Subject: Re: ABC & racist pseudoscience
From: skupinm@aol.com (SkupinM)
Date: 3 Oct 1996 00:11:19 -0400
I don't say that we are helpless to fight the various incarnations of
wickedness; I simply say that when we do, it is not as eggheads, but as
unselfconscious brawlers, catch as catch can, no holds barred, and hitting
below the belt as often as possible. When Hitler made Darwinism the state
creed of Germany, he was not defeated by Thomas Mann's nerdy radio
broadcasts, or by the sighs of Marlene Dietrich, or by screenings of The
Threepenny Opera, but by blood, sweat and testosterone. When we descend
into the arena with our academic robes on, we are merely ridiculous. I'm
all for the contemplative life, and would love to find a place like
Hesse's Castalia (in The Glass Bead Game), but know from experience that
being an egghead doesn't really cut any ice in an argument, while the
Hamlet-like hesitations and hedgings that are our occupational hazard are
a definite hindrance.
vale
Mike Skupin
Subject: Re: Sumerian etymology of the word Lugal
From: m.levi@ix.netcom.com(M.Levi)
Date: 3 Oct 1996 03:59:03 GMT
In piotrm@umich.edu (Piotr Michalowski)
writes:
The word lugal is not present in the earliest
>Sumerian texts from around 3100/3200 BCE. Is it particulalry noted by
>its lack of presence in the Early Dynastic list of professional names.
>This makes it likely, although by no means certain, that it was a
>later invention. If so, then we have only the time span between, let
>us say, 2600 and about 1900, to be generous, when the living language
>could have been the source of the word as a loan. It is interesting
>that no other language in the Near East borrowed the word, not
>Akkadian, Elamite, Hurrian, Amorite, as far as we know. This
>means that none of the languages that we know might have been in
>contact with Sumerian took on this lexeme.
I'd never stopped to think about it before, but it is curious that
"lugal" doesn't appear in any other language given that so many of
Sumer's neighbors imitated or borrowed aspects of Sumerian culture. Do
any OTHER Sumerian titles appear as loanwords in other languages? I
can't recall seeing namesda or en as a loanword, for example, but
perhaps I am overlooking some obvious examples.
Kate
Subject: Re: The Minoan Linear A Language?
From: conor@patriot.net (Bill Grobbel)
Date: Wed, 02 Oct 1996 23:57:20 -0500
> I'm afraid that I'm not a scientist.
>
> However, I intend to *eventually* try to prove my ideas, and I was
> hoping that people such as yourself could speed me along in my
> understandings. I was just fishing for stonewall problems with the
> theory.
>
> A basic description of the amateurish thought process that I employed
> goes as follows:
>
> 1) I have determined/guessed that the early Greek advancements were due,
> very largely, to influence from the more advanced Near Eastern
> civilizations of the period. More specifically the sea traders who were
> from Sidon and Tyre. They would have wanted to make use of the
> geographically valuable (to trade) Greek lands. Since they were
> technologically superior to the Greeks they were able to (with the aid
> of religion) set up a civilization, based on trade, in ancient Greece.
>
> 2) The Linear A examples we have are ALL lists of items.
>
> 3) The Minoan thalassocracy was generated by bull-worshipping commoners
> with Eastern aristocracy and technology.
>
> 4) Look. I don't have time to write out everything I've noticed so far.
> It should be fairly important that all I've read (and my school Greek
> History book is very recent (1996)) seems to support my impression.
> A History of Ancient Greece, Nancy Demand, 1996 ed. goes to some trouble
> to show varied archaeological evidences and interpretations.
>
> As far as no Levant findings of Linear A, I will admit that this is a
> minor black mark to the theory. But, Greece is far from the Levant, and
> I am contending that the Semites 'set up shop' in Greece. Moreso, the
> ratio of decoder writings that would be in the Levant to functional
> accounting records from Greek port cities would support the absence of
> found examples on the Eastern mainland.
>
I'm afraid I have one of those stonewall problems for you. Language, even
written, is but a small part of any cultural group. The items people use
for daily activities, items of religious significance, jewelry, styles of
architecture, etc. are other components of a cultural identity. These are
important to archaeologists, of course, because they are tangible evidence
to a cultural identity that is left behind at an occupation/activity site.
The problem I have with your theory is that there is no tangible evidence
in Minoan artifacts and architectural remains to even imply a Semitic
connection. You are correct in saying that a culture will change over time
when displaced and disconnected from their homeland. It is important to
accept, though, that there will be a record of these changes in physical
remains (changing architectural styles, different jewelry and
new/different religious icons, etc.) that will still be comparable to the
original culture. There is no evidence to support this with the Minoans.
Their architecture, art, etc. bear no resemblance to any Semitic culture
of their period or earlier. Sorry, chief, but that's the way it is.
