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| Persephone's abduction by Plouton from an ancient Greek painting on a wall of a tomb at the ancient Macedonian capital of Aegai, Central Macedonia, Greece. |
This article was instantaneously published at the American Chronicle:
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/211763
Το παρό
FALSIFYING HISTORY - FABRICATING A FAKE IDENTITY: Skopjan pseudo-Makedonism revising Greek Mythology.*
A brave new world is dawning on classical studies. A new breed of classical scholars is collectively trailblazing new and exciting avenues of creative knowledge in our understanding of the ancient world, demolishing old taboos about the Greeks and their contribution to civilization.
These hereto internationally unknown scholars, professors like Vasil Ilyov, Risto Stefou, Aleksandar Donski, JSG - "Gandeto", Odisej Belchevski, Aristotel Tendov, Tome Boshevski, and others, whose numbers are on the rise, all happen to trace their descent from that world famous (some would utter "infamous") beacon of Classical Scholarship, that lies in the southernmost province of former Yugoslavia whose capital is Skopje. I am speaking of course of the Former Yugoslav Republic that insists on being called Makedonija.
We will be concerned here with exploring the findings on the article "Is There a Practical Meaning to Mythology?" by "contemporary scholar" as he has been hailed by his co-scholarly circles, Odisej Belchevski. This article is "part 1" of :
"A Series of Studies in European Mythology" where
"Classical Mythology (is) Explained With The Use of Macedonian Vocabulary".
As it soon becomes apparent, once we start reading his article, the writer is wholly unbiased by any superficial connections to the labors and findings of other "modern scholars and scholars of the "Romantic Era" in particular". His only bias is to serve the neo-Balkan cult of historical revisionism [locally branded by its opponents as the "Antiquization" or "Bukefalization" (branded so from the name of Alexander the Great´s horse, Bucephalas) campaign] that has taken the small Balkan country by a storm. Once someone accepts the basic premise that the modern Slavic-speaking descendants of the Slavonic tribes that entered the southern Balkans in the 7th century AD to be the true descendants of Alexander the Great´s Macedonians, who lived more a thousand years before the Slavs appeared in Macedonia, in the 4th c BC, then everything is possible!
It is important for us to be open minded and to take Odisej Belchevski at his word when he assures us that "the information contained in this article is not of mythical or imagined content but is very real, which the reader should find exciting and interesting". I, for one, am already excited, yet calm at the same time, in the knowledge that Odisej B. will take us "through a fresh new look at classical mythology and bring out alternative meanings of the identities of Demeter, Saturn, Pluto/Hades and Zemele."
Being of "an inquiring mind", he wondered "How is it that for the last 200 years European scholars…when it comes to interpreting mythological figures they could only manage to provide imaginary, unrealistic, impractical, hard to understand and confusing explanations?"
Being thus assured that "modern scholars…did not have a clear understanding of the true meaning of the names of deities in relation to the deities´ roles and functions in nature", Odisej Belchevski decided to "then show how the ancient Europeans used practical methods for naming their deities and each name such as Demeter, Pluto, Hades, Zemele, etc., had a special meaning for them which, when interpreted properly, makes sense even today."
We need to stress two things right away. Somehow, Odisej B., who hears people call him by his very Greek name every day, somehow has an aversion to even mention Greeks by name. Wherever the text leads him to say "Greeks" or "Greek Mythology", I notice that he clicks an internal switch and writes "ancient Europeans" or "ancient European" Mythology, instead. Not that anyone would care for this, but it simply makes for a more generally confusing text. The second thing that catches someone´s attention is Mr. Belshevski´s naively mechanistic way of thinking, when he says that "the ancient Europeans used practical methods for naming their deities". Somehow I beg to differ with this author, since I cannot possibly visualize a tribal "ancient European" gathering where the tribe´s elders are calling a meeting for the purpose of discussing the burning issue; that of deciding on a new method for coming up with a new practical Proto-Slavonic name for a Deity of the land to be adopted in tonight´s meeting, called for 6:30 pm sharp! I am sure this is not how a divine name was given...Primitive people observing nature and their surroundings (including their on society), always tried to find patterns. This was done in a slow and organic way, that took many years, sometimes whole generations and beyond. By trying to decipher the inner meaning of the cycles of nature and social life, they would inevitably try to compromise their observations with their already acquired common knowledge. This communal knowledge was always codified in religious terms. It was natural to look for answers in divine interference and action within every aspect of their life, whether cyclical or abrupt. Every action already had a name, a word describing it, so it was always easy to make that small step and name the divine "mover" of that action or event after the action he was responsible for. We will come back to this.
For now we move on, following the steps of Odisej Belchevski, who insists that:
Now I am slightly confused. What "old Macedonian languages" is he referring to? "Koine and Slavonic"? From the little that I have read, neither one can be described as one of "the old Macedonian languages". The Macedonians spoke another Greek dialect before they helped form the Alexandrian Koine (common Greek of the age after Alexander). It was by all indications the dialect found in the Pella katadesmos text, and survived in the Macedonian
"glosses" saved by Hesechios and others, which has been classified as a Northwest Greek dialect, like the one spoken by the Epirotes, with strong influences of Aeolian, as spoken in nearby Thessaly.
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| The only document found to date in the Macedonian dialect. 4th cAD. Pella, Central Macedonia, Greece |
Obviously he cannot be speaking of Slavonic as a possible ancient Macedonian language, since the Slavs had not appeared in the historical account as yet, still residing in the general area around the Pripet marshes of what are now parts of north Ukraine and southern Belorussia.
As any high school student that took his European history class seriously will remember, the Slavs did not appear into the Greek and Latin speaking Balkan Peninsula until the 7th century AD, about 1500 years after historians place the Macedonian Greeks as first residing
in Macedonia, and fully one thousand years after Alexander the Great and the beginning of the formation of the Koine Greek dialect.
Slavonic had to wait for fully 1400 years after the Pella katadesmos text before it was even written down, thanks to the two Greek monks from Thessaloniki that were sent to Moravia to convert the great grandparents of modern Czechs and Slovaks into Christianity, inventing a system, of writing adjusted to their own language.
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| One of the earliest Slavonic existing inscriptions in Glagolitic alphabet, from Croatia, 11th cAD. |
Having eliminated both Koine and Slavonic as possible candidates for what this author specified as "old Macedonian languages", we are left hanging.
Is he possibly speaking of some (hereto unattested and unidentified) "old Macedonian languages" plus the later attested "Koine and Slavonic"? And where does Alexandrian Koine Greek dialect fall into this? The Alexandrian Koine ("Common") is a rather late dialect of Greek that is an amalgam of Attic, Macedonian, Doric and Aeolian and other minor Greek dialects, which were mixed as a result of the new society that was created by the conquests of Alexander the Great. It is the Greek dialect into which the New Testament and all the early Christian scholarship have been written. It will hardly be of significant help for someone who wants to study the earlier sources of Greek Mythology. In order to go to the sources, Ionian, Aeolian and Achaean (linear B) Greek are necessary.
Mr. Belchevski is coolly unabated: "Over the years I have studied many details of these deities both from linguistic and historical sources and, although many books have been written on this subject, none can provide a simple and logical explanation." One is definitely impressed but is also left wondering as to how many of these books Odisej has read…
Nevertheless, "By applying my knowledge of the Macedonian language, some of its older dialects and Old Slavonic I have been able to find simpler and more practical meanings for the names of the deities which not only identify the deities with nature but also put them in harmony with their characteristics and attributes." So, then who cares for Koine, Ionian, Aeolian or any other Greek, if Odisej Belshevski will apply his knowledge of the modern Yugoslavian Slavomacedonian language, plus Old Slavonic and "more practical meanings for the names of the deities" will be revealed…
True enough, "In this article" he tells us "I would like to offer a practical meaning for the four deities: Demeter, Pluto, Hades and Zemele." And once this is done, "After establishing the meaning of the names of these four we can use the same method to explain the meaning and role of almost all known classical deities."
For now at least, and our wondering about the "old Macedonian languages" issue notwithstanding, it seems like we are in good hands!
After a brief crash course on ancient agriculture, we learn that "It was Plato (500-600 BC) that said "most gods and their traditions we have received from the Barbarians." A few hundred years later Herodotus confirms Plato´s statement."
Hm…I am not sure to which Plato (Πλάτων/Platon) our "contemporary scholar" is referring to, but search as much as I did, I failed to locate any quote of Plato where he allegedly said that "most gods and their traditions we have received from the Barbarians." Our "contemporary scholar" somehow failed to give us any reference to back up his quote, so I am at a loss here.
Besides, the only Plato that I know as being widely quoted is Platon / Πλάτων, or Plato in Latin, the Athenian philosopher and student of Socrates who lived in the later part of the 5th century BC (born 428/427 BC) and the early part of the 4th century BC (died 348/347 BC). No historically attested Plato who has lived in the years between "(500-600 BC)" is known to history, unless Odisej Belchevski is privy to some apocryphal Skopjan sources that he keeps tightly close to his scholarly sleeve. I am quite certain this must be an oversight by this "contemporary scholar", as I am also certain that it is an oversight the fact that he writes the BC dates upside down "500-600 BC" instead of the correct "600-500 BC"!
Most importantly, how could he be THE famous Plato, the philosopher and founder of the original Academia in Athens, when none other than Odisej Belchevski himself assures us that "A few hundred years later Herodotus confirms Plato´s statement." It does not take a classics scholar to know this. Any elementary school child who is not lazy enough to open an encyclopedia or check his/her facts on the internet can effortlessly find out at once that Herodotus / Ἡρόδοτος, of Alicarnassos, the father of History, was born in Ionia around 484 BC and died in Athens around 425 BC. This of course means that Herodotus lived BEFORE Plato, and died just three (3) years after Plato was born, not "hundreds of years" later...Some "scholars", it seems are not too scholarly or scholastic about double checking their "facts". The (predetermined) end result seems to take precedence over "minor" details.
By now, though, the reader is utterly confused: were 'nt we told, just seconds ago, that
it was Herodotus, that same one, the father of history, the one who "confirms Plato´s statement" "a few hundred years later"?
Ή στραβός είναι ο γυαλός, ή στραβά αρμενίζουμε / I stravos einai o yialos, I strava armenizoume!... jokes a Greek expression, meaning:
Either the seashore is placed wrong or we are sailing the wrong way!
Otherwise I cannot make much sense of this profound testimony of Skopjan scholarship, so I repeat it for posterity, for others to decipher it:
"It was Plato (500-600 BC) that said "most gods and their traditions we have received from the Barbarians." A few hundred years later Herodotus confirms Plato´s statement."
