Hollow Syria (was: Contemporaneous protolanguages)

On Tuesday, September 28, 2004, at 09:50 , Steg Belsky wrote:

> On Sep 28, 2004, at 12:23 PM, Rodlox wrote:
[snip]
>>>> The spit of land you're thinking of is probably the Sinai peninsula.
>
>>>  my Egyptology teacher said that that was Cole-Syria...at least
>>> during the time of Ramses.
>
> Weird... which Rameses?
> I just read a website that said that both of us are wrong, and
> Coele-Syria is the Mediterranean coastline north of the Litani river.
Ancient usage is quite clear about_Coele Syria_ (Greek: koile: Syria =
"hollow Syria"). It was that hollow (or valley)
in ancient Syria (forget the modern political boundaries) which lay
between Libanus (Gk. Libanos) "Mt. Lebanon"/ "Jebel Liban" and
Antilibanus (Gk. Antilibanos) "Jebel esh-Sharqi".

The position of the "Syrian hollow" remained the same irrespective of any
Egyptian pharoah. They may have thought themselves gods - but they weren't
   :)

Ray
===============================================
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
ray.brown@freeuk.com
===============================================
Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight,
which is not so much a twilight of the gods
as of the reason."      [JRRT, "English and Welsh" ]

Reply