Dear Swirlednews,
I note your continuing concern and interest
regarding Silbury Hill, the largest prehistoric mound in Europe and a probable
"platform" for presenting gifts/sacrifices to deities.
The name Silbury is Old English and means
something like "hillfort above a marsh", rather a neat description.
We don't know the monument's ancient name, or even
what the Romans called it (they must have called it something, because their
road from London to Bath had to dodge it).
What we do know is that the River Kennet rises
very close to Silbury and flows past it. The name Kennet is clearly
related to Cunetio, the Roman name for the settlement at Mildenhall,
just east of Marlborough.
Cunetio is a puzzle for linguists. While
it is clearly not Indo-European, the element Cuno- forms the first
part of a number of compound names used by Celts in the British Isles (such as
Cunobelinos, Cunotamos, etc), but not on the continent of Europe.
It has been argued that Cuno- means
"dog", but this is not possible, because there is no n in
the nominative singular.
I suggest Cuno- is Dene-Caucasian, and is
connected with Basque goien "highest" = goi "high"
+ superlative en, and *kon, an element in Iberian personal
and deity names, such as Edekon "the supreme Edetani" and Torolus
Gombiciecus (*Gonbikiaiki "the exalted one of the supreme
eye").
-etio may be connected with the Basque
and Iberian toponymic suffix -eta, meaning "place of".
Cunetio would therefore mean
"supreme place".
Whether or not this was the name originally
applied to Silbury Hill, we cannot know, but I think it is a distinct
possibility.
With best wishes,
Angus J Huck