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111-397: The inscription is written right to left in three units, without spaces to separate words. It is difficult to translate, as some letters are hard to distinguish, particularly since they cannot always be deduced by context. The absence of spaces causes additional difficulty in assigning the letters to the respective words. There have been many proposed translations advanced by scholars since

222-456: A figura etymologica . This alliterative form would be analogous to the Old Latin phrase donum do , donum being formed exactly in the same way as supposed for [m]einom ( *déh3-no- ). *Meinom mito would have existed beside donum do , both referring to similar but culturally distinct behaviours, the first one perhaps "specifically involving exchange/reciprocity". The document raises also

333-400: A gentilicium , the gens Titur(n)ia (Simon and Elboj) mentioned by Cicero. In the 1990s, two further contributions have discussed once again the interpretation of the second part of the first grapheme, particularly morpheme toitesiai . Even though doubts have been cast over its correspondence with the technical Roman legal word tutela , Dumézil's intuition of recognising in the destination of

444-548: A cautiously ambiguous relation" with Nouvelle Droite figures like de Benoist and Haudry, "both of whom courted him avidly". During the 1930s, Dumézil supported the far-right, royalist, anti-democratic, and anti-German Action Française. While he held for a while Benito Mussolini in high regard, he steadfastly opposed Nazism and voiced as a journalist his opposition to the growing danger posed by German nationalism. However, Dumézil never joined Action Française, contending that "too many things separated [him] from them. The credo of

555-650: A major influence on the fields of comparative mythology and Indo-European studies . Georges Dumézil was born in Paris, France, on 4 March 1898, the son of Jean Anatole Jean Dumézil and Marguerite Dutier. His father was a highly educated general in the French Army . Dumézil received an elite education in Paris at the Collège de Neufchâteau, Lycée de Troyes, Lycée Louis-le-Grand and Lycée de Tarbes. He came to master Ancient Greek and Latin at an early age. Through

666-409: A marriage compact or promise by a young man in love to a girl to whom the vase is presented as a gift. The inscription would thence exhibit an oath structure consisting in an archaic form of coemptio : "Swears for the gods he who buys me": mitat = *emitat (the future bridegroom would be speaking in the third person). Then passing to the second person the compact would be set out in the second line by

777-742: A memoir, believing that the legacy of his work should stand on its scholarly merits alone. However, shortly before his death, Dumézil made a series of in-depth interviews with his defender Eribon, which were subsequently published in Entretiens avec Georges Dumézil (1987). This book remains the closest Dumézil ever came to writing a memoir. Upon his death, Dumézil left a number of unfishined works on Indo-European mythology, some of which were subsequently edited by his friends and published. Accusations of Fascist sympathies continued after Dumézil's death. Eribon's Faut-il brûler Dumézil? (1992) has been credited with permanently debunking accusations that Dumézil

888-748: A position in France, and encouraged him to move abroad. From 1925 to 1931, Dumézil was Professor of the History of Religions at Istanbul University . During his years in Istanbul, Dumézil acquired proficiency in Armenian and Ossetian , and many non-Indo-European languages of the Caucasus . This enabled him to study the Nart saga , on which he published a number of influential monographs . Dumézil developed

999-460: A promise that they agreed to the marriage and nominated guarantors ( sponsores ). To the same time of the regal period is ascribed the introduction of the Greek use of double scriptures, tesserae . The sponsio is one of the most ancient forms of verbal undertaking of obligation and its religious nature is acknowledged, as well as its connection with betrothal. The ancient sources are in agreement that

1110-708: A strong interest in the Ossetians and their mythology , which was to prove indispensable for his future research. For the rest of his life, Dumézil would make yearly visits to Istanbul to conduct field research among Ossetians in Turkey . During this time he also published his Le problème des centaures (1929), which examined similarities in Greek and Indo-Iranian. It was inspired by Elard Hugo Meyer . Together with Le festin d'immortalité (1924) and Le crime des Lemniennes (1924), Le problème des centaures would form part of

1221-448: A substantivised *méi̯-no- , meaning 'something given in exchange, gift' from the same root *mei̯ as in MITAT . This form would be a - no substantive, a widely attested formation and may be presupposed by Latin mūnus, mūneris 'duty, service, office, offering', from immediate antecedent *mói̯-n-es- . The appearance of mitat and [m]einom show a semantic contiguity and may constitute

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1332-655: A trifunctional hierarchy respectively composed of priests, warriors and producers. In Dumézil's trifunctional model, the priests were responsible for the "maintenance of cosmic and juridical sovereignty", while warriors were tasked with the "exercise of physical prowess", and the commoners were responsible for "the promotion of physical well-being, fertility, wealth, and so on". In Norse mythology , these functions were according to Dumézil represented by Týr and Odin , Thor , and Njörðr and Freyr , while in Vedic mythology, they were represented by Varuna and Mitra , Indra , and

1443-519: A usage of oaths is attested in later literary sources. Besides the trace of a sponsio as the legal function of the object, Dumézil would also see that of providing a piece evidence, i.e. a probatory attitude. Servius in his commentary to the Aeneid writes that, before the introduction of the matrimonial tablets, in Latium the parties used to exchange tokens of pledge ( symbola ) on which they stated as

1554-415: A verb that would mean 'to cause to be given in exchange', hence 'to give (in exchange)'. Vine's analysis of the segment EN()MANOMEINOM fits the hypothesis of an exchange of symbola equally well. He argues that a word [M]EINOM could be isolated on the grounds of the single spelling of geminates which is considered normal by linguists for the archaic period. This he proposes to understand as reflecting

