Indo-European Poetry and Myth

34127, Jonval no. 7) tells of an oak growing from the top of God’s house
(Dieva nama) that not even the stroke of Perko ̄n (the thunder-god) causes to
tremble; nams‘house’ is the same word as δο ́ μο. In another song a girl is
told that her deceased mother is sitting in God’s house (posˇâ Dìva namen ̧â)
and embroidering (LD 4993 var. 4, Jonval no. 948).
The Vedic Dawn is said to open the doors of heaven (dva ̄ ́rau diváh
̇

) with
her brilliance (RV 1. 48. 15; cf. 113. 4). Several of the Latvian songs mention
theDieva durvis (door) or namdurvis (house-door). In some cases it is where
the souls of the dead go, but one song has the door in a cosmological context
analogous to that of the Vedic passage:

A qui les chevaux, à qui la voiture

auprès de la porte de la maison de Dieu (pie Dievin ̧a namdure ̄m)?

Ce sont les chevaux de Dieu, la voiture de Dieu,

ils attendent que Saule (the Sun) s’y asseye.^16

Father Sky

The most constant title of the gods who inherit *Dyeus’ name is ‘father’.
Scholars long ago noted the striking agreement of the vocatives Díaus
̇

pítar
(RV 6. 51. 5, al.), Ζευ

πα ́ τερ, and the agglutinated Iupater or Iuppiter of the
Italic peoples. The phrase is used equally in the nominative (RV 4. 1. 10 Diáus
pita ̄ ́, 1. 89. 4 pita ̄ ́ Dyáuh ̇
̇

;Il. 11. 201 Ζε3 (με)πατρ, 4. 235 πατ^ρ Ζε3;
Illyrian Deipaturos; Latin Diespiter, Iuppiter), and to some extent in other
cases too (RV 1. 71. 5 pitré ... Divé; Homeric πατρ: ∆ιο ́ ,∆ι? πατρ; Italic
Dipoteres, Ioues patres, Iuve patre).
Herodotus (4. 59. 2) reports that the Scythians, ‘most correctly in my
opinion’, call Zeus ‘Papaios’. He must have understood the name to mean
‘father’ or ‘fatherly’, and he was very likely right. This looks like another reflex
of Father Dyeus. The same is assumed for the Bithynian Zeus Παπα or
Παππ;ο.^17 The ‘father’ title may perhaps also survive in the name of the
Old Russian deity Stribogu ̆ , if stri- is from *ptr-.^18 In the Latvian songs we
find the declinable formula Dievs debess te ̄vs, ‘God, father of heaven’ (LD
31167, 9291, 269 = Jonval nos. 79–81). An ecclesiastical source dating from
1604 records that the Letts believed in a supreme deity whom they called

(^16) LD 33799, Jonval no. 139. Other references are LD 12238, 19491 (Jonval no. 10), 27601,
27690 var. 2, 27378, 27850. There is no lexically equivalent phrase in Homer, but one may refer
to the π3λαι ο1ρανο, ‘gates of heaven’, of Il. 5. 749 = 8. 393. For Semitic parallels see West
(1997), 141–3.
(^17) Kretschmer (1896), 241 f.; RE xviii(2). 934, 977, 1083 f., and Supp. xv. 1471.
(^18) Cf. Puhvel (1987), 233.
170 4. Sky and Earth