Re: [tied] Tyrrhenian's new family members

From: Miguel Carrasquer
Message: 22186
Date: 2003-05-23

On Fri, 23 May 2003 12:58:25 +0000, Glen Gordon
<glengordon01@...> wrote:

>Miguel on the Amathusan bilingual:
>>In fact, I'm beginning to suspect that the whole thing is in Greek.
>
>Reasons why Miguel is crazy:
> - The text is _already_ written partially in Greek (Attic dialect)
> - Specialists in Greek would have discovered this long ago,
> if it were true.
> - The Eteo-Cypriot text was written in the old syllabary, not
> the Greek alphabet.
> - Eteo-Cypriot is definitively non-Greek, non-IE & non-Semitic

Since you had given no further details on the inscription (its date,
the _exact_ transcription of the Greek alphabetic and Cypriot
syllabary portions, the source where these transcriptions can be found
etc.), the above is all true, but irrelevant.

See John Chadwick, "Linear B and related scripts" (British Museum
1987), chapter 6, where it is explained that the Cypriot syllabary was
used up to Hellenistic times to write Greek (Cypriot dialect). In
fact almost all Cypriot syllabary material is written in Greek. The
example Chadwick gives is:

a-no-ko-ne-o-na-si-lo-ne . to-no-na-si-ku-pu-ro-ne
to-ni-ya-te-ra-ne . ka-se . to-se . ka-si-ke-ne-to-se
i-ya-sa-ta-i . to-se . a-to-po-ro-se . to-se . i-ta-i
ma-ka-i . i-ki-ma-me-no-se . a-ne-u . mi-si-to-ne

I leave the translation to Greek (or Etruscan :-) as an exercise.

The term "Eteo-Cypriot" is used to denote those inscriptions not
written in Greek (or Phoenician), whether they be in the Greek
alphabet, the Cypriot syllabary, or the Phoenician alphabet. So the
fact that this text was partially written in the Cypriot syllabary
does not mean it can't be Greek, on the contrary.

The fact that another part of the inscription is written in alphabetic
Attic Greek is also irrelevant: most of the later inscriptions are
precisely of this nature. Chadwick's chapter 6 ends with words (I
only have the Dutch translation, so the wording may not be identical
to Chadwick's:)

"This script remained in use until Hellenistic times, but by that time
many people were unable to read or write it, so we find inscriptions
where the texts is given both in the Cypriot script and dialect as in
the Greek alphabet and standard langauge. Figure 36 shows an example.
[Figure 36]"

Chadwick does not give a transliteration of the inscription, but I
read it as:

DE:ME:TRIKAIKORE:IEUKHE:N
ELLOOIKOSPOTEISIOSANETHE:KE

ta-ma-ti-ri . ka-se . ko-ra-i . e-lo-wo-i-ko-se . po-te-si-o-se .
a-ne-te-ke

Attic:
de:me:tri kai kore:i eukhe:n hellooikos poteisios anethe:ke
Cypriot: da:ma:tri kase kora:i hellowoikos pote(i)sios anethe:ke

So without having seen the inscription, there is no reason to reject
the possibility that it's an inscription in both Attic alphabetic
Greek _and_ Cyprus-dialect Greek in the Cypriot syllabary. There are
many such inscriptions.


>I have to rely on memory but the Greek side looks something like:
>"He polis he Amathousion Ariston Aristonax eupatriden." The
>expected verb "dedicated to" is implicit and unwritten.
>
>The last name in Eteo-Cypriot is written:
> A-RA-TO-WA-NA-KA-SO-KO-O-SE
>Cyrus Gordon mentions a dialectal variant of Aristonax which
>is Artowanax. The explanation suffices because surely this
>is the ECyp representation of the name in the Greek text.
>
>Nothing and I repeat NOTHING in the Eteo-Cypriot text can be
>construed as Greek and the verb U-MI-E-SA-I (umesi) is clearly
>"dedicate" firmly attested in Etruscan /um-uce/ and Lemnian
>/aumai/ (look at the Lemnian Stele). The phonetics are even
>predictable since Lemnian tends to diphthongalize pure vowels.
>
>Scrool down this site...
>
> http://etruskisch.de/pgs/gr.htm
>
>...and you'll also see mentioned the gloss /une/, the locative of
>/un/ "libation" which correlates with the Minoan /una kanasi/.
>Hell, Minoan even shows the plural /unar kanasi/ at times! You'd
>have to be dropped on your head if you think EteoCypriot and
>Minoan are anything but Tyrrhenian given all that evidence.
>
>Unlike Cyrus, I'm not picking small pieces of text and making
>a mountain out of a molehill. I've taken the ENTIRE text and
>succesfully compared the vocabulary, grammar and phonetics
>to other known Tyrrhenian languages. Forget Greek.
>
>Now, for some strange reason, I can't find any mention of the
>bilingual EteoCretan/Greek text on the net. I believe it used to be
>on the indoeuropean-turned-porno-site but I know the text dates to
>the 4th century BCE and is mentioned in "Forgotten Scripts" by
>Cyrus Gordon (again, I must stress, no relation!) :P

Now we're getting somewhere. Luckily I have that at hand...

The alphabetic Greek indeed reads:

E:POLISE:AMATHOUSIO:NARISTO:NA
ARISTO:NAKTOSEUPATRIDE:N

He: polis he: Amathousio:n Aristo:na Aristo:naktos eupatride:n

The city of the Amathousians (honours) Aristo:n Aristo:naktos the
noble one.

The Cypriot syllabary inscription is obviously harder to read. I'm
not sure Cyrus Gordon's transcription is entirely accurate. Let's
assume that it is.

C. Gordon identifies:

(h)a(:)na mado:r-e: "the city"
la-sana aristono-se "for this Ariston",

and further refers to his "Evidence for the Minoan Language".

We've seen G. Gordon's translation.

Having now seen the actual inscription, I'm not so sure anymore it is
Greek. There certainly are elements in it which might easily be
Greek:

ana "upon" (the inscription was found on a stone with footmarks for
holding a statue, according to C. Gordon)

umies- "you (pl.)" (not sure about the shape of this pronoun in
Arcado-Cypriot, but the Proto-Greek is *humeies)

-ai Muk(u)lai "Amyclae" (the first deciphered Greek Cypriot
inscription --a Phoenician-Greek bilingual-- reads <to-a-po-lo-ni .
to-a-mu-ku-lo-i> (Phoen. <l-rs^p mkl>) "to Apollo of Amyclae"/"to
Reshef-Mukl")

a-ri-si-to-no-se a-ra-to-wa-na-ka-so-ko-o-se (Aristo:nos
Atowanaxokoos) looks like a Greek genitive.

(ka-i-li-)po-ti (Attic posi) "lord, god" (voc., perhaps dat.)

If I knew anything about the Arcado-Cyprian dialect, I could probably
say more..

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...