--
Bill Grobbel
"Wherever you go... there you are."
-- Buckaroo Banzai
Subject: Re: Sweet Potatos and Silver Bullets
From: gblack@midland.co.nz (George Black)
Date: Thu, 03 Oct 96 22:53:40 GMT
>: garments of maguey fibre ... pounded bark cloth
..
>
>George,
>
>You're ill-informed. The transmission of bark-cloth
manufacturing
>techniques is a MAJOR argument FOR diffusion from
Asia. Check the work by
>Tolstoy.
When I look at the statement no I will not dispute
the fact that pounded bark
cloth is known throughout the world. And it is
worldwide.
>: pineapples
>
>Pineapples were a native American crop that are seen
in a fresco in
>Pompeii.
So, were are the references in the popular writings
of the day. Why pick on
Pompeii??? There are many other Roman frescoes that
survived (and, seemingly,
none have anything of the pineapple.
Is there reference to the pineapple in the pharmacy
books of the time???
>Plenty of other crops you mention have been
apparently transmitted between
>the continents, but I don't have the time to deal
with all of this now.
Please demonstrate as to how the silver bullet is the
Kumara yet these people
left behind the maize plant which IS (and was) the
staple foodstuff.
And explain as to how the potato was overlooked by
the same people seeing as
to how it was also one of the major foodstuffs.
Do you have any suggestions as to how they managed to
return to the Islands
without the meat animals that they would have seen
(and eaten) in South
America.
Taken that the Polynesian managed to take the rat and
the dog from Hawakii to
New Zealand
So, once more. Here are a number of the foods
available to the peoples of South America the same
time as was the Kumara.
Why are none of these represented in the Pacific
Islands closest to South America???
squash chai camotes red and green peppers
alligator pears tomatoes potatoes chocolate
vinilla pineapples tobacco smoked in hollow reeds
copal gum incense rubber from the guayule plant
cochinealpeanuts plaintains warty squash avacado
pumpkin granadilla chirimoya guanabana tumbo
papaya pacai lucuma jiquima yacon achira pepino
quinoa oca mashua lupin ulluco canahua.
tomato manioc casava sunflower ragweed white
potato cattail roots sedge and rush roots achira.
And
None of these made it into the Pacific.If we look at
other evidence there is another group of problems.
The lack of syphilis in the (pre European) Pacific
areas.
The lack of Meso American legend and story. (in the
Pacific)
The lack of Polynesian legend and story (in Meso
America)
The lack of Sinodont molar amid the Sundadonts. The
three rooted first molar and related shovelling
seperates very definitely, the Polynesian from the
Meso American.
ref: Scientific American Feb. 1989 Teeth and
Prehistory in Asia Christy G Turner ll Page 70
These early Austronesians seemed to have all carried
a few important domestic animals to almost everywhere
they went: the dog, the rat, pig and chicken.
However, again, the pig , rice and the chicken did
not arrive in New Zealand
>You write a lot of simplistic nonsense...
>
>Yuri.
Then the answer, when given, should be simple :-))))
Regards
Some people can stay longer in an hour than others can in a week
gblack@midland.co.nz
Subject: Re: Sweet Potatos and Silver Bullets
From: pmv100@psu.edu (Peter van Rossum)
Date: Thu, 3 Oct 1996 12:34:49 GMT
In article <52v5u6$87o_001@dialin.csus.edu> pmanansala@csus.edu (Paul Kekai Manansala) writes:
From: pmanansala@csus.edu (Paul Kekai Manansala)
> pmv100@psu.edu (Peter van Rossum) wrote:
>>You are entitled to your conclusions, maybe you're right maybe you're not -
>>only future research will tell. But get off this eurocentrism kick,
>>or demonstrate to me how and why my view of no significant outside contact
>>is eurocentric.
>
>You don't believe in no significant outside contact. You believe only in
>significant contact from Europeans (Vikings). This sounds pretty Eurocentric
>to me.
You seem to have misunderstood my previous posts, I say no such thing.
To me "significant contact" is when the cultural contact between two
cultures leads to a significant cultural change in one or both of them.
While, the Viking contact seems proven to me I noted that it did not
seem to have had much of an impact on the local populations. Therefore,
to me this is an instance of cultural contact, but not significant
cultural contact. Its an interesting historical footnote but has
little importance to the anthropological/archaeological understanding
of the region's cultures.
It is also possible to me that other isolated instances of Old World/
New World contact *may* have occurred. However, the evidence I have
so far seen indicates to me that *if* this contact did occur, it didn't
have much of an impact on either culture in question (hence no
significant contact).
Again, I believe that the cultural trajectories of Prehispanic New
World civilizations was not significantly altered by contacts with
Old World cultures. If you can show me evidence to the contrary,
please do so.
