Wednesday, August 14, 2013

SATARCHE

One of the most typical Kartvelian ways to form nouns in the meaning 'a place of...' is the following:

SA + ROOT + E

Here is what the textbook of Rudenko says about it:

The method is simple and intuitive. You can form the nouns youself, without checking the dictionary:

საძროხე – სა+ძროხ+ე – sadzrohe, out of dzroha (cow) – cow-shed
საღორე – სა+ღორ+ე – sagore, out of gori (pig) – pigsty
საწხენე – სა+წხენ+ე – satshene, out of tsheni (horse) – stable
საღვინე – სა+ღვინ+ე – sagvine, out of gvino (wine) – wine bowl
სათაფლე – სა+თაფლ+ე – sataple, out of tapli (honey) – apiary
სამარილე – სა+მარილ+ე – samarile, out of marili (salt) – salt-cellar
სათევზე – სა+თევზ+ე – satevze, out of tevzi (fish) – corf

As we see, the method is highly toponymical. In fact, there are tons of toponyms formed according to this rule. In particular:

Satshene, Sabue, Sataple, Saniore (villages in Kakheti), Saboloke (village in Samachablo), and many more.

So, let's get back to the map of Ptolemy, where we see in the II century in Crimea a wornderful toponym of Satarche. If we split it according the above method:...

                                  SA + TARCH + E

...we'll end up having the root 'tarch(i)' with the whole word meaning 'the place of tarch(i)':




What is tarch(i) quickly turned out to be no secret. It's Tarch, one of the main gods of Hittites with his main sanctuary in Turkish Bogazkoy (former Hittite capital Hattusa). In Ukraine Tarch used to be known by the name of Dazhdbog, Perun's son. The Slav mythology mentions him also as Tarch Perunovich, Tarch Tarchovich or even Gorokh Tzar. Since at least one more Slav god - Hors - also is of Scythian origin, the chain Tarch - Dazhdbog seems reliable.

So, now Satarche from 'a place of Tarch' turns into 'a sanctuary of Tarch'. Where exactly used to be this city, no one knows. The keys to find it lie in the name of the West Crimean peninsula of Tarchankut as well as in ancient ruins in Evpatoria and Saki. Another hypothesis implies Satarche lying somewhere near Donuzlav river. One of the neighbouring absulutely unremarkable steppe villages, Hmelevo, in the times of Tartars used to be called Sadyr, distantly resembling 'Satarche'.

To sum up, in the ancient times the Georgi people built in Crimea a city which was named STRICTLY according to the rules of Kartvelian morphology. Quite a twist...

By the way, according the myths, Tarch-Dazhdbog was chained to a rock in... Caucasus:

"...but the Koscheys were able to weaken Dazhdbog (Tarch Perunovich) so that they could chain him to the Eagle Rocks in Caucasian mountains (Sochi, Matsesta district)...".
http://rodobogie.org/?page_id–299

And finally, compare Satarche to other sanctuary-like toponyms in Spain: Sahagun, Sagunt (Saguno) in the corresponding entry.

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