Selene

Summary

Selene is the moon among the Greeks and its goddess, and her name in Greek, Σελήνη, Selēnē, is the word for the moon itself. Hesiod says Theia bore to Hyperion, one of the Titans, "great Helios and clear Selene and Eos who shines upon all that are on earth and upon the deathless gods". Homer never makes her a goddess; for him the word is the moon in the sky.

The thirty-second Homeric Hymn describes her, calling her at its start Μήνη, Mēnē, the long-winged moon: from her immortal head a radiance is shown from heaven and embraces the earth, and the air, unlit before, glows with the light of her golden crown. When she has bathed in the waters of Ocean, put on her far-gleaming garments and yoked her shining, long-maned horses, and drives them on at full speed in the evening at mid-month, her great orbit is full and her beams are brightest as she increases, "so she is a sure token and a sign to mortal men". The hymn says that the son of Kronos, Zeus, once lay with her and she bore him a daughter, Pandia. Pausanias, describing the base of the statue of Zeus at Olympia, says that at its end Selene is driving what he thinks is a horse, though some say a mule.

Her best-known story is that of Endymion. The Library says Endymion was of surpassing beauty, the Moon fell in love with him, and Zeus allowed him to choose what he would, and he chose to sleep for ever, deathless and ageless. Apollonius of Rhodes has the Moon see Medea fleeing in the night and say to herself: so I am not the only one who strays to the cave on Mount Latmus, nor the only one who burns with love for fair Endymion; often you drove me away with your spells so that you could work your sorcery in the dark. The people of Elis, Pausanias reports, say the Moon loved Endymion and bore him fifty daughters, though others say he married a mortal wife.

The idea Selene's stories turn on is that the moon is a light in the night by which time is reckoned. In the hymn she comes out in the evening and her orbit is full in the middle of the month, so she is a sign by which people know where they are in their month. In the story of Endymion she goes down every night to a sleeper in a cave who neither dies nor ages, as the moon vanishes and comes back new every month.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this, as a reading proposed on the method, since the project's essays do not read it. LSJ derives σελήνη from σέλας, "light, brightness, flame", used of a flash of lightning and of the torch in Hecate's hand in the Hymn to Demeter. Take off the suffixes and sel- remains, with s and l. We read it as Arabic sanā: in Lane sanā is "light", or "the light of lightning, and of fire", sanā al-barqu "the lightning shone", and in the Qurʾān "the flash of His lightning almost takes away the sight". S is s, and n becomes l; they are letters that replace each other within Arabic itself. With the same word the project's Babylonian essay reads the name of Sîn, the moon of Babylon, and compares him with Selene. Arabic offers a second reading, hilāl, the moon at the start of the month: ahallū al-hilāl, they raised their voices when they saw it, and tahallala al-saḥābu bi-l-barq, the cloud shone with lightning. Both ls are in place, but h would have to become s.

Linguistic Root

LSJ derives σελήνη from an old form made of σέλας and a suffix, so the name means "the bright one". It gives σέλας as "light, brightness, flame", citing burning fire, the flash of lightning Zeus sends in the Iliad, torchlight, among them the torch in Hecate's hand in the Hymn to Demeter, and the light of sun and moon. So the Greek word itself makes the moon "the light". Beekes's etymological dictionary of Greek calls the origin of σέλας itself unclear: some compared an Avestan word for glory, but the initial s rules it out, so no known Indo-European family of the word competes with the Arabic reading, and the dictionary compares the formation of σελήνη with the Latin moon-word lūna only in its suffix.

In Lane sanā is "light", or "the light of lightning, and of fire", or "a high light"; sanā al-barqu is said when lightning shines and gleams, and of lightning that sends its light into a tent or flies along the clouds, "but it is only in the night". In the Sura of Light: "the flash of His lightning almost takes away the sight". The Arabic and the Greek word are both used for the light of lightning at night and the light of fire. S is s, and n becomes l: the project's reading method treats l, n and r as one group whose members interchange within Arabic itself. The Babylonian essay reads the name of Sîn, the moon of Babylon, from sanā, "the lightning's gleam.. so Sîn is the luminous one", and counts Selene among his likenesses.