AS exprerssed in:
"Classical Mythology Explained With The Use of Macedonian Vocabulary.
A Series of Studies in European Mythology. Part 1 - Is There a Practical Meaning to Mythology?" By Odisej Belchevski, November, 2003
"Classical Mythology Explained With The Use of Macedonian Vocabulary.
A Series of Studies in European Mythology. Part 1 - Is There a Practical Meaning to Mythology?" By Odisej Belchevski, November, 2003
Having noted that, we continue our search with a question mark: "If these barbarians, who according to Homer, were "as numerous as the leaves in the forest" had the capacity to create these gods and pass them on to the ancient Europeans (note: he means " Greeks" but he does not want to say the G-word, unless when absolutely necessary!), is it not possible that their other characteristics have also descended and remain with us today?"
So, Belshevski continues: "It is important to note here that the original meaning of the word barbarian was "misunderstood". Today we know that barbarian does not mean ignorant but rather a non-speaker of the languages of the ancient Greek city states."
First of all, technically speaking, it is not correct to say that "today we know"...because the meaning of the word barbarian has been known to Greeks since time immemorial, ever since they met a person whose language sounded to them like bar bar bar...hence "barbaros" is used for someone who speaks either in a foreign language or in unintelligible, rough Greek. By extension, especially after the Persian wars as barbarian became to be known anyone who was a "bad Greek", or "brutal, rude, αμαθής" i.e. uneducated (Liddell & Scott, page 306, 1952), barbaros, therefore, was also someone who lacked culture, at least as such judged by the high Attic standards of civility and civilization. Thucydides calls the Aetolians "barbarians" and Hesechios mentions the Elians in Olympia as "barbarophonoi" (barbarian speakers, since they were the only people in Peloponnese who spoke a dialect akin to the Northwest Greek, the same dialect as the one spoken by Epirotes and Macedonians. Therefore, it was not only the "non-speaker of the languages of the ancient Greek city states" as we are told that were excluded by the Hellenic-non barbarian club of ancient times.
The Macedonians and the Epirotes are by default included into the Hellenic group. At the same time, anyone, even a central Greek or a Peloponneian Greek that spoke an unintelligible dialect, was by default also a barbaros, or barbarophonos. And as Stephanos of Byzantium explains to us in his 5th c dictionary, being called a barbarian had not an ethnic but a linguistic connotation:
Βάρβαρος, ούκ επί έθνους, αλλ' επί φωνής ελαμβάνετο
Barbaros, ouk epi ethnous, all' epi phones elambaneto
Barbaros, it was not (based) on ethnic, but on speech (considerations).
The original meaning of "barbarian" is a "non-Greek speaker" but also a "not easily understood, rough speaker of Greek". Alexander the Great sending the 300 captured Persian shields to Athens, he acted as both King of Macedonia and Pan-Hellenic Hegemon - leader of All (Pan-) the Hellenes-Greeks. He includes the Macedonians along with other Greeks from the city states, in the Hellenic camp, excluding only the Spartans (Lacedaemonians) and those only for political, not ethnic or linguistic reasons.
«Αλέξανδρος Φιλίππου και οι Έλληνες πλην Λακεδαιμονίων από των βαρβάρων των την Ασίαν κατοικούντων»
"Alexander, son of Philip and the Hellenes except the Lacedaimonians from the barbarians that live in Asia"
Αρριανoού, Αλεξάνδρου Ανάβασις /Arrian, Alexander Anabasis
Αρριανoού, Αλεξάνδρου Ανάβασις /Arrian, Alexander Anabasis
Alexandros Philippou, Makedon, as he was known, had no idea, that 24 centuries after his death he would become Cet Obscur Objet du Desir by an Aleksandar Makedonski national fan club in an obscure, mainly Slavonic and Albanian speaking Balkan country that insists, despite Greek protests to the contrary, on being called Makedonija! Alexandros would be amused, to say the least…
Modern Balkan ethnic myths apart, we go back to ancient mythology and we follow how Odisej Belchevski summarily dismisses his competition:
"Many authors, I believe, have tried to interpret the rationale behind the ancient deities but did not go deep enough. In my opinion, their scope was too narrow and they could not find a rational and logical explanation. One of those authors was Edith Hamilton, a great scholar and world-renowned classicist who wrote a book about Greek and Norse Mythology. In her book, published in 1940 (M.B. note: it was actually published in 1942), she talks about mythological fairy tales and stories of the imagination, pure fiction with little meaning or practicality that would connect the deities to every day life. Others too have hinged on the imagination of the ancients as the source for the creation of mythology."
I took Edith Hamilton's book, "Mythology" in my hands and opened it. I could only imagine Odisej B. opening the first page of her book, and reading:
"Introduction to Classical Mythology"
And then, right below this title, he probably read the prominent quote with which this book starts. He most probably did not like:
"Of old the Hellenic race was marked off from the bar-
barian as more keen-witted and more free from nonsense."
Herodotus I:60
No wonder, this "contemporary scholar" must have thought, Edith Hamilton, despite being a "great scholar and world-renowned classicist" was, after all, "too narrow" in her "scope", to "find a rational and logical explanation" for what this wannabe Classical author considers as "ancient European" Mythology...
This is probably the point where the "contemporary scholar" decided he had enough of Greek Mythology. He promptly put Edith Hamilton´s book down and decided he had no time to waste reading "fairy tales and stories of the imagination, pure fiction with little meaning or practicality". I am sure that was the moment he took upon himself to "correct" what was hitherto "wrong" with Classical Scholarship, and like another Aristotel Tendov and Tome Boshevski, he started writing a "practical" "ancient European" mythology of his own.
This is because he realized that "Influenced by numerous literary sources connecting classical mythology to the ancient Greeks and Romans (M.B. note: How naïve of classical scholars to dare connect Greek mythology to the Greeks!...and Roman Mythology to the Romans! How more absurd can that notion be!), most writers over the last hundred years or so have failed to widen their search and consider one of the largest linguistic groups, the Slavonic languages. Myself, I have discovered that the Slavonic languages offer an immense source of knowledge in many fields including mythology."
I dare say that Mr. Belchevski would most definitely be right, if he was speaking of Slavic Mythology. Obiously in that case we would need to refer to Slavonic sources! Similarly, when studying the Vedic Mythology, we need to look at the Sanskrit sources, and when we speak of Chinese mythology some people would consider it obvious to first look into the Chinese sources. Comparative Mythology is one thing, and it is a legitimate part of study. It has led scholars to find prehistoric Indo-European connections between the mythology of the Greeks the Hindu Vedes, the Avestani Persians and the Mythology of the Norsemen. All four, for example share stories with the same three headed dog, Cerberus, the guard protector of the underworld, which betrays very ancient and very close relations between all of them. This is legitimate research. But trying to explain the Vedic myths via Latin and the Romance language, and try to use Romanian to decipher the Sanskrit names in the Vedic myths, sounds a bit stretched to me…though obviously not to Mr. Belshevski.
So, he moves on: "For example, consider the following excerpt;" Now, excerpt, in my dictionary means quote, quotation, extract, selection, citation, all of them as part of a text; a text to which someone can go back and make a reference to. So, now, the question we have is from what text is this excerpt from?
"... The daughter of Doimater (Demeter), Prosorpina – (Persephone) is "snatched" by Hades the god of the underworld and is taken underneath the earth for four months of the year. In the beginning, Demeter is furious as she frantically looks for her daughter. Her absence causes the earth to freeze and become barren of all fruits and gifts to the mortals. After some time Demeter accepts Persephone´s fate and allows her to become Hades´ bride and spend the winters beneath the surface of the earth…
In the spring, when Hades changes to Pluto (his brother), Persephone comes back to the surface bringing with her Pluto´s wealth of the agriculture and all Demeter´s gifts of nature back to the mortals…"
In this age of the internet, life has become a nightmare for plagiarists and other assorted literary frauds. It has become very easy for anyone to uncover such fraud. All someone needs to do is copy the text in question, paste it on a "search engine" site and click. We did just that and we made a test with an adequate part of the text, namely the following long sentences, a large enough sample:
"The daughter of Doimater (Demeter), Prosorpina – (Persephone) is "snatched" by Hades the god of the underworld and is taken underneath the earth for four months of the year. In the beginning, Demeter is furious as she frantically looks for her daughter."
The result was as unfortunate as we expected: several entries with our sample did in fact appear, but (surprise!- surprize!) all of them in ultra-nationalist Slavomakedonski (so called "ethnic Macedonian" sites, starting with this one: http://www.maknews.com/html/articles/belchevsky/belchevsky_practical_mythology1.html, which seems to be the original one which everyone else is copying from.
There is simply no ancient or other modern scholarly text to which the alleged "excerpt" belongs to. Plainly speaking, it is simply a forged, counterfeit quote: a fake pseudo-scholarly groundwork for the pseudo-linguistic fraud that will follow soon after and it will be based on it.
So, now, after a few paragraphs, here comes the springing of the trap:
"Also, in spite of what some modern scholars tell us, Ancient Europeans (MB note: he means Greeks, again, but avoids the hated "G" word) did not imagine or create their gods purely for fictional purposes (we all wonder to which "modern scholars" this "contemporary scholar" is referring to...no names or books are referenced, so it sounds to us like a fight against imaginary windmills) but rather they modeled them after the powerful "natural phenomena" which they observed over long periods of time. The gods were created from the basic need to explain the natural forces that controlled their lives."
So, then, here comes down the trap door:
"This becomes apparent when we use the Macedonian language to explain the role of the gods from the meaning of their names.
Most of the original names and characteristics of these deities clearly coincide with basic fundamental words found in the modern Macedonian and Slavonic languages. These words are part of language concepts that have created very large families of words with very deep etymological root connections pointing to a long and continual development. The Slavonic languages provide the most logical explanation and are unparalleled compared to other European and non-European languages. Evidence of this is very strong and is extremely hard to ignore.
The following table provides examples of the relationship between the meaning of the name of the deities and their role in nature:"
Let us start from the top.
