TI-NI-TA
Tinit (goddess, = Phoenician Tanit)
First proposed by Cyrus H. Gordon, Evidence for the Minoan Language (1966), §129.
- Reading
- Tinitu
- Confidence
- Confirmed
- Root
- *tinnīt- ‘Tanit/Tinit (Punic goddess, face of Baal)’
- Kind
- Divine
- Language
- Semitic
- Rank
- #9 of the top 100
Compared forms
- Phoenician𐤕𐤍𐤕tnttnt ‘Tanit’ (Sarepta, KAI 285, 7th c. BCE: dedication to Tanit-Astarte)
- Punictnttnt ‘Tinnit’ (Carthage stelae: lrbt ltnt pn bʿl ‘to the Lady Tinnit, face of Baal’)
- Punic in Greek lettersΘινιθ-Φανεβαλ, Θεννειθ-Φενηβαλ ‘Tinnit-Phanebal’ (Krahmalkov 2000, 495); Θινιθ-Φανεβαλ on the El-Hofra stele EH 1.1/5 (ibid., 126)
Attestations1 cited
Commentary
HT 27a: TI-NI-TA directly before *307 DUBUR ‘sanctuary’, the goddess with her sanctuary, as Linear B Potnia Daboritu. The variant TA-NA-TI is commoner, four attestations (HT 7a, HT 10b, HT 49a, HT 98a). Punic in Greek letters writes Θινιθ, i–i, on the El-Hofra stele EH 1 (Krahmalkov 2000, 126), beside Θεννειθ (ibid., 495), against the conventional ‘Tanit’: the vowels of TI-NI-TA, a millennium later. Rival: a Berber origin for Tanit, on the t…t feminine of Tamazight names, against which an LM I attestation a millennium before Carthage stands. See TI-NI-TA *307.