1665-640: A visiting professor at UCLA in 1971. He was elected to the highly prestigious Académie Française in 1975. His election to Académie Française was sponsored by Lévi-Strauss, who gave him the welcoming address. Dumézil was also an Associate Member of the Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium , Corresponding Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences , Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy , Honorary Fellow of

1776-414: Is a party (equally) religiously sanctioned by the gods". The vase is a speaking token that after the celebration of the ritual consecrates the content of the action, of which it is "the form in its probatory function and the matter as a constituent element". Vine quotes German authors who still follow the erotic thread of interpretation. They think of the vase as a container for beauty products and interpret

1887-569: Is credited with having saved the Ubykh language from extinction. His magnum opus , Mythe et epopee , provides a thorough overview of the trifunctional ideology of Indo-European mythology, and was published in three volumes in (1968–1973). In 1974, Dumézil would earn the Prix Paul Valery for this work. Dumézil research has been credited with being largely responsible for the revival of Indo-European studies and comparative mythology in

1998-413: Is generally accepted that the text contains the formula of an oath. On the archaic oath and its juridical value there is large agreement among scholars. It looks also probable that the object should have a religious implication: an instrument permeated by religious ritualism, as the oath could well be employed in legal practice at the time of the object, as seems supported by linguistic analysis. The usage of

2109-523: Is made up by two distinct parts or sections, the second one beginning with the word DVENOS . It was found in a favissa (votive deposit). It belongs to the kind known as "speaking inscriptions", widely in use in the Archaic period . Some scholars consider the object to be of good quality and reflecting the high social status of the owner. Others consider it common. The vase was bought from an antiquarian by Heinrich Dressel shortly after its find. It

2220-486: Is not always possible to classify some ancient writing systems as purely RTL or LTR. Right-to-left, top-to-bottom text is supported in common computer software. Often, this support must be explicitly enabled. Right-to-left text can be mixed with left-to-right text in bi-directional text . Examples of right-to-left scripts (with ISO 15924 codes in brackets) are: Georges Dum%C3%A9zil Georges Edmond Raoul Dumézil (4 March 1898 – 11 October 1986)

2331-425: Is nothing else than a form of the power the males of a family group (father, tutors) exercised on a girl, i.e. a variant or alteration of the word tutelae , similar to tu(i)tela . Since this interpretation has been proposed no critic has been able to disprove it. Authoritative scholars on the grounds of the lexeme toitesiai have proposed a theonym (Coarelli), a feminine proper name Tuteria (Peruzzi, Bolelli), or even

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2442-850: Is similar, but developed from Proto-Hebrew rather than Aramaic. Many other ancient and historic scripts derived from Aramaic inherited its right-to-left direction. Several languages have both Arabic RTL and non-Arabic LTR writing systems. For example, Sindhi is commonly written in Arabic and Devanagari scripts, and a number of others have been used. Kurdish may be written in the Arabic or Latin script. Thaana appeared around 1600 CE. Most modern scripts are LTR, but Niko (1949), Mende Kikakui (19th century), Adlam (1980s) and Hanifi Rohingya (1980s) were created in modern times and are RTL. Ancient examples of text using alphabets such as Phoenician, Greek, or Old Italic may exist variously in left-to-right, right-to-left, or boustrophedon order; therefore, it

2553-409: Is the central group of letters IOPETOITESIAI in the string ASTED...VOIS . Proposed interpretations include: iubet orders for IOPET ; futuitioni sexual intercourse for IOPETOI , the cut TOI / TESIAI or OITES / IAI so that OPE would be the only recognisable Latin word. Dumézil attributes a peculiar semantic value to the syllabic group TOITESIAI : a moral instrument that

2664-429: Is the meaning the lexical couple DUENOS/DUENOI . The meaning of Duenos has been often considered to be the name of the craftsman who made the object. Such an interpretation meets with the difficulty of how to explain the second occurrence of the word and with the problem of how to interpret MANOM , since if Duenos is a name identifying a person and qualifying him as 'good' then it would be difficult to understand

2775-411: Is written from right to left spiralling downwards about 1 + 1 ⁄ 2 times. The letters are written upside-down for a reader who looks at the inscription from a level position; this has been explained by Aldo Luigi Prosdocimi as due to the fact that the inscription was meant to be read from above, not from a sideways position. Some letters are written in an archaic fashion that appears influenced by

2886-510: The Aśvins . Dumézil's trifunctional hypothesis would come to revolutionize modern research on ancient civilizations. In the prelude to World War II, Dumézil returned to military service as a captain of the reserves in the French Army . He was subsequently posted at Liège as a liaison officer with the Belgian Army . Through the assistance of Maxime Weygand , a friend of his father, Dumézil

2997-557: The Carmen Saliare (similarly to the Duenos vase) bonus ( duonus ) and manus occur together, both referred to the same character, the god Cerus , fact that makes their synonymity implausible". In order to further clarify the use of the adjective in the text, Sacchi makes reference also to a well-known passage of Cicero's De Legibus II 9, 22: Deorum Manium iura sancta sunto. (B)onos leto datos divos habento ... . Here too as in

3108-665: The Grande Loge de France , a pro-Jewish masonic lodge, for which he would later be persecuted by the Nazis. In the late 1930s, Dumézil broadened his research to include the study of Germanic religion. His research on Germanic religion was greatly influenced by the renowned Dutch philologist Jan de Vries , and also by Höfler. It was while lecturing on the Indo-European component in Germanic religion at Uppsala University in

