Arura (Ancient Greek: ἄρουρα, romanized: aroura) is a Homeric Greek[1] word with original meaning "arable land", derived from the verb ἀρόω (aroō), "plough".[2] The word was also used generally for earth, land and father-land and in plural to describe corn-lands and fields.[3] The term arura was also used to describe a measure of land in ancient Egypt (similar in manner to the acre), a square of 100 Egyptian cubits each way.[4] This measures 2700m² or 2/3 of an acre.[5] The oldest attested form of the word is the Mycenaean Greek a-ro-u-ra, written in Linear B syllabic script, originally meant "plough".[6]
Other uses
edit- Aruru, a Mesopotamian goddess associated with vegetation at some point conflated with Ninhursag
- 'Arura, a Palestinian village in the northern "West Bank".
References
edit- ^ Iliad 11.68
- ^ ἀρόω, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus
- ^ ἄρουρα, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus
- ^ Herodotus, 2.168, on Perseus
- ^ "Household economics: Making ends meet" note 1.
- ^ Palaeolexicon, Word study tool of ancient languages
External links
edit
The dictionary definition of arura at Wiktionary
