SINNAI, THE JEWISH AND THE ANCIENT TOPONOMASTICS

In Sardinia, in spite of Wagner’s disciples, we don’t have 7 but 750 oriental toponyms. Those are only a quota of 1900 tested, and exceed the 38% of the entire vocabulary composed in Toponomastica Sarda. The toponym Sìnnai is clearly Hebraic. It appears for the first time in Carta Volgare di Marsiglia (written with greek characters between 1089 and 1103 as Σίνναη, to read Sìnnai). 250 years later it appeared as Sinay. The alternation double-simple is ancient. In the Bible too the name appears often as Sīnai or Sināi. Today the Jewish prefer Sinái. Naturally, in St Jerome’s Vulgata the name was written in the Latin fashion, with -ī-, that generates Italian Sínai. The ambiguity is a standard feature in this toponym. Today the inhabitants swear the last pronunciation was Sinnái (see the same Hebraic stress!), and they refer to the word meaning, improperly, to 'cattle brand'. Curiously, the present dialectal pronunciation is Sìnnia, therefore the alternance is still in force, but today it’s a religious alternance. In fact the people (and their intellectual fellows) refuse (for an atavistic fear) to accept the Hebraic toponym since 1700 years ago, from the moment when then Jewish were forced to assume the historical-religious guilt of being Christ’s murderers. The Hebraic memory had to be removed, and the bizantine priests worked lively for it. In only a few centuries they persuaded the inhabitants that Sìnnai is an allomorph, a secondary shape of Sìnnia ('signs'), and this is, in its turn, an allomorph of Sinnái (as ‘to brand’). Therefore Sìnnia too is understood and imposed as ‘to brand, brands’.

Concerning history, Sìnnai is a rare documental survival of 4000 Jewish transferred in Sardinia in 19 by Tiberius coercendis latrociniis, to fight Ilienses. Latrocìnia were, for Romans, brigandage actions, or rather hostile, sequential and organized operations, though without tactical battle formations, maybe with guerrilla warfare too, by those who refused the new authority. The tacitian Jewish wave was the second, compared to the earlier one of a thousand years before (see book).

The Jewish positioning in the forests, where then was built Sìnnai, had clear strategic meaning, for the Ilienses’ pressure from the mountains against near Karalis (Cagliari). Sìnnai was an affectionate name given by the conscripts. But maybe the Roman command, in agreeing to that name, wished to ethnically connote the place, in the same way they had done for the ethnical legions scattered all over the imperial territory. The Jewish were surreptitiously exiled, but first of all they were soldiers, who had legal status. And I believe they were treated like every veteran (with land awarding). Maybe they were rewarded like the later bizantine kabaḍḍaris, “knights” installed in the limes with awarding of vast land properties as mutual security for the permanence of the settlement.

Geographic reasons support all I’ve written. In the XIX century, when Italy was united, Sìnnai was the sardian village with the largest territorial surface (proportionally to inhabitants, and absolutely too). Sinnai owned all of the south-east corner of Sardinia. A minimal share was then transferred to Burcei, another to Villasimìus, another was owned by Mara-Calagònis. The reasons for so large a possession was that Sinnai dwelled for two thousand years as the guard of the uninhabited mountains.

St. Gregory, another Sinnaian place at the foot of the mountains, was at the beginning a border area, too. Gregory < gr. Gregórios < gregoréuō ‘to watch over, to look after, to be awakening’, is moulded from Babylonian kerχu ‘enclosure wall; enclosed area’ (with the sardian metathesis: kerχu > kreku > krekuriu > Gregoriu). It’s a classic paronomàsia, showing the unscrupulous will of bizantine monks to register the toponyms in the name of their saints.

Even the nearby Seven Brothers mountain shows an Hebraic original name by now translated into Sardinian (Seven as menorah’s tips, seven as the days of the Creation). The oronym had to be Hebraic and ancient; it was reinforced in 1705 when Salvatore Vidal built an isolated monastery in order to look after the vagrants along the (ex)Roman way. From that moment the “Brothers” were, indifferently, monks or mountain peaks. But neither the monks nor the peaks were seven. Another rock of Seven Brothers is named Poni Fogu ‘Poke up fire’, another S’Eremìgu Mannu ‘the Devil’, and are a clear sign of the demonization of the pre-Christian religions, still alive in the VI-VII century a.C., by the Christian priests. In the same mountain we also have Bruncu su Gattu, understood as ‘Cat Peak’ whereas is < Bab. gattu, kattu ‘form, physical build (of deity)’. From that toponym, scattered around the island as strong evidence of totems and betils (vertical stones), was born the Sardian word catzu ‘prick’ (< kattu), once showing the physical form of supreme God. The bizantine clergy, comparizing their all-spiritual God with the vulgar representation of the pagan God, after some centuries succeeded in making the people feel ashamed in touching their own groin.

But what ending was in store for the 4000 Jewish? Well, from the toponyms scattered in Sardinia we think they were sent to different mountains against the Ilienses, but the main body was stationed at Sinnai to protect the Karalitani’s properties. Tacitus mantains the Emperor was convinced that the Jewish would be wiped out by malaria (si ob gravitatem caeli interissent, vile damnum), and so he could close the Hebraic Question. But the historical data prove the 4000 didn’t die. The mystery till now on their disappearance is due to historians’ incapacity to interpret. Before demonstrating it, I clear up the mystery of Segossini, that is the minor village juxtaposed to Sinnai. It repeats the name Sinnai. The first part of the compound, Sego-, has the Akkadian basis ṣeχrum ‘modest, little’. Therefore Segossini means ‘Little Sinai’. The Segossinates were obviously Egyptians, the other ethnic group transferred to Sardinia with the Jewish.

