I-DA

A complete sign group on ritual stone vessels at three sites, Nerokurou, Palaikastro and Zakros; on PK Za 18 it alone is bounded by dividers, between the broken groups ]-TE and JA-JA-[. The distribution and the dedicatory genre fit a sacred-mountain name, Mt Ida and the Idaean cave. PH 6 (MM IIB, Phaistos), the earliest witness, has it inside the phrase I-DA-PA₃-I-SA-RI ʾIdā bi-ʾišarī; Phaistos lies under the mountain. Ida ‘the Hand’: Linear A writes the *ʾid- variant, with the initial i of Eblaite i-da ‘hand’ (GlOS 2, 371), Akk. idu, Soqotri ʔed, Tigre ʔǝde. The Idaean Daktyls, ‘fingers’, are the Greek doublet, ‘fingers of the hand’ (Pollux, Onom. 2.156), and Chantraine calls Ἴδη pre-Hellenic (DELG s.v. Ἴδη; di Mino, Ya Diktu); JE-DI yedī ‘the Idaean’ (HT 8a, HT 36, HT 122b, HT 140) is the gentilic. Rival: ἴδη ‘wood, forest’ (DELG s.v. ἴδη), attested only after the toponym. The w- is Cretan only: Βίδα (IC IV 80.2), Zeus Ϝιδάτας (IC II v 35), Koine Ἰδάτης (Staatsverträge III 552), Linear B wi-da-jo (KN V 60); epic Ida has none (Il. 8.170 ἀπ‘ Ἰδαίων). The w- is a Greek reshaping after ϝιδ- ’see‘: Helbig equates Βιδάτας with Παντόπτης ’all-seeing' (Bürchner, RE Suppl. I 250–51), while Linear A, which has WI (WI-DI-NA, HT 28b), writes Ida only as I-DA-. Weak point: the toponym class rests on behaviour.