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Writer's pictureIosua Ioane Fānene

PO-SE-DA-O (Poseidon) / (Linear B: 𐀡𐀮𐀆𐀃, po-se-da-o, 𐀡𐀮𐀆𐀺𐀚, po-se-da-wo-ne)

Some of you know I have long... LOOOOOOoooooong been fascinated by mythology and legends. My personal library is dominated by mythological texts, and not the watered-down modern takes like Percy Jackson, but the good stuff...


So here's what I think about the Greek Pantheon of gods:


PO-SE-DA-O (Poseidon) / (Linear B: 𐀡𐀮𐀆𐀃, po-se-da-o, 𐀡𐀮𐀆𐀺𐀚, po-se-da-wo-ne) appeared to have a superior position over Zeus (Linear B: 𐀇𐀸, di-we, 𐀇𐀺, di-wo) during the Mycenaean period (1600 B.C.E. - 1100 B.C.E.) when the Greek nation states were on the rise during the Bronze Age. I half wonder if the identity of some of these gods wasn't actually born of highly regarded and deified foreign kings whose civilizations were more advanced, i.e. Egyptian pharaoh and abundant mineral and granary wealth (Pluto/Hades - possibly a cognomen of Amharic ADDIS ("new") parts of nearby Ethiopia, south beyond Upper Egypt, OR a directly loaned word from the Egyptian word for "sovereign" transliterated as [ITY] - see photos), Minoan naval power (Poseidon), Hittite chariot power (Lightning-swift attacks and pre-eminent worship of the Storm God), Mitanni metallurgical advances (Hephaestus), etc. One thing I noticed in mythology is the tendency for humans to anthropomorphize natural phenomena and deify ancestral chiefs, often conjoining the supernatural attributes of nature with the persons themselves. Hazarding a guess here, I think that the Minoans were probably anthropomorphized as Poseidon. And after the destruction of Mt. Thera, Poseidon took a backseat to the other brothers of the Greek pantheon -- Hades, which I think was probably Egypt, a civilization conspicuously preoccupied with reverence for their dead rulers and overflowing with wealth and gold... it was said that gold was so abundantly available in Egypt that almost every citizen had some form of it, being regarded as the flesh of the sun god RA, so much so that some citizens even had sandals made with gold leaf, hence the association of the cthonic Pluto with mineral wealth. Zeus, then, might have been the Hittites or other mountaintop advanced civilization. Zeus was originally also associated with the Sun, and his name hints at a link to the Indo-Aryan TIWAZ (Linear B: 𐀇𐀸, di-we, 𐀇𐀺, di-wo). The etymology of the name of Olympus links up with the ancient Greek words for "of the mountain" and "garden" -- OUREINOS (Ορεινός) and KIPOS (κήπος), and hints at the Titan generation led by Uranus, the "man of the mountain" and his paradisiacal "garden". The Hittite civilization was in its prime during the time of the Trojan War / Iliad, which was fought in the Luwian territory of Troj-Wiluša, a vassal-state or senior subordinate partner of the militarily powerful Hittite state.


See, Mom? I DID learn some stuff at Charles Wright Academy that stuck... Mr. Callow's class wasn't a complete waste.

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