What do you think is Sumer's word Dingir(god)'s etymology?
Sept 1, 2016 14:21:51 GMT -5
Post by rakovsky on Sept 1, 2016 14:21:51 GMT -5
The Esoteric Codex: Mesopotamian Deities By Troy Kynard says:
A book called Names (1977) says:
books.google.com/books?id=oEtQAQAAIAAJ&q=%22for+which+the+-gir+may+be+suspected+of+being+an%22&dq=%22for+which+the+-gir+may+be+suspected+of+being+an%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjO8pKe4O7OAhXLsB4KHZQ3BsoQ6AEIIDAA
Gods in the Desert: Religions of the Ancient Near East By Glenn S. Holland proposes:
The cuneiform ideograms used to represent [Dingir] associate the idea of a god with the heavens. This implies that the term is essentially spatial, that the idea of a god in Mesopotamia originally had more to do with location than with essence. The gods are those beings that live in heaven, not on earth where human beings live.
Mystical and Mythological Explanatory Works of Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars By Alasdair Livingstone looks to a post-Sumerian Mesopotamian Semitic work, in which:
This brings to mind a claim on a New Indology website equating or associating Dingir with the Hindu Angiras/Agni, Agni being a fire god:
New Indology: Sumerian and Indo-European: a surprising connection
new-indology.blogspot.com/2015/05/sumerian-and-indo-european-surprising.htm
Of course, a weakness in the reliability of equating Angiras and Dingir is that Hinduism's text about Angiras is in Indo-European Sanskrit, rather than in Sumerian. But Angiras appears to be a very old concept in Hinduism, so it could date back to the Indus Valley period and have commonality with the Sumerians' mythology or word Dingir.
The entry Gerra (god) in Wikipedia, says:
So etymologically it's questionable that Dingir is Girra, as Girra is a Semitic word. Yet there could be an explanation reflected in the Semitic writing referred to above, in that associations with fire, or perhaps sparks or lighting, could be a core meaning of Dingir.
The concept of divinity in Sumerian is closely associated with the heavens as is evident from the fact that the cuneiform sign doubles as the ideogram for sky and that its original shape is the picture of a star. The original association of divinity is thus with bright or shining hierophanies in the sky.
A book called Names (1977) says:
The /din/ does appear in a very common Sumerian word, /dingir/ for which the /-gir/ may be suspected of being an agent~noun suffix, seen for example in /ligir/ “prince, ruler," with the /li-/ probably beingthe same morpheme found in the verb ...
Gods in the Desert: Religions of the Ancient Near East By Glenn S. Holland proposes:
The cuneiform ideograms used to represent [Dingir] associate the idea of a god with the heavens. This implies that the term is essentially spatial, that the idea of a god in Mesopotamia originally had more to do with location than with essence. The gods are those beings that live in heaven, not on earth where human beings live.
Heaven (pronounced 'sha-me') is equated with the phonetically identical phrase for "of water" (sha me). THe sign AN which may represent the god Anu, or the word for "god", dingir, is equated with the fire god, Girra. Either a theological equation of Girra with Anu, or the phonetic similarity between girra and dingir, or something else, could be involved.
This brings to mind a claim on a New Indology website equating or associating Dingir with the Hindu Angiras/Agni, Agni being a fire god:
New Indology: Sumerian and Indo-European: a surprising connection
new-indology.blogspot.com/2015/05/sumerian-and-indo-european-surprising.htm
Of course, a weakness in the reliability of equating Angiras and Dingir is that Hinduism's text about Angiras is in Indo-European Sanskrit, rather than in Sumerian. But Angiras appears to be a very old concept in Hinduism, so it could date back to the Indus Valley period and have commonality with the Sumerians' mythology or word Dingir.
The entry Gerra (god) in Wikipedia, says:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerra_(god)
Gerra (also known as Girra) is the Babylonian and Akkadian god of fire, derived from the earlier Sumerian deity Gibil.
Gerra (also known as Girra) is the Babylonian and Akkadian god of fire, derived from the earlier Sumerian deity Gibil.