3219-440: The Greek alphabet . There are signs of corrections in the two C or K of PAKARI and FECED and in the L of MALOS . Three distinct sections are individuated by spaces after SIED and VOIS . There are neither spaces delimiting words nor signs of interpunction. The earliest interpunction to appear was syllabic. As it appeared only in the 7th century BC, the inscription should be more ancient. The inscription

3330-541: The Lapis Satricanus and Leucesie of the carmen Saliare ). The substantive oitesiai would be thus related to the semantic field of utor i.e. the concept of utilitas . Therefore, the text should be divided as: asted noisi; opet otesiai pakari vois . Opet would be an articulatory fusion between the dative opi and conjunction et . The whole text should thus be understood as: Ni erga te virgo comis sit, asted nobis; (iurat) opi et utilitati pangi vois , 'if

3441-665: The Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland , and the recipient of honorary doctorates from the universities of Uppsala, Istanbul, Berne and Liège . He was an Officer of the Legion of Honor . In the 1970s and 1980s, Dumézil vigorously continued with research and publishing, and devoted himself particularly to the study of the Indo-European components in Ossetian and Scythian mythology . The much awaited third edition of his Mitra-Varuna

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3552-528: The Scythians , maintained a caste system which had been established before the Indo-Iranian migrations into South Asia. This article eventually caught the attention of French linguist Émile Benveniste , with whom Dumézil entered a fruitful correspondence. From 1931 to 1933, Dumézil taught French at Uppsala University . Here he became acquainted with the influential professor Henrik Samuel Nyberg and

3663-475: The University of Warsaw in 1920–1921. While lecturing at Warsaw, Dumézil was struck by striking similarities between Sanskrit literature and the works of Ovid , which suggested to him that these pieces of literature contained traces of a common Indo-European heritage. Dumézil gained his PhD in comparative religion in 1924 with the thesis Le festin d'immortalité . Inspired by the works of Ernst Kuhn ,

3774-411: The dii Manes become 'good' in the ethic sense, but rather that the dead consecrated to death according to the pontifical prescriptions ( leto datos ) do become gods (= divos ). The epithet duenos would then design that which has been given in homage, consecrated correctly according to the pontifical ritual. Sacchi opines that in the case of the Duenos inscription the speaker is acting according to

3885-455: The virgo or his representatives formally give a suretyship about her attitude towards a man. Dumézil's interpretation though was fraught with linguistic problems. Apart from the value of the I before OPE , which he considered meaningless or an error of the incisor, the only possible meaning of ope in Latin is 'by the power or force of', and it governs a word in the genitive case. Thence

3996-941: The "exposure" of Dumézil's alleged political Fascist sympathies may lead to the abolishment (" Ragnarök ") of the concept of Indo-European mythology . Throughout his career, Dumézil published more than seventy-five books and hundreds of scholarly articles. His research continues to have a strong influence among Indo-Europeanists, classicists , Celticists , Germanicists , and Indologists. Prominent scholars heavily influenced by Dumézil include Emile Benveniste, Stig Wikander, Jan de Vries, Gabriel Turville-Petre , Werner Betz , Edgar C. Polomé, Jaan Puvhvel, Joël Grisward , Nicholas Allen , Georges Charachidzé , François-Xavier Dillmann , Jacques Duchesne-Guillemin , Daniel Dubuisson  [ fr ] , Lucien Gerschel , Emily Lyle , Dean A. Miller, Alwyn Rees , Brinley Rees , Robert Schilling , Bernard Sergent , Udo Strutynski , Donald J. Ward and Atsuhiko Yoshida . Along with Marija Gimbutas ,

4107-609: The 1930s. They also accused Dumézil's trifunctional hypothesis of similarity with Fascism, and wrote that his reconstruction of Indo-European society was motivated by a desire to abolish " Judeo-Christian " values. Momigliano had himself been a member of the National Fascist Party in the 1930s, but was not open about this. Dumézil was also defended by many colleagues, including C. Scott Littleton, Jaan Puhvel, Edgar C. Polomé , Dean A. Miller, Udo Strutynski, and most notably by Didier Eribon . Polomé and Miller saw

4218-543: The 1980s. During the 1960s Georges Dumézil proposed a new line of thought in the interpreting of the text. He remarked the inconsistency of the previous interpretations both with the solemnity of the opening formula (" Iovesat deivos qoi med mitat ": 'He swears for the gods who sends /delivers me') and with the site of the find. Dumézil's interpretation was: "If it happens that the girl is not nice to you/ has no easy relationship with you (" nei ted endo cosmis virco sied " = " ne in te (=erga te) comis virgo sit "), we shall have

4329-425: The 19th century, philologists such as Franz Felix Adalbert Kuhn , Max Müller and Elard Hugo Meyer (who had influenced Bréal) had conducted notable work on comparative mythology, but their theories had since been found to be mostly untenable. Dumézil became determined to restore the field of comparative mythology from its contemporary discredit. Dumézil lectured at Lycee de Beauvais in 1920, and taught French at

4440-808: The Action Française was a block: it forbade both appreciating Edmond Rostand and believing in the innocence of Captain Dreyfus ." Furthermore, Dumézil joined the Free Masonry in the early 1930s as a member of the Portique lodge of the Grande Loge de France of the Scottish Rite , and was consequently dismissed from his teaching positions and from the civil service by the collaborationist Vichy State during World War II. Some critics, particularly adherents of Lévi-Strauss, contended that

