Celtiberian oral hygiene in light of literary sources and historical-comparative linguistics
Elwira Kaczyńska
Uniwersytet Łódzkihttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-4545-1927
Krzysztof Tomasz Witczak
Uniwersytet Łódzkihttps://orcid.org/0000-0001-8895-974X
Abstract
Greek and Roman writers (e.g. Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, Catullus, Apuleius) agree that the Celtiberians, the Cantabrians and their neighbour tribes used urine to brush their teeth and wash the entire body. Celtic vocabulary confirms this ancient observation. The Old Irish word mún ‘urine’ (< Proto-Celtic *mūnos) was formed by the suffix *-nofrom
the Proto-Indo-European verbal root *meH-: *muH- ‘to wash’ (cf. Proto-Slavic *myti
‘id.’), which means that the Goidelic Celts considered urine a means of washing. Slightly
different appellatives are found in Brythonic Celtic: Welsh troeth ‘lye, urine, bath’, trwnc
‘urine, lye’, Bret. troaz ‘urine’, motivated by verbal forms denoting the activity of washing
or bathing, cf. OIr. fo-thrucid ‘s/he bathes’, Lithuanian trenkù, triñkti ‘to wash one’s hair,
wash fruit’ (< PIE. *trek-, *trenk-). The lexical material shows that urine was considered
an appropriate substance for washing or bathing in the ancient Celtic world. The exact
structural equivalent of the Proto-Slavic word *mydlo ‘soap’ is Vedic mū́tram ‘urine’. Both
of these words, similarly to OIr. mún ‘urine’, derive from the Proto-Indo-European root
*muH- ‘to wash’. It can therefore be assumed that urine was used as a washing liquid not
only by the Celts, but also by the Indo-Iranians.
Keywords:
ancient medicine, Celtiberians, Celtic vocabulary, etymology, Greek-Roman literature, Indo-European culture, urine, washingReferences
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