History of the World #phoenicians
One tweet at a time: What is History
work in Progress.
Irelands link to Chaldea
Britain's link to Phoenician Traders
The Laws of King Dyfnal Moel Myd (Dunvallo Molmutius), who reigned in the 5th-4th centuries BC
Behind the Rhiphoean hills, and beyond the North Wind, there is a blessed and happie people, if we may believe it, whom they call Hyperboreans, who live exceeding long, and many fables and strange wonders are reported of them.
In this tract are supposed to be the two points Or poles about which the world turneth about, and the verie ends of the heaven's revolution. For six months together they have one entire day, and night as longe, when the sun is cleane turned from them. Once in the year,' namely at our midsummer, when the Sun entereth Cancer,. the Sun riseth with them, and once likewise it setteth,' even in midwinter with us, when the Sun entereth Capricorn, The countrie is open upon the Sun, of a blissful and pleasant temperature, void of all noisome wind and hurtful aire. Their habitations be in woods and groves, where they worship the ; gods both by themselves and an companies and cojigregations. No discord know they. No sickness are they acquainted with. They die only when they have lived long enough: for when the aged men have made good cheere, and anoynted their bodies with. sweet ointments they leape off a certain rocke into the sea. This kind of sepulture is of all others the most happie."
We find a notice of the tradition in the Saga of Gottrek and Rolf.
Here by our home," says the hero, "is Gillings-rock : we call it the family cliff, because there we lessen the number of the family when evil fortune comes. There all our fathers went to Odin without any stroke of disease. The old folk have free access to that happy spot, and we ought to be put to no further trouble or expense about them. The children push the father and mother from the rock, and send them with joy and gladness on their journey to Odin." The situation of several of these "Valhalla Cliffs" is said to be known in Sweden. The lakes, which stretch below, were called "Valhalla-meres" or "Odin-ponds."
Posidonius, an early chronicler of the Cimbri, who was 22 years old when they appeared on the world’s stage in 113 BC, gives verbal descriptions consistent with the visual details on the Cauldron.
The Cimbri also
venerated cauldrons (e.g., at the time of Augustus calling a cauldron their most “precious possession”), which, along with the above, clearly indicate characteristic Celtic not Gemanic cultural traits.
The meaning of the name Cimbri.
According to some sources, derives from kimme (rim) and thus “people of the coast”. As will be described later, some consider that Cimbri =Cimmeri (the Cimmerians being an ancient people who “disappeared” from Western Asia about 800 BC).
There is a 600 or so year gap between the historical documentation relating to each, time enough for dialect changes although linguists view as likely Cimbri changing to Cimmeri rather than the other way around via Grimm’s law with mb morphing to mm (Markale, 1976). Furthermore, there are different variants of Celtic, other than Q-Celt (e.g., Irish) and P-Celt (e.g., Welsh and Gaulish).
Those knowledgeable about the language(s) such as reported in the Encyclopedia Britannica 1911 state that what is found as an mm sound in Welsh would be mb in other forms of Celtic so that in Welsh “cymmer” is equivalent to “combor” in Old Irish (the latter on a time scale being an earlier version of Celtic) and means “confluence of brooks”.
Some sources note that the Welsh term for themselves is Cymri that in Brythonic (P-Celt) means, “companions” or “tribesmen”. One expert offers an opinion that Cimbri might relate to Kom-roghes, which in General Celtic signifies, "the fellow countrypeople" (Gavin-Hauser, personal communication, 2007). This would perhaps relate to their status as kin to the Teutones who resided near them, were their allies in the famous campaign of 113 to 101 BC, and whose name means “the people” in all Celtic languages.
The Language of the Cimbri:
That the Cimbri spoke a Celtic language is attested to by the reports of Pliny the Elder (circa 77 AD) who stated that Philemon wrote that, the Cimbris word Morimarusa means the Dead Sea, as far as the Promentory of Rubeas, beyond which they name it the Cronian Sea (“Naturalis Historiae”, Libri IV, xiii, line 95). The word “Morimarusa”, referring to the Baltic Sea, is composed of ‘muir’ and ‘marbh’ in Q-Celt Irish; ‘mor’ and ‘maro’ / ‘marw’ in P-Celt languages such as Breton and Welsh. Importantly, there is no Germanic word in any dialect that would even approximate these root elements (Wikipedia entry for “Cimbri”). Furthermore, Thierry (1828) notes that ‘crwnn’ means coagulated or frozen, and in Gallic, cronn has the same meaning; Murchroinn equals ‘icy sea’. It seems that there is no argument, these are Celtic words – apparently Gaulish Celt. There is even a hint here as to how long the Cimbri may have resided in the Baltic region. Latham, in a paper read at the Philological Society, 1844, stated that, Of Sallust and Cicero, the language points to Gall (p.clvi) meaning that the consensus of these scholars was that the Cimbrian language was similar to that spoken by the Celts in Gaul. In the Wikipedia entry for “Cimbri” the author says, it is at any rate more probable that the North Sea and the Baltic would be considered ‘dead’ and ‘frozen’ by Central Europeans than by Scandinavians living by and from the sea. This suggests that the Cimbri had a more recent rather than deep history of occupation in the region when Philemon wrote his geography (about 325 BC as we will see later). Other evidence as to the language spoken by the Cimbri can be seen in the actions of the Roman intelligence service of Marius, run by Sertorius, which sent spies who spoke Gaulish Celtic into the Cimbri camp in 101 BC. They were able to understand the language of the Cimbri so they could report back details of importance to their masters (Hubert, 1934).
1874 Written in Welsh the book called Barddas Translated:
2013
2014
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