According to Herodotus’s ‘geography’, there
are two important cities in Phoenicia. He names them Σιδών (Sidōn;
Sidon), a name that also appears several times in Homer, and Τύρος (Tyros;
Tyre), which had never been mentioned before. The name Sidon is matched, today,
with the Egyptian word ḏjdwn, pronounced Tcheţţenna
The match is far from perfect, and, indeed, when based on only three
non-consecutive consonants, it may be a product of pure chance. For example,
the English words sedan, sodden,
sadden, and sudden
have neither etymological nor semantic relation, neither with one another, nor
with Sidon, Ṣaydūn,
Σιδών, Ṣīḏōn,
Ṣīdūn, ṣdn, or
ḏjdwn. Assuming an alphabet of 24 letters used with
equal frequencies, and a vocabulary of 40000 lemmas, we can expect roughly 3
words carrying the same letters by chance[1].
For a match to be credible, the matched letter sequences should be long enough
to exclude chance, or the words attested in the same context, or documented
to mean the same thing (be cognates). Herodotus uses Sidon in the context of
Phoenicia, but Phoenicia did not exist as such in any Semitic tradition before
Herodotus.
Figure 1. Cheese-making requires stirring. During industrial production of Emmental cheese, the as-yet-undrained curd is broken by rotating mixers. Artwork by Matthias Kabel (assumed based on copyright claims). Creative Commons license.
Matching Tyros (Tyre) with Akkadian Ṣurru,
Phoenician Ṣūr (ṢR; rj), and Hebrew Tzór (צוֹר), is more
problematic. The match relies on only two letters one of which is not
identical. The city was apparently named after the rocky formation on which it
was built since the Semitic versions of the toponym mean rock
At first, it was believed that the original
Phoenician pronunciation of Ṣ was different in ṢR (Ṣūr) and ṣdn (Ṣīdūn; Egyptian ḏjdwn). This hypothesis has
now been generally dismissed
Instead, the hypothesis that Herodotus
tells a myth, and that both Sidōn and Tyros are Greek-made or
loan words that have nothing to do with the towns of the Levant is supported by
direct literary evidence. It predicts that both words have a meaning in Greek
and that, together with Phoenix, Cadmus, Cilix, Europa, and her abduction by
Zeus, they form coherent parts of the Phoenician myth about painting, drawing,
and writing, initially on pottery and later on other supports.
The verb σίω (siō), a poetic form of
σείω (seiō; compare seism), means to shake, agitate, disturb, move to
and fro. It provides the stem si- of Sidōn. The
second stem, -dōn is found in δώνακος (dōnakos)
and (dōnaki), the genitive and dative forms of δόναξ (donax),
respectively. Donax means anything made of reed, e.g., the shaft of an
arrow, a shepherd's pipe, a fishing rod, or a limed reed. The related verb δονέω
(doneō) is a synonym of siō, to shake, agitate, move to and fro, drive
about, in commotion, shake as to make butter[2]
Tyros is also about agitation. The movement
it denotes is not a to-and-fro shaking but an up-side-down turning. I
repeatedly show that the letter Y stands for down, bottom, and R is always for top,
surface. The archaic T – call it ‘Phoenician’, Ionian, Aegean, or Greek – was a
cross, x or +, denoting a point or center of rotation. Cross signs, straight or
oblique, surrounded by a circle ({) or not (t), are amongst the
simplest glyphs. They have been found all around the Mediterranean including
not only Egyptian
Practically all the Ancient Greek words starting with tyr- and their derivatives are about cheese. For example, τυρός (tyros) means cheese, and βούτυρον (boytyron), butter. Both products require milk agitation (Fig. 2.5.1). Cheese also requires sieving. There are, however, some significant exceptions. The word τυραννίς (tyrannis; tyranny), as used by Herodotus, means despotic rule obtained by force or fraud, hence all the negative connotations of tyranny. Hesychius glosses τύραννος (tyrannos; tyrant) as an illegal ruler. The notion of an overturn is evident in both words. Also, τύρβη (tyrbē) means pell-mell, disorder, confusion, tumult, rout, and is used in up-side-down contexts; τύρβασμα (tyrbasma) is trouble (e.g. agitation); τυρβάζω, (tyrbazō), to trouble, stir up, burst in turbid stream.