4551-572: The United States by scholars such as Jaan Puhvel , C. Scott Littleton , Donald J. Ward , Udo Strutynski and Dean A. Miller . Many of these scholars were associated with the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Dumézil was made an Honorary Professor of the College de France in 1969, and became a Member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in 1970. Dumézil was

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4662-469: The above two instances "one can remark the opposition between Manium , that, as shown in Paulus exc. Festi, originally meant 'the good ones' and the qualificative (B)onos = Duenos as referred to the deified dead (= divos ). Cicero here relates a pontifical prescription of high antiquity consciously preserving the original wise of expression and lexic". In other words, one could argue that it is not meant that

4773-446: The adjective had certainly religious and sacral implications: in the oldest sacral formulae it had a more technical acception and the repetition had other implications than just eurythmy . Colonna refers to the formula optumus duonorum of the mid republic which was a qualificative formula with sacral implication reserved to the upper classes. Correspondences are the opposition of the epithets Optimus and Maximus of Capitoline Jupiter,

4884-491: The archaic sponsalia had a religious nature. Brent Vine's study which focuses on the linguistic analysis of the word MITAT of the first sentence and of the segment EN()MANOMEINOM of the third lends support to such an interpretation: he argues that mitat would be a form of a frequentative verb mitare based on a past participle in - to of an IE root *meɨ̯ , with the meaning of 'exchange'. Semantically this frequentative should be considered factitive, thence arriving at

4995-406: The archaic period and great part of the republican: the matrimonial exchange was conducted, as far as legally relevant profiles were concerned, by the subjects who had potestas on the woman and by the future husband (or he/those who had potestas over him). This is testified by the fact the virgo had no right of pronouncing the nupta verba . The passage which presents the greatest difficulties

5106-517: The assistance of Sylvain Lévi , a friend of Meillet, was able to gain a position at the École pratique des hautes études (EPHE). From 1935 to 1968, Dumézil was Director of Studies at the Department of Comparative Religion at EPHE. In this capacity he was responsible for teaching and research on Indo-European religions. Students of Dumézil during this time include Roger Caillois . At EPHE, through

5217-454: The authors on the grounds that no genitive marker is to be found in the segment oitesiai . The proposed interpretation would find support in its strict analogy with a passage of Terentius 's Hecyra (vv. 136–151), in which a story similar to that supposedly recorded on the vase is described. The text would thus be the undertaking of an obligation concerning the eventuality that the girl go back to her family of origin, should she be not liked by

5328-545: The best introductory work on Dumézil's core ideas. Dumézil retired from teaching in 1968, but nevertheless continued a vigorous program of research and writing which continued until his death. He would eventually become proficient in more than 40 languages, including all branches of the Indo-European languages , most languages of the Caucasus, and indigenous languages of the Americas (most notably Quechuan ). Dumézil

5439-402: The bridegroom ( asted endo cosmis virco sied, asted noisi ). Even after the last two contributions related above, Sacchi acknowledges that all attempts at interpreting the segment AST...VOIS remain conjectural. Dumézil's hypothesis of a protoform of tutela , though attractive and plausible, remains unconfirmed. Although there are still obscure points in the interpretation of line two, it

5550-455: The complete translation as follows, though not with certainty: Duenos is an older form of Classical Latin bonus ('good'), just as Classical bellum ('war') is from Old Latin duellum . Some scholars posit Duenos as a proper name, instead of merely an adjective. The inscription (CIL I 2nd 2, 4) is scratched along the side of the body of three vases made of dark brown bucchero , connected with each other by short cylindric arms. It

5661-555: The criticism of Dumézil as an expression of political correctness and Marxist ideology, and questioned the scholarly credentials of the critics. Dumézil himself responded vigorously to these accusations, pointing out that he had never been a member of a Fascist organization, never been sympathetic to Fascist ideology, and that the ancient Indo-European hierarchical social structure never appealed to him. In order to clarify his political position, he declared to Éribon in 1987: "the principle, not simply monarchical, but dynastic, which protects

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5772-406: The delivery of the vase. Dumézil thinks of the involvement of more than one tutor for each party in order to explain the two plurals nois(i) and vois . Lastly the ending ESIAI presents difficulties. It might derive from an archaic -e-s-la as proposed by H. Osthoff in the formation of Latin abstract names with an assimilation of the liquid into an i . Another possibility would be to interpret

5883-507: The discovery of the kernos ; by 1983, more than 50 different explanations of the meaning had been put forward. Due to the lack of a large body of archaic Latin, and the method by which Romans abbreviated their inscriptions, scholars have not been able to produce a single translation that has been accepted by historians as accurate. Below is the transcription and one of many possible interpretations: Line 1: Line 2: Line 3: An interpretation set out by Warmington and Eichner, renders

5994-416: The early Faliscan Titia inscription " Eco quton euotenosio titias duenom duenas. Salu[...]voltene " interpreted as 'good among the good', the epitaph of Lucius Cornelius Scipio , the consul of 259 BC, duonoro[m] optumo[m]... viro[m] in which clearly the adjective duonus is not the synonym of optumus , that as derived from ops , plenty, has different semantic connotations. Colonna also reminds that "in

6105-506: The existence of a distinct priestly class among the Proto-Indo-Europeans . In the early 1930s, under the pseudonym "Georges Marcenay", he wrote some articles for the right-wing newspapers Candide and Le Jour , where he advocated an alliance between France and Italy against Nazi Germany . Dumézil's opposition to Nazism figures prominently in several of his later works on Germanic religion. At this time Dumézil joined

