Horse Names: A "Wild Horse-Chase"?

So, did the ancient Greek reporters send us on a “wild horse-chase”? Maybe. But I tend to think that where there’s smoke, there’s fire.
From Melanippe to Marc, we have discovered quite a few horse names. The problem being that all but one of them belong to quasi-mythological Amazon warriors. There is a Grand Canyon-sized gap in the Scythian culture, where we have names, but none pertaining to horses. The Picts have also provided us with a name, but only one. Both the Scythian and Pictish languages also leave something to be desired, in that very little of them remains to us. Tough to compare names when you have a plethora in one language, none in the next, and only one in the third and final language.
Hmmm…. Maybe all that leaves us with is the old, archaeological adage: “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”
Or maybe the question becomes: Do we have other evidence demonstrating the importance of horses to these cultures and thus their cultural connectivity to one another? Let’s start with something we do have ample evidence for in all three cultures: cavalry.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Charlton, T. “Caballus.” Wiktionary, 1879, en.wiktionary.org/wiki/caballus#Latin.
Davis-Kimball, Jeannine, and Mona Behan. Warrior Women: an Archaeologist's Search for History's Hidden Heroines. Warner, 2003.
Gaulish Glossary, tied.verbix.com/project/glossary/gaul.html.
Jones, Heather Rose. A Consideration of Pictish Names: Index. Arval Benicoeur, 1996.
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%
Scythian Vocabulary in the Sources.” Scythian Lexicon - TurkicWorld, 19 Dec. 2008, s155239215.onlinehome.us/turkic/27_Scythians/ScythianWordListSourcesEn.htm.
Silver, Carly. “Meet the Amazon Warriors Who Brought the Greeks to Their Knees.” ThoughtCo, ThoughtCo, 25 May 2019, www.thoughtco.com/amazon-queens-who-rocked-ancient-world-4012619.
Vergano, Dan. “Amazon Warriors' Names Revealed Amid ‘Gibberish’ on Ancient Greek Vases.” National Geographic, National Geographic Society, 23 Sept. 2014, news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/09/140923-amazon-greek-vase-translations-science/.
Wagner, Paul. Pictish Warrior, AD 297-841. Osprey Pub., 2002.
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