Emma Lundgren <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> My area of interest, which I am planning to do my thesis on,
> are the western borderlands of Syria (the Golan, Lebanon and
> Alexandretta). ... I would like to try to find out what these
> borders mean both to the Syrian government and for the peoples
> living in these areas.

Anyone who speaks a Semitic language can "reconstruct"
body-part maps for Asia minor and north Africa. Knowledge
of anatomy is used to generate the name/location of these
geographic areas based on the shape of a coherent body.
This method literally produces a "map without paper".
In cognitive linguistic terms, the (human) body became
a metaphor for the geographic area.

It seems this method of deriving names for geographic areas
was very widespread. Stan Knowlton and Dan Moonhawk Alford have
described the map of Napi, the creator of the Blackfoot indians.
Names for the parts of his body produce the names of areas in
Alberta, Canada and north Montana, USA. Napi's head is located at
Calgary.


Does anyone on the list know of similar body-part maps that
exist in other parts of the world?


The center of these maps is the body's "center": the navel.
As a general rule, the language community which constructed
the map is located at the center of the map.

The word "navel" is derived from Sanskrit nabhila. I think this
root is used for NePaL, the center of a Buddhist map. Nepal is
not far from GuPTa in northern India (the liver of that body and,
as opposed to eGyPT, the most likely origin of the Roma/Gypsies).
This root becomes HePaT- in Greek. Compare English hepatitis
(a disease of the liver) and Aedes aegypti (the mosquito that
causes yellow fever with liver damage and jaundice).

The names of SyRia and (Arabic) miSR seem to be based on tzadi-resh
TZaR = narrow. Compare Hebrew miTZRaim = Misr/Egypt. These locations
are the waist or narrow part of these bodies. [If you fail to close
your lips while pronouncing miTZ, you will say waits/waist.]
Aphrodite is literally "bent" at her waist.

I suspect the Phoenicians learned this mapping method from the
Buddhists or Hindus. The Phoenician map is centered at LeBaNon,
the reversal of NaBhiLa. It is a male body, probably that of
HeRMes who lived at Mt. HeRMon before he moved to Mt. Olympus.
[The Phoenician king HiRaM ruled at the time of the Hebrew kings
David and Solomon.] This map stretches from the uKRaiNe (his
CRaNium) to Yemen (his right foot). The Ukraine was formerly
called Rus (as in Semitic RoSH = head).

There is a female body map in north Africa, probably that of
Aphrodite, centered at NuBia. It seems that Aphrodite gave
her name to the continent of Africa. Her body stretches from
Mo[n]rocco (a reversed CRaniuM) to Somalia (her left leg).
eGyPT is the location of her liver. The biblical GoSHeN is
equivalent to KTN, her bean-shaped kidney. Compare cotton
(from Arabic qutn) which was exported from GoSHeN.

The Hebrew name for Ethiopia is XaBaSH. That reverses to SHeBa,
the queen of Ethiopia who visited king Solomon. At that time,
Ethiopia stretched all the way to the Atlantic ocean, then
called the Ethiopian Sea.

Reversals of body-part names seem to occur for two reasons:

1 - the same body-part occurs on an earlier map of a different
    body/area that is known to the language-community.

2 - the name of that body-part cannot be pronounced publicly
    due to a sexual taboo or similar reason.

The (to me) most interesting inference from these reconstructions
is the obvious fact that these places were named without *any*
regard for what people(s) were living in the area. Later, the
inhabitants of each area referred to themselves by the name of
the area in which they lived.

When the names were originally given, precise "borders" were
probably not relevant. How does one decide where the waist (Syria)
stops and the hip (YeReKH --> Iraq) begins?

Details (including a .tif, .jpg or .bmp graphics file for the
Blackfoot map of Napi and another graphics file for the Hermes
& Aphrodite maps) are available by email. To receive these,
send me an email off list and tell me which graphics format
you prefer.

best regards

Israel Cohen
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