Nysa, Greek mythology

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Nysa was a mythical place in Greek mythology where the young god Dionysus was raised. The exact location of Nysa varies in the myths; Alexander's troops in the Swat hills of northwestern Pakistan in 327 BCE, were told that Dionysus had been there before them. Other, modern interpretations of "Nysa" include Ethiopia, Anatolia, Libya, Tribalia (nowadays Serbia), and Arabia. Greek concepts of where Nysa was, are variable enough to suggest that a magical distant land was named 'Nysa' to explain the god's unreadable name, as the 'god of Nysa'. (The Greek stem dio- while related to Latin deus "god" is a form of zeus and does not technically mean god; Dionysus by this interpretation would mean "Zeus-Nysa, = either (?) "Zeus of Nysa" (cf> the Cretan Zeus, thought to be equivalent to Dionysys) or "of Zeus (and) Nysa," i.e. born of one and in the other. Infant Dionysus, god of the grapevine, was nursed by the rain-nymphs, the Hyades, at Nysa.