6216-465: The expression more atque iure of Gellius. Then the object in question could well have been deposited in a temple upon the occasion of a marriage ritual as a probatory document of an engagement undertaken not by the girl but by her sponsor . The compact would be also a legal guarantee of the rights of the future bridegroom. The most relevant issue for the interpretation of the document in Sacchi's view

6327-544: The fact that the girl shall be ready to marry. Festus gives it as a most ancient custom for marriage ceremonies. An analogous usage of the word comis is to be found in Gellius while relating the custom of flaminica dialis on the occasion of the Argei . The Praenestine fibula is generally thought to be the earliest surviving evidence of the Latin language. The Lapis Niger inscription is another example of Old Latin dated to

6438-712: The fall of 1943. During the war, Dumézil significantly reformulated his theories, and applied his trifunctional hypothesis to the study of Indo-Iranians, most notably in his work Mitra-Varuna (1940). In this work, Dumézil suggested that the Indo-Iranian gods Mitra and Varuna represented juridical and religious sovereignty respectively, and that these functions were relics of an earlier Indo-European tradition also manifested in Roman and Norse mythology. In works such as Jupiter, Mars, Quirinus (1941), Horace et les Curiaces (1942), Servius et la Fortune (1943) and Naissance de Rome (1944), Dumézil applied his trifunctional hypothesis to

6549-538: The find gave researchers grounds to pursue their work of interpretation in the same direction, i.e. of its significance as a token of legal obligation. The efforts have centred on deciphering of the last segment of the first section, ASTED...PAKARIVOIS . As already mentioned above, the cult of Fortuna Virgo , celebrated on the day of the Matralia , was related to the role of girls who became married women. The passage saw girls as completely passive subjects both during

6660-419: The girl is not to your taste/agreeable to you, let her go back to us; (he swears) to give you guarantee about your disturb and your interest'. The segment oitesiai could be also understood as utensilium referred to the vase itself as a token of suretyship or usus in the technical legal sense of Roman marriage as a way of providing a guarantee. The last two hypotheses are, however, considered unacceptable by

6771-566: The highest office of the State from caprices and ambitions, seemed to me, and still seems to me, preferable to the generalized election in which we have been living since Danton and Bonaparte. The example of the [constitutional] monarchies of the North (of Europe) confirmed to me this feeling. Of course, the formula is not applicable in France." Dumézil died in Paris from a massive stroke on 11 October 1986. He had deliberately refrained from writing

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6882-485: The hypothesis that the object might have been placed in the votive deposit of one of the temples of goddess Fortuna dedicated by king Servius Tullius , perhaps the one known as Fortuna Publica or Citerior , i.e. located on the side of the Quirinal near to Rome. Her festival recurred on the nonae of April (April 5). However, June 11, the festival day of the Matralia , which was originally devoted to Mater Matuta ,

6993-540: The influence of Michel Bréal , who was a student of Franz Bopp and the grandfather of one of Dumézil's friends, Dumézil came to master Sanskrit , and developed a strong interest in Indo-European mythology and religion . He began studying at École normale supérieure (ENS) in 1916. During World War I , Dumézil served as an artillery officer in the French Army, for which he received the Croix de Guerre . His father

7104-462: The initial constitution of the manus . The sponsalia would then be the occasion upon which the legal subjects defined the compacts concerning the juridical and economic aspects of the marriage: the dowry, the future legal status of the woman who could be put under the potestas/tutela of one or more persons, the compensations for a passage of status of the woman and the guarantees for breach of promise. Two strata were perhaps present as testified by

7215-401: The inscription had been interpreted mainly on the basis of (and in relation to) the supposed function of the vases, considered either as containers for a love philter or of beauty products: the text would then mockingly threaten the owner about his behaviour towards the vase itself or try to attract a potential buyer. This is the so-called erotic line of interpretation which found supporters until

7326-452: The inscription of the cippus of the Forum , also known as Lapis Niger (CIL I 1). For the sake of convenience of interpretation, the text is usually divided into two sections, the first one containing the first two units and ending with PAKARIVOIS . The two sections show a relative syntactic and semantic independence. Many attempts have been made at deciphering the text. In the 1950s

7437-445: The inscription on a pedestal (probably of a votive statue) from Tibur : HOI()MED()MITAT...D[O]NOM()PRO()FILEOD . Vine finds in it support for his interpreting of [M]EINOM as meaning munus . Sacchi rejects the interpretation of cosmis as agreeable in the first section that is traditionally accepted in the scholarly literature, on the grounds of considerations of history of the language and semantics. He proposes to interpret

7548-485: The last phrase NEMEDMALOSTATOD as 'let no evil person steal me'. " STATOD would be a form of a Latin verb *stare that failed to survive for its homonymie fâcheuse [unfortunate homonymy ] with the ordinary verb for 'stand ' ", as found in Hittite tāyezzi 'steals', Vedic stená-stāyú 'thief'. Both Sacchi and Vine remark the striking parallelism between the formula of the Duenos inscription: QOIMED MITAT and

7659-435: The latter parth of the 20th century. He was generally regarded as the world's foremost expert on the comparative study of Indo-European mythology. From the late 1960s towards the end of his life, Dumézil's research came to be widely celebrated in the United States, where many of his works on Indo-European mythology were translated into English and published. Additional works inspired by Dumézil's theories were also published in

7770-627: The latter's favourite students, Stig Wikander and Geo Widengren . Through Wikander and Widengren, Dumézil further became acquainted with Otto Höfler . Wikander, Widengren and Höfler would remain lifelong friends and intellectual collaborators of Dumézil. Throughout their careers, these scholars would have a strong influence on each other's research. Most notably, Höflers research on the Germanic comitatus , and Wikander's subsequent research on related warrior fraternities among early Indo-Iranians, would have enormous influence on Dumézil's later research. Dumézil returned to France in 1933, where he through

