Etymology In the past, the Semitic word kabir ("great") has been compared to Κάβειροι since at least Joseph Justus Scaliger in the sixteenth century, but nothing else seemed to point to a Semitic origin, until the idea of "great" gods expressed by the Semitic root kbr was definitively attested for North Syria in the thirteenth century BCE, in texts from Emar published by D. Arnaud in 1985–87. Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling connected the Greek word to the Hebrew חבר (khaver "friend, associate") and via this to several priest names as one attached to the Persians ("Chaverim"), linking them to the Dioskouri or priestly blacksmiths alternatively.Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling: Ueber die Gottheiten von Samothrace. Stuttgart and Tübingen (Cotta) 1815, p. 110 sqq. (online text). T. J. Wackernagel in 1907 proposed a connection with the Sanskrit God Kubera/Kuvera which means "the ill-shaped one".Noted by Walter Burkert, The Orientalizing revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age (1992, p 2 note 3). in 1925 A. H. Sayce had suggested a connection to Hittite habiri ("looters", "outlaws"), but subsequent discoveries have made this implausible on phonological grounds. Dossein compares Κάβειροι to the Sumerian word kabar, "copper."Buckert, Greek Religion (1985), p. 282 and notes on page 457. A connection with the Greek word Kaio () has also been suggested, considering the nature of the Cabeiri as demons of volcanic fire; this was suggested by Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker and Louis Ferdinand Alfred Maury. Strabo wrote that the Cabeiri were named "after the mountain Kabeiros in Berekynthia". R. S. P. Beekes believes that their name is of non-Indo-European, pre-Greek origin.R. S. P. Beekes. "The Origin of the Kabeiroi" Mnemosyne. Vol. 57, Fasc. 4 (2004: 465–477); Etymological Dictionary of Greek, Brill, 2009, p. 612.
Etymology In the past, the Semitic word kabir ("great") has been compared to Κάβειροι since at least Joseph Justus Scaliger in the sixteenth century, but nothing else seemed to point to a Semitic origin, until the idea of "great" gods expressed by the Semitic root kbr was definitively attested for North Syria in the thirteenth century BCE, in texts from Emar published by D. Arnaud in 1985–87. Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling connected the Greek word to the Hebrew חבר (khaver "friend, associate") and via this to several priest names as one attached to the Persians ("Chaverim"), linking them to the Dioskouri or priestly blacksmiths alternatively.Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling: Ueber die Gottheiten von Samothrace. Stuttgart and Tübingen (Cotta) 1815, p. 110 sqq. (online text). T. J. Wackernagel in 1907 proposed a connection with the Sanskrit God Kubera/Kuvera which means "the ill-shaped one".Noted by Walter B!urkert, The Orientalizing revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early: Archaic Age (1992, p 2 note 3). in 1925 A. H. Sayce had suggested a connection to Hittite habiri ("looters", "outlaws"), but subse.quent discoveries have made this implausible on phonological grounds. Dossein compares Κάβειροι to the Sumerian word kabar, "copper."Buckert, Greek Religion (1985), p. 282 and notes on page 457. A connection with the Greek word Kaio () has also been suggested, considering the nature of the Cabeiri as demons of volcanic fire; this was suggested by Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker and Louis Ferdinand Alfred Maury. Strabo wrote that the Cabeiri were named "after the mountain Kabeiros in Berekynthia". R. S. P. Beekes believes that their name is of non-Indo-European, pre-Greek origin.R. S. P. Beekes. "The Origin of the Kabeiroi" Mnemosyne. Vol. 57, Fasc. 4 (2004: 465–477); Etymological Dictionary of Greek, Brill, 2009, p. 612.