Mount Ida

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For other uses, see Mount Ida (disambiguation).
Mount Ida, Crete, overlooking the administrative and religious center of Knossos.
Mount Ida, Crete, overlooking the administrative and religious center of Knossos.

Two sacred mountains are called Mount Ida in Greek mythology, equally named "Mount of the Goddess." Both are associated with the Mother Goddess in the deepest layers of pre-Greek myth: Mount Ida, Crete, and Mount Ida, Turkey, known as Phrygian Ida in Classical times. Mount Ida in Phrygia is sacred to another aspect of the Great Goddess as Cybele, the Mother Goddess, who is often called Mater Idae ('The Idean Mother").

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[edit] Etymology

The name Ida is associated with the Goddess, De, which also appears in Demeter, the "goddess-mother," (De + meter). The "De" is an Attic-Ionic dialect form of the older Da,

"a female deity whose succor and assistance were evoked in archaic formulas by use of this syllable".[1]

The modern Turkish name for Mount Ida, Turkey, Kaz Dağı (pronounced "Kaz DA-u", with the last syllable having a schwa /ə/ sound) has no more than a coincidental connection with the goddess' syllable; dağ is the element that translates as "mountain," and all other mountains and mountain ranges in Turkey include dağ in their names.

There is reasonable evidence to believe that the Turkish mountain was renamed from something else, perhaps Gargarus, to the same name as the Cretan mountain by the Tjeker, a people at the tip of the Biga Peninsula (the Troad) in the Bronze Age. If that is true, the etymology is likely to be only that of the Cretan mountain, with the others being ulimately named from it. Whatever its name, the Turkish mountain was certainly sacred in its own right. All mountain were at the dawn of history.

[edit] Mount Ida, Crete

Mount Ida, Crete, is the island's highest summit, sacred to the Goddess Rhea, and in which lies the cave in which Zeus was reared.

Main article: Mount Ida, Crete

[edit] Mount Ida, Turkey

Mount Ida, Turkey (Kaz Dağı) is a mountain in the environs of ancient Troy, now in Balıkesir Province, northwest Turkey. The topmost peak is Gargarus mentioned in the Iliad.

Main article: Mount Ida, Turkey

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Karl Kerenyi, Eleusis: Archetypal Image of Mother and Daughter p.28)

[edit] External link

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