Hello,
Pjotr, you wrote:
> Perhaps the fellow in the feather-crowned headgear on
>the Phaistos Disk represents the syllable LU ;-).
Great idea! That would give US the REALLY OBJECTIVE FIRST syllable for
reading the disc!! (In capitals: what most other 'explainers and 'code
breakers' write about their findings, too). Lets carry on, may be we'll get
the rest just as easy! :-)) ;-))
A little more serious:
I've read somewhere (at a time I wasn't interested in that subject very much
yet, but I remember it clearly, only not where ... so far my archaeological
'expertise') that on the Canaanite coast Semitic (West Semitic, Ugaritic or
the like) findings predate others, but many of the settlements were then
mysteriously destructed and stayed uninhabited for some time. If we
hypothesize (!) that this rather 'empty' moment was when the Philistines
(where ever they were actually coming from, but their pottery resembled
Mycenean and Cretan as well without being similar) found their place on the
Levantine coast. They were well settled when the Israelites came from the
deserts and took over. I imagine that even if the larger settlements were
destroyed, small ones (with Semitic population) still existed, at some sites
there seem to be graves from nomadic or similar non settled people. So
within their - now again largely Semitic speaking surroundings - the
Philistine (speaking something IE, as we are again hypothesizing...)
settlers lead a somewhat insular life, concentrated on their seafaring (that
bit really does make sense). Being culturally somewhat superior, it does
make sense, too that the heretofore nomadic Hebrews borrowed some of the
nice pottery ideas and certainly some of the mythology (Brinna Otto in:
König Minos und sein Volk, Zürich 1997, hypothesizes a lot in the opposite
direction, some probably correctly as all connections always have two sides
and there are certain Semitic imports into Lin. B - that's as far as my
'philological expertise' goes in this case).
As Cretans had already had connections with Mari in the 19th century BC (the
Marians noted that they needed a translator - and had one, too - for trading
with them) and as their cultural influence also seems to have been
noteworthy in the Levantine coast, it seems possible they exported some of
their mythology, too (taking back parts and symbols, e.g. the holy palm tree
that is rather scarce in Cretan climate but was one of the most important
mythologems in Mesopotamia).
To give you another philologically daring example, one of the oldest Greek
gods that has already been documented in Mycenaean Greek was Dionysos (name
except for the first part unclear). As his myth is partly based on his
turning crazy and then being killed (sacrificed) to be reborn later, even
the Greek story sounds very old. As Di-wo-nu-so (documented in 15th cent.
Crete) he might be expressing an idea later taken up by religious reformers
of the Hebrews: the God of suffering (nu-so being like the Ionian form
'nousos' of 'nosos' meaning illness/suffering and (!) insanity). Now if you
are a patriarchic Monotheist you then need to make him his son so everybody
in the region would be satisfied, those of the old fertility religion and
the patriarchs, too. Only those who prayed to a female goddess (I sometimes
doubt the so-called Great Mother really existed in this way...!) would have
problems. And looking at Crete today and the importance of the cult of Mary
(also linguistically very interesting and certainly not as simple as usually
given: from the Hebrew Mirjam - there are Cretan seals from the Middle
Minoan time engraved with symbols that - read with Lin. B phonetics - would
render ma-re-ja, ma being the symbol of a cat's head and reminding me a lot
of Neolithic Anatolian females - goddesses? who knows - paired with or
sitting on big cats like the later Cybele!) we can imagine that being the
mother of god's son wasn't as bad, either.
Enough with hypothesizing, if I say more of this kind no serious
archaeologist will ever again talk to me - nothing of this can be proven, it
all may be coincidence!
But, Pjotr, your idea of looking into possible remnants of Anatolian,
especially the Lykian branch, in early Hebrew and Western Semitic sounds
interesting anyway!
From the mythical land of magical spirals
Sabine
p.s. Has any of you ever had a look at Kjell Aartun's 'decipherment' of the
Minoan languages (including the Phaistos Disc)?. He is a well known scholar
of Ugaritic and takes the discos to be a typical Mesopotamian erotic hymn
(the deep wet hollow earth is longing for the hard long plough etc, makes me
blush although I've published a volume of erotic stories quite successfully.
But mainly because his fantasy for associating syllables to symbols are by
far not as convincing as Pjotr's LU-idea. E.g. the fish-sign for him is 'pi'
as Western Semitic 'Torpedofisch', a branch with several leaves (to me) to
him is 'pa' like WS 'Frucht'. The man with the Iroquois hairstyle Pjotr
proposed to be LU for him is 'ka' as 'Priester' (see: K. Aartun, Minoische
Schrift, Sprache und Texte tom. II, Wiesbaden 1997). With this kind of
technique I'm quite certain someone with a lot of patience - any volunteers?
Probably would publish well! - might prove it to be Old English or
something like that!