There is overwhelming evidence that the
Greek Y is equivalent to Latin U, but Latin U also replaces Greek O,
particularly in endings. The Greek -os becomes Latin -us. You might
have noticed from the above that tyr- is preserved in English and other
modern European languages with intact semantics even though transliteration and
phonetics may vary. The Modern English verb to turn and
its cognates, Middle English turnen and late Old English turnian,
to rotate, revolve, Old French torner and Modern French tourner
(Y > U/O > OU), to turn away or around, draw aside, cause to turn,
change, transform, turn on a lathe, both from Latin tornāre,
to polish, round off, fashion, turn on a lathe, and tornus,
lathe, from Greek tornos (τόρνος) lathe, tool for drawing
circles, that which is turned, circle, round; all are said to be from PIE root *tere-[4],
to rub, turn or *terh₁-[5],
to rub, rub by turning, turn, twist, bore. Other English words using TYR >
TUR with similar semantics are turmoil, or uncertain
etymology, and turban, turbid, turbine,
turbulence, disturb, etc., obviously related
to Latin turba and Greek τύρβη (tyrbē;
tumult, disorder, turmoil, as above). The latter series is thought to derive
from Proto-Indo-European *(s)twerH-, *(s)turH-, meaning to
rotate, swirl, twirl, move around. Yet, the stem tyr- and its
Latin equivalent, tur-, are found in the Egyptian twr (pronounced
/tu:r/), meaning reed
The Greeks may, therefore, have borrowed
the Egyptian twr (reed), transliterated it into tyr-, and used it
in combination with the rigorous agitating action called Sidōn (shaking,
agitating, rotating) in every workshop where agitation was an important step of
the manufacturing process; for example, in a pottery plant (Phoenicia). The
Semites may have borrowed the Egyptian stwr (/stuːr/; keep clean, remove
impurity) to make Ṣur (Tyre) and pronounce it /tsu:r/. The English
probably transformed stwr into stir and straw. If tyr is of
Egyptian origin and means agitator reed, then Sidōn and Tyros are
synonymous (agitator reed) but of different origins. The initials S and T would
be unrelated to the Semitic Tsade of ṢR (Ṣūr) and ṣdn (Ṣīdūn) and the question of differential
transliteration by the Greeks would be irrelevant. But does tyr- truly
derive from the Egyptian twr? Why would the Greeks use two redundant
synonyms (stirring reed, and reed) to describe Phoenicia?
The odds are that Tyros is not
related to the exceptions but to the main tyr-like words, τυρός (tyros),
cheese and the related verb τυρεύω (tyreyō), to make
cheese, to mix up cunningly. In this case, Y would still be for down, and R,
still for surface, up. The T (Archaic X), however, would not denote a point of
rotation but a grid, a chiasma at its broad Greek sense. The most iconic tool
for cheesemaking is the strainer that separates the curds from the whey. The
strainer (t > X, T for the net + w > Y for down + r > R for top, surface) would
be a device having holes punched in it or made of crossed wires for separating
solid matter, remaining on the surface, from a liquid dripping down. Small-scale
cheesemakers use cloth. The same simple device can be used to produce lump-free
clay or for removing undissolved earth from stain preparations. A strainer is
used, in general, for removing large-particle impurities from powder or fluid
mixtures – or large-particle goods from smaller impurities. The keep-clean
sememe of the strainer brinks back the possibility that all the above stur-,
tur- and tsur- words are of Egyptian origin. A fishing net, like
the one depicted on a Palestinian keffiyeh (Fig. 2), is a strainer after all, and a
fishing reed is an alternative solution for separating solid particles from
liquid. Cheese strainers have been found throughout Europe,
dating back to the Bronze Age
References