This is what Odisej Belchevski came up with:
"DEITY NAME – GREEK or ROMAN: Semele
ATTRIBUTES: Earth Goddess
"MACEDONIAN" or SLAVONIC: Zemja
ENGLISH: Earth
GREEK: Homa"
(for his information Homa is modern Greek, not even Koine or Byzantine Greek. The ancient word is slightly different, and we will see it below)
(for his information Homa is modern Greek, not even Koine or Byzantine Greek. The ancient word is slightly different, and we will see it below)
This is actually an admirable try for someone who has no clue about ancient Greek, despite his earlier boasting about an alleged "good knowledge of the old Macedonian languages, Koine and Slavonic." I cannot attest on his knowledge of OCS or other languages, though it is known that any native speaker of Slavomacedonian can easily converse not only in Bulgarian, a language virtually identical to the so called modern "Macedonian language", more properly the Slavomakedonski, but they can also easily converse in no less than five more "languages", namely: Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, Montenegrin, and Torbeshi! Speaking all these five languages is amazingly easy: despite the multitude of names, they are actually all one and the same language: Serbo-Croatian! The only thing different besides the names, is the ethnic hatred shared between the speakers of say Torbeshi and Montenegrin, Bosnian and Croatian, or Serbian and Bosnian, etc. who refuse to have the name of "their" language be called by that of their "enemies". As for his knowledge of Koine Greek, we leave that aside. It is probably rivaling my deep knowledge of OCS…which is next to zero! The minimal Greek that he is using is what he probably heard from his bilingual grandmother as a child. Unfortunately, when you publish your lerned opinions of such issues as ones that can have an influence on the way one nation views its own image in relation to its neighbors, and you promote nothing else than raw hatred and intolerance towards the ones who allegedly stop you from developing your (imaginary) "ancient" identity then, good enough is simply not good enough. Therefore, no credit is given for effort: only results count! Indeed, when the results bring our knowledge not simply several steps back but an abyss of understanding below our current point, then failure is simply unacceptable!
We are told that "Zemele is an ancient root word that exists only in the Slavonic languages." We happen to disagree and linguistics are in our favor.
Here below is the improved version of what his list should have been:
 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Semele and Dionysos.Derveni Crater. |
INDO-EUROPEAN ROOT: *dheghom / earth
ENGLISH COGNATES: Bride-groom, Humble, Humility, Homicide, Human
SKOPJE SLAVOMACEDONIAN COGNATE WORD: Zemja
OTHER COGNATES: Lithuanian: Zeme, Persian Zamin, OCS (Old Church Slavonic): Zemlja, Sanskrit: Ksam, Tocharian: Kham, Hittite: Tekam, Phrygian: Zemelon, Latin: Humus and Humanus, Old English Bride-Gome, Old Germanic Gumon, Old Russian Zemstvo
ANCIENT GREEK COGNATES: Θάλαμος / Thalamos, Θεμέλιον/Themelion, Χθαμαλή/Chthamale, Χθόνιος/Chthonios
MODERN GREEK: Θάλαμος / Thalamos, Θαλάμι / Thalami, Θεμέλιο/Themeliο, Σεμέλα/Semela, Χαμηλή/Chamili, Χώμα/Choma, Χάμω/Chamo, Καταχθόνιος/Katachthonios.
An amusing thing is that the word "Temeli" also explained by O.B. as:
"(Zemeli) foundations (the foundations are always dug into the Earth)", is used naively as an argument. Had this "scholar" and "Macedonian Language Researcher" done his research he would have found out that Temeli is a Turkish loanword into Slavomacedonian and that in its turn the "Turkish" Temeli is an original Greek word Θεμέλιον/Themeliοn, meaning foundation (and, true enough, foundations are always dug into the Earth) which the Turks borrowed from Greek. How do we know? Because a word, indeed an Indo-European one, not an Altao-Turkic, that exists as a cognate in both Turkish and Greek and is attested in ancient Greek is, by default, a Greek word. The same is of course also true with Slavomacedonian, Bulgarian, French, English, German, Italian, etc. You cannot argue against timing in History, though some people, who revel in trips into the paranormal sphere, insist on doing just that:
"(Zemeli) foundations (the foundations are always dug into the Earth)", is used naively as an argument. Had this "scholar" and "Macedonian Language Researcher" done his research he would have found out that Temeli is a Turkish loanword into Slavomacedonian and that in its turn the "Turkish" Temeli is an original Greek word Θεμέλιον/Themeliοn, meaning foundation (and, true enough, foundations are always dug into the Earth) which the Turks borrowed from Greek. How do we know? Because a word, indeed an Indo-European one, not an Altao-Turkic, that exists as a cognate in both Turkish and Greek and is attested in ancient Greek is, by default, a Greek word. The same is of course also true with Slavomacedonian, Bulgarian, French, English, German, Italian, etc. You cannot argue against timing in History, though some people, who revel in trips into the paranormal sphere, insist on doing just that:
While the Slavomacedonians have not as yet claimed the Romans and the Etruscans as Slavo - Makedonci and the Latin language as a Slavo-Makedonskata and Proto - Slovenskata dialect, it is some of their linguistic (and, true to their Ex-Yugoslav status, equally ultra-nationalistic) cousins from Slovenia who confidently claim the ancient Venetians (an Italic people who lived in modern Veneto in Northern Italy and modern Slovenia) as true blooded Slavs. Odisej Belchevski is now breaking ranks and seems to be insinuating that in fact the Romans and the Etruscans were indeed Slavonic too, even if he does not say it openly...! Otherwise, how could he explain his own bogus "discovery" the Latins, like the Greeks named their Gods with Slavonic names...?
Once you take off and you reach the ethereal sphere of para-normality, then, obviously, EVERYTHING is possible! When the professorial duo of Tendov and Boshevski from the university of Skopje discovers a proto-Slavic language in the Egyptian Demotic script of the Rosetta stone of Ptolemaic Egypt, 280 BC (http://macedonianissues.blogspot.com/2010/01/blog-post.html), and Aleksandar Donski discovers the genealogical tree of George W. Bush and Queen Elisavet of England and discovers that they are both Slavo-"Makedonci", then writes a book about it (You can buy it for only for $10.00!...http://www.topix.com/forum/world/macedonia/TU7UP1CCNPNJIQ215), or even when Donski has a friendly chat with none other than Alexander the Great through a Florida medium (did I just say Alexander the Great?...I am sorry, Aleksandar Velikiot Makedonski, Is what I had meant to say…!), then claiming that the Mythology of the Romans was written by Slavonic Makedonci, is not that great of a step…or is it?
Once you take off and you reach the ethereal sphere of para-normality, then, obviously, EVERYTHING is possible! When the professorial duo of Tendov and Boshevski from the university of Skopje discovers a proto-Slavic language in the Egyptian Demotic script of the Rosetta stone of Ptolemaic Egypt, 280 BC (http://macedonianissues.blogspot.com/2010/01/blog-post.html), and Aleksandar Donski discovers the genealogical tree of George W. Bush and Queen Elisavet of England and discovers that they are both Slavo-"Makedonci", then writes a book about it (You can buy it for only for $10.00!...http://www.topix.com/forum/world/macedonia/TU7UP1CCNPNJIQ215), or even when Donski has a friendly chat with none other than Alexander the Great through a Florida medium (did I just say Alexander the Great?...I am sorry, Aleksandar Velikiot Makedonski, Is what I had meant to say…!), then claiming that the Mythology of the Romans was written by Slavonic Makedonci, is not that great of a step…or is it?
For now, we will have to pass on this daunting challenge and let our Italian friends take this issue up with these renowned Skopjan scholars. It is enough to note the fact that the list above mixes everything from a completely unrelated Greek Φυτόν/phyton, plant (mispelled as Fiton…and obviously it was thrown there to show how un-related Greek is to Greek Mythology…), with the Etruscan god Sadir and the Roman god of plenty Saturnus. Related to Saturnus, the word "saturate" comes to us, originally meaning satisfaction through plenty, satis, in Latin, and obviously connected with the Latin sator, the sower, the planter. Unlike Cronos, Saturnus was indeed an agricultural god. Saturnalia was a winter solstice celebration of food and plenty and they are considered by many to be the predecessor festival of Christmas. The word Saturday is also from him, but while the Romans equated Saturn with Cronos, the two names are in fact linguistically totally unrelated:
 |
| Rhea offering Cronos a stone instead of baby Zeus. |
"DEITY NAME – GREEK or ROMAN: Saturn Sadir-Sadene
ATTRIBUTES: Agricultural God
"MACEDONIAN" or SLAVONIC: Sadi, Sadenje
ENGLISH: Planting
GREEK: Fiton"
Unlike Saturnus, Cronos was a rather minor deity for the Greeks and he was not related to agriculture.
DEITY NAME – GREEK: Κρόνος / Cronos
ATTRIBUTES: Father of Zeus, who used a sickle to castrate his father, Ouranos. Blood and sperm spilling from Oyranos contributed to divine creation.
INDO-EUROPEAN ROOT: * (s)ker- / cut
ENGLISH COGNATES: Shear, Scissors, Screw, Scar, Scratch, Cuirass.
SKOPJE SLAVOMACEDONIAN COGNATE WORD:
OTHER COGNATES: Latin: Caro, Cribrum, Corium, Cortex. Lithuanian: Skabus, OCS (Old Church Slavonic): Kori, Skobli, Sanskrit: Krnati, Karma.
ANCIENT GREEK COGNATES: Kείρω / Keiro, Χρόνος / Chronos, Χέρσος / Chersos, Κουρά / Koura, Κόρις / Κoris, Επικάρσιος / Epiκarsios.
MODERN GREEK: Χρόνος / Chronos, Χέρσος / Chersos, Κουρέας / Koureas, Κοριός / Korios.
Further down we have a short essay with generalities on nature, copulation and female impregnation which ends like this:
"The seeds of every plant, when planted at the proper time (the spring), will be nourished by the falling rain or Dos / Dosdoi, as we call it in Macedonian (note: he means Slavomakedonski). Coincidentally, the original name of Demeter was Doi (Δοι) and Dos (Δοσ)."
One thing at a time, but first of all, I do not know what they do in Toronto, where Odisej lives, but in the Balkans, including Macedonia, and even further north, in Yugoslavian FYROM, where he is originally from, farmers traditionally plant their cereal and most of their other plants in the Fall, in Autumn, not in Spring. This might come as a surprise to this "contemporary scholar" who seems to specialize in agricultural deities. It is of course possible that he is confusing those agricultural activities with the Spring planting of his annual flowers in his Toronto garden. We will never know. It is a fact at any rate that autumn tilling and sowing has been an annual activity for farmers in Greece for the last nine thousand years. Since we must assume that he has profoundly studied farming as practiced in that area, we are not going to argue any further, so we continue with the more interesting aspect of his "study", since all the chat about natural copulation is but a smoke cover for what follows.
We remember the so called "excerpt", earlier on. We found out that there was no ancient or other text from which this alleged "excerpt" was quoted from; that is was simply a forged quote: intended to lay the groundwork for the pseudo-linguistic fraud that would soon follow and that it will be based on this so called "excerpt". Let us refresh our memory with it:
"The daughter of Doimater (Demeter), Prosorpina – (Persephone) is "snatched" by Hades the god of the underworld and is taken underneath the earth for four months of the year. In the beginning, Demeter is furious as she frantically looks for her daughter."
