THE SCYTHIAN "IPPA" MYSTERY: IT’S GREEK TO ME!

Carved stone Scythian horse-headed pestle.

We don’t have much Scythian “to our name”. Meaning: there isn’t much of the language left to us moderns. There is enough, however, to discern something that masquerades as their possible word for “horse”.
My Scythian glossary says that ippa means “mare” or “horse” in that ancient language. Hippocrates – whose name would also seem to indicate “horse” – says in his Diseases that hippaka, or ippaka, is the name of a mare’s milk cheese manufactured by the Scyths. Unfortunately, none of the names for the powerful goddesses or warrior-chieftains recorded in that glossary include the word ippa.
Even so, I’m not sure these words – and the other Amazon horse names, like Hippolyte, Melanippe, and Ainippe, don’t derive from the language of the Greeks who reported them. Greek boasts several words for horse, including:
§  Foráda, “mare”
§  Áλoyo, “horse”
§  Ίππος, “horse”
This last, Ίππος, translates into English script as ippos, which is the word we see repeating in the Amazonian names Alcippe, “Powerful Mare”, Hippothoe, “Imperious Mare”, Lysippe, “She Who Lets Loose the Horses”, et al., and, yes, also in the Scythian words for “horse” and “mare’s milk cheese”: ippa and ippaka.
So, maybe after all, we don’t know which actual word in ancient Scythian stood for “horse” or “mare”. Maybe, all that is left to us is a Greek facsimile of the Scythian word: a shadowy translation of a cultural trait the patriarchal Greeks little understood. Maybe, we need to just hope that the ancient Greeks translated the Amazonian horse names correctly, and that, if they had possessed any knowledge of them, they would have done the same for the Scyths. Alas, the Scythian horse names – if ever there were any – are lost to time.

MLA Citations:

Abaev, V. I. “Scythian Vocabulary in the Sources.” Scythian Lexicon - TurkicWorld, 19 Dec. 2008, s155239215.onlinehome.us/turkic/27_Scythians/ScythianWordListSourcesEn.htm.

Davis-Kimball, Jeannine, and Mona Behan. Warrior Women: an Archaeologist's Search for History's Hidden Heroines. Warner, 2003.

Liddell, Henry George. “Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon.” Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, Ἵππος, Henry George Liddell. Robert Scott. A Greek-English Lexicon. Revised and Augmented throughout by. Sir Henry Stuart Jones. with the Assistance of. Roderick McKenzie. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1940., 1940, www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3Di%28%

Wilde, Lyn Webster. On the Trail of the Women Warriors: the Amazons in Myth and History. Thomas Dunne Books, 2000.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

POSEIDON AND DEMETER: HAPPY COUPLE, OR VIOLATOR AND VICTIM?

Image
By Alvesgaspar - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43569142 Although the above sculpture depicts the rape of Demeter’s beloved daughter, Persephone, or Proserpina, by Hades, God of the Underworld, in the myths of the ancient world there was another, earlier rape: that of the earth goddess, Demeter, herself. In Demeter’s case, the rapist was the god of earthquakes, water, and horses, as well as the Underworld: Poseidon. I chose to use Bernini’s  The Rape of Proserpine  as the illustration of this post because I felt it vividly depicted the shock and horror of this ancient outrage. The two stories might have been a “twinning”, i.e.: Persephone’s later rape by Hades may just possibly have been a retelling of the original violation of Demeter by Poseidon. Here’s the initial story:   When Demeter was wandering in search of her daughter [Persephone], she was followed, it is said, by Poseidon, who lusted after her. So, she turned, the story runs, into a m
Read more

ACHILLES AND PENTHESILIA: NECROPHILIA, OR SACRED MARRIAGE?

Image
  By ArchaiOptix - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=88625666 Rage. The great bard, Homer, employed wrath as the driving force behind the events of his  Iliad , including the deaths of his leading man, Achilles – the warrior-hero of the Greeks – and the Amazon Wonder Woman, Penthesilea. For, had the warrior woman not first killed one of her own, she would not have been compelled to find redemption in battle against the Greeks. Perhaps, she would instead have died somewhere on her native steppes, unremembered. Such a death – our loss, as well as that of Penthesilea and her people – would have been sad, indeed. Her name would have then been forever lost to time and anonymity. That ancient name conveyed some connotation of sadness:  penthos  meant “sorrow” in Ancient Greek. The second syllable of the warrior queen’s name is not so easy to decipher. Maybe, it came from the Latin verb for “silence”:  sileo . Or perhaps it was some Scythian derivative of
Read more