Who was Menua?
Finding Manuland XVI: M-N- sound in Armenia and Ireland's first monarchs' moniker.
Recently I drove by the source of one of the rivers of Babylon: the Euphrates. Menua (790 BCE to 775 BCE) was the third monarch to rule the Biblical era Van / Ararat / Urartu / Bianili kingdom, whose successor state two millennia later is Armenia.
It’s interesting, but probably of no particular significance that the ancient kingdom of Ararat, where Noah’s Ark was said to rest after the Biblical flood, today is framed by towns with M-N- sounds in their names: Mercan in modern Türkiye is precisely where the Euphrates begins. Martuni on Armenia’s Sevan Lake is close to the limit of where the writ of Menua ran. And Miandaob in the south.
Miandaob is located in today’s Iran. Iran’s name is derived from the character of Ahryaman - yet another M-N- sound in an Indo-European culture’s mythological founder’s moniker. Ahryaman was created by the religious reformer Zoroaster / Zarathustra (~1,400 BCE).
Due to the proximity of the M- and the N- in Miandaob, it is potentially part of the Reversion to the Moon M-N- sound meme that characterises so much of Indo-European geographic, semantic, symbolic, linguistic, and cultural space.
Even at this early stage of enlightening you about the Power of Mana, I would go so far as to say M-N- is Indo-European civilisation’s most fundamental sound / characterising meme.
It is indeed fun that modern scholars decided to call the original speakers of the first Indo-European language (proto-Indo-European or, as I call it because it was first spoken in eastern Ukraine Ancient Ukrainian) the Yamnaya - another M-N- sounding moniker. Anyway, onwards…
Bookmark this idea, then, that the proximity of the M to the N in M-N- words is a possible indicator of semantic and signifier connection for that set of words whose M-N- sound stems, ultimately, from the M-N- sound in the proto-Indo-European / Ancient Ukrainians word for the moon - Meh₁n-ṓt.
I photographed this inscription mentioning Menua in one of his fortresses - in Erebuni in a suburb of contemporary Armenia’s capital Erevan:
The supreme God of the time of Menua Haldi clearly takes their name from two linguistic elements - Hal- is proto-Nostratic meaning “light up” (nostratic is a pre-Indo-European linguistic stratum underlying most of the language families we recognise today - Hal reappears in Allah’s name and as the “L” in the light element in the Latin “Lux” as well as in illuminate).
The “De” element in Haldi’s name obviously is Indo-European. It’s the “de” element that survives in deus (Zeus), deity, day, Tiwaz (as in Tuesday). I deal with more of it here:
I had already worked out that the similarity in sound between Erebuni (one of the most impressive Royal palaces from the ancient Ararat kingdom still in existence) was cognate with the modern city Erevan.
The first appearance of Erevan in text is in a third century CE text by Mani (of Manichean fame) that is held in the Chester Beatty library in Dublin.
Menua built the world’s first aqueduct - but I digress. Of interest to the Power of Mana is how Menua (probably) gave his name to Armenia. Well, the foremost expert on the geography of Armenia whose book of maps of Armenia from earliest times is a remarkable piece of scholarship Robert H. Hewsen1 maintains that the origin of what he calls the “minna” element in Armenia’s moniker is unknown.
The best explanation for the origins of the M-N- sound that we use to signify our species in the definitive record of the English language - Oxford English Dictionary - is that the:
“pre-Germanic origins [of Man] are problematic.”
The mention of the old theory that Man has its origins in the ancient Indian language Sanskrit name for the first sacrificed among human kind - Manu - is an artefact from a time before we understood how Indo-European languages spread.
Germanic, Armenian, Indian, Iranian, Celtic (Irish (Manannán and Eremon) and Welsh (Manawydan)), Greek (Mycenaeans / Minos / Macedonia / Minerva), and Italic (Latin) Indo-European cultures all have founding first human kings with the M-N- sound in their names (or its reverse Numitor is Romulus and Remus’s grandfather, while Numa is Romulus’s successor as the mythological founder of Rome’s first institutions).
I demonstrate elsewhere that the M-N- sound is deeply entrenched in cognate mythological and contemporary vocabulary in English - a Germanic language (note the M-N- in German, a remnant of Mannus/Hermione, the German tribe’s eponymous founders according to the Roman (there’s that M-N- sound again!) Tacitus).
This embedding and immanence (there it is again!) of M-N- across space and time into words like Common, Community, Communism, munition, monk, moniker, communion, ceremony, sacrament,… and hundreds of other cognate words and place names, at the very least, hints at something deeply fundamental about this sound in Indo-European culture (note M-N- is an element of element and fundamental too, as well as in month, Monday, and minute).
This power of M-N- which for the sake of branding I call ‘Mana’ (mainly because Mana itself signifying power/energy in contemporary English describes perfectly what the M-N- sound communicates (M-N-) throughout our contemporary world (monde in French!)).
Given what we now know about the spread of Indo-European languages from a Common Source in the river valleys of eastern Ukraine, we ought to be looking for an explanation for this mysterious M-N- phenomenon there, rather than in India or any of the linguistic cultures which grew out from migrations from these first Indo-European language speakers in ancient Ukraine.
Readers of Power of Mana know better though!
We understand that the M-N- moniker (while originating in the mouths of the first Indo-European language speakers before 2,500 BCE to describe the moon (which sound modern linguists write as Meh₁n-ṓt)) actually communicates a much older idea: the M-N- sound signifies the energy we exchange as animate creatures.
This moon-based metaphor was used from earliest times to communicate this energy that we humans are characterised by. What I call Mana is THE Subtle Energy that transforms our mere matter into mind and humans - just as the light illuminates a full moon on a winter’s night.