This was the Skopjan cheese: Doimater (Demeter).
Now here is the Skopjan trap:
"The seeds of every plant, when planted at the proper time (the spring), will be nourished by the falling rain or Dos / Dosdoi, as we call it in Macedonian (note: he means Slavomakedonski). Coincidentally, the original name of Demeter was Doi Δοι and Dos Δοσ."
Did we just read here…Doi? (Δοι)? and Dos? (Δοσ)? as "names" somehow related to Demetra?
We obviously need to look into this.
Now, before I forget, a friendly note for wannabe "scholars" who pretend to claim that they know Koine or any other dialect of Greek: "σ" is only used in the middle of the word. At the end of a word, this "ς" is used, the telikon, terminal sigma.
We were just told that Demetra is somehow also called Doimater in Greek. Furthermore, we were also "coincidentally" informed that "the original name of Demeter was Doi Δοι and Dos Δος."!
These days I happen to be reading a very interesting book, "The Mycenaean World", by professor John Chadwick, the Cambridge linguist and classical scholar who assisted Michael Ventris decipher the Linear B, back in 1952.
On page 87 of the first edition 1976 of this book, which I have in my hands, we read about a small word, which is found as a compound word in the earlier, Achaean-Mycenaean appearances of the name of Poseidon, namely Poteidan and *Poteidaon (in Linear B Greek: PO-SE-DA-WO-NE), the word "da"- δα:
"There is but one other source for this mysterious word, another of the same set of names, Demeter, or in its earlier form Damater. Since Demeter is beyond question the earth-goddess, and mater is the Greek word for "mother", da must mean "earth";
So much for the "coincidentall" information that "the original name of Demeter was Doi Δοι and Dos (Δος)."! ..or Doimater for that matter!
Demetra appears in Classical Greek as Demetra, Demeter and in Achaean Greek as Damater (in Linear B Greek: DA-MA-TE ) or Potnia (the Lady). Later on she was also named Despoina / Δέσποινα, meaning Lady of the house, a word derived from Domos / Δόμος, house and Potis / Πότις – Potnia / Πότνια. This makes us also think that The Da/Δα in Damater / Δαμάτηρ while most strongly identified as "earth", it can possibly also be a derivative of Domos-Demo-Dome. At any rate δόμος / domos (from Indo-European lema *dem- house, with cognates in Latin Domus, Slavonic Dom and Germanic Timber) is the first compound of both Despotis and Despoina. By Achaean Greek we mean the Mycenaean Greek of the 16th to 13th century BC for which a written Greek Linear B record exists. Before that there is no written record surviving, not one with Demetra´s name at any rate. The Doi and Dos and Doimater, therefore, are simply fraudulent pseudo-scholarly inventions, tricks that are used to make the name Demetra fit the pre-arranged mold of a "nourishing" "… falling rain or Dos / Dosdoi, as we call it in…" Slavomakedonski!
And to continue the deception, are also told that:
"Also from the Homeric poems we know that Doine (Δοινε – θοινε) means "feeding, nourishing".
Of course we all know this, who doesn´t? It is such common knowledge that "Doine (Δοινε – θοινε) means feeding" in the "Homeric poems", that Mr. Belshevski conveniently forgot to give us the reference to the exact location of this in the text, since there might be a rare person out there who never read all the Homeric poems…!
Doine is written in Latin letters, so we cannot check it so easily, but this "contemporary Scholar who has, of course, a good command of Koine, wrote it also in Greek, so that we can double check it, just in case: (Δοινε – θοινε)," which, of course, we were told, "means feeding, nourishing".
The way they are written, Δοινε – θοινε, is seems obvious that they are meant to show that they are the same word, just written in a different spelling, something not altogether unusual in Greek, especially when different dialects are involved. But is this so?
We look first at the first word: Δοινε, the one closer to the Latinized: Doine, which of course will click in and support "Doi and Doimater". Now, how can I break this to someone in a considerate and gentle way? I have two specialized Homeric Greek dictionaries and no less than five or six other general ancient Greek dictionaries, but I am very frustrated to say that no matter how well I searched for it, such a word simply does not exist in Greek. The few words that start with "Δοι-" in Greek, are related to double, both, two etc, not with feeding, and unfortunately for Mr. Belshevski, none of them comes even close to sounding or being spelled like Δοινε. Now we check for θοινε, which regrettably brings us the same result. Papala, we say in Greek, an ancient word meaning "pebbles", meaning…no treasure here! Doing this I realized that there are two things happening here at the same time. One is plain and unabashed attempt to create fraud. We are not amused to uncover it. The second thing is plain incompetence: This is in fact amusing! Our friend Odisej came close to something but he sort of messed it up on the way. Δοινε & θοινε do not have a chance to pass as Greek words with that «ε» ending in the nominative, but we at least can give Odisej a thumbs up for trying.
I had to try different spellings to see if he had made a mistake, and indeed I found the word he was trying to use: θοίνη. Not a very common word, for sure, and we thank him for pointing it out for us. There are also alternate ways of pronouncing and spelling it, which is phoina / φοινα, in Aeolian Greek and thoina / θοίνα in Doric. Θοίνη, θοίνα and φοίνα all mean feast, more particularly a feast where wine is served, since the original word comes from the verb Thyo / Θύω, to sacrifice, and Oinos / Οίνος, wine. The original meaning therefore, was libation, i.e. sacrifice to the Gods by pouring wine on the altar. I suppose only a amall part of it was sacrificed and the bulk of it was then consumed in the party afterwards, hence the verbs thoinao / θοινάω and thoinazo / θοινάζω meaning to partake in a banquet. Thoinodoteo / θοινοδοτέω means to throw a party!
We were told that "Also from the Homeric poems we know that Doine (Δοινε – θοινε) means "feeding, nourishing".
True, the scholar in question conveniently invented some word Doine / Δοινε, since the equally invented "Doimater" would not work otherwise, but while he missed the second one, θοινε, he actually came close enough to θοίνη, θοίνα and φοίνα. The meaning though, being a wine – related word, is not so much for "nourishing", but for feasting, partaking in a banquet, more Dionysian, in other words rather than Demetrian, if you analyze it.
Now let´s try to find that word in the "Homeric poems". Thank Zeus for the internet, for it gives us the tools to search for a word fairly efficiently, since I was not about to read the whole Iliad and Odyssey again just to answer Homer´s favorite character, Odisej! Being inconsiderate to our search, he never gave us any reference, to begin with. There is only one reference to this word, used as a verb, and we were lucky to locate it. It is from Odyssey, lines 30 to 36 of chapter four, where Telemachos arrives at Menelaos´ palace in Sparta, and Eteoneus is asking Menelaos if he should allow these two strangers to come in,
τὸν δὲ μέγ᾽ ὀχθήσας προσέφη ξανθὸς Μενέλαος:
"οὐ μὲν νήπιος ἦσθα, Βοηθοΐδη Ἐτεωνεῦ,
τὸ πρίν: ἀτὰρ μὲν νῦν γε πάϊς ὣς νήπια βάζεις.
ἦ μὲν δὴ νῶι ξεινήια πολλὰ φαγόντε
ἄλλων ἀνθρώπων δεῦρ᾽ ἱκόμεθ᾽, αἴ κέ ποθι Ζεὺς
35ἐξοπίσω περ παύσῃ ὀιζύος. ἀλλὰ λύ᾽ ἵππους
ξείνων, ἐς δ᾽ αὐτοὺς προτέρω ἄγε θοινηθῆναι."
Blond Menelaus became very upset and reprimanded him:
"You were never so immature, "Eteoneus, son of Boethos,
before, but now you speak nonsense like a child.
We two have stayed and ate many times at homes
of other men before we returned here, where we hope that Zeus will
grant us a peaceful end to our pains. But unbridle the horses
of the guests and lead them forward inside, to be entertained at the feast."
Homer, Odyssey IV 36
So much for "Doine (Δοινε – θοινε)", in other words:
Thoinao / θοινάω : aorist passive infinitive: thoithinai / θοινηθῆναι - "to be entertained at the feast", Georg Autenrieth, Homeric Dictionary
Now it gets better. There seems to be an obsession brewing here, regarding the "Doi´: DOIne, DOImater, even ΔOIνε and ΘΟΙνε, anything as long as all the roads lead to Doi:
"Again according to Homer, when the goddess Demeter came to earth to search for her daughter she used the name Doi."
Ok, here is another awkward moment…and we will try to be as politically sensitive as we can, so here is the short answer:
There is NOWHERE in the Iliad and Odyssey where the story of Demetra and Persephone is even mentioned! It simply NEVER comes up!
There are a few mentions of Demetra in both Iliad and Odyssey, but in all cases they are simple mentions, nothing about the abduction myth, and for sure nothing about an imaginary Doi name…!
οὐδ᾽ ὅτε Δήμητρος καλλιπλοκάμοιο ἀνάσσης,
I loved the queen Demeter of the lovely tresses."
Homer, Iliad XIV.326
ὡς δ᾽ ἄνεμος ἄχνας φορέει ἱερὰς κατ᾽ ἀλωὰς
500ἀνδρῶν λικμώντων, ὅτε τε ξανθὴ Δημήτηρ
κρίνῃ ἐπειγομένων ἀνέμων καρπόν τε καὶ ἄχνας,
αἳ δ᾽ ὑπολευκαίνονται ἀχυρμιαί: ὣς τότ᾽ Ἀχαιοὶ
λευκοὶ ὕπερθε γένοντο κονισάλῳ, ὅν ῥα δι᾽ αὐτῶν
οὐρανὸν ἐς πολύχαλκον ἐπέπληγον πόδες ἵππων
505ἂψ ἐπιμισγομένων: ὑπὸ δ᾽ ἔστρεφον ἡνιοχῆες.
οἳ δὲ μένος χειρῶν ἰθὺς φέρον:
As the breezes sport with the chaff upon some goodly threshing-floor, when men are winnowing - while yellow Demeter blows with the wind to sift the chaff from the grain, and the chaff- heaps grow whiter and whiter - even so did the Achaeans whiten in the dust which the horses' hoofs raised to the firmament of heaven, as their drivers turned them back to battle, and they bore down with might upon the foe.
Homer, Iliad V.499-502
ὣς δ᾽ ὁπότ᾽ Ἰασίωνι ἐυπλόκαμος Δημήτηρ,
ᾧ θυμῷ εἴξασα, μίγη φιλότητι καὶ εὐνῇ
νειῷ ἔνι τριπόλῳ: οὐδὲ δὴν ἦεν ἄπυστος
Ζεύς, ὅς μιν κατέπεφνε βαλὼν ἀργῆτι κεραυνῷ.