>> To me, your claim of eurocentrism seems real similar
>>to claiming racism and I take this as an insult. I don't appreciate
>>unsubstantiated insults about my character from people who do not even
>>know me.
>
>I don't appreciate posting personal email to newsgroups either.
>That's substantially in bad taste, although not necessarily
>Eurocentric.
>
>Paul Kekai Manansala
I suggest that if you have views which you are unable, or unwilling,
to justify that you keep them to yourself. I see people all the
time post, "so and so told me.." I see no reason why e-mail should
be any different.
Peter van Rossum
PMV100@PSU.EDU
p.s. It's not necessary for you to e-mail me your responses as well,
I'll see them in the newsgroups.
Subject: Re: The Egyptian concept of Ma'at in the Platonic Dialoges: was Re: Egyptian Tree Words
From: piotrm@umich.edu (Piotr Michalowski)
Date: Thu, 3 Oct 1996 09:24:51
In article <32527F28.3636@PioneerPlanet.infi.net> Saida writes:
>I put all of you into the basket of knowing more about linguistics than
>I do--and that is a pretty full basket. But that is not to say that I
>have never read a book about linguistics. Added to that, I have been
>reading the linguistic posts in here for quite some time now. NOTHING
>anybody, including yourself, has said has served to convince me that it
>is impossible for ancient Egyptian terms to have survived into the
>English language. We know they have, already, or do the dictionaries
>lie? My question to you is--why do you want to deny the possibility?
>What is YOUR prejudice that you want to disregard the evidence of the
>dictionaries--never mind what I say?? How many words do you need to
>have served up to you before you are willing to admit that Egypt was not
>an isolated land whose culture and language was of no interest to
>anybody? And even if we can't find more than ten words (and we will)
>that have survived through some channel into English--so what? Those
>ten words prove that it IS possible, no matter how many books on
>linguistics ignore the whole situation.
The issue is not the possibility or impossibility of loans from Egyptian into
English, but the cultural contexts and the methodologies involved. I would be
very happy if anyone could show even hundreds of such loans, but one has to
have some fairly strict methodological ways of doing this. You cannot simply
look for vague similarities between vague transliterations of Egyptian and
some semantically vaguely similar word or words. You cannot compare modern
English with Egyptian and then disregard the well-documented history of the
word in either the Germanic or Romance history of the language. There are a
tremendous number of loans in English, as in all languages, and all of them
came into the language long after Egyptian had died out. The other problem is
that since Egyptian loan would have come into ancestors of English, they would
have to have their other trajectories in other IE languages. There is a whole
field of contact linguistics that is very sophisticated, and if you wish to
indulge in this you should study it a bit. Loans usually have specific
structures, with regular sound correspondences and with certain regular
changes. The hunt-and-peck method that goes straight from Egyptian to modern
English disregards the history of both languages. If there were loans, they
would have undergone many changes from then and have been much less obvious.
Let me give you an example. When I--years ago, I am afraid--took beginning
Hittite from Warren Cowgill, a brilliant Indoeauropeanist, he looked at me,
trying to make a specific point about the well established principles of the
comparative method and asked me what the Hittite word for "eagle" was.
Of course, I did not know. He told me it was hara(sh) [sh is an ending] and
then went through all the established sound changes in dozens of IE languages
to try to reconstruct the Polish word, which he claimed not to know. It was
dazzling, and he ended up with Polish orzel (the l has a slash through it and
is pronounced as w in wombat; my name has the same letter). Now, on the
surface, without detailed knowledge of the history of comparative IE
historical phonology, one would never dream that hara and orzel were related.
Sorry got to go--just heard on the radio that one of my favorite poets,
Wieslawa Szymborska got the Nobel prize in literarure!!!!
Subject: Re: Sumerian etymology of the word Lugal
From: whittet@shore.net (Steve Whittet)
Date: 3 Oct 1996 12:20:40 GMT
In article , piotrm@umich.edu says...
>
>In article <844284721.5379.0@ibis.demon.co.uk> gareth@ibis.demon.co.uk
(Gareth Jones) writes:
>>From: gareth@ibis.demon.co.uk (Gareth Jones)
>>Subject: Re: Sumerian etymology of the word Lugal
>>Date: Wed, 02 Oct 1996 20:31:59 GMT
>
>>whittet@shore.net (Steve Whittet) wrote:
>
>>>In fact the earliest known written forms of Indo European are
>>>2nd millenium texts, Linear B from Mycenean Greece and Luwian
>>>from Anatolia. Scattered references in other texts to Hurrians,
>>>Mitanni and Kassites evidence use of Indo European names as
>>>far to the south east as Dilmun with its connections to the
>>>Indus (about which Piotr and I argue ceaslessly).
