The Ourea (/ˈu:rea/, or alternatively Orea /`orea/) were ten primordial deities offspring of Titaness Gaia (or Gaea) that preceded most of the Titans and corresponded to as many respective deified holy mountains as guardians that spanned most of the very ancient known world.
Albeit considered part of the Hellenic (more properly Helenic – and not Greek!) mythology, they are actually inactive characters therein and some only present some action in stories beyond its sphere which, along with the clearly Anatolian structure of the name, strongly recommends an origin from the east.
That said, both forms look most likely Phrygian in descent as the interchange between the sounds /u/ and /o/ as concerns the letter ‘O’ is conspicuous in Old Phrygian, stretching over the best part of their history, where ‘Ω’ and apparently also the diphthong ‘OY’ were introduced to render the former sound in New Phrygian, attested between the first and third century AD (if not earlier).
The Hellenes (more properly Helénoi, or Helénēs), on the other hand, did not use ‘OY’ to render the sound /u/ but ‘Y,’ or ‘Ω’ (Ionians), whereas it was the so-called Koine (Common) that did when it emerged in Anatolia around 330 BC, a ‘bastard’ dialect they didn’t reckon as Hellenic but barbaric anyway.
Which, in turn, spells that ‘Orea’ is the older and ‘Ourea’ a much later form of the appellation in writing though the former effectively contained the latter phonetically.
On top of that, not only the stem ‘or-‘ seems to feature well in Old Phrygian but there was further a similar word ‘ΟΡ-ΥΑΝ’ (voiced as ‘or-uan’ or ‘ur-uan’) that means ‘guardian’ or ‘warden,’ a trait that well fits that of the Ourea.
Nonetheless, the quest of the roots of the name most likely doesn’t wind up here but rather runs far deeper in the past and east among the very influential Hurrians, out of the ranks of whom the Phrygians look as though they may as well have emerged themselves.
Looking closer, the pattern and pronunciation of either Our-ea or Or-ea strongly suggest and reflect a most likely earlier Hurrian form as ‘Ur-Ea’(1) behind it; where ‘ur,’ pronounced as either /ur/ or /or/ just like Phrygian ‘Or-,’ carries the sense of ‘elevated/above ground,’ ‘primeval/primordial’ or ‘source of (divine) light’ whilst ‘ea’ spells ‘earth, ground, mound’ and therefore meets the profile a great deal.
Now, the ten Ourea, or Orea, are lined up on several websites as Aitna (or Aetna), Athos, Helicon, Kithairon, Nys(s)os, Olympus 1, Olympus 2, Oreios, Parnes, and Tmolus – yet a list that doesn’t fully add up on a couple of grounds.
First, there cannot be two (or more) of the same offspring that bear the very same name and yet the above list displays two Ourea under the appellation Olympus, which correspond to the respective mountains in ancient Phrygia and Thessaly. Therefore, one of them is not the original.
Second, the line-up on display doesn’t show Belos (or Belus), a confirmed Oureo(2) (or Oreo), which is actually the original name of Mount Olympus in Thessaly (nowadays Greece). The name itself breaks down as Bel-os/us and forms the apparent Anatolian and Hellenic rendering of Bel, Belu or Ba’al (meaning ‘Lord,’ ‘Master’), a major Akkadian, Babylonian and Phoenician god (or gods).
For that matter, Herodorus recounts that Cadmus(3) and his men drove away the Hestiaeans, apparently Leleges (Luwian speaking peoples out of Anatolia), from northwestern Thessaly which entails a Phoenician hold over the region, with storm god Ba’al (Zeus)(4) set up on the ‘throne’ of the mountain, in the wake in deep ancient times.
On the other hand, the Phrygian Olympus is the genuine one as there was actually a Phrygian mountain god named Olympos, who may be the same as the namesake Oureo, that was an early consort of supreme goddess Cybele as well as considered the inventor of the flute and father of the flute-playing Satyrs.
The name Olympus, or alternatively Ulympus, is most likely Phrygian as well. But I will discuss the matter of Olympus, which is very intriguing, at far greater length in a separate post as it merits. For the time, let’s now look at the proper make-up of the Ourea:
Aitna (or Aetna), Athos, Helicon, Kithairon, Nys(s)os, Olympus (Phrygia), Belus (later Thessalian Olympus), Oreios, Parnes, and Tmolus.
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(1) Ea is also the name of the Akkadian and Babylonian god of the earth.
(2) Oureo (or Oreo) is most likely the root of modern Greek ‘όρος’ (`oros,’ mountain).
(3) Belus was also a legendary Pharaoh of Egypt of divine lineage who was further twin brother of King Agenor of Tyre (Phoenicia), father of Cadmus, and long ancestor of Perseus, the legendary founder of Mycenae.
(4) As I have reiterated, Zeus is an epithet (title) and not a theonym applied to king gods and Ba’al was a storm god that resembled the Zeus we have in mind a great deal at that.