7881-505: The most influential mythographers of all time. Notable works published by Dumézil in the late 1940s include Tarpeia (1947), Loki (1948), L'Héritage Indo-Européen à Rome (1949) and Le Troisième souverain (1949). The latter work examined the role of Aryaman and his Indo-European counterparts, such the Norse god Heimdallr , in wider Indo-European mythology. Through several influential works of his friend Wikander, Dumézil came to doubt

7992-415: The most widespread RTL writing systems in modern times. Right-to-left can also refer to [REDACTED] top-to-bottom, right-to-left (TB-RL or vertical ) scripts of tradition, such as Chinese , Japanese , and Korean , though in modern times they are also commonly written [REDACTED] left to right (with lines going from top to bottom). Books designed for predominantly vertical TBRL text open in

8103-622: The most widespread RTL writing systems in modern times. As usage of the Arabic script spread, the repertoire of 28 characters used to write the Arabic language was supplemented to accommodate the sounds of many other languages such as Kashmiri , Pashto , etc. While the Hebrew alphabet is used to write the Hebrew language , it is also used to write other Jewish languages such as Yiddish and Ladino . Syriac and Mandaean (Mandaic) scripts are derived from Aramaic and are written RTL. Samaritan

8214-535: The mythological and social structures Dumézil identified with Indo-Europeans were not distinctly Indo-European, but rather characteristic of all humanity. Among those were Colin Renfrew , who doubts that Indo-Europeans had anything distinctly in common beyond speaking Indo-European languages. The harshest critics of Dumézil were Arnaldo Momigliano and Carlo Ginzburg , who charged Dumézil with having "sympathy for Nazi culture" due to his writings on Germanic religion in

8325-407: The oath in archaic times as an instrument of private civil law could have been widespread, even though the issue has not yet been thoroughly analysed. Even though in the inscription there is no segment directly reminiscent of the dialogic formula of the sponsio , i.e. " spondes tu ...? ", " spondeo! ", internal and external evidence allow the assumption of the enactment of a matrimonial sponsio . Such

8436-457: The obligation of bringing her and you into good harmony, accord, agreement (" asted noisi ... pakari vois "=" at sit nobis ... pacari vobis "). The transmission of the object would be expressed by the words qoi med mitat . The story mirrored in the text would thus depict a custom deeply rooted in Roman society that is described by Plautus in the scene of the Menaechmi in which the tutor of

8547-464: The offering of the nuptial gifts as a guarantee. The third line would complete the legal formula of the compact ( Duenos / ne med malos tatod ). Leo Peppe has proposed to interpret the inscription as a primitive form of matrimonial coemptio different from that presented in Gaius , consisting in a cumulative acceptance that included both the legal aspects concerning the transmission of the dotal assets and

8658-469: The only governing word could be the group TOITESIAI : this would then be an exception to the rule of the genitive of the themes in -a , which does not end in -as as expected, an archaism perhaps in Dumézil's view. TOITEISIAI would then denote the means by which the nois(i) , 'we', would have the authority of establishing peace between the 'vois' 'you' (the couple) of the main relationship justifying

8769-660: The pantheon of the Mitanni was derived from an earlier pantheon shared by all Indo-Iranians, and that the main deities in the Indo-Iranian pantheon represented the three functions of Indo-European society. According to Dumézil, it was only during the rise of Zoroaster that Ahura Mazda became the chief deity in Iranian mythology. In the years immediately after World War II, Dumézil recruited Claude Lévi-Strauss and Mircea Eliade to EPHE, and both became close friends whom he strongly influenced. These three men are widely considered

8880-470: The period of Rome's monarchy, although scholars have had difficulty in their attempts to interpret the meaning of the texts in their surviving fragments. Right-to-left script In a [REDACTED] right-to-left, top-to-bottom script (commonly shortened to right to left or abbreviated RTL , RL-TB or Role ), writing starts from the right of the page and continues to the left, proceeding from top to bottom for new lines. Arabic and Hebrew are

8991-406: The political right , but always presented his works as apolitical, and had many friends and admirers on the left , such as Michel Foucault . Defunct Defunct In the 1980–1990s, Dumézil came under heavy criticism from certain scholars, particularly left-wing historians, who accused Dumézil of being a crypto-Fascist and a neo-traditionalist, by implicitly defending in his scholarly writings

9102-403: The question of the kind of the marriage in question, and specifically of whether it was with or without manus . Dumézil supported the thesis of a marriage without loss the independent status of the woman ( sine capitis deminutio ). In the last case it should be admitted that in archaic times a form of marriage existed in which the sponsio was directly linked to the nuptiae , independently from

9213-465: The recommendation of Lévi, Dumézil also attended lectures by sinologist Marcel Granet , whose methodology for the study of religions was to have a strong influence on Dumézil. Seeking to acquire knowledge of non-Indo-European cultures, Dumézil became proficient in Chinese and gained a deep understanding of Chinese mythology . In his research on the social structure of ancient Indo-Iranians, Dumézil

9324-446: The religious legal ritual, presumably enacting a private consecratio : the formula of the dedication is then a case of private dedicatio dis , dedication to the gods. The epithet duenos should therefore be interpreted as used in its original technical sense. The restitution of the text should thus be: "A party acting in the way sanctioned by religious law made/consecrated me for a good end. That no harm/fraud be done to me and to one who