>
>>Luwian? I may be wrong about this, but so far as I remember the Luwian
>>texts are rather late - later, for example, than the main cuneiform
>>hittite archives.
>
>Just more confusion being wrought by SW. He seems to have this obsession
>with "peoples," whatever that may be.
"Peoples", as in the plural of people, meaning more than one person.
One less word which you didn't understand, one step closer to a
meeting of the minds.
> Luwian is just one of the languages of the Anatolian branch of IE,
>together with the badly attested Palaic, and Nesite (Hittite).
Correct me if I am wrong here, but Anatolia is where linguists seek
the point from which the IE languages spread.
Archaeology has provided the evidence from which linquists make this
determination.
It is also necessary to consider the archaeological
implications.
These include geographic adjacencies, interactions such as may be
the result of cultural and trade links, the entire history of the
region and not simply a snapshot at one moment of time, for people
in these regions have long memories.
> Hurrian is a linguistic designation,
It is not entirely correct to claim the designations as entirely
linguistic.
> Mitanni is a name of a state
There is no evidence of that. The evidence rather suggests that
it is the name of a Hurrian people loosely organised into households,
families, clans, tribes and brotherhoods led by a king.
>and the likewise badly attested Kassite language, known only from personal
>names and a few entries in Akkadian lexical texts (there is not a single
>preserved narrative sentence in the language).
"Two complete tablets and at least that number of fragments
are reported from the central building [Qal'at, Bahrain] Bibby
in his popular account puts the total number of pieces at six
to seven (Bibby 1970:347) One fragment was recovered from a
primary context within a single room. (Bibby 1965:103;1967:91)
As with the sealings the tablets have not been published although
Bibby does characterise one as a school text and the other as an
administrative text (Bibby 1970:347) The name of Kstiliasu is
legible on one of these tablets (K Nashet, oral communication
at the conference)" "Bahrain and the Arabian Gulf" C Edens BTTA,p 199
> As for Kassites having IE names, how would one know, as the only
>way in which people define "Kassites" are by their Kassite names!
"The [Kassite] materials may be discussed under six headings: organics,
metal, stone, ceramic, glyptic and epigraphical" For example under the
catagory of ceramics...
"The Kassite assemblages are dominated by a range of pedastal bases,
corresponding to the Kassite goblets, (Nippur I types 46A and 47),
a simple bowl, (Nippur I type 43 C) which occurs more rarely and lids"
Linguists are apparently totally unaware that there is any archaeological
basis for discussing these "peoples" outside the epigraphical evidence.
>Just pay no attention, as all of this comes from reading very quickly
> a few atlases, one book on Dilmun and whatever is posted
>on the net.
Just quickly counting the books I have open at the moment as I reply
you are off by a factor of ten.
I know you have not yet learned to use the net and so are not
impressed by it's resources, but frankly I would not be so quick
to dismiss its usefulness.
We might also discuss which of us has spent more time on site
in Dilmun. Have you recently examined the Qal'at Piotr? When was
the last time you visited Tarut, Hofuf or Ain-Dar?
Discuss with me the Kassites architecture. Have you counted for
yourself the rows and noted the orientation in each coursing of
their foundations? Have you documented the placement of their
beam pockets?
How can you say "the only way in which people define 'Kassites'
are by their Kassite names!"?
steve
Subject: Re: The Egyptian concept of Ma'at in the Platonic Dialoges: was Re: Egyptian Tree Words
From: Saida
Date: Thu, 03 Oct 1996 08:29:05 -0500
Miguel wrote:
Saida wrote:
> > BTW,
> >Piotyr, while I can even rattle off some Polish (my father having been
> >born there) I come up empty on Hittite...
>
> All you need to know about Hittite to impress people of your erudition
> at cocktail-parties and such are the words:
>
> nu NINDA-an ezateni, watar-ma ekuteni.
> "now bread you eat, and-water you drink"
>
> These are the words that provided the Czech scholar in Austrian
> service Bedr^ych Hrozny' the clue to identify Hittite as an IE
> language. Nu=now, eza-=essen (Hitt. z=ts), watar=water, eku-=aqua.
So why, then, when I find the same commonalities in Egyptian, do you
guys get so upset?
Anyway, thanks for the info. I don't get much call for Hittite, but
occasionally people ask me what language Christ spoke and was it Hebrew.
I tell them that, yes, Jesus knew Hebrew very well, being a prodigious
scholar from his youth, but the language he spoke in everyday life was
Aramaic. When they ask me if I can give them an example of an Aramaic
word, I begin to recite the Kaddish, the Jewish Prayer For the Dead,
which I know by heart and which is the only Aramaic Jews still commonly
use. "Yitgadal, v yitkadash shmeh Rabbo, etc."...It floors them every
time.
