Who were these people that survived to modern times from the pre-historic era with their language intact and with little evidence of any written materials during that time period up to 1878 when an Albanian alphabet was established and until1945, with a 95% population that was illiterate? There had to be something more than tenacity. Something spiritual had to exist in the make-up of these people of the Illyr-Albanian world who were known originally as Pelasgians. That spirit was in their blood. IT WAS THEIR LANGUAGE. The language was a great part of the sacred understandings they had and it had a greater influence then heretofore imagined on the sacred writings that subsequently took hold in other cultures as the result of the ‘intercultural’ concept. This language was sustenance, as much as food and shelter because at night, in the shelters, language served them so well that writings need not have been developed. It served them in story-telling, day events howe!
ver primitive, and family, clan and tribal communications. It served them with spiritual communication with each other, expressions of love, interacting with survival and sustenance
concerns. The mystery is why it served them so well when other cultures found it necessary to develop writings. Don’t misinterpret what I say. As time went by, and as we realize today, the writings eventually were missed on many levels. The missed writings are what makes the
‘propagandists’ against Albanians successful with their efforts to confiscate lands and identity because they wrote the stories, the histories, but with untruths in languages that had no substance as it regards the early evolution of man in the Balkans nor any insights into the spiritual evolution of the sacred writings of the East. Western scholars appear ignorant to cling so vehemently to what was ‘Greece’ because Greeks had the writings when to the Greeks themselves, the Mother of understandings had been the Illyr-Albanians. The ancient Greeks appear to have been misguided with too many misinterpretations as was evident in the essay ‘The Birth of Aphrodite and The Decline of the West’; even Hesiod’s ‘Genesis of the Gods’, itself written to try to give an accounting of their early evolution ‘in the beginning’ appeared to be based on their misunderstandings of the society to the North which had evolved millennia earlier.
We are plagued with too many realities about the foundation of Western Civilization. First we have the Greek reality, the Greek Civilization. Now one Simcha Jacobovic, an investigative reporter suggests that “The Exodus is arguably the most important story ever told, for it is the founding story of Western Civilization”. I want to admit that his finding of the biblical ‘Ark of the Covenant’, the chest containing two stone tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments and the location of Mount Sinai and ‘the discovery of a 3,500 year-old gold image that he thinks depicts the biblical chest’ is a brilliant piece of discovery by him. But is it ‘the founding story of Western Civilization’? Well, the Greek and Hebrew stories played key roles in the foundation. But without the understanding of the Illyr-Albanian existence, the key would have no door to open to the origin of Western Civilization to begin the building of a foundation unless you believe that time only began!
with Greek and Hebrew cultures.
Whatever form survival and sustenance took in their Balkan fastnesses in the pre-historic era, whether as hunter-gatherers, shepherds, early farmers, the Pelasgians, then Illyr-Albanians saw their benefactor was the Earth, who later became recognizable to them as Mother Earth and spiritual awareness matured. This had been true of many, if not most cultures. The distinction here was in the expression of words, names, phrases and concepts of this language that became recognizable in other cultures millennia later, many times being of a religious nature though with some inevitable changes. Illyr-Albanian became what we might call the ‘intercultural sacred language’ a concepts phenomenon. The propagandists would never accept this. What is important is not their politics or interpretations nor the lack of substance to claims made, but the lessons to be learned and not just for one sector of humanity, for all people who desire a positive humanity’s journey on Earth.
The Mother Earth took on a persona, first person recognition by the early people of the Balkans. This was reflecting or acting out the first reality. How or why this evolved I am not certain, but it would be difficult for the people to refer to Mother Earth as ‘he, she, or it’ because perhaps it was they who were the ‘he, she or it’. Mother Earth was Supreme. Physical survival and sustenance came to them from Her bounty and that appreciation filled their awareness that translated into the inspiration of the human spirit for good.
III. DECIPHERING THE NAMES ‘MIRIAM’ AND ‘AMITLAI’
Some religious dictionaries suggest that ‘Miriam’ is a name of uncertain meaning. In Hebrew it means ‘Sorrow’ or ‘Bitterness’. It has also been suggested that ‘Miriam’ was the ‘source of all spirit’. ‘Miriam’ was the name of the older sister of Moses and the name of the Virgin Mother of Jesus as preserved in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. Also, there was shown great respect for the memory of ‘Miriam’, the Mother of Jesus, in the Quran.
In Albanian, ‘mire jam’ (the ‘j’ pronounced as ‘y’) is ‘I am the Good’. It would not be unimaginable to suggest that the full name was ‘I am the Good Earth’ since the Earth was the logical source of the bounty enjoyed by the earliest people. ‘I am the Good Mother Earth’ since
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‘motherhood’ was the analogy. It may have been disingenuous for the Hebrew writers of the Bible to suggest that God revealed his identity (though not his personal name) to them as ‘I am that I am’, Yahweh. It may have been that the revelation was ‘I am that I am’ suggesting that He was the son of the Virgin Mother Earth, ‘Mire jam’, ‘I am the Good’, or ‘I am from I am the Good’, my Mother, the Earth. ‘Miriam’ was one of those names of ‘intercultural’ significance. Most cultures, if not all, viewed the First God as originally coming from the Virgin Mother Earth. That being said, this evolution to a Supreme God, the One that Created the Earth, the God of Abraham, cannot be a bad thing because of spiritual guidance and inspiration that followed whether that be That Highest Existence or not.
The name of the mother of Abraham, a woman of ‘Ur’ (a place in ancient Iraq), was ‘Amitlai’. In Albanian, ‘e mituri’ is ‘innocence’. The Albanian linguist, Nelo Drizari (Albanian Dictionary, 1934,1957) suggested reviewing the word ‘ushter’. Albanian ‘ushter’ translates as ‘green’ (fruit or grain), ‘peme ushter’, ‘green or unripe fruit’. In this context the thought might be ‘virgin’, a ‘virgin mother’, imitating the ‘Virgin Mother Earth’. When Abraham was born the legend was that his mother, Amitlai of Ur hid his existence because the ruler at the time, King Nimrod had heard about a boy child that had been born and would be a usurper to his rule. The order came from the King to destroy all male children born at that time. Does it sound familiar? Was Abraham, Hebrew Patriarch, the real Hebrew ‘Messiah’ but no one among the Hebrew seemed to have had that understanding. Or was it too early? With the introduction of One God, Monotheism, what better ‘Messiah’ !
than Abraham, founder of the Hebrew people would there be?