So it was when Demeter of the braided tresses followed her heart and lay in love with Iasion in the triple-furrowed field; Zeus was aware of it soon enough and hurled the bright thunderbolt and killed him."
Homer, Odyssey V.125
Homer, Odyssey V.125
The Iliad and the Odyssey are the only poems universally attributed to Homer. But maybe Mr. Belshevsky meant to include the Homeric Hymns in the mix, thinking that they were also written by Homer, though they are much later...Maybe it is in the two Homeric Hymns to Demetra that Odisej Belchevski found that "Again according to Homer, when the goddess Demeter came to earth to search for her daughter she used the name Doi"?
We needed to find out, so I read the Hymns and I underlined every single instance where Demetra´s name is mentioned, even periphrasticaly. I had to spend a long time doing this, so here is the list:
HOMERIC HYMN to DEMETRA / ΕΙΣ ΔΗΜΗΤΡΑΝ - Greek epic, 7th cBC
Δήμητρ' ἠύκομον / Demeter with the beautiful hair,
Δήμητρος χρυσαόρου / Demeter of the golden double-axe, ,
πότνια μήτηρ / Lady Mother,
πότνια Δημήτηρ / Lady Mother Demeter,
Δήμητερ Άνασσα / Demeter Queen,
Δωσὼ ἐμοί γ' ὄνομ' ἐστί: τὸ γὰρ θέτο πότνια μήτηρ / Dôsô (a giver of gifts) is my name. It was given to me by my honored mother.
Δημήτηρ ὡρηφόρος, ἀγλαόδωρος / Demeter bringer of hôrai lady resplendent with gifts
δεξαμένη δ' ὁσίης ἕνεκεν πολυπότνια Δηώ / The Lady known far and wide as Dêô (M.B. meaning: earthy) accepted it, for the sake of the hosia
καλλιστέφανος Δημήτηρ / Demeter, with the beautiful garlands in her hair,
Δημήτηρ τιμάοχος / Demeter the holder of tîmai.
ἠυκόμῳ Δημήτερι / of Demeter with the beautiful hair
ξανθὴ Δημήτηρ / blond-haired Demeter
ἐυστέφανος Δημήτηρ / Demeter with the beautiful garlands in her hair
Δημήτερα κυανόπεπλον / Demeter with the blue garment
Δημήτερι κυανοπέπλῳ / to Demeter with the blue garment
Δήμητερ / Demeter
πότνια, ἀγλαόδωρ', ὡρηφόρε, Δηοῖ ἄνασσα /
lady, resplendent with gifts, bringer of hôrai, Dêô (M.B. meaning: earthy) queen
Δημήτερος / of Demeter
As suspected, and unfortunately for the wannabe "scholar" and self proclaimed "researcher", "according to Homer, when the goddess Demeter came to earth to search for her daughter she" NEVER "used the name Doi!"
Now, let us find out why this "Macedonian Language Researcher" needed so desperately to find a "doi" and when he could not find it, he decided to invent it in the Greek texts, and this is why he never referenced his sources. After all, he is preaching to the converted…how many of his naïve Slavomacedonian youth reading his articles know Greek or even if they do, how many would be willing to do the tedious research to prove him a fraud? So, he continues:
"There is also one important fact that I would like to mention at this point. According to one Macedonian tradition, which by the way is still practiced to this day in remote parts of (Note: ex-Yugoslav, Slavo-)Macedonia, there is a chant attributed to Doi that goes something like this;
"Doi - dole - Doidule
Dozhdo da zavrne
Da na doi zemlata"
These are actual words chanted to the rain goddess asking her to make it rain (Dos and Dozd) so that the earth can be nourished and the crops will grow and bear fruit."
That is admittedly a nice song, and this is where the Slavomacedonians should look into, to find their true roots, in their own Slavonic culture and not in the legacy of their neighbors, creating racist hatred and ethnic tension on the way. So, I would like to answer with a Greek answer to Doi - dole – Doidule, this one not in the lest related to rain or agriculture:
Ντίλι-ντίλι-ντίλι,
ντίλι το καντήλι
που έφεγγε και κένταγε
η κόρη το μαντίλι,
ντίλι-ντίλι-ντίλι.
Dili Dili Dili
Dili the candle-li
that shone light for a
girl to stitch a hankie-dili
Dili dili dili
The dili dili song continues on with oil, a mouse, a cat, a dog, water, fire, etc entering the dili dili rope of events: it is an amusing children´s song that has absolutely nothing to do with Demetra and Macedonia, and in this way it is as relevant to both as Odisej Belchevski´s "research".
He had promised in the beginning of his article that "the information contained in this article is not of mythical or imagined content but is very real, which the reader should find exciting and interesting". The only exciting and interesting item found on it, was arguably the Doi - dole – Doidule song, and in all honesty it was far superior in mythical and imaginary content than his fabricated linguistics:
"DEITY NAME – GREEK or ROMAN: Doimater (Demeter), Doi, Dos, Δοσ, Δοι
ATTRIBUTES:
"MACEDONIAN" or SLAVONIC: Doi Dos Nourishing
ENGLISH: Nourishing, Feeding, Rain
GREEK: Theripticos…"(?)(!)
(Th-ERI-pticos has no meaning in Greek. I suppose what he meant to write was Th-RE-ptikos – θρεπτικός, but, as usually, he spelled it wrong again…we are getting used to this rather un-"scholarly" sloppiness by now…)
To stay closer to the truth, this is how it could have been written:
DEITY NAME – GREEK: Δαμάτηρ / Damater
ATTRIBUTES: Goddess of agriculture
INDO-EUROPEAN ROOT: *dheghom + *mater
ENGLISH COGNATES: Timber, Domesticated, Mother, Material, Metropolis
SKOPJE SLAVOMACEDONIAN COGNATE WORD: Дом, Мајка, Zemja
OTHER COGNATES: Old Indian dama-h, Old Church Slavic domъ, Albanian dhoma, Old English Timber, Dutch Moeder, Old German Modar, Tocharian B tem-, A tam-, Lithuanian nãmas (*ndãmas)
ANCIENT GREEK COGNATES: Demeter/Δημήτηρ, Domater/Δωμάτηρ, Demetra/Δήμητρα, Deo/Δηώ, Dmos/Δμώς, Demetrios/Δημήτριος, Doma/Δώμα, Μήτρα /Metra, Meter /Μήτηρ, Mater /Μάτηρ, Metropolis/Μητρόπολις
MODERN GREEK: Demetra /Δήμητρα, Demetriaka /Δημητριακά, Demetrios /Δημήτριος, Doma/Δώμα, Domikos /Δομικός, Apodomisi /Αποδομηση, Anadomisi /Αναδομηση, Domokataskeyastikos / Δομοκατασκευαστικός, Μητρικό /Metriko, Μητρότητα /Metroteta, Μήτρα /Metra, Metera /Μητέρα, Metropolis/Μητρόπολις
This is not enough to abate this "scholar", so he continues:
"The names of these Deities are interconnected in a most amazing functional conception. In fact they exist together in harmony in the (Slavo-)Macedonian language today just as they always existed in nature. They are inseparable. If we separate them their meaning will be lost."
And besides Zemja, Zemla, the Earth, whose cognates and explanation we gave above, he also presents the world with such profound Skopjan agro-linguistics as the following:
"Now let´s review the characteristics and basic concepts associated with the earth.
The Earth has two main attributes:
1. It is able to bear fruit => Fruitfulness
2. Richness of the Soil => Plod => Pluto
Only a fruitful earth will bear "agricultural riches" associated with the god Pluto.
The word Pluto is closely related to the (Slavo-)Macedonian word Plod or Plodo. In older versions of the Slavonic languages the letters and sounds of o and u were interchangeable. This is significant because if we replace the current letter ´o´ with ´u´, we obtain Pludo. By the way, it is important to mention here that Pluto´s original name, or more precisely, one of Pluto´s older names is "Ploto"."
The question immediately arises, Why don´t we make his name Pludu? Or Pudlu and make a poodle out of Pluto. That could go a long way in explaining why Walt Disney made a dog out of him.
"The word Plodo is part of a very large family of words many of which are functionally related in a language concept.
The earth contains all the ingredients and ability to nourish life which is planted into it. This is reflected and expressed in the words "Plodna Zemja" or "fruitful earth" .This only happens when the earth´s two attributes "fruitfulness and richness of soil" come together."
I would suggest that before we start making outlandish connections with linguistic and unhistorical pigs in the sky, a more prudent approach would be to keep a closer attachment to mother earth and understand what is obvious, and within our reach.
First of all, if someone comes forward and claim that "By the way, it is important to mention here that Pluto´s original name, or more precisely, one of Pluto´s older names is "Ploto"", he also needs to have some reference to back it up.
My theory is that Pluto is actually from Pluto, the planet, where it is well known that the local aliens speak Chinese. His name comes from 扑 - pu= dedicate energy, because you cannot become rich unless you work hard, 流 - liú = to flow, to spread, to circulate, and a good way to become rich is to circulate products, and of course 桶 - tong = pail, bucket which is how you carry your products to the market place, in Chinese Pluto at least, using double buckets balanced on a stick and carried on their back.
扑流桶 pu - liú – tong is, therefore, the original name for Pluto. He was sent from planet Pluto, on a reconnaissance mission to check on the American base of Bondsteel, and he was dropped off in Skopje. Once there, the Proto-Slavonic Makedonci changed his name to Plodo, since U and O are interchangeable, so he became Plodo, spelled 潑 - po 流 – liú 桶 - tong the traveling merchant from Pluto. 潑 – po means, to springle, to spread, and that goes well with流 – liú, to flow and 桶 – tong the bucket. This is why Puliutong-Pluto the merchant became Poliutong the farmer, or something like that, I am not so sure. For sure he became a famous Makedonskiot God and the Gruevski administration is preparing a huge bronze statue for him, to be placed in Skopje along with other famous Makedonci like Aleksandar Velikiot, the great protoslavic czar, whom others (have been obviously been bribed by the Greeks) still call Alexander the Great.
Someone would ask: where is your back up for this theory? Where are your references? I would feel insulted. Why would someone need historical or other documentary references? What kind references? If the Slavs and Albanians from Skopje can claim that they are Macedonians, and their impoverished Balkan nation is spending millions of euros of money it does not have on an Italian buying spree of statues of ancient Macedonian Greek kings, just to "prove" that they are Macedonians, and if a horde of Skopjan pseudo-scholars, most of whom have never seen the gate of a university, come to the defense of their ultra-nationalist BIG LIE armed with ludicrous fraudulent pseudo-historical and pseudo-linguistic fictions, then why do I need a proof for my Chinese speaking Pluto in Skopje who is Plodo the Makedonskiot from Pluto?