Subject: Re: Mr. Whittet's Linguistic Idiocies
From: Saida
Date: Thu, 03 Oct 1996 08:46:54 -0500
Loren Petrich wrote:
> Loren Petrich wrote:
> Steve Whittet wrote:
>
> >This premise that Latin pater and Sannskrit pitar resemble
> >each other is unconvincing.
>
> This from someone who is willing to accept the most preposterous
> attempts to derive English from Egyptian? Latin and Sanskrit correspond a
> heck of a lot better than English and Egyptian. And when one factors out
> the numerous borrowings, English corresponds a heck of a lot better to
> Latin and Sanskrit (not to mention other IE languages) than Egyptian.
Just keep in mind that Egyptian IS partly an Indo-European language. It
is also partly Semitic. This is precisely what troubled scholars when
they first began to study it. It just wouldn't be classified.
>
> For example, the English word is "father". and p- in L and S
> correspond to f- in English: ped-, pad-, foot; my AHD gives several
> examples of other English f- -- Latin p- correspondences (not as many
> Sanskrit borrowings have gotten into English as Latin ones).
>
> >For one thing why isn't the Egyptian "Ptah" or "sky father"
> >considered in this analysis?
>
> Because it does not fit. What's the Egyptian word for "father"?
> And where did the final r go?
> --
The Egyptians used "iti" or "tef" for "father". "Teftef" evidently was
"grandfather". I don't know when one or the other was called for, if
both terms were interchangeable or what. Later on, it appears, the
Semitic "abba" was also used. Strangely, if the "f" and the "t" were
reversed in "tef", we'd have something. The word for "mother", of
course, is "mut", which is very IE. "Muti" means "my mother".
Interestingly, when I was a very small child and spoke no English yet, I
called my parents "Tate" and "Mutti".
Subject: Re: The Egyptian concept of Ma'at in the Platonic Dialoges: was Re: Egyptian Tree Words
From: whittet@shore.net (Steve Whittet)
Date: 3 Oct 1996 14:03:11 GMT
In article , piotrm@umich.edu says...
>
>In article <52u74v$84m@halley.pi.net> mcv@pi.net (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
writes:
>>
>
>
>>So what does this tell us about the Kassite's language? The presence
>>of Mitanni seals proves nothing. Of course there were contacts
>>between the Kassites and the Hurrians/Mitanni. Contacts do not imply
>>that the languages were similar, though.
>
>There is absolutely no relationship that we know of between
>Hurrian/Urartaean (East Caucasian?) and Kassite.
The Old Babylonian period comes to an end when Babylon is sacked
bt "Hittites" c 1595 BC. At this time the region between Hattusas
and Babylon is under the control of the Hurrians and the Hittites
barely have control of their own capital established less than
50 years earlier.
If instead of Hittites sacking Babylon we have Hurrians sacking
Babylon then we have some explanation for the subsequent appearance
of a people with Hurrian names, whom we call Kassites, in control
of what had previously been the territory of the Sealand Dynasty
and Babylon.
Because Piotr thinks the Hurrians are limited to the Caucasus
Mountains he doesn't look at the possibility that the Hurrians
were spread throughout the mountains of the region much as are
the modern Kurds.
If the Hurrian territory also includes the Kuhha-ye Zagros Mountains
connecting the mountains of the Caucasus and Anatolia with the
mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan and paralleling the water
routes along the Tigris and Euphrates from the Black Sea to the
Persian Gulf, then these people might have made their living
bringing wood and metal from the mountains down to the rivers,
raising sheep for wool and weaving carpets for trade down the
rivers, and been associated through a network of trade down
the rivers.
The reason I see for the Hurrians coming into conflict with
the Babylonians is a dispute over water rights and the right
of free passage along the rivers. We see some mention of this
in the correspondence earlier cited in the Mari letters.
What reason would there have been for the Hittites to come into
conflict with the Babylonians? Their terratories are not in any
way, manner, shape or form adjacent or interactive.
>We first hear of Kassites in the middle of the Old Babylonian
>period when a few administrative texts and letters mention
>eren2 kashshu, "Kassite troops."
Which is another reason to suppose the sack of Babylon was by Hurrians
(Kassites not Hittites)
> After the Hittite sack of Babylon a Kassite "dynasty" filled
>the void, but we really do not know much about Kassite
>ethnicity beyond personal names.
Do you have any examples of Kassites with Hittite names?
Why not allow that the Kassites and the Mittani were Hurrian
if that is what the preponderence of the evidence suggests?
>Certainly there was not a sizable Kassite element in Babylonia
>judging by the number of such names and they never wrote
>their own language.
