[gothic-l] Ashkenaz

[jdm314 at AOL.COM]

In a message dated 11/9/00 4:27:07 AM, you wrote:

<<Erh???? {Ashkenaz} (written in Hebrew as {#-Sh-K-N-Z}) is an easy Hebrew
miscopying for {#-Sh-K-W-Z} = {Ashku:z} = the Scythians (a group of Iranian
steppe nomads): compare Assyrian etc names for the Scythians. {#} is the
glottal stop / aleph. >>

Actually, the Akkadian for Scythians, or at least the word used on the
Behistun inscription, is gi-mi(r)-ri! In Elamite it's sha2-ak-qa, and in Old
Persian it's Saka. I also happen to know that the Egyptian name for this
provence (found presumably on Darius' statue he had made in Egypt, with
illustrations around the base in semi-Egyptian style, of a man from each
province bowing down to him) is written <sk>.
    Nevertheless, your explanation of Ashkenaz is certainly more plausible
than than the Skandanavia one... though perhaps that theory explains why Jews
have long associated it with Eastern Europe and Germany in particular.
Sepharad  probably did not originally mean Spain either (a friend of mine
suggests the origin is the Old Persian Sparda, Lydian Sfarda, which means the
city of Sardis and its surrounding area... possible.), and Tsarfat certainly
didn't mean France!
    On a side note, in Modern Hebrew the word they use for Scythian is
"Skiti," spelled samekh-quf-yud-taf-yud.

JDM

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