9435-493: The religious ones inherent in the matrimonial cults and rites. F. Marco Simon and G. Fontana Elboj (autopsy) confirmed the interpretation of the previous proposals that see in the vase the symbol of a marriage compact. The authors ground their interpretation on the segment OITESIAI instead of TOITESIAI . They therefore identified a root *o-it (composed by prefix *o and lexeme *i- , cf. Latin eo ) related to classic Latin utor , and suffix -esios/a (cf. Valesios of

9546-504: The research of Dumézil continues to form the basis for modern Indo-European studies. His formulation of the trifunctional hypothesis has been described by C. Scott Littleton as one of the most important scholarly achievements of the 20th century. Since 1995, the Académie Française awards the annual Prix Georges Dumézil  [ fr ] for a work of philology. Dumézil married Madeleine Legrand in 1925, with whom he had

9657-738: The restoration of a traditional hierarchical order in Europe (e.g. the three estates ). Many of these critics pointed out that Dumézil's lifelong close friend Pierre Gaxotte had been the secretary of Action Française leader Charles Maurras , and that his work had been influential on members of the European New Right , including Alain de Benoist , Jean Haudry , or Roger Pearson , who used his theories to support far-right political positions, with an "Indo-European race" (conflated with white people ) being seen as superior to all other peoples. Bruce Lincoln has argued that Dumézil "maintained

9768-502: The same direction as those for RTL horizontal text : the spine is on the right and pages are numbered from right to left. These scripts can be contrasted with many common modern [REDACTED] left-to-right writing systems , where writing starts from the left of the page and continues to the right. The Arabic script is mostly but not exclusively right-to-left; mathematical expressions, numeric dates and numbers bearing units are embedded from left to right. Hebrew and Arabic are

9879-429: The spring of 1938 that Dumézil made a major discovery which was to revolutionize his future research. In his subsequent Mythes et dieux des Germains (1939), Dumézil found that early Germanic society was characterized by the same social divisions as those among the early Indo-Iranians. On this basis, Dumézil formulated his trifunctional hypothesis , which argued that ancient Indo-European societies were characterized by

9990-423: The study of the Indo-European heritage of ancient Rome . From the late 1940s onwards, the comparative study of Vedic, Roman and Norse mythology and society would constitute the main focus of Dumézil's research. Iranian and Greek mythology played less conspicuous roles in his research. Naissance des archanges (1945) is his sole book on Iranian and Zoroastrian material. In this work, Dumézil suggests that

10101-406: The suffix -ela as -e-la , i.e. as a female derivation of an ancient neuter -el attested in Hittite. This would entail admitting the incisor made two errors. Antonino Pagliaro understood the word TOITESIAI as an adjective from noun tutela , ope tuteria , i.e. ope tutoria in classical Latin: the word would thence be an attribute in the ablative. Dumézil's contribution and the location of

10212-475: The term as referring to the peculiar style of hairdressing of brides, known as seni crines which would find support in Festus: " Comptus id est ornatus ... qui apud nos comis: et comae dicuntur capilli cum aliqua cura compositi ", ' Comptus , that is adorned, ... what we call comis ; and comae is named the hair dressed with a certain care'. In the inscription the use of this word would be an explicit allusion to

10323-619: The thesis examined ritual drinks in Indo-Iranian , Germanic , Celtic , Slavic and Italic religion. Dumézil's early writings were also inspired by the research of James George Frazer , whose views were however becoming discredited due to advances in the field of anthropology. At ENS, Dumézil became a close friend of Pierre Gaxotte . Gaxotte was a follower of Charles Maurras , leader of the nationalist Action Française movement. Though some have accused Dumézil of being in sympathy with Action Française, this has been denied by Dumézil, who

10434-466: The trifunctional Indo-European social structure, which he now regarded more as an ideology than an established system. In 1955, Dumézil spent several months as a visiting professor at the University of Lima , during which he dedicated much time the study of the language and mythology of the Quechua people . During the 1950s, Dumézil conducted much research on what he hypothesised to be a war between

10545-556: The universalist theories of Durkheim and Lévi-Strauss, and thus contended that the trinfuctional structure of Indo-European society was a distinct characteristic of the Indo-Europeans. Dumézil had studied the languages and mythology of several indigenous peoples of the Americas , and contended that trifunctionalism was not prevalent among those peoples. Dumézil was elected to the Collège de France in 1949, where he until 1968

10656-401: The use of manom in the same sense of 'good'. It should be easier to understand manom as manum ('hand'), i.e. reading: "Duenos made me with his own hands". Sacchi, following Palmer and Colonna, proposes to interpret the couple as conveying a specifically technical religious and legal meaning as is testified in ancient sources. Duenos has given classic Latin bonus , 'good', but originally

10767-556: The various functions in Indo-European mythology, which he suggested culminated in the incorporation of the third function into the first and second function. Dumézil's ideas on this topic were published in Aspects de la fonction guerrière chez les Indo-Européens (1956). Other notable works published by Dumézil in the 1950s include Hadingus (1953), and several works on Roman, Celtic and Germanic religion. His L'Idéologie tripartie des Indo-Européens , published in 1958, has been described as

10878-413: The vase a juridical function, namely a matrimonial sponsio , was accepted and taken on. G. Pennisi reconstructs the text as follows: " Iovesat deivos qoi med mitat: nei ted cosmis virgo sied ast ednoisi opetoi pakari vois. Duenos med feced en manom einom duenoi ne med malos tatod ". Segment EDNOISI is deciphered recurring to Homeric έεδνα in the meaning of nuptial gifts and the speaking token would be