Yet again in Menua we see how an M-N- sound in the name of a human monarch gives their name to the mythological founder of a great Indo-European community in a distinct Indo-European language group:
Mannus and Hermione founded the Germanic people - note the M-N- sound in their and Germany’s name.
Érímon was the mythological first high monarch of all Ireland.
Manannán was Ireland’s most prominent and sole surviving pre-Christian deity. Amairgen, Érímon’s brother, was the first poet-judge of the Milesian conquerers of all Ireland - note the M-N- sound too in Amairgen - whose song (Ireland’s first poem) is beautifully communicated here:
Manu is Indic culture’s first sacrificer and founding human monarch - mentioned in the Rig Veda that was first written down in 1,100 BCE but whose songs, naturally, are much older than that.
Manušcihr whose name literally means “son of Manus” was king of Iran. As we noted earlier Iran takes its name from Ahriman (Aryaman).
And the M-N- sound in the Italic linguistic culture’s most famous offspring the Ancient Romans and their early Numen religion is legion.
I call this phenomenon of the constant resurfacing of the M-N- sound in the names of Indo-European cultures’ founders, foundation myths and core vocabulary (community, mind, communal, communion, mana, manna, human, monk, mound, moniker, … ) Reversion to the Moon (-based metaphor).
Reversion to the Mean (“Mean” is another M-N- word - signifying something Other shining through a signifier, as the light illuminates the moon) is a phenomenon (as is phenomenon an M-N- word!) in contemporary statistics / data analytics that enables modern neural network computer algorithms to operate.
Reversion to the Moon (-based metaphor) is an empirical observation, by me, that what I call the Sacred M-N- sound (mantra, if you like - yes, M-N- is in Mantra too!) is a sound immanent in a huge universe of mainstream, manistic, and important meanings (semantics) and signifiers in almost every sentence we speak in an Indo-European language.
This M-N- sound in Power of Mana could be seen as an Organising Fiction through which to explore the beauty of the most studied and important linguistic, religious and cultural family of our world (monde) - Indo-European - which I call Manuland.
We can rule out a causal relationship between Ireland and Armenia’s founding M-N- sounding monarchs (and indeed between India, Ireland and Rome). These cultures all arose at roughly the same time. They are too far separated in space and time for one of them to have entrenched the M-N- sound in each other’s founders’ names (note that reversal of the M-N- sound in ‘name,’ ‘anima,’ ‘anim’ (name in Irish), ‘animate,’ ‘Numitor,’ (Romulus and Remus’s grandfather), and Numa (Romulus’s successor)).
The contemporary French language phenomenon manifested in the speech in the banlieu called “Verlan” (on the street smarts are manifested by reversing syllables in word sounds) is only one of many manifestations of this reversal-of-sounds phenomena noted by linguists, including me.
So we can rule out borrowing in any of those directions. It’s possible each culture adopted an M-N- sounding name as its founding monarch by coincidence. What though are the chances of this?
Here we see that five (Celtic, Germanic, Indo-Iranian, Armenian, and Greek (Minos, Mycaenian, Minerva)) of eight of the main emanations of the ancient Ukrainian / Proto-Indo-European language speaking group (that first formed in today’s eastern Ukraine selected (around a millennium after they all lived together in one community in eastern Ukraine)) choose as a moniker for their founding monarch a name with the M-N- sound.
There is a strong consensus among linguistic and material archaeologists that all Indo-European language speakers last lived together in one community in 2,500 BCE and that, around that time, the community began to split and all the Indo-European language families we speak today formed after that moment.
Such a coincidence is, I’m going out on a limb here, IMPOSSIBLE.
So, we are left with, the third possibility: A common source (note that immanent in Common is the sacred M-N-sound).
So before the split around 2,500 BCE the founding monarch (another M-N- sound) in the Indo-European community (another M-N-sound) had an M-N- sounding moniker, which carried through into five of eight remaining Indo-European linguistic communities’ mythological founders monikers.
And this M-N- phenomenon carried itself forth, in a mantic manifestation of the actual phenomenon that M-N- describes (a shining through, like light through a full moon on a clear winter’s night in the mountains) into the Armenian, Germanic, Irish, Welsh (Manawydan), Roman, Indo-Aryan/Iranian, and Greek (Minos/Minerva) linguistic and cultural communities.
It interests me to learn that Irish and Armenian both contain cognate words for the moon (I note the author of this text2 Max Fomin too carries presumably unknowingly the sacred M-N- sound in his name).
I’ll leave it at this, for now.
When I discovered the Power of Mana almost exactly one year ago I shared the insight with a friend. He was very interested in my discovery but asked of what use is the noticing of this mysterious mantic phenomenon in our hyper-modern world?
Well, we will get back to that soon - as looking for the Mana in the meme is absolutely crucial to tackling the Disinformation (Disinfolklore) that is afflicting and weakening our civilisation.
Continued:
Continued from:
First in series:
The Power of Mana did not manage to entrench itself so deeply into the foundation mythologies, signifiers and every day speech of the language that more than half of humanity speaks today without having more to it than meets the eye.
And reading the Power of Mana is the sole means today of unlocking the meaning of the sacred M-N- sound that is the basis of our humanity.
I promise you that every tantalising lead I lay out here (which is resolved in my mind) will resolve in yours as you keep reading.
Armenia: A Historical Atlas by Robert H. Hewsen (Chicago, 2001) - https://archive.org/details/hewsen-maps-00-earliest
Fomin, Maxim, Alvard Jivanyan, and Séamus Mac Mathúna, eds. Ireland and Armenia : Studies in Language, History and Narrative. Washington: Institute for the Study of Man, 2012. Print.