Until I work out the kinks in that theory, let´s go back to the earth for now, and to reality. We were told that the name of the ancient Greek god Pluto comes from Slavonic linguistic roots:
" Richness of the Soil => Plod => Pluto"
Since Pluto (Πλούτων / Plouton for the Greeks), had been worshiped for 1500 to 2000 years before any Slavs were ever attested in the lower Balkans, then Odisej Belshevski´s theory is as credible as the derivation of his name from 潑流桶 po-liú- tong, or even from 扑流桶 pu-liú-tong.
One thing that is apparent, checking on the Slavic language family is that all the Slavs from Russia to Poland and from Czeck to Bulgaria have the same word for fruit: Plod, plod, плoд, płod, плодъ. Words derived from the Latin fructus / fruit also abound but they are later loanwords.
Plod, plod, плoд, płód, плодъ is most definately Slavic, derived from the proto-Slavic *plodъ. The Slavic and Baltic languages were ate some point in their development the same language, but when we look at how the remaining Baltic languages name their fruit, Latvian - Auglis and Lithuanian – Vaisius, it becomes obvious that the Slavonic plod is a fairly „recent" innovation, in the AD era, or a little earlier, but for sure before the Slavic tribes split up arround the 5th cAD.
The Polish have the word Płodność indicating fertility, the Ukranians Plodonosnist / Πлодоносність and Plodovitist / Πлодовитість, the Russians Plodorodne / Плодородие and the Czecks Plodnost, the Croatians, the Serbs and the Slavomacedonians also Plodnost /Плодност.
I do not need to make a case for the similarity of fruit and fertility, I believe it is obvious. What is also obvious is that while in some languages, as in Russian, it indicates more the fertility of land, in other Slavic languages it narrowed down to the fertility of a female person or animal.
What is rather surprising is to find out where this word comes from. Land is productive only through cultivation and the main tool for land cultivation is the plow. There are a several words for the plow. One of them is derived from the Indo-European root *ghel - plow, plough. This is a very widespread word. All the Slavs use it: Polish: Pług, Czeck and Slovak: Pluh, Serbo-Croatian: Plug / Плуг, Russian and Bulgarian also Russian, Bulgarian: Плуг / Plug.
Proto-German: *plogaz and *ploguz gives us the Norwegian: Plog, the German: Pflug, Danish: Plov, Scottish: Pleuch and finally English: plough or American: plow.
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| Pług-Плуг-Pluh-Plug-Plog--Plūgas-Pflug-Plov-Pleuch |
In between the Germans and the Slavs there is Baltic Lithuanian: Plūgas. The Balts, unlike the Slavs, do not use this word to form neither fruit nor fertility.
Incidentally, a small fertile piece of land that someone would use to grow their vegetables, is called a plot, in English, that lost its "p" at some point to indicate just any measured piece of land, a real estate lot. When you need to sell that lot you get a plat of survey. To make a plat of survey, the surveyor puts sticks at the defining corners of the lot or plot and then he plots the distances between them onto a paper. This is also how plotting numbers onto a graph paper started, by the act of putting sticks or placing stones defining the ownership line of the lot of land, more specifically the arable plot or plow-able land. As for the final stroke, whether we like it or not, we all have a cemetery plot waiting for us, somewhere.
To make this connection with the plough even more apparent, we need to remember a rarely used English word, a cognate of the Slavonic plod but with a differtent meaning altogether: Plod means to walk slowly, heavily and laboriously and it also means to trudge though, which makes it obvious that this word is replicating the action of a farmer walking in the mud and the freshly plowed land behind the plough / plow.
The word for plough in Greek is arotron, a word we explored when speaking or Heracles Arotos (http://macedonianissues.blogspot.com/2010/06/macedonian-names-and-makedonski-pseudo_28.html)
Ploutos /Πλούτος was the son of Demetra and Iasion a Healer deity as his name indicates, and he was the god of wealth. Sometimes Ploutos /Πλούτος and Plouton / Πλούτων are intermixed. He was the personification of the corn of wheat and barley that flowed into the farmer´s storage rooms after the harvest. It comes from the Indo-European root *plou-to, to flow (Calver Watkins, The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots, 2000). Interestingly, there is also a nymph, named Plouto / Πλουτώ one of the Oceanic nymphs (Ωκεανίδες Νύμφες), a daughter, according to some, of Oceanos / Ωκεανός and Tethya / Τηθύα. She was keeping company to Demetra the months Persephone was in the underworld.
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| No sign of "Plodo" anywhere... |
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| Ploutonion, in Eleusis, by Athens, the cave through which Plouton entered the underworld when he abducted Persephone. |
Mr. Belshevski of course lost no time in deciphering it with a Slavonic etymology:
"It is important at this point to mention that Persephone, Demeter´s daughter was also known by an older name as "Preseffeta" which in Macedonian means "to bloom". As we know all living plants bloom in the spring when Persephone is released by Hades and returns to the surface."
The fact that none of the names of Persephone was ever "Preseffeta", is of course immaterial. He found a word in Slavomacedonian that sounded like "Persephone", then made her be just that. My immediate reaction seeing the name is to answer with "Precisefeta, derived from "precise" + "feta", from the "precise" methods used in producing the "feta" cheese"! I am wondering...how are we doing so far following Skopjan "etymological" methods?
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| Couple of Female fertility figures from Neolithic Greece. Potniai? |
"Pe-re-swa is mentioned on another Pylos tablet (Un6), where she receives along with Poseidon , an offering of a cow, a ewe, a boar and a sow, the same three species of animal sacrificed in the old Roman of the Suouetaurilia. Her name might be reconstructed as Preswa which vaguely recalls the first element of Persephone, the Queen of Hades."
And further down:
"A new tablet in Thebes speaks of a dedication "to the house of Potnia" without further qualification; here it may be relevant that in later times there was a district just outside Thebes called potniai, Ladies: in the plural.
These Potniai were understood by the classical Greeks as Demeter and Persephone, who became the Queen of Hades; that is to say, they continued, in different aspects, the pre-hellenic cult of the Earth Mother, which is so abundantly attested by figurines and pictures of all kinds throughout the Bronze Age."
John Chadwick , The Mycenaean World, 1976
We are moving gears now and we go down from a Cambridge scholar to a "contemporary scholar":
"And now let´s look at Hades, the god of the underworld and his relationship to the natural world.
Ghades – Hades"
We are immediately struck, by Ghades, and we stop right there…where on earth, where on an inscription, where on a literary or any other kind of document did Odisej Belchevski find Hades´ name written as "Ghades"? We urgently need to see it! The man is trailblazing through ancient mythology and he obviously has more documentation that the rest of the world academic community of classical scholars put together…and he is not sharing his sources; he guards his references tightly, refusing to enlighten them!
"We all know that during the winter months in the world where the climate is moderate the earth freezes and loses its ability to bear fruit. In other words, Doimater or Demeter [note: pseudo-association #1] "cuts off the fruitfulness, richness and gift of the soil" as Pluto (Plodo) [note: pseudo-association #2], the richness of the soil escapes into the underworld and becomes his brother Hades (Ghades) [note: pseudo-association #3].
We already talked about the imaginary "Doimater" and the imaginary "Plodo". It is time now to be introduced to "Plodo"´s brother, "Ghades".
It is beautiful to have such a broad poetic license and create characters at will. Hollywood pays big money for just that, and Mr. Belchevski is totally wasting his time writing this kind of worthless pseudo-makedonist fables, if someone asked me. He obviously has a talent in creating parallel universes, and the proof is in Doimater, the rainy girl, Plodo, the fertility boy, and now Ghades the snake man! Ghades is, incidentally, a brother of Plodo. For the ancient Greeks Hades and Pluto were the same person, different names of the same god, but, using his poetic license Mr. Belshevski simply invented a new Mythology, he splits him in half and makes two brothers out of one divine man. This is creative writing, if you ask me…fertility in action:
"Pluto (Plodo), the richness of the soil escapes into the underworld and becomes his brother Hades (Ghades)"
…only in Skopjan mythology can something like this happen so effortlessly: Pluto becomes "Plodo", Hades becomes "Ghades", then Hades-Pluto, god of the underworld is split like an amoeba and becomes the two separate "Ghades" and "Plodo". Why does he have to do this? We can only assume that since the Slavomacedonian etymologies he came up with were contradicting with each other, so the only solution was to separate them…but not too much…hence the two parts became brothers! I would say, once you make Slavs out of the ancient Macedonians, who were flesh and blood real people that left us their Greek language and civilization and thousands of Greek inscriptions to read and understand them, making a split between the imaginary Plodo and his alter ego imaginary Ghades is child´s play!
"Ghades", we are told, "is a unique Slavonic word that does not exist in any other European language. In most Slavonic cultures, the word Ghades is associated with the snake but in (Yugoslav-)Macedonian it could also mean something bad, unpleasant, terrible, undesirable, or slimy.
Ghad
Ghadeno
Ghadesh
Se ghadi"
Γадъ / (gadŭ) is an Old Church Slavonic (ст.-слав - OCS) word that means snake, reptile or a creeping animal in general. In Greek it is ἑρπετόν / herpeton, from έρπω/herpo, to crawl, an unrelated word.
From гадъ, it developed into Russian: "гад/gad", Ukranian: "гад/gad", Belorussian: "гад/gad", Bulgarian: "гад/gad", Serbocroatian: "гад/gad", Slovenian: "gàd - gáda", Czech and Slovak "had" - "hadi", Polish "gad", "waz" and "żadzić".
In the related Baltic branch we also find the distantly related Lithuanian: "gė́da" - "gyvatės" and the Old Prussian "gīdan", which means that this was a common word in the old Balto-Slavic branch, and therefore, by Slavic standards, a very old word (before AD).
While the original meaning is that of a snake or a reptile, in some modern languages it has changed its meaning, and in Serbo-Croatian or Slavomacedonian for example it can simply mean a "repulsive person", a "scoundrel", basically an "asshole". The word has also entered the English language as "cad", whose Oxford English Dictionary definition is that of "an ill-bred person; a vulgar."
Our immediate question is now this: How is it that an ancient Greek god took his name from the imaginary Slavonic Macedonians of 3 or 4 thousand years ago, when they themselves are not even using this word in its proper usage but only metaphorically? And if Hades is not a "Macedonian" deity name, then, based on Mr. Belshevski´s "analysis" we deduct that it surely must be a Lithuanian, Old Prussian, or even Polish or Russian god. That would not go well with the title of his article: "Classical Mythology Explained With The Use of Macedonian Vocabulary".