10989-453: The works Dumézil referred to as his "Ambrosia cycle". Dumézil's work in Istanbul would be of enormous importance to his future research, and he would later consider his years in Istanbul as the happiest of his life. In 1930, Dumézil published his important La préhistoire indo-iranienne des castes . Drawing upon evidence from Avestan , Persian , Greek , Ossetian and Arabic sources, Dumézil suggested that ancient Indo-Iranians, including

11100-491: Was Chair of Indo-European Civilization. This position was specifically created for him. In the 1950s and 1960s, Dumézil's theories gained increasing acceptance among scholars. The spread of Dumézil's theories was greatly aided by support he received from friends such as Émile Benveniste, Stig Wikander, Otto Höfler and Jan de Vries. Notable Iranologists who adopted Dumézil's theories include Benveniste, Wikander, Geo Widengren, Jacques Duchesne-Guillemin and Marijan Mole . Dumézil

11211-499: Was a French philologist , linguist , and religious studies scholar who specialized in comparative linguistics and mythology . He was a professor at Istanbul University , École pratique des hautes études and the Collège de France , and a member of the Académie Française . Dumézil is well known for his formulation of the trifunctional hypothesis on Proto-Indo-European mythology and society . His research has had

11322-500: Was a crypto-Fascist. Charges of Fascist sympathies have nevertheless continued to be leveled, most notably by Eliade's former student Bruce Lincoln . Inspired by the critique of Momigliano and Ginzburg, Lincoln has criticized Dumézil from a Marxist perspective, and suggested that Dumézil was a Germanophobic Fascist. Similar accusations have also been leveled by the Swedish Marxist historian Stefan Arvidsson , who hopes that

11433-606: Was a fervent Dreyfusard known for his philosemitism , republicanism , anti-racism and Germanophobia . Dumézil had deliberately avoided attending Hubert's lectures, and had to be convinced by Meillet to provide Hubert with a copy of his PhD thesis, which Hubert subsequently bitterly criticized. The refusal of Mauss and Hubert to provide Dumézil with a position may have been motivated by suspicions that Dumézil did not agree with them politically. The rejection by Hubert led to Dumézil losing support from Meillet as well. Meilett informed Dumézil that it would be impossible for him to acquire

11544-651: Was also the day of the Fortuna Virgo , ritually associated with the passage of girls from adolescence into adulthood and married life. For another scholar, the site of the find was in Trastevere but near the valley between the Viminale and Quirinale. The antiquity of the document is generally acknowledged. The language shows archaic characters in morphology, phonetics and syntax. The absence of u after q would testify to its greater antiquity comparatively to

11655-532: Was discovered in 1880 by workers who were digging to lay the foundation of a building near the newly opened Via Nazionale , in the valley between the Quirinal Hill and the Viminal Hill . More precisely it was found on the south slope of the Quirinal, near the church of San Vitale, Rome . Dressel was told the place was supposed to have been a burial site. Archaeologist Filippo Coarelli has advanced

11766-627: Was greatly aided by Benveniste, who had earlier been critical of Dumézil's theories. During his early years at EPHE, Dumézil modified many his theories. Most importantly, he increasingly shifted his focus from linguistic evidence to evidence from ancient social structures. Iranologists who influenced Dumézil in this approach include Arthur Christensen , James Darmesteter , Hermann Güntert and Herman Lommel . Notable works of Dumézil from this period include Ouranos-Varuna (1934) and Flamen-Brahman (1935). Ouranos-Varuna examined similarities in Greek and Vedic mythology , while Flamen-Brahman examined

11877-539: Was however also criticized by certain Indologists , Iranologists and Romanists . Indologist Paul Thieme notably argued that the gods of the Mitanni were distinctly Indo-Aryan rather than Indo-Iranian, and that Dumézil's reconstruction of Indo-Iranian religion was thus mistaken. Dumézil responded vigorously to such criticism, while also continuously refining his theories. Most notably, Dumézil modified his theories on

11988-706: Was in April 1940 posted to the French military mission in Ankara , Turkey, where he remained during the Battle of France . He was repatriated to France in September 1940, and subsequently returned to full-time teaching at EPHE. Because he had been a Freemason as a young man, Dumézil was fired from EPHE by the pro-Nazi Vichy government in early 1941. Through the influence of colleagues, he was however able to regain his position in

12099-404: Was inspector-general of the French artillery corps during the war. Dumézil returned to his studies at ENS in 1919. His most important teacher there was Antoine Meillet , who gave him a rigorous introduction in Iranian and Indo-European linguistics . Meillet was to have a great influence on Dumézil. Unlike other students of Meillet, Dumézil was more interested in mythology than linguistics. In

12210-444: Was never a member of the organization. Dumézil's PhD thesis was highly praised by Meillet, who requested Marcel Mauss and Henri Hubert , both followers of Émile Durkheim , to assist Dumézil with further studies. For reasons unknown, the request was turned down. Mauss and Hubert were both socialists in the spirit of Jean Jaurès , who actively used their academic influence to advance their own political ideology. Hubert in particular

12321-499: Was published in 1977. He received the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca in 1984. In his later years, Dumézil became a visible figure in French society, and was frequently interviewed and cited in the public press. His theories on Indo-European society were celebrated by Nouvelle Droite figures such as Alain de Benoist , Michel Poniatowski and Jean Haudry , but Dumézil was careful to distance himself from them. Dumézil openly identified with

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