Scota

In medieval Irish and Scottish legend, Scota or Scotia is the daughter of an Egyptian pharaoh and ancestor of the Gaels. She is said to be the origin of their Latin name Scoti, but historians say she (and her alleged ancestors and spouses) was purely mythological and was created to explain the name and to fit the Gaels into a historical narrative. Early sources Edward J. Cowan traced the first mention of Scota in literature to the 12th century. Scota appears in the Irish chronicle Book of Leinster, in a redaction of the Lebor Gabála Érenn. The 9th-century Historia Brittonum contains the earliest surviving version of the Lebor Gabala Erenn story (centred on an unnamed Goídel Glas), but this earliest version does not mention Scota even indirectly. The Lebor Gabála Érenn states that Scota was the mother of Goidel Glas, the eponymous ancestor of the Gaels. This Scota was the daughter of an Egyptian pharaoh named Cingris, a name found only in Irish legend and nowhere in Egyptian records or those of its neighbours. She marries Goidel's Father Niul, son of Fénius Farsaid (identified as a son of Gomer) a Babylonian who traveled to Scythia after the collapse of the Tower of Babel. As with Cingris, Gomer appears nowhere in Babylonian records, and is not a Babylonian name. Niul son of Fénius returns to Babylon as part of an effort to study the confusion of languages. He is a scholar of languages and is invited by Pharaoh Cingris to Egypt to take Scota's hand in marriage. Scota and Nuil's son, Goídel, who was saved by a prayer from Moses after being bitten by a snake, and is said to have created the Gaelic language by combining the best features of the 72 languages then in existence. In Fordun's early Scottish version, Gaythelos, as he calls Goídel Glas, is the son of "a certain king of the countries of Greece, Neolus, or Heolaus, by name", who was exiled to Egypt and took service with the Pharaoh, marrying Pharaoh's daughter Scota. The Lebor Gabála Érenn describes him as a Scythian. Again, this personage appears nowhere in Greek records.