
and that we find. This empire must have encompassed both
Crete and Asia Minor, perhaps even Syria, and so it's not
shocking to expect a cosmopolitan mixture of Aegeans (both
Greek and Tyrrhenian speaking), Egyptians, Semites, and even
Hurrians. Just think about it. We'll never find Minoan
names in Egyptian records until we decipher Minoan.

With the rise of the Minoans, the Egyptians would have
taken the foreign name *Kuptar and reshaped it into
meaningful native words, just as Chinese do with English
words today. Eg: America => Mei-guo "beautiful country".
Don't ask me what Koukekoula (Coca-Cola) means but I'm
sure it means something.

One result from *Kuptar in Egyptian would be [kftiw]
which then would be a name that would seemingly mean
"Crete" on the one hand but Asia Minor on the other (since
both areas were overtaken by Minoa with the latter being
more significant as its base over time).

What's really interesting is that some authors connect
this name [kftiw] with "pillar".

"J. V. Luce points out that the original name for Crete
- Keftiu - is probably derived from a root meaning
'pillar', and that a western island containing a 'sky
pillar', that is a lofty mountain helping to support
the dome of the sky, would fit neatly into the frame
of Egyptian Bronze Age mythology. A goddess [Nut] was
said to hold the heavens on her back, and the sky
pillars were the four points at which her arms and
legs touched earth."

- Charles Pellegrino, Unearthing Atlantis (1991) p. 45

In a search for a potential Minoan meaning of a
hypothetical *Kuptar (which I've already identified as a
plural based on Tyrrhenian morphology), "pillars" might
be an interesting idea to look into. In fact, my next
paragraph could work well if we understand that pillars
are phallic symbols that represent a divine potency and
fertility as is reflected in Egyptian mythology through
Ptah...

So *Kuptar would be reformed as /ko?-ptah./ "The Soul of
Ptah".

Afterall, if I understand correctly, Egyptian "r" was
uvular and so the difference between a resultant Egyptian
**/koptaR/ and the actual */ko?-ptah./ appears very slight.
A particular temple precinct of Memphis then could be a
tribute to the foreign and influential polycultural entity,
becoming "The House of *Kuptar", being both translatable as
nativized "The House of the Soul of Ptah" and in foreign
terms "The House of Minoa". Maybe kinda like a Minoan
Foreign Embassy :)

The Greeks being under the Minoans at the time, would have
heard news about Egypt indirectly through the Minoans. So
if Minoans were referring to "Memphis" as *Aikupta based
on that particular area of Memphis that the Egyptians called
*Hautko?ptah, then I can see the Greeks hearing *Aikupta
and saying /Aiguptos/, attributing the term to all of Egypt
in confusion.

If this is all so, and there is some kingdom known as *Kuptar,
then it would be inevitable that the Ugarites would hear
about it and roll *koptar off their tongues, from which
it popped up in the Bible as "Kaphtor". From perhaps Ugaritic,
it would also enter into more eastern Anatolian languages and
finally into Assyrian as Kaptara.

This all seems to account for everything as far as I see
including Linear A texts which show /ku-pa3/ as I said.

One last note tying back to the "*Kuptar means 'Pillars'"
theory. It not only explains why *Kuptar would be
reinterpretted as "The Soul of Ptah" in a clever play on
words in Egyptian. It would also explain and justify the
relationship between Atlantis and Crete.

Say wha?? Well, Atlantis is a derivative of Atlas... y'know
the muscley hunk that holds the world on his shoulders? Well,
not only does Atlas hold the world up. So do pillars. Pillars
hold the sky up. And while we're at it, so does Egyptian Geb
with his bleepity-bleep which kinda looks like a pillar if
you cross your eyes. So if we can agree that "Atlantis"
basically means "(The Kingdom) of Atlas" and if we understand
that Atlas is just a human version of a Divine Pillar, then
is "Atlantis" just a clever way of translating *Kuptar "(The
Kingdom of) Pillars"?

Oh, one last thing. Basically, long story short: the Phillistinians
are the descendants of the Minoans (aka *Pelesta) but by the time
Minoa had dissolved and the chaos had ensued, the Phillistines
ended up in Asia Minor and were heavily integrated into other
cultures and languages as were all the *Pelesta. Only the *Tresena
would ultimately survive the collapse of Minoa. We know them as
the Etruscans, Lemnians and Rhaetic and they ditched the area
starting about 1200 BC.

Hopefully my expansive theory will either cause enlightenment
or staunch anger.


= gLeN