Polish, Lithuanian or Russian, such a god must have left his traces in the Balto-Slavonic Mythology pantheon. Did the Slavs even have a Hades deity? Or, even a fake "Ghades" one?
The answer is No, and is very simple: The Slavs already had a god of their own…they did not need the gods of the Greeks to express their religious gratitude to the deities of fertility and agriculture. And that god for sure was not Mr. Belchevski´s imaginary "Ghades"; nor his imaginary "brother" "Plodo"! It was not even the divine couple of Persephone and Hades-Plouton, either.
They were not needed: The Slavs had their own agricultural and fertility deities and they did not need to borrow anything from anyone: they had, among others, Veles/Велес/Weles and Yarilo/Ярило/Jarilo, also spelled as Јарило or Jaryło!
Veles is a chthonian god, protector of shepherds and waters and land. His name survives in southern Yugoslavia, in the name of the city of Veles in former Yugoslav Makedonija, not far from Skopje. Before the decent of the Slavs into the Balkans, it was called Bylazora / Βυλαζώρα, and it was the ancient capital of the Paionians, before the Macedonians conquered and Hellenized it. It is probable that the Slavs changed Bylazora's name (or whatever what left of it, probably not much, to something that sounded more familiar, to the name of their beloved god, Veles.
Jarilo is also chthonian fertility deity, of spring and harvest. He became Veles son in law, by marrying Veles´ daughter, Morana a goddess of death, vegitation and nature, though others mention the controvertial (a recent invention?) Lada as his partner.
In "The Oxford companion to world Mythology", we read one of these versions:
" A Slavic God of particular importance to the eventual emergence of Christianity was Jarilo (Iarilo), a Dionyssos-like god of youth, and spring wearing a crown of flowers. This was the Slavic version of Adonis-Dionyssos-Balder, the dying and resurrected god of fertility."
David Adams Leeming, Oxford University Press, 2005.
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| Modern Slavic girls joyfully reveling by Jarilo's effigy |
Whether Lada was a real or a fake, fairly recently invented, deity is not as important to our discussion here. Jarilo was very much a real god to the Slavs, an agricultural "life-death-rebirth" deity of harvest whose position as a winter guest to the chthonian abode of Veles is reminiscent of Persephone and Pluto.
Jarilo´s name is derived from the Slavic root (actually an Iranian loanword into Slavonic) Jar/Яр, meaning to be active, to activate. After the adoption of Christinanity by the Slavs, Jarilo became identified with St. George, on whose day the Jarilo festivals were being celebrated till recently in Russia, Serbia, Belorussia, Croatia and Slovenia. His resurrection made him also identified with Lazaros, and songs were sung on his name. Today, a tractor factory in Ukraine is building Ярило/ Jarilo tractors for farmers worldwide, and a traditional Kvas drink (the traditional Russian answer to coca cola) is named after him in Russia. Finally, in the Slavic cultural rebirth that is currently occurring in many Slavic countries, Ярило pagan groups are springing up which openly celebrate the pre-Christian Slavic cultural traditions while Arkona, a Russian band has dedicated a song to his name: http://www.videosurf.com/evideo/2_SY0szD2fRfw
Leaving the beautiful Slavic Mythology and fables for a moment, we turn our attention to Hades.
Despite Odisej Belchevski´s pronouncements that Hades was "Ghades", there is not a billion in one chances that he would ever be able to produce an inscription or a literary piece of work that would corroborate with his spelling of Hades. The only words that I can find in my largest Liddell & Scott dictionary in Greek words that start with these letters are only three two of them very dialectical and rare: γαδή/gade, a wooden box, probably a variant of κάδος/kados, a vessel, then γάδος/gados, the name of a fish and finally γάδαρος/gadaros, a donkey, a word we still use in modern Greek. No mention anywhere of anything remotely connected with snakes or other slimy creatures, pseudo-macedonian (PS: not even στέφωφ/stefof, though στέφανος/stephanos was there, meaning crown or wreath, a beautifull word indeed) or other kind.
While Hades is the name that became prevalent in later antiquity, the original name of Hades was Haides.
To know this you need to be able to read Greek, so this should not be a problem for Odisej who, in the beginning of his article told us that "It is also essential that we have a good knowledge of the old Macedonian languages, Koine and Slavonic."
The text below is not Koine, it is in the Ionian dialect, five centuries before Koine, but the alphabet is identical, so anyone who can read any Greek, even modern one, can follow it.
It is from a familiar text, the one we already visited above, the Hymn to Demeter.
75
Ῥείης ἠυκόμου θύγατερ, Δήμητερ ἄνασσα,
εἰδήσεις: δὴ γὰρ μέγα σ' ἅζομαι ἠδ' ἐλεαίρω
ἀχνυμένην περὶ παιδὶ τανυσφύρῳ: οὐδέ τις ἄλλος
αἴτιος ἀθανάτων, εἰ μὴ νεφεληγερέτα Ζεύς,
ὅς μιν ἔδωκ' Ἀίδῃ θαλερὴν κεκλῆσθαι ἄκοιτιν
αὐτοκασιγνήτῳ: ὃ δ' ὑπὸ ζόφον ἠερόεντα
ἁρπάξας ἵπποισιν ἄγεν μεγάλα ἰάχουσαν.
ἀλλά, θεά, κατάπαυε μέγαν γόον: οὐδέ τί σε χρὴ
μὰψ αὔτως ἄπλητον ἔχειν χόλον: οὔ τοι ἀεικὴς
γαμβρὸς ἐν ἀθανάτοις Πολυσημάντωρ Ἀιδωνεύς,
(Aïdōneus, lengthened Epic Greek form of Aïdēs or Hāidēs, The Unseen One)
On the fifth line, the fourth word is Ἀίδῃ/Aidei. This is dative declension, which in the English text below it is translated as "to Hades". The same name in nominative is Ἀίδης/Aides. If it was Hades it would be written as: ᾍδης, without the line below the A. That little line is an hypogegrammene (under-written), which shows that it used to be an "ι" after the A, but its pronunciation fell out of use by the time the text was coppied down. The English text cannot possibly render these small but important details, and it does not need to, anyway. Further down the text, on the last line, we look at the last word, and it is Ἀιδωνεύς/Aidoneus. Once again the English translation simply translates it as Hades. As the note indicates: Aïdōneus was a lengthened Epic Greek form of Aïdēs or Hāidēs, the Unseen One.
75 "Daughter of Rhea with the beautiful hair, Queen Demeter!
You shall know the answer, for I greatly respect you and feel sorry for you
as you grieve over your child, the one with the delicate ankles. No one else
among all the immortals is responsible except the cloud-gatherer Zeus himself,
who gave her to Hadês as his beautiful wife.
So he gave her to his own brother. And he, heading for the misty realms of darkness,
80 seized her as he drove his chariot and as she screamed out loud.
But I urge you, goddess: stop your loud cry of lamentation: you should not
have an anger without bounds, all in vain. It is not unseemly
to have, of all the immortals, such a son-in-law as Hadês, the one who makes many
sêmata.
In modern Greek, as of the 1980´s most of the signs have gone out use, except for a basic accent the "oxya", which only indicates the tone: Άδης takes an accent on the α, Αίδης on the ι, and Αιδής on the η. The ancient Greek system is more complicated but it served its purpose for the proper pronunciation of the Greek word and it became necessary once Greek became an international language after the conquests of Alexander the Great. It was the Alexandrian Greeks in Egypt that devised the system and it came to characterize Hellenike Koine, the Common Greek.
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| The "Persephone crater" from the Antikensammlung Museum in Berlin. Note the spelling of both names. |
The name that is written in Latin letters as Hades can come in Greek in these forms:
In Modern Greek: Άδης (accent on A).
In ancient Greek: ᾍδης / Háides (accent on A),, Ἅιδης / Haides (accent on A), Άΐδης / Haides (accent on i).
But also: Ἀΐδης / Aides (Homer - accent on A), and Ἀΐδας / Aidas (Aeolic and Doric - (accent on A) and even Ἀιδωνεύς/Aidoneus (accent on u).
The etymology of the name is obvious to someone that understands Greek:
The orifinal was *ἀ-Fίδας. The first part is the negating "a", the "alpha steretikon", alpha privative (ἀ-, un-), a prefix which roughly corresponds to the English prefix "un-", and indicates negativeness - "not-".
The second part is from the root Fίδ- / Wid- and the verb ἰδεῖν/idein "to see", which in ancient times was Fιδεῖν / Widein. It is a cognate of the Latin-derived word "video", and both are derived from the Indo-European root *weid-. The English word Wit and the Sanskrit Veda join Video in the group of words. The Hindu Vedes are the books that show knowledge to the one that reads them, we show wit when we have true knowledge and we all watch video to see movies.
Another cognate is the Greek oίδα/oida, to know. When Socrates said "I know one thing that I know nothing", this was the word that he used:
"ἓν οἶδα ὅτι οὐδὲν οἶδα" / "hen oida hoti ouden oida"
The man who said that also happened to have his own opinion of the matter:
[404β] Σωκράτης
καὶ τό γε ὄνομα ὁ "Ἅιδης," ὦ Ἑρμόγενες, πολλοῦ δεῖ ἀπὸ τοῦ ἀιδοῦς ἐπωνομάσθαι, ἀλλὰ πολὺ μᾶλλον ἀπὸ τοῦ πάντα τὰ καλὰ εἰδέναι, ἀπὸ τούτου ὑπὸ τοῦ νομοθέτου "Ἅιδης" ἐκλήθη.
[404b] Socrates: And the name "Hades" is not in the least derived from the invisible (ἀειδές), but far more probably from knowing (εἰδέναι) all noble things, and for that reason he was called Hades by the lawgiver.
Plato, Cratylos, 404b
Socrates may have invented the Socratic method and opened the horizons of Philosophy for the world but his linguistic analysis was simply lacking. In the fifth cBC people had not invented grammar or syntax yet, and for sure the linguistic tools at their disposal were pitifully limited. One thing is obvious from this quote: whether he disagreed with it or not, Socrates´ testimony clearly reveals to us what the Greeks of his day thought of the etymology of Hades´ name. It most certainly did not include any proto-Slavic Γадъ / (gadŭ) slimy reptiles! Socrates´ conviction that "the name "Hades" is not in the least derived from the invisible (ἀειδές)", confirms the widely accepted etymology of the Greeks of his time, and that etymology is still accepted by modern linguists as correct now.
*ἀ-Fίδας means un-seen, out of view, unapproachable. It is a name that fits perfectly the god of the netherworld that never sees the light of day and that nobody can see, unless they die.