Well, how did the 4000 survive? I’m claryfying it through biology, linguistics, history and greography. The biological evidence is of two kinds: first, Tiberius was unaware that people didn’t contract malaria on mountains. The second biological evidence is scientific, and concerns the aplotype p12f. We all know the Phoenician biological locus, characterized by the absence of p12f. It is found only in the Phoenicians, the Hebrews and all the coastal peoples who had come into contact with Phoenicians-Canaanites. Sardinia has the biological Phoenician-Canaanite locus 100%; it means the symbiosis between two peoples was perfect and lasted very many centuries, since the Shardana’s time.

The linguistic evidence is illustrated in this report. I only say that, amongst 1900 headwords investigated, at least 250 are Hebraic or Canaanite. We don’t understand the phenomenon if we refuse to realise what History and Literature have undertaken to demonstrate (I’m speaking of the Ugaritian texts, of the Bible, of some Phoenician steles). In the book I sketch a linguistic and commercial outline from which we infer that the celebrated Phoenicians were tout court Canaanites, a coastal people mixed with an inland and high Syrian people, too.

The Sardian pre-Phoenician language has a Mesopotamic and Semitic basis. It was the Nuraghean language, the Shardana’s language. A language that nowadays we all dream of, we are looking for, but nobody discovers it since we all tread on it, and things covered with dust are refused by men, instead inspired to look at the sky. My book contains 38% of headwords, the hard hoof of Shardana's language, and gives back a language that generations of researchers, dazzled by the grandeur of the Roman Empire, have always had in hand without understanding it. Phoenicians and Jewish didn’t supplant the Shardana’s language, they simply integrated it, and didn’t have difficulty in doing it, since the Canaanite and Assyrian-Babylonian language had in good part a common basis on the Akkadian language.

What does it have to do with the 4000 Jewish “disappeared”? Everything! Those Jewish were bilingual: they spoke Latin out of respect to the Roman Government but among them they spoke their ancestors’ language. And just transferred to the mountains, they were amazed listening to mountain dwellers speaking the Hebraic language. Only a novelist can grasp intuitively the beautiful events which happened, starting with marriages.

If the 4000 “disappeared”, it specifically happened because a modus vivendi was found between Sinnaians and the mountain dwellers to moderate latrocinia, to satisfy both parties and, at the same time, to satisfy the provincial Governor. And all lived very happily.

But not for a great deal. In fact the Hebraic Problem reappears fifty years later, two generations later. And here we have very strong historical evidence. The Tabula of Esterzili demonstrates that the Galilla didn’t pop out of nothingness, but repeated their own ethnical from Galilea, the land stuck on Phoenicia, from which came the Jewish sailing for Sardinia. The headword was pronounced in Sardinia with twin -ll- in both syllables (Gallilla, for the phonetic law of south-Sardinia), and Romans simplified, solomonically, at least in the first syllable.

But who were these Galilla or Gallilla, that left their own ethnic three times, in the Tabula of Esterzili, first of all, in the toponym Galilla changed into Villasalto in the XIX century, and then in the silver mine named Sa Lilla (hypercorrection of Galilla). Attention! The Galilla weren’t the already talked of 4000. They were the Galileian colleagues of Phoenicians (1000 b.C.). Obviously, the Sinnaians had to be related to the survival of the Galilla ethnic; in fact, with whom did they undertake a lot of marriages?

This is the interpretation oh history. As far as the geographic evidence, there is a lot. Besides the Monte Sette Fratelli, we remember the wine. Following Noe’s commandment, the Jewish grew the grapevine wherever they went. The coronym Campidanu was born in Sinnai, undoubtedly, and till now it names a territory that covers the Sinnaian hills and Burcei’s mountains. It, historically, doesn’t refer to the plains. The three Campidani of Oristano are those concerned with producing the famous Vernaccia, a wine known all over the world. (The great Campidano Plain got its paronomastic name only in the XIX century). Campidanu means ‘field fenced off’ + ‘vine-grown’ <Lat. campus ‘fenced garden’ and Sard. ide ‘grapevine’.

Besides this geographic evidence (maybe rather slender, I admit), I now introduce indisputible linguistic evidence. The Nasco is well-known especially in the past as the world’s best wine. Its centre of production is Sinnai. Nasco < Ass. nasqu ‘selected, chosen, precious’. The Jewish in the Bible use an infinitive: nasaq to show ‘to pour the wine, make a libation upon the altar’.

And specifically from Jewish we have the cheese Pecorino Romano < Hebr. rōmēm ‘high, lofty’, rūm ‘height, altitude’. Pecorino Romano is the cheese produced in the Sardinian mountains by the Ilienses, by the Galillenses, by the Shardanas.

It’s clear that Galillenses had too much to ask from the Roman Governor in Karalis, who was on the side of Patulcenses Campani, reliable people. The Galillenses made an effort to hold their own mountains, because over there they had, besides the cattle, the vineyards and the mines. All the “Silver Way” was owned by them, so as the mines of Corr’e xerbu. Correxerbu is understood by Sinnaians as ‘deer’s horn’ while is from Akk. kūru ‘kiln, furnace (for metals)’ + χarbu ‘deserted, abandoned land (as inhabitability and cultivations)’.

This is the linguistic history of an important part of Jewish in Sardinia.