Comparative Notes on Hurro-Urartian, Northern Caucasian

sign spelling to reflect either a fortis/lenis contrast or a difference in length
(gemination). 295 Thus Northern Anatolian might have had a term with the structure of
this group similar to *-kwkw/k w k w - though not yet attested. The development of the
former e > i is normal in Hittite, Lydian and Palaic. Homeric fix≈r /fix« “the blood of
the immortal gods” may be cited as another example of the same type which had been
borrowed from a Northern Anatolian form cognate to Palaic eÍßur < *eÍßôr (Tocharian
A ysâr < *yäsôr > B yasar “blood”)/eÍßa < *éÍßar (Old Indian ás‡-k “blood”), Hittite
éÍßar > iÍßar “blood” 296 (Luwian aÍßar, quasi-ergative aÍßa-Ía = dialectal Tocharian B
Perlative yasârsa).
To understand the possible links of the Mycenaean word to the (Northern)
Anatolian tradition as well as (although in an indirect way) to the Hurrian one, it is
important to study parallels with the title of the Mycenaean goddess [po-]ti-ni-ja i-qe-
ja = Potniâi hiqq w eiai “(to) The Lady of horses”. 297 This epithet is a more concrete
variant of the title PÒtnia yhr«n “Lady of the Wild Beasts”, which refers to a Cretan
goddess who matches Cybele and Artemis in Asia Minor. 298 The Greeks
295 Ivanov 1963; Melchert 1994, 20-21. It is not yet clear which member of the opposition was really
geminated.
296 Sayce 1929, 273; Kretschmer 1930, 10: “wir kommen zu der überraschende Annahme, das fix≈r die
hethitische oder einer kleinasiatischen Sprache angehörige Form des idg. êsôr = Griech. ≥ar ar ist,
die im Hethitischen *ißar geschrieben worden wäre”; Heubeck 1961, 81; Gamkrelidze and Ivanov
1984/1995, I, 798. The relatively old age of the vowel in the oblique cases of the Old Hittite noun is
supposed by Starke 1990, 558; on Palaic forms important for finding the accentological reason of the
absence of -r in fix«, cf. Melchert 1994 , 226 a.o.
297 PY 312=An 1281, Ventris and Chadwick 1973, 483, 548; Lejeune 1958. On the archaeological evidence,
cf. Levi 1951, fig. 4a.
298 Hanfman and Waldbaum 1969; Laroche 1960c; Diakonoff 1977. Some of the places dedicated to
Artemis had names linking them to horses, e.g. Pvl≈ in Thasos. For recent etymological studies on
Artemis, cf. Szemerényi 1994.