A Decipherment of the Eteocretan Inscription from Psychro (Crete) (original) (raw)
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reading an Eteocretan inscription
A Decipherment of the Eteocretan Inscription from Psychro (Crete), 2017
This study presents a decipherment of the Eteocretan inscription from Psychro (Crete), which was discovered in 1958 and dated to about 300 BC. The inscription was attributed to an unknown Eteocretan language, while the attempts to read the text so far included languages like Hittite, Semitic, even Slavic, without remarkable results. The attempt of the herein decipherment is based on the following concepts evidenced in earlier publications: The inscriptions that are conventionally called Eteocretan convey more than one language. These languages could not have remained totally unaltered through the centuries. Eventually, they had to be written in the Greek alphabet, because of the predominant cultural context. Of course, the Greek alphabet could not precisely render the non-Greek Eteocretan languages, so the scribes improvised their own ways to approximate the sounds of their native language, and this is one more factor that makes it harder for modern researchers to determine the language of the Eteocretan inscriptions. This is the only Eteocretan inscription that was preserved practically intact, but as all attempts of interpreting were fruitless, some researchers have declared it a fake. It would be pointless to return to interpretations of the inscription as conveying languages stated in previous attempts, and since it has been shown in a previous publication that the inscription cannot be fake, the present interpretation follows the latest linguistic evidence about the Sumerian origins of the Aegean scripts and, especially, the confirmation of a Cretan Protolinear script’s existence.
“Uninterpretable” cretan alphabetical inscriptions: “eteocretan” as phrygian?
Ukraïnsʹke movoznavstvo, 2020
The article is devoted to an old problem of several "Eteocretan" (i.e. "true Cretan") inscriptions in Greek alphabet, found in Classical Crete (dated to c. 6-4 c. BC), but not interpreted in Greek until the present time. Despite several hypotheses, the problem remains unsolved. However, this enigma is very important to reconstruct the ethno-linguistic map of ancient Crete as the craddle of Minoan civilization and the oldest interpretable scripts in Europe (Cretan hieroglyphs and Linear A). According to a commonly accepted view, the "Eteocretan" inscriptions can be a rest of "Pre-Greek" languages of the island-despite the "Eteocretan" and the Linear A inscriptions demonstrate no common linguistic features. The present author proposes an interpretation of the "Eteocretan" language as Phrygian. The latter was a close relative to Ancient Greek, splitted from it c. 4000 BC. This hypothesis correlates with another idea of the same author-of the presence of some Phrygian phonetic features in the language of Cretan hieroglyphs. Some "satem" elements of Phrygian, Cretan hieroglyphs, and Eteocretan (the name of Praisos as possible homonym of the "satem" Indo-European name of pig) make a system. Summarizing, Eteocretan looks like Phrygian, more or less Graecianized. In some inscriptions, loaned lexical elements are Greek whereas basic lexical and grammatical elements are Phrygian. In such way, a conundrum of "Greek vs non-Greek" Eteocretan inscriptions can be solved.
Kritzas-2005-The “bilingual” inscription from Psychro (Crete). A coup de grâce
ΜΕΓΑΛΑΙ ΝΗΣΟΙ. Studi dedicati a Giovanni Rizza per il suo ottantesimo compleanno, vol. I, Catania (2005), 255 – 261., 2005
In 1958, a curious inscription of the Giamalakis collection, which was later acquired by the Museum of Herakleion (Inv. no. 1541) was published (S. Marinatos, Γραμμάτων διδασκάλια, in Minoica, Festschrift Johannes Sundwall, Berlin 1958, pp. 226-231). According to information given by Dr. Giamalakis, the inscription might have come from the area of the village of Psychro, lying on the high-lands of Lassythi, with the famous cult cave. But there is confusion about the (presumed) origin of the inscription. Its uniqueness is due to the fact, that besides a short text of three lines in Greek lettering (which according to the ed. pr. might be “Eteocretan” dating to the 4th c. B.C.), it also bears a fourth line with three signs resembling those of the Linear A script. After a critical review of the various proposals for its decipherment, this article presents arguments proving that the “bilingual” inscription is in fact a modern forgery, scratched not on a porous block, as it was thought, but on a fragment of a Roman clay floor slab, of the type of bipedales.
