Hello Nir, On Wed, 19 Sep 2012 16:39:46 -0200, "Nir cohen - Prof. Mat." <[email protected]> wrote: > ... > the arabic situation is somewhat similar: MY) for water and SM) and > SM)) (sing/pl?) for sky. > > the common NWS form seems to be $M)=sky. but we may conjecture > $M=air, $WM=emptyness, $MYM=the great emptyness, $MMH=empty terrain > (desert, destruction), N$M=breath. in this case, the sky-water > linguistic similarity would be merely accidental. > > now is the most intriguing: $M$=sun. if we interpret $M$ as $MY-)$ > or sky-fire or fire-of-the-great-emptyness we may, opposite to > peter's opinion, conclude that the ancients did associate the sky > light with the sun. > > of course, this is conjectural, and also problematic since $M$ is > sun also in babylonian, where sky (as far as i know) is AN and nor > $M).
I'm not an expert on Babylonian, but I think that AN is the Sumerian word for the sky god, and that the regular Babylonian word for "sky" is "shamû" [/šamu:/] (plural, contracted from "*shamāū" [*/šama:u:/]). -- Will Parsons μη φαινεσθαι, αλλ' ειναι. _______________________________________________ b-hebrew mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
