For Purim, I slept ten hours and dreamed of Alan Turing curled like a fossil into a scrape of the hillside in the Lake District, which feels as much as anything like a belated recognition of the half-centenary of Penda's Fen (1974). I have been similarly reminded that today is Don Lockwood's lucky day. Hestia lay in the windowsill and I took a walk before the sun rolled over into its present violet smog of sunset.
What with all the Akkadian going around my friendlist lately, it seemed an appropriate occasion to boost the link of Esther with Ištar, as attested by inscriptions in the catacombs of Beit She‘arim. From the second through the fourth centuries CE when the town became a rabbinic center in what had been designated Syria Palaestina following the crushing conclusion of the Jewish–Roman Wars, they functioned as a sort of destination necropolis, drawing their dead from all across the diaspora including the cities of the Phoenician coast and the Kingdom of Himyar; its inscriptions freely mix Greek with Hebrew, Aramaic, Himyarite, often rendering a name originally from one language in the alphabet of another or identifying the same person by both Greek and Semitic names. The name we know as Esther is variously rendered in Greek as Εἰσθήρ (Eisthḗr), Ἰσθήρ (Isthḗr), Ἀσθήρ (Asthḗr), and Ἀστήρ (Astḗr). That this last variation is the same as the Greek for star might be as niftily coincidental as hamantashn sounding like Haman except that one of the dual-named burials was of a woman identified as Ἰσθήρ ἡ κὲ Ἀμφαίθα—Isthḗr hē kè Amphaítha, "Esther also known as Amphaitha." Ἀμφαίνω is a poetic apocope for ἀναφαίνω, to shine forth, to give light. The complex of goddesses which includes Inanna, Ištar, ‘Aštart, Tanit, Aphrodite, and Venus is associated with the planet recognized in the ancient world as the morning and the evening star. In Biblical Hebrew it is called הֵילֵל (helel), the shining. Classical Greek referred to the morning aspect as Φωσφόρος (Phōsphóros), the light-bringer. It is accepted that the pairing of Esther and Amphaitha treats one name as the equivalent of the other, perhaps not so differently from modern traditions of secular and Hebrew names. A first-century Latin epitaph from Puteoli records the existence of a woman named Claudia Aster, taken as a captive in the sack of Jerusalem; in accordance with the evidence of other funerary inscriptions, her second name is agreed to have been originally Esther. These bright links are not merely the product of modern archaeology and linguistics. The Babylonian Talmud explains Esther's name by reference to the Venus-star; the same connection is made by Aramaic targumim. I fell down this research K-hole years ago for a friend who wanted to know why we transliterate אֶסְתֵּר as Esther, to which the answer seemed to be the unsatisfying and plausible "out of a number of dialectally varied options without standard orthography, the Septuagint went with Ἐσθήρ and here we are." Would a random Carthaginian have vocalized the theonym written 𐤕𐤍𐤕 (tnt) as Tanit when the Greek of the Cirta stelae renders the name as Θινιθ (Thinith) or Θεννειθ (Thenneith) and even some of the Punic inscriptions employ the form 𐤕𐤉𐤍𐤕 (tynt)? For all the pain in the ass of the rebus of Akkadian, at least it put in the vowels.
What with all the Akkadian going around my friendlist lately, it seemed an appropriate occasion to boost the link of Esther with Ištar, as attested by inscriptions in the catacombs of Beit She‘arim. From the second through the fourth centuries CE when the town became a rabbinic center in what had been designated Syria Palaestina following the crushing conclusion of the Jewish–Roman Wars, they functioned as a sort of destination necropolis, drawing their dead from all across the diaspora including the cities of the Phoenician coast and the Kingdom of Himyar; its inscriptions freely mix Greek with Hebrew, Aramaic, Himyarite, often rendering a name originally from one language in the alphabet of another or identifying the same person by both Greek and Semitic names. The name we know as Esther is variously rendered in Greek as Εἰσθήρ (Eisthḗr), Ἰσθήρ (Isthḗr), Ἀσθήρ (Asthḗr), and Ἀστήρ (Astḗr). That this last variation is the same as the Greek for star might be as niftily coincidental as hamantashn sounding like Haman except that one of the dual-named burials was of a woman identified as Ἰσθήρ ἡ κὲ Ἀμφαίθα—Isthḗr hē kè Amphaítha, "Esther also known as Amphaitha." Ἀμφαίνω is a poetic apocope for ἀναφαίνω, to shine forth, to give light. The complex of goddesses which includes Inanna, Ištar, ‘Aštart, Tanit, Aphrodite, and Venus is associated with the planet recognized in the ancient world as the morning and the evening star. In Biblical Hebrew it is called הֵילֵל (helel), the shining. Classical Greek referred to the morning aspect as Φωσφόρος (Phōsphóros), the light-bringer. It is accepted that the pairing of Esther and Amphaitha treats one name as the equivalent of the other, perhaps not so differently from modern traditions of secular and Hebrew names. A first-century Latin epitaph from Puteoli records the existence of a woman named Claudia Aster, taken as a captive in the sack of Jerusalem; in accordance with the evidence of other funerary inscriptions, her second name is agreed to have been originally Esther. These bright links are not merely the product of modern archaeology and linguistics. The Babylonian Talmud explains Esther's name by reference to the Venus-star; the same connection is made by Aramaic targumim. I fell down this research K-hole years ago for a friend who wanted to know why we transliterate אֶסְתֵּר as Esther, to which the answer seemed to be the unsatisfying and plausible "out of a number of dialectally varied options without standard orthography, the Septuagint went with Ἐσθήρ and here we are." Would a random Carthaginian have vocalized the theonym written 𐤕𐤍𐤕 (tnt) as Tanit when the Greek of the Cirta stelae renders the name as Θινιθ (Thinith) or Θεννειθ (Thenneith) and even some of the Punic inscriptions employ the form 𐤕𐤉𐤍𐤕 (tynt)? For all the pain in the ass of the rebus of Akkadian, at least it put in the vowels.
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