The second reading is al-hilāl. In Lane the hilāl is the new moon, or the moon when near the sun, a little before or after the change, and mustahall al-shahr is the first night of the lunar month. In the Asās al-Balāgha: "ahallū al-hilāl and istahallūhu, they raised their voices on seeing it; ahalla al-hilāl and istahalla, when it was seen"; "tahallala al-saḥābu bi-l-barq, the cloud gleamed with lightning"; and kāraytuhu muhālla, "I hired him by the month". The hilāl is the moon by which the start of the month is known, and in the Qurʾān "they ask you about the new moons; say, they are times appointed for people", close to the hymn's words that Selene is "a token and a sign to mortal men". The Helios page reads her brother's name from the same halla. But Selene's name begins with s, not h. H and s interchange within Greek itself, as in ἑπτά against Latin septem, and within Semitic in the pronouns, as in Akkadian šū against Arabic huwa, but the Juthoor laws do not pair them.

The hymn calls the moon at its start Μήνη, of the family of μήν, "month". This is the family of Norse Máni, the moon, which the Sól and Máni page reads from manā, "to measure out", making the moon the one by which time is measured.

Key Mythic Narratives

The moon drawn down by witches

LSJ notes under σελήνη that "drawing down the moon" was attributed to the witches of Thessaly, citing Aristophanes and Plato. In the Argonautica the Moon complains of Medea for driving her away with spells so that she could work in the dark. For the Greeks the moon is a light that belongs to the night, and magic wants to take it away.

The moon and the month

LSJ notes that the same word means a month: "in the tenth moon" in Euripides is the tenth month, and the new moon "by the moon" in Thucydides is the first of the lunar month. The goddess and the month share one name, as the hymn counts her orbit full at mid-month.

Symbolic Reading

The essay rereading the Greek myths puts Selene in its table of "cosmic phenomena in names": the religious reading "a goddess riding a silver bull", the cosmic reading "a description of the phases of the moon", since the bull with its horns is the image of the crescent. The Greek essay reads the name of her mother Theia from ḍiyāʾ, radiance, once ḍ has become th, making her the mother of the three lights: sun, moon and dawn.

The hymn and the story give two images of the moon. The first is counting: a light that grows until it is full at mid-month, by which people know the time. The second is going away and coming back: the moon that goes every night to a sleeper who does not age. The Arabic readings hold both: sanā is light in the night, and the hilāl is the light that comes back at the start of every month, so that people raise their voices when they see it.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

In the North, Egypt, Sumer, Ugarit and Japan the moon is male; among the Greeks it is female. In the North Máni is a man who drives the moon and rules its waxing and waning; he took two children from the earth, Bil and Hjúki, as they carried a pail from a well, and they follow him. Selene takes Endymion into a sleep without end. In both stories the moon takes to itself a human companion.

In Egypt Khonsu is the travelling moon by whom the month is counted, called "reckoner of lifetime". In Sumer Nanna is the moon of Ur, whom the Sumerian essay compares with Selene, and in Babylon Sîn, whom the Babylonian essay reads from sanā as we read Selene. At Ugarit Yarikh, whom the Canaanite essay compares with Selene, reads from arrakha, "to date", and supports with the verse of the new moons: "say, they are times appointed for people". The Sumerian essay also compares Ningal, mother of the sun and wife of the moon, with Selene.

In Japan Tsukuyomi is the male moon who was parted from his sister the sun, Amaterasu, by a day and a night after he killed the food goddess. Selene is the sister of the sun, Helios, and each has a chariot and a time. In China Chang'e is the woman who took the drug of immortality, rose to the moon and lives there, while Endymion received from Zeus to neither die nor age because the moon loved him. In both stories undying life lies close to the moon.

Selene drives her chariot across the sky as her brother drives the chariot of the sun, so she belongs to the story of the sun's journey.