The center of the Kassite sphere of influence does not seem
to have been Babylon. Rather it is associated with the Dilmunite
sphere of influence to the south, the Mittani sphere of influence
to the west, the Hurrian sphere of influence to the North, all
combining to cut off Babylon from any source of trade.
> If the names were not there, we would hardly know that
>such an element was there.
That is because as a linguist you seem to have no interest
whatsoever in discussing organics, ceramics, metal, stone,
take the presence of eyestones and agate in Kassite sites
such as the Qal-at which are strong indicators of a trade
link with India, what have you to say about that?
> I should say, however, that the early part of the
>Middle Babylonian period is very badly known archeologically
>as well as textually, and that there is a 300-400 year blank
>in texts in southern Mesopotamia after the reign of Samsuiluna
>(the son of Hammurabi), so that we have to be careful with
>generalizations.
And yet you manage to convey such a certainty that your perspective
is always correct and that no other point of view need be considered.
What I see is a very interesting question. Why did emerging nations
struggle with one another in the Middle Bronze Age.
What were they fighting over? There certainly is a lot of
fighting going on, there is increased militarism, fortifications,
standing armies, the emergence of a warrior class... Why is that?
The Habiru march through Canaan putting cities under the ban
massacring their inhabitants, burning the infrastructure, and
sowing the fields with rocks. All those who won't join with them
in worshipping the Law as sovereign over all other norms, mores,
conventions, rules, attitudes and values are declared out Laws
and marked for destruction. Is this a religious crusade or
vigilante justice?
It reminds me of what we see in our modern cities where people
join together to burn down the house of the local crack dealer.
People are fighting to establish a sense of identity, to build
consensus as to what is right and proper behavior, to establish
standards and values and spheres of influence, and to protect
what they view as their rights and property.
> Moreover, a large group of Kassite period texts from Nippur
>is still unpublished.
So you know about the school and administrative texts and yet you
claim there is no complete sentence in the Kassite Language?
>Because we know so little, all of speculations, including
>textual redaction, have been attributed to this period, but
>that has nothing to do with Kassites as such.
Of course outside the epigraphics there is also the archaeology...
>It is traditional to use the term Kassite period for part of
>the Middle Babylonian period, and this may lead some to think
>that everything in this time was "ethnically" Kassite.
What I have been talking about is a much broader picture. The
"ethnicity" involved seems to include terms for training horses.
Of what use are horses to rivermen? The Egyptians don't come to
use horses until their empire expands beyond the Nile. We also
have a tradition of weaving carpets which apparently ties into
the Silk Road, Persia and the caravans of the next millenia.
> As for the language, so little is known that any
>connections have to be very tentative.
Then you should have very little to say. Let's put the
language aside for a while and move on to discuss the archaeology.
> Diakonoff has suggested Dravidian, but with caution.
It makes some sense to look at what sorts of possible connections
there may have been to India. I would submit that the Persian Gulf
and the Dilmun, Makkan, Meluhha link is impossible to ignore in
this context.
>In any case, it seems to come to Mesopotamia from the east
>(older books indicate a connection with Syria, but this is
>based on misdating of tablets from Terqa)
If the Kassites have a link to India, moving up the Persian Gulf
with the Dilmun trade, and establishing a base of operations at
Qal'at al Bahrain, thence up the coast to Faikala at the very
estuary of the Tigris and Euphrates, thence up the Euphrates
to Terqa, Syrian outpost of Mari, and the reason for their
presence is the rich trade we have been discussing, why isn't
it germane to the conversation to look at the trade connections?
>and definitely has nothing to do with Hurrian nor with
>Indoeauropean.
The Hurrians control the Mountains, the Kassites the rivers,
and sealands, the Mittani control the plains.
Each is ethnically disposed to different lifestyles with
different interests perhaps different attitudes and values
but strongly connected by an interdependence of trade.
Hurrians bring trees, metals and precious stones down from
the mountains to the rivers, they herd sheep and weave their
wool into carpets. The Kassites transport these goods down
the rivers and trade them for meat and grain.
Perhaps the Kassites also get involved in making pottery
to put their goods in using the clay of the river beds.
At the sea they meet people who have fish and pearls to trade,
farther along there are people with frankincense and copper,
farther still lapis, corrundum, carnelian, aggate and tin.
Perhaps the direction of travel begins at the other end
and works north instead of south, irregardless there is soon
a connection between India and Anatolia and people talk of an
upper and lower sea.
>Because we know that early Kassites had horses, it is often
>assumed that they had to have had contact with IE.
We know that they had technical terms for training horses...
Apparently this is considered an IE trait, and laid to
Scythians, Cimmerians, Kurgan Cultures, Hunters and
Pastorial Nomads, Nomadic Groups of the Steppes, etc;
While it is true that there is evidence for the
domestication of the horse in the Ukraine and Central Asia
much earlier, what does that really prove?
