Princess of Egypt, Mother of the Gaels
Scota was an Egyptian princess — the daughter of a Pharaoh — who married Míl Espáine and became the mother of the sons who invaded Ireland. Her name gives the Gaelic peoples their most ancient designation: the Scots of Ireland and Scotland are, in the mythological account, her descendants.
She came to Ireland with the invasion fleet. When the Milesian army marched inland through County Kerry, fighting their way north through the Tuatha Dé Danann‘s resistance, Scota was killed at the Battle of Sliabh Mis. She was buried in the valley near Tralee that still carries her memory — Gleann Scoithin, the valley of the little flower.
The Egyptian genealogy was not accidental. The mythological tradition needed the Milesians to have been part of the ancient world — to have stood at Pharaoh’s court, to have been present in the age of Moses — before they came to Ireland. Scota is the mechanism of that connection. The Egyptian princess whose marriage to the Milesian ancestor line brought the greatest ancient civilisation into the Gaelic genealogy.
The tradition gives two women named Scota in different parts of the genealogy — one who married an earlier ancestor in Egypt, one who was Míl’s wife. Both carry the same name, the name that explains the people.
Her sons — Éremon, Éber Finn, Donn mac Míl, Amergin among them — took Ireland. She died in it before they had finished taking it.
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