The Homeric 'Asamiuphos: Stirring the waters of the Myceanean bath'

In the storm of controversy raised by the word asaminthoz, there are two reliable anchors: (1) that for Homer asaminthoz meant not simply a wash basin or tripod from which to draw warm water but a real 'bathtub', one into which the bather entered and from which he emerged, one of the very type that has survived almost intact from the Mycenean period in the palace of Nestor at Pylos in Western Messenia, (2) that asaminthoz, with its intervocalic -s- and suffix -nth-, is not native Greek but a foreign loan word of a type thought to have had its origins directly in the indigenous 'Aegean' culture and perhaps ultimately in Anatolia or the Near East.