At the point written languages document the presence
of the words for horses, domesticated horses have
been around in most civilized cultures for milenia.
>I should point out,m however, that horses are mentioned in Sumer
>already in the Ur III period (c. 2100-2000) The main source for the
>language remains the old book by Kemal Balkan, Kassitenstudien 1.
>Die Sprache der Kassiten (New Haven, 1954, written earlier), as
>nothing of any significance has come to light since then.
While I would agree with other posters that the real issue
is not simply the domestication of the horse, but its secondary
uses and the terms for them, we need to add on besides that
that the focus is on the level of interest in the horse as
evidenced by the technical terms for training horses and not
its mere presence.
In this light the unpublished texts of Bibby found at
Qal'at al Bahrain and the technical terms for the use
and training of horses found elsewhere in other texts
from Kassite sites discovered more recently are
of interest here.
steve
Subject: Re: Sumerian etymology of the word Lugal
From: mcv@pi.net (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Thu, 03 Oct 1996 15:24:43 GMT
whittet@shore.net (Steve Whittet) wrote:
>In article , piotrm@umich.edu says...
>>Just more confusion being wrought by SW. He seems to have this obsession
>>with "peoples," whatever that may be.
>"Peoples", as in the plural of people, meaning more than one person.
>> Luwian is just one of the languages of the Anatolian branch of IE,
>>together with the badly attested Palaic, and Nesite (Hittite).
>Correct me if I am wrong here, but Anatolia is where linguists seek
>the point from which the IE languages spread.
There are "linguists", as in the plural of "linguist", meaning more
than one person, that believe Anatolia is the cradle of IE. The vast
majority think otherwise, or leave the thinking about these matters
entirely to the archaeologists.
The "standard" theory on IE origins puts the homeland somewhere in the
Pontic-Caspian area. This theory was first elaborated by Marija
Gimbutas, and was most recently put forward by JP Mallory, "In Search
of the Indo-Europeans", a must read for anyone interested in the
subject. The initial area of dispersal is said to be the Pontic-
Caspian (Southern Ukraine to Western Kazakhstan), at the time of the
Yamnaya culture (3500 BC) or its direct ancestors (Sredny Stog/
Khvalynsk) a millennium earlier.
Mallory's book was written mainly to counter the attack on the
standard view, made by Colin Renfrew in his book "Archaeology and
Language: the Puzzle of Indo-European Origins". Also a must read.
Renfrew puts the homeland in Anatolia, in early Neolithic times
(C,atal Hu"yu"k culture, 7000 BC).
The Georgian-Russian team of linguists Tamaz Gamqrelidze and
Vjacheslav Ivanov published a very interesting re-analysis of
Indo-European linguistics ("Indoevropejskij jazyk i indoevropejcy"),
including a somewhat over-elaborate theory on the homeland and
subsequent migrations. They would put the homeland in the Southern
Caucasus (Halafian culture, 5000 BC).
A final possibility is the Balkans as the original homeland
(Karanovo-Starc^evo cultures, 6500 BC), as put forward by the Spanish
historian Pere Bosch-Gimpera, and as illustrated for instance in Colin
McEvedy's "Penguin Atlas of Ancient History".
The "consensus" then could be said to be that the Indo-European
homeland was located somewhere in the vecinity of the Black Sea
(North, West, South, or East of it?) roughly in the Neolithic aera
(Early (7000-6500)? Middle (5000)? Late (4500-3500)?).
==
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal ~ ~
Amsterdam _____________ ~ ~
mcv@pi.net |_____________|||
========================== Ce .sig n'est pas une .cig
Subject: Re: The Egyptian concept of Ma'at in the Platonic Dialoges: was Re: Egyptian Tree Words
From: piotrm@umich.edu (Piotr Michalowski)
Date: Thu, 3 Oct 1996 12:29:59
I
>The Old Babylonian period comes to an end when Babylon is sacked
>bt "Hittites" c 1595 BC. At this time the region between Hattusas
>and Babylon is under the control of the Hurrians and the Hittites
>barely have control of their own capital established less than
>50 years earlier.
I am really sick and tired of this constant misinformation being peddled here.
Once again we have nothing but misunderstood generalizations that are
completely false. There is no evidence that the whole region between Hattusas
and Babylon was at the time in the hands of Hurrians. Some of the region was,
but there is absolutely no evidence that all of it was. In fact, there is
very little evidence at all and the texts that have surfaced, from terqa. SW
dismissed earlier without even knowing what they contain.
>If instead of Hittites sacking Babylon we have Hurrians sacking
>Babylon then we have some explanation for the subsequent appearance
>of a people with Hurrian names, whom we call Kassites, in control
>of what had previously been the territory of the Sealand Dynasty
>and Babylon.
