Lecture | Comparative Indo-European Linguistics (CIEL) Seminars
Ama – a warrior deity in the Avesta, his name and functions, and their Indo-Iranian and Indo-European backgrounds
- Date
- Friday 10 November 2023
- Time
- Series
- Comparative Indo-European Linguistics (CIEL) Seminars
- Location
-
Lipsius
Cleveringaplaats 1
2311 BD Leiden - Room
- 2.01
Abstract
After a presentation of the Old and Young Avestan evidence of this term for 'onslaught, attacking force', a special excursus about the formation of the word, its derivatives and formal and semantic reflections on its etymology will be offered. Further sections of the paper will demonstrate how this abstract category was deified to a major protector of the Indo-Iranian Männerbund and show traces of the presence of the warrior deities Ama and Vərəϑraγna in Armenian and Greek transmission as well as in a series of personal names attested in Babylonian, Assyrian and other non-IE sources.
This is a joint event with the Gonda Fund of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) in the framework of Velizar Sadovski's Gonda Fellowship (2023)