Re: Hollow Syria (was: Contemporaneous protolanguages)

On Wednesday, September 29, 2004, at 09:39 , Steg Belsky wrote:

> On Sep 29, 2004, at 9:12 AM, Ray Brown wrote:
>> 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
>
>
> Ah, but does the Syrian Hollow extend southwards along the
> African-Asian Rift, down towards where the Libanos and Antilibanos
> become the Mountains of Judea and Moab, respectively, on either side of
> the Dead Sea?
> Or is it just up there in the Lebanese part?
Interesting point - but I don't think Syria extended that far south.
Without checking every reference I cannot be 100% certain, but my feeling
is that it was only the Lebanese part that was called Coele Syria by the
ancients.

The mountains n the east of the rift do continue unbroken from Antilibanos
to the mountains of Moab, but the western lot appear to have a gap in
Galilee.

Interestingly I doscover that while the Romans declined Syria the Latin
way, they retained the Greek endings for Coele; so we have:
Nominative   Coele Syria
Accusative   Coelen Syriam
   Genitive   Coeles Syriae

As far as I know, the dative is not attested; but I guess it would be
Coelei Syriae. The ablative would be a little problematic - there wasn't
one in Greek     :)

Ray
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Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight,
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