Aphrodite

Submitted by

Israel Cohen

Poem

The goddess we call Aphrodite
Is not just an old Grecian deity.
The Phoenicians did make
Her a map. It's not fake.
Her body is cartograffiti.

The Punic war destroyed her face, (1)
The Romans left nary a trace.
But her hair is still there,
In Sahara, that's where. (2)
And her chin's a Tunisian place. (3)

Mt. Atlas is her first verTebra. (4)
Her backbone is now Gulf of Sidra. (5)
Her heart is in Libya, (6)
Her left leg, Somalia. (7)
Her breast is in Chad wearing no bra. (8)

The Greeks called her liver Egypt,an' (9)
Her kidney was Biblical Goshen. (10)
She's bent at her waist,
Now Misr-ably placed. (11)
The Red Sea was her menstruation (12)

As a kid I did think the Red Sea
Was an English map typo: lost E,
From Reed Sea in Hebrew.
But that could not be true,
Mare Rubrum 'twas Latin, B.C.

Aphrodite with Hermes did sin,
We know this is true 'cause within
Her "snatch" we call Sinai (13)
His "zaiyin" does still lie. (14)
It's known as the desert of Zin.

Notes

Aphrodite as an Anthropomorphic Map

Anthropomorphic maps were made by configuring the gigantic virtual body of a god or goddess over the area to be mapped. The name of each body part became the name of the area under that part. This produced a scale 1:1 map-without-paper on which each place name indicated its approximate location and direction with respect to every other place on the same map whose name was produced this way.

(1) The Romans destroyed Carthage during the 3rd Punic War. In Hebrew, "face" is PaNim.
(2) Hebrew Sa3aR = hair (using 3 for the aiyin).
(3) Tunis is a reversal of SaNTir = chin in Hebrew.
(4) Atlas = cervical vertebra supporting the skull.
(5) In Hebrew, SHiDRa is spine, backbone.
(6) The Semitic term for "heart" is LeB.
(7) In Hebrew, "left" is S'MoL.
(8) In Hebrew, "breast" is SHaD.
(9) As in ancient Greek hepato- "liver".
(10) The ancient shin had a T-sound. SHoR = ox was ToR as in Taurus. Gimel had a K-sound in other languages: GaMaL = camel. So, GoSHeN sounded like QTN, as in QiTNiot = beans. Goshen was her bean-shaped kidney, so Ashkenazi Jews do not eat beans on Passover. Cotton was exported from QTN / Goshen. The cotton genus is Gossypium. Compare gossamer < Latin cotton+sea = foam (Greek aphros).
(11) Arabic Misr & Hebrew MiTZRaim are derived from the Semitic term for narrow, TZaR. The waist should be the narrow part of the body.
(12) In Latin, the Red Sea was Mare Rubrum. In Hebrew, the Red Sea is "Yam SooF" = Sea of Reeds. SooF is a reversal of the sounds in peh-sof PoS, Hebrew for the female pudenda.
(13) In Hebrew, Sinai is spelled SiNi without an aleph but is pronounced as if had an aleph after the nun. The ancient sound of aleph changed from CHS/GHT => T => a glottal stop. Treating aleph as CHS, Sinai sounded like SNCHs, a reversal of K'NiSah = entrance (to her body).
(14) Zaiyin means "weapon" in Hebrew. It is also a euphemism for the male member.