tredition (https://tredition.de/ ), 2019
The Minoan culture on Crete existed around 2100-1420 BC leaving hundreds of inscriptions on seals, sealings and other artefacts. The most well-known inscription among them can be found on the Phaistos disk, a small clay disk with impressed signs on both sides. Deciphering it is one of the greatest challenges leading to better understanding the Minoan language and culture. First and foremost, the book offers a new general methodology in epigraphy for deciphering writing systems. Mathematical and statistical methods enable one to arrive at basic principles underlying the writing system and the root language. It allows one to begin a decipherment based on scientifically verified knowledge and to exclude false assumptions. While previous works on the Phaistos disk have either had to declare the impossibility of deciphering it or have suggested dubious interpretations based on preconceived assumptions, the present study aims to present a scientifically verifiable method for a step-by-step decipherment of the Phaistos disk. Now, by the end of the decipherment about 85% of the signs on the Phaistos disk can for the most part be read with a high degree of confidence. The discovered sound values and meanings of all the signs are then checked against other hieroglyphic inscriptions from Crete. It follows from the analysis that the Phaistos disk belongs to the writing system of both the Cretan and the Luwian hieroglyphs and that the texts are written in the Luwian language. The Phaistos disk and other Cretan-Luwian hieroglyphic inscriptions can therefore be considered to belong to a uniform linguistic area which extended from Crete to Western Anatolia during the Aegean Bronze Age.
The Decipherment of Minoan Linear A, Vol. II: Corpus of transliterated Linear A texts, Part I: Arkhanes - Kea, 2022
The decision to publish a completely revised and extended edition under the new title THE DECIPHERMENT OF MINOAN LINEAR A, VOLUME I: HURRIANS AND HURRIAN IN MINOAN CRETE: PARTS I–VI, also offered an opportunity to publish a revised and extended new edition of VOLUME II: CORPUS OF TRANSLITERATED LINEAR A TEXTS, PART I: Arkhanes - Kea (414 pages); Part II: Khania - Zakros. For Academia.edu I have provided the cover and title-pages of the book, the contents, 2 Linear A grids and the inscriptions from Arkhanes, Apodoulou and Arkalokhori. It is advisable to consult the editions with excellent photographs of the texts, such as L. Godart – J.-P. Olivier, Recueil des inscriptions en linéaire A, Vol. 1-5, Études Crétoises XXI, 1-5, Paris 1976-1985, while using this Corpus of transliterated Linear A texts. Only the photographs and ultimately the tablets and other objects on display in the musea are decisive for a sound judgement of the proposed readings.
Introduction to the Aegean Pre-Alphabetic Scripts
Kubaba 1: 38-61, 2010
This paper presents an introduction to the family of five syllabic scripts used in the Aegean and Cyprus before the introduction of the Greek alphabet: Cretan Hieroglyphic, Linear A, Cypro-Minoan, Linear B, and the Cypriot Syllabary. The sections on each script include descriptions of (1) the corpus of inscriptions, (2) the syllabary and its structure, (3) the spelling conventions (if known), and (4) the standard editions of the corpus. The paper concludes with an evaluation of the problems that are hindering the decipherment the three earliest scripts.
The archaeological context The Minoan peak sanctuary of Vrysinas is located on the peak of Agio Pneuma in the Vrysinas range, south of Rethymnon city. 1 It is an elevated site (858 m. asl.) with high visibility from and of the surrounding area, and with lines of sight to other local peak sanctuaries, notably Atsipadhes. There are small arable plateaux and many springs at a short distance from the peak. Communication with the south, the Amari and Agios Vassilios valleys, is easy, as is access to the uplands to the east and north.