Eteocypriot language
Eteocypriot | |
---|---|
Native to | Formerly spoken in Cyprus |
Region | Eastern Mediterranean Sea |
Era | 10th to 4th century BC[1] |
Cypriot syllabary | |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | ecy |
ecy | |
Glottolog | eteo1240 |
One of the Eteocypriot inscriptions from Amathus |
Eteocypriot is an
The language is as yet unknown except for a small vocabulary attested in bilingual inscriptions. Such topics as syntax and possible inflection or agglutination remain an enigma. Partial translations depend to a large extent on the language or language group assumed by the translator, but there is no consistency.
Due to the small number of texts found, there is currently much unproven speculation about the origin of the language and its speakers. It is conjectured by some to be related to the
Corpus
Several hundred inscriptions written in the Cypriot syllabary (VI-III BC) cannot be interpreted in Greek. While it does not necessarily imply that all of them are non-Greek, there are at least two locations where multiple inscriptions with clearly non-Greek content were found:
- Amathus (including a bilingual Eteocypriot-Greek text)
- a few short inscriptions from Golgoi (currently Athienou: Markus Egetmeyer suggested that their language (which he calls Golgian resp. Golgisch in German) may be different from those of Amathus[6]).
While the language of
Amathus bilingual
The most famous Eteocypriot inscription is a bilingual text inscribed on a black marble slab found on the
- Eteocypriot:
- 1: a-na . ma-to-ri . u-mi-e-s[a]-i . mu-ku-la-i . la-sa-na . a-ri-si-to-no-se . a-ra-to-wa-na-ka-so-ko-o-se
- 2: ke-ra-ke-re-tu-lo-se . ta-ka-na-[?-?]-so-ti . a-lo . ka-i-li-po-ti[7]
- A suggested pronunciation is:
- 1: Ana mator-i umiesa-i mukla-i lasna Ariston-ose Artowanax-oko-ose
- 2: Kerakertul-ose takna[?-?]s-oti alo kailp-oti.
- [citation needed]
- Greek:
- 3: Η ПΟΛΙΣ Η АΜАΘΟΥΣΙΩΝ ΑΡΙΣΤΩΝΑ
- 4: ΑΡΙΣΤΩΝΑΚΤΟΣ ΕΥΠΑΤΡΙΔΗΝ
- which might be rendered into modern script as:
- 3: Ἡ πόλις ἡ Ἀμαθουσίων Ἀριστῶνα
- 4: 'Ἀριστώνακτος, εὐπατρίδην.
Cyrus H. Gordon translates this text as
- The city of the Amathusans (honored) the noble Ariston (son) of Aristonax.[8]
Gordon's translation is based on Greek inscriptions in general and the fact that "the noble Ariston" is in the accusative case, implying a transitive verb. Gordon explains that "the verb is omitted ... in such dedicatory inscriptions".
The inscription is important as verifying that the symbols of the unknown language, in fact, have about the same phonetic values as they do when they are used to represent Greek. Gordon says, "This bilingual proves that the signs in Eteocypriot texts have the same values as in the Cypriot Greek texts...."[8]
See also
References
- ^ "Eteocypriot". Archived from the original on February 17, 2015. Retrieved 2024-01-27.
- Eteocretan is based on a genuine Ancient Greekword.
- doi:10.1558/jmea.v12i1.108. HAL ffhalshs-00001435.
[Eteocypriot] is a Hurrian dialect [and] was not the first spoken language in Cyprus.
- ISBN 978-0-19-938113-5. Retrieved 17 February 2024.
Eteocypriot had survived from the Cypriot Bronze Age (perhaps related to a language written in the undeciphered Cypro-Minoan script.)
- ^ Valério, Miguel Filipe Grandão (2016). Investigating the Signs and Sounds of Cypro-Minoan (PhD thesis). Universitat de Barcelona. Retrieved 17 February 2024.
- ^ M. Egetmeyer, '"Sprechen Sie Golgisch?" Anmerkungen zu einer übersehenen Sprache' Études mycéniennes 2010: 427-434
- ^ The inscription is given as portrayed in Gordon, Evidence, Page 5. Breaks in the stone obscure the syllables in brackets.
- ^ a b Forgotten Scripts, p. 120.
Sources
- Gordon, Cyrus (1966). Evidence for the Minoan Language. Ventnor, New Jersey: Ventnor Publishers.
- ISBN 0-465-02484-X.
- Jones, Tom B., Notes on the Eteocypriot inscriptions, American journal of philology. LXXI 1950, c. 401–407
- ISBN 978-1-107-04286-5.
- Masson, Olivier, "Leds inscriptions étéochypriotes", in: Syria 30 (1-2), 1953, pp. 83-88.
- Masson, Olivier, "Inscriptions étéochypriotes", in: in: Syria 34 (1-2), 1957, pp. 61-80.
- Duhoux, Yves, "Eteocypriot and Cypro-Minoan 1–3", in: Kadmos 48, 2000, pp. 39-75, doi:10.1515.