gender prevails: Baltic saule, Germanic *sunno ̄n and derivatives, Old Norse
sól, and Irish súil‘eye’, which is generally thought to be the same word;^5 the
Irish word for ‘sun’,grían, is also feminine. This northerly feminine zone
is perhaps to be accounted for in terms of influence from the substrate
population(s).
Finally, as a lamp is an item of material culture, we must reckon with the
possibility that the old Indo-European word was originally a loan from
another language. That might explain its unusual morphology.
The Sun as a deityThere is extensive evidence for the recognition of the Sun as a deity among
Indo-European peoples. The solar gods mentioned in Hittite texts include
one or more of probably non-Indo-European pedigree, such as the Sun-
goddess of Arinna, but others, like the above-mentioned Sius-summi and
Tiwat/Tiyat, are securely Indo-European. It is also worth noting that in taking
over the name of the Hattic Sun-goddess Esta ̄n, the Hittites applied it to a
male god. ‘The goddess took on the personality of an ancient Indo-European
god.’^6
The Indic gods listed in Suppiluliuma’s treaty with Mitanni do not include
the Sun. But the (non-Indo-European) Kassites had a Sun-god whose name,
Sˇur(i)yasˇ-, closely resembles Vedic Su ̄ ́r(i)ya- and may be a borrowing from
those western Indics. In the Amarna letters there appears a north Syrian
prince Sˇuwardata, which looks very much like a theophoric name, ‘given by
Suwar’, parallel to the Su ̄ ryadatta attested in post-Vedic India.^7 Su ̄ rya is the
recipient of ten hymns of the Rigveda, and eleven more are addressed to
Savitr
̇
, the Arouser, who is also in some sense the god of the Sun.
In Greek myth Helios appears as a god with a genealogy and progeny. He is
invoked as a witness to oaths (see below). He can be portrayed as a speaking
character interacting with other gods (Od. 8. 302, 12. 374–88, Hymn. Dem.
26–9, 62–89). He is not prominent in public cult except in Rhodes, but there
he had an important festival.
Greek writers observed what they took to be Sun-worship among some
other Indo-European peoples: the Persians (Hdt. 1. 131), the Thracians
(^5) O. Szemerényi, however, Akten der 2. Fachtagung der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft (1962),
191 f., derives it from sokw-li- ~ sekw‘see’.
(^6) Gurney (1977), 11. On Sun-gods in Hittite texts cf. Daisuke Yoshida, Untersuchungen zu den
Sonnengottheiten bei den Hethitern (Heidelberg 1996).
(^7) Cf. T. Burrow, The Sanskrit Language (London, n.d.), 28; Kammenhuber (1968), 48–51, 173
(sceptical).
196 5. Sun and Daughter