The Greek word temenos (1)

Text
The sacred precinct, the plot of land assigned to the god and demarcated by an enclosing wall or incribed boundary stones, is called a temenos in Greek. The word is already attested in Linear B, and it can also denote land assigned to a king or noble. The Greeks connected it with temnō ‘to cut’, as it were a ‘cut-off’ piece of land. But temnein tēn gēn normally means ‘ravage the land’ - the opposite of what may be done to God’s little acre - and the noun temenos in anomalously formed from the Indo-European point of view. The scholars have been struck by its similarity to Akkadian tem(m)en(n)u (from Sumerian temen), which means a little deed or boundary marker, a foundation deposit, especially a prism with a building inscription. In restoring a temple it was important to locate the old temennu in order to be sure of building on the truly hallowed plot. In Greek the word might come to mean the plot itself, and in the Neo-Babylonian texts it is used of the foundation platform on which a temple is built, from which there is only a small step to the Greek temenos.

Bibliography

Amar Annus

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