More rubbish. There is no evidence at all that all the Hittite and
Babylonian records are wrong and Hurrians rather than Hittites attacked
Babylon. The Kassites have nothing to do with Hurrians and it is absurd to
say "people with Hurrian names who we call Kassites." People with Kassite
names are called Kassites. Ugh!
>Because Piotr thinks the Hurrians are limited to the Caucasus
>Mountains he doesn't look at the possibility that the Hurrians
>were spread throughout the mountains of the region much as are
>the modern Kurds.
I never said anything of the sort, I only noted that there is evidence that
the Caucasus was their previous home before they first appear in the Near
East, first attested during the reign of Naram-Sin of Akkad.
>The reason I see for the Hurrians coming into conflict with
>the Babylonians is a dispute over water rights and the right
>of free passage along the rivers. We see some mention of this
>in the correspondence earlier cited in the Mari letters.
Nonsense
>>We first hear of Kassites in the middle of the Old Babylonian
>>period when a few administrative texts and letters mention
>>eren2 kashshu, "Kassite troops."
>Which is another reason to suppose the sack of Babylon was by Hurrians
>(Kassites not Hittites)
More nonsense. Just because some small Kassite troop movements are reported a
few hundred years earlier does not mean that unrelated Hurrians destroyed
Babylon! What kind of logic is this?
>> After the Hittite sack of Babylon a Kassite "dynasty" filled
>>the void, but we really do not know much about Kassite
>>ethnicity beyond personal names.
>Do you have any examples of Kassites with Hittite names?
>Why not allow that the Kassites and the Mittani were Hurrian
>if that is what the preponderence of the evidence suggests?
I am sorry, but words fail me. What do Hittites have to do with Kassites????
What single piece of evidence is there that Kassites were Hurrian? Another
invention like your Hutur river?
>>Certainly there was not a sizable Kassite element in Babylonia
>>judging by the number of such names and they never wrote
>>their own language.
>The center of the Kassite sphere of influence does not seem
>to have been Babylon. Rather it is associated with the Dilmunite
>sphere of influence to the south, the Mittani sphere of influence
>to the west, the Hurrian sphere of influence to the North, all
>combining to cut off Babylon from any source of trade.
That is pure nonsense. There is no Dilmunite influence in the south, and I as
said before no connection with Hurrians. Now we have a new conspiracy that
was invented here ad hoc.
>> If the names were not there, we
would hardly know that >>such an element was there.
>That is because as a linguist you seem to have no interest
>whatsoever in discussing organics, ceramics, metal, stone,
>take the presence of eyestones and agate in Kassite sites
>such as the Qal-at which are strong indicators of a trade
>link with India, what have you to say about that?
What does this have to do with your imaginary ethnic history? Metal and stone
do not belong to any group. As for trade with India, it has nothing at all to
do with the present discussion and, morever, seems to end before this time, as
far as I know.
>
>> Moreover, a large group of Kassite period texts from Nippur
>>is still unpublished.
>So you know about the school and administrative texts and yet you
>claim there is no complete sentence in the Kassite Language?
Are we speaking the same language? Name me one text that has a sentence in
Kassite. Don't post some encyclopedia entry from the net, just give us one
simple reference!
>>Because we know so little, all of speculations, including
>>textual redaction, have been attributed to this period, but
>>that has nothing to do with Kassites as such.
>Of course outside the epigraphics there is also the archaeology...
>>In any case, it seems to come to Mesopotamia from the east
>>(older books indicate a connection with Syria, but this is
>>based on misdating of tablets from Terqa)
>If the Kassites have a link to India, moving up the Persian Gulf
>with the Dilmun trade, and establishing a base of operations at
>Qal'at al Bahrain, thence up the coast to Faikala at the very
>estuary of the Tigris and Euphrates, thence up the Euphrates
>to Terqa, Syrian outpost of Mari, and the reason for their
>presence is the rich trade we have been discussing, why isn't
>it germane to the conversation to look at the trade connections?
This is complete nonsense, once again. You have no concept of time at all,
nor of geography. By the time Kassites first appear, Mari was gone and
finished, never to be occupied again. You have invented all the rest of this
paragraph, as the rich trade "we have been discussing" is unattested, since
the main connections of Mari, as evidenced by tons of information were with
Iran and the West, with very little information about any trade with the Gulf.
You learn nothing.
(snip, more invented facts about "ethnic" groups, all unfounded)
I had made up my mind to disregard your uninformed postings, and I probably
should have kept to my decision, but the shameless range of disinformation
made me angry. Why don;t you discuss something you know even a small amount
about, if there is such a thing, and stop peddling rubbish. If you insist on
doing this, perhaps you could read a book or two on the subject (no, please do
not post a list of unread entries from a bibliography, we have seen those
already).