ᾍδης /Ha(i)des, Ἅιδης /Haides, Άΐδης /Haides, Ἀΐδης /Aides, Ἀΐδας /Aidas, Ἀιδωνεύς/Aidoneus and *ἀ-Fίδας, all of them (unlike Persephonee, where each name can take a different etymology), I repeat, ALL mean the same thing: the Unseen One, the Invisible.
Homer describes him as the ἄναξ ἐνέρων / king of the shadows. Aidoneus / Ἀϊδωνεύς / Hades lept up and he was seized by fear when his brother Poseidon, god of the sea and earthquakes, threatened to break the earth open and his οἰκία / home for θνητοῖσι καὶ ἀθανάτοισι / mortals and immortals would be revealed and seen, φανείη / phaneie.
καὶ κορυφαί, Τρώων τε πόλις καὶ νῆες Ἀχαιῶν.
ἔδεισεν δ᾽ ὑπένερθεν ἄναξ ἐνέρων Ἀϊδωνεύς,
δείσας δ᾽ ἐκ θρόνου ἆλτο καὶ ἴαχε, μή οἱ ὕπερθε
γαῖαν ἀναρρήξειε Ποσειδάων ἐνοσίχθων,
οἰκία δὲ θνητοῖσι καὶ ἀθανάτοισι φανείη
65σμερδαλέ᾽ εὐρώεντα, τά τε στυγέουσι θεοί περ:
[60] and all her peaks, and the city of the Trojans, and the ships of the Achaeans. And seized with fear in the world below was Aidoneus, lord of the shades, and in fear leapt he from his throne and cried aloud, lest above him the earth be cloven by Poseidon, the Shaker of Earth, and his abode be made plain to view for mortals and immortals- [65] the dread and dank abode, wherefor the very gods have loathing:
Homer XX 60-65
τὸν μὲν Ἄρης ἐνάριζε μιαιφόνος: αὐτὰρ Ἀθήνη
845δῦν᾽ Ἄϊδος κυνέην, μή μιν ἴδοι ὄβριμος Ἄρης. (Ἄϊδος /Aidos)
but Athene [845] put on the cap of Hades,
to the end that mighty Ares should not see her.
Iliad V-845
Ἄϊδος κυνέη: νέφος τι σκότους - a cloud of darkness, explains Hesechios in his "Lexicon", a cloud that covered the person wearing Hades´ cup making that person, divine or mortal, unseen and invisible, like ᾍδης /Ha(i)des, Ἅιδης /Haides, Άΐδης /Haides, Ἀΐδης /Aides, Ἀΐδας /Aidas, Ἀιδωνεύς/Aidoneus himself.
At the end of his article, its author wrote the following: "All rights in using or propagating this material are strictly reserved by the author, Odyssey Belchevsky."
He could have used another word, but he chose to say propagate, "propagating this material". I thought this was a research paper, by a scholar who identifies himself as a "Macedonian Language Researcher". I had not realized I was wasting my time with mere propaganda "material"!...
Propaganda is one thing…you follow Joseph Goebels and you create the BIG LIE. The Bigger the lie the easier it will be believed by the ignorant many.
If, on the other hand you want to do research, then by all means do research: start with a clean slate, check your sources, be meticulous and above all, serve the truth, whatever that truth may be, even if it means a reconsideration of your initial assumptions. If, on the other hand you sit down to write fables in support of a cause, whatever that cause may be, the least you should do is to avoid calling it research, call it state sponsored propaganda, call it history falsification, call it simply just another failed Skopjan attempt to link the Slavic speaking inhabitants of the Former Yugoslav republic in Skopje to the legacy of the ancient Greek Macedonians, and all that by inventing fraudulent data that will collaborate with your pre-determined results; anything, but research! But the Big Lie trick, unfortunately, always works!
None other than the president of the Israeli Kneset, a man who, by all accounts should not be included among the ignorant hoi polloi, on welcoming his counterpart from Yugoslav Makedonija – FYROM, informed him that he was "the first Macedonian ever to step foot on Israel", except for Alexander the Great…If that was not a low moment for the Israeli educational system, that produced such an historically ignorant politician, then I do not know what to call it. And we are not talking about some Oceanic island in the middle of the Pasific that never heard of Greeks or Alexander the Great…Greek presence is still felt in Jerusalem and in many smaller towns, and all the mosaics found in Israel are written in Greek…yet he equated the Bugarski-speaking Skopjan visitor with Alexander´s Macedonians. This shows how far international opinion has been poisoned by such nonsense as the one we tackled above. A fake theory, a Guebelian Big Lie, supported by nonsense and fraudulent practices, when repeatedly pounded time and again into the brains of unsuspecting listeners eventually wins the day. The criminaly fraudulent history falsification perpetrated by Skopjan pseudo-Makedonists needs to be exposed for the hoax it is. Deception can only last for as long as nobody cares to check their ID, their historical and linguistic "credentials" their roots and sources, to unravel the modern pseudo-Makedonian scam.
Skopjan ultra-nationalists scream "We are Macedonians! You have no right to tell us how we call ourselves!" That sounds reasonable. You can call yourselves sons of Plodo, or even Gadu, for what we care. Other names will do too. But when you call yourselves Macedonians, then you claim to be descendants of the ancient Macedonians and finally you claim that Greek Macedonia, a province larger that the whole of your country belongs to you the rightfull descendants of Aleksandar Velikiot, as you call him, and you polute the internet with ultra-nationalist poison against the Greeks who "occupy" Alexander´s Macedonia, then we get the message. The rest of the world might be too busy minding their own issues, and they plainly do not care. And if they care, they love the prospect of a Balkan Peninsula where everyone hates each other, the old divide and conquer. Spitting on their face is not the best way to make friends with your neighbors. The Greeks have to date refused to accept the former Yugoslav Republic of Makedonija, a country north of historic Macedonia, Greece's northernmost province and birthplace of Alexander and Aristotle, to be called "Macedonia", no matter who else recognizes them. If anything else, Greeks have history (as well as language and mythology) on their side. The best the Skopjan revisionists can do is try to falsify it.
P.S.
Ἑρμογένης
Κρατύλος φησὶν ὅδε, ὦ Σώκρατες, ὀνόματος ὀρθότητα εἶναι ἑκάστῳ τῶν ὄντων φύσει πεφυκυῖαν, καὶ οὐ τοῦτο εἶναι ὄνομα ὃ ἄν τινες συνθέμενοι καλεῖν καλῶσι, τῆς αὑτῶν φωνῆς μόριον ἐπιφθεγγόμενοι, ἀλλὰ ὀρθότητά τινα τῶν [383β] ὀνομάτων πεφυκέναι καὶ Ἕλλησι καὶ βαρβάροις τὴν αὐτὴν ἅπασιν. ἐρωτῶ οὖν αὐτὸν ἐγὼ εἰ αὐτῷ Κρατύλος τῇ ἀληθείᾳ ὄνομα [ἐστὶν ἢ οὔ]: ὁ δὲ ὁμολογεῖ. "τί δὲ Σωκράτει;" ἔφην. "Σωκράτης," ἦ δ᾽ ὅς. "οὐκοῦν καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις ἀνθρώποις πᾶσιν, ὅπερ καλοῦμεν ὄνομα ἕκαστον, τοῦτό ἐστιν ἑκάστῳ ὄνομα;" ὁ δέ, "οὔκουν σοί γε,"
ἦ δ᾽ ὅς, "ὄνομα Ἑρμογένης, οὐδὲ ἂν πάντες καλῶσιν ἄνθρωποι."
Hermogenes
Cratylus, whom you see here, Socrates, says that everything has a right name of its own, which comes by nature, and that a name is not whatever people call a thing by agreement, just a piece of their own voice applied to the thing, but that there is a kind of inherent correctness in names, which is the same for all men, [383b] both Greeks and barbarians. So I ask him whether his name is in truth Cratylus, and he agrees that it is. "And what is Socrates' name?" I said. "Socrates," said he. "Then that applies to all men, and the particular name by which we call each person is his name?"
And he said, "Well, your name is not Hermogenes1, even if all mankind call you so."
Plato, Cratylos, 383b
1 You are no son of Hermes - Hermogenes. Hermes was the patron deity of traders, bankers, and the like, and Hermogenes, as is suggested below, was not successful as a moneymaker, nor, obviously was he son of Hermes.
* Classical Mythology Explained With The Use of Macedonian Vocabulary.
A Series of Studies in European Mythology. Part 1 - Is There a Practical Meaning to Mythology? by Odisej Belchevsky, November, 2003
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY:
THE OXFORD INTRODUCTION to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World, Oxford Linguistics, J.P.Mallory & D.Q. Adams, Oxford University Press, 2006-2007
THE AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY of Indo-European Roots, Calvert Watkins, Boston-NewYork, 2000
ΗΣΥΧΙΟΣ, Λεξικόν, Συναγωγή πασών λέξεων κατά στοιχείον, Στερεότυπες Εκδόσεις-Οι Ελληνες, Κακτος, Αθήνα, 2004
Pусско - Aнглийский Cловарь, В. К. Мюллер, Москва, 2002
GREEK - ENGLISH LEXICON, Liddell & Scott, Oxford University Press, 1843-1951
A LEXICON of the HOMERIC DIALECT, Richard John Cunliffe, University of Oklahoma Press, 1924-1963
A LATIN DICTIONARY, Lewis & Short, Oxford University Press, 1879-1993
THE DECIPHERMENT of LINEAR B, John Chadwick, Cambridge University Press, 1958
THE MYCENAEAN WORLD, John Chadwick, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1976
Homeric Hymns - Hymn 2 To Demeter: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3atext%3a1999.01.0137%3ahymn%3d2
Slavic Mythology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book:Slavic_mythology
MYTHOLOGY, Edith Hamilton, Little, Brown & Co., Boston - New York - London 1942-1998
"In older times some ears of rye were left during the harvest time in the name of Veles. One of the days during the harvest a young girl was dressed in rye ears and field flowers. She was wondering around the village (selo) embodying the Goddess of earthy fruits (earth плодов - fertility?)." But here is the interesting part: "This Goddess was called Додола/Dodola, Драгайка/Dragayka, Плуга/PLUGA."!!!
ReplyDeleteReadings in the Imperial Society of Russian history and antiquities at Moscow University. Volume 4
Periodical publications of the Company Russian history and antiquities at Moscow University. "Readings" provide capital research on the history of the peoples of Russia and the Slavs, the rich historical and ethnographic documentary materials and translations of foreign works about Russia. Out in 1846-1918 years. (With break).
http://books.google.com/books?id=sM9AAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false