From: Francesco Brighenti
Message: 54134
Date: 2008-02-25
>The idea that Schythians lived among the Urartians in eastern
> It's definitely an odd situation. I realize they once
> used the term "Hieroglyphic Hittite" but I thought the
> term died out long, long ago. The idea that it's
> possibly an Iranian among the Urartians makes sense
> --although the Armenians claim they are the heirs to
> the Urartians. It's something that does need to be
> followed up, though.
>http://www.iranica.com/newsite/articles/ot_grp10/ot_mannea_20060116.h
>
> --- Francesco Brighenti <frabrig@...> wrote:
> >
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister
> > <gabaroo6958@>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > I found this incongruous --the idea that
> > Hieroglyphic Hittite
> > > script was used to write Scythian.
> > > 1 --I thought the hieroglyphic script was Luwian
> > > 2 --How would the Hittite have come in contact
> > with
> > > Scythians?
> > > 3 --What is the date for this?
> > >
> > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scythian_languages
> > > "Scythian Language" Wikipedia
> > >
> > > Inscriptions
> > > Some scholars ascribe certain inscribed objects
> > found
> > > in the Carpathian Basin and in Central Asia to the
> > > Scythians, but the interpretation of these
> > > inscriptions remains disputed (given that nobody
> > has
> > > definitively identified the alphabet or translated
> > the
> > > content).
> > > An inscription from Saqqez written in the
> > Hieroglyphic
> > > Hittite script may represent Scythian...
> > > Transcription:
> > > patinasana tapa. vasnam: 40 vasaka 30
> > > arzatam ikar. UTA harsta XAYAL. | Partitava
> > xaya
> > > DAHYUupati xva|ipayam
> > > Translation: "Delivered dish. Value: 40 calves 30
> > > silver iqlu.
> > > And it was presented to the king. | King
> > Partitavas,
> > > the masters of the land property."
> >
> >
> >
> > The Wikipedia article you cite attributes this
> > linguistic hypothesis
> > to J. Harmatta, "Herodotus, Historian of the
> > Cimmerians and the
> > Scythians", in W. Burkert (ed.) _Hérodote et les
> > peuples non Grecs_,
> > Genève, Fondation Hardt, 1990, pp. 115-30.
> >
> > The term "Hittite hieroglyphs" used by Harmatta to
> > refer to the
> > Saqqez inscription was once commonly applied to
> > Anatolian
> > hieroglyphs, but the current English scientific term
> > is "Luwian
> > hieroglyphs" because the Anatolian language encoded
> > in the
> > inscriptions is Luwian, not Hittite.
> >
> > Harmatta's alleged "translation" is rejected by the
> > Catalan
> > philologist A. Alemany in a note available online at
> >
> > http://ddd.uab.es/pub/faventia/02107570v21n1p151.pdf
> > ,
> >
> > which I have tentatively translated into English:
> >
> > << In a surprising article, to say the least, János
> > Harmatta
> > interprets an inscription in Luwian hieroglyphic (?)
> > found on a
> > silver dish fragment coming from the "Scythian"
> > grave of Ziwiye
> > (Saqqez, southeast of Lake Urmia, Iranian Kurdistan
> > as "an adoption
> > and adaptation of the Hittite hieroglyphic alphabet
> > (sic) to another
> > language", in this case "some Old Iranian dialect,
> > apparently the
> > language of the Transcaucasian Scythians"; and then
> > he reads in it a
> > sequence of signs like <par-tì-ta5-wa5> =
> > *Pr.ta-tavah "who has
> > force for fighting", that is, the king Bartatua
> > [a.k.a. Partatua,
> > mentioned in an Assyrian inscription of Esarhaddon
> > (681-669 BC), who
> > even gave him a royal daughter in marriage, and
> > generally identified
> > with Herodotus' Protothyes -- Francesco], so that we
> > would be in
> > front of a document written up in his court or
> > chancellery; the
> > problem is that no other epigraphic monument has
> > come to us of the
> > language of the Scythians and this circumstance
> > makes us difficult
> > to believe in Harmatta's decipherment. [Footnote 9:
> > "About the
> > hieroglyphs (perhaps Urartian) of the artefact on
> > question, cf.
> > Diakonoff (op. cit.): "whether they belong to a
> > writing system is
> > not at all clear" ] >>
> >
> > The site of Saqqez was under the rule of the
> > Manneans in the period
> > in question (first half of the 7th century BC). The
> > neighbours of
> > Mannea to the north and northwest were the Urartians
> > (of Hurrian
> > linguistic affiliation) and the Transcaucasian
> > Scythians of whom
> > Bartatua was probably a king. The onomastic of the
> > ruling classes of
> > Mannea, as revealed by Assyrian sources, has a
> > strong Hurro-
> > Urartian, and secondarily Iranian component. Some
> > scholars have
> > concluded that the Manneans (at least their elite)
> > were a Hurrian
> > group subjected to an increasing Iranian penetration
> > -- see at
> >
> >
>
> > tml_____________________________________________________________________
> >
> > Given the probable cultural links of the region of
> > Saqqez with the
> > Hurro-Urartians in the 7th century BC, the
> > "hieroglyphic
> > inscription" Harmatta attributes to the
> > Transcaucasian Scythian king
> > Bartatua may be "written" in a Urartian-derived
> > symbol system not
> > necessarily encoding a language. Compare the
> > situation in Urartu: a
> > restricted number of still undeciphered
> > "hieroglyphic inscriptions"
> > of various type have been found at first-millennium
> > BCE Urartian
> > sites, but scholars who have studied them have
> > concluded they are
> > for the most part pictographic in nature and are not
> > likely to
> > represent a phonetically based writing system. The
> > initial input for
> > this locally developed symbol system, however, is
> > likely to have
> > come from hieroglyphic Luwian, a phonetically based
> > script which is,
> > quite significantly, also used by Harmatta (although
> > he calls
> > it "Hittite hieroglyphic") to decipher the Saqqez
> > inscription -- at
> > least, he tried to! :^)
> >
> > Best,
> > Francesco
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
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