More on MUSTHRION's mysterious background

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Fri Sep 25 09:09:09 EDT 1998


This is, of course, the sort of inquiry that one pursues for its own sake 
rather than with any expectation that what one learns will turn out to be 
at all useful knowledge. What I have gained from it personally, beyond what 
I've found out, is (1) a bit more openness to alternative suggestions, and 
(2) a bit more skepticism about the likelihood of plumbing the abyss of 
etymological meanings.

Here's what I've found out:

(1) MUW (with short U) really IS a verb meaning "shut the eyes." Our 
"myopia" comes from the noun MUWY, which means "blinking," then 
"short-sighted." However, there's no clear indication that this verb, even 
though its root is MU with short U, bears any relationship to MUSTHS and 
MUSTHRION. That doesn't mean at all that's impossible, but that it probably 
can't be proven and is therefore useless for helping us understand anything 
about the origin of the root involved ultimately in MUSTHRION.

(2) An altogether different verb, MUEW (with short U) with a variant form 
MUW means regularly in the active "initiate," or "indoctrinate" (evidently 
from the sense of "instruct in sacred lore" carrying over into the notion 
of teaching more generally in a secular sense); still more frequent is the 
middle or passive that is seen frequently in the aorist or perfect and 
having the sense "undergo initiation." The Mycenaean text cited yesterday 
by Mary Pendergrast from the current dean of scholars in Greek religion, 
Walter Burkert, does in fact, appear to show the verb MUW being used in the 
sense of "to initiate." (Incidentally, I was gratified to see that the new 
appendix by Glare to the latest edition of LSJ does refer to this Mycenaean 
text). Regular usage quite clearly establishes the link between the nouns 
MUSTHS, "initiand," and MUSTHRION, "rite of initiation" and the verb 
MUEW/MUW.

(3) Two other candidates that were mentioned yesterday as being somehow 
related to MUSTHRION are MUS, "mouse" and MUQOS, "story", "tale." The fact 
that the U is long in both MUS and MUQOS is makes it dubious that either 
word is related to MUSTHRION, MUSTHS, and MUEW/MUW with their short U's. I 
would like to know more about the association suggested for MUS, "mouse," 
but I have to be skeptical about it. Superficially, if it weren't for the 
long U in MUQOS, this might be a more likely cognate, if only MUQOS in 
ancient Greek usage had the associations with religion that the modern word 
"myth" has come to have, but in earliest usage MUQOS is pretty much a 
synonym of LOGOS, and only gradually seems to develop that distinct sense 
of "story from a nameless source" as opposed to LOGOS as a "story/account 
with an authoritative basis." It is worth noting that comparative linguists 
insist on the importance of long and short vowels in the identification of 
cognates.

That will have to do for now. Apparently the oldest sense of the root MU- 
is associated with the process of religious initiation and indoctrination 
of an initiate. We are free to imagine a relationship between religious 
initiation and the closing of the eyes, but that's purely hypothetical, a 
"stab in the dark."



Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu OR cconrad at yancey.main.nc.us
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/



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