Lemnian language

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Lemnos stele
)
Lemnian
RegionLemnos, Greece
Extinctattested 6th century BC
Tyrsenian
  • Lemnian
Language codes
ISO 639-3xle
xle
Glottologlemn1237
Location of Lemnos

The Lemnian language was spoken on the island of

Athenians conquered the island in the latter half of the 6th century BC, Lemnian was replaced by Attic Greek
.

Writing system

The Lemnian inscriptions are in

Western Greek alphabet, also called "red alphabet". The red type is found in most parts of central and northern mainland Greece (Thessaly, Boeotia and most of the Peloponnese), as well as the island of Euboea, and in colonies associated with these places, including most colonies in Italy.[6] The alphabet used for Lemnian inscriptions is similar to an archaic variant used to write the Etruscan language in southern Etruria.[7]

Classification

Tyrrhenian language family tree as proposed by de Simone and Marchesini (2013)[8]

A relationship between Lemnian,

Raetic and Etruscan, as a Tyrsenian language family, has been proposed by German linguist Helmut Rix due to close connections in vocabulary and grammar.[4]
For example,

Rix's Tyrsenian family is supported by a number of linguists such as Stefan Schumacher,

Paleo-European and to predate the arrival of Indo-European languages in southern Europe.[15]

According to Dutch historian Luuk De Ligt, the Lemnian language could have arrived in the Aegean Sea during the Late Bronze Age, when Mycenaean rulers recruited groups of mercenaries from Sicily, Sardinia and various parts of the Italian peninsula.[16]

Scholars such as Norbert Oettinger, Michel Gras and Carlo De Simone think that Lemnian is the testimony of an Etruscan commercial settlement on the island that took place before 700 BC, not related to the Sea Peoples.[17][18][19]

After more than 90 years of archaeological excavations at Lemnos, nothing has been found that would support a migration from

Raetic was spoken. The indigenous inhabitants of Lemnos, also called in ancient times Sinteis, were the Sintians, a Thracian population.[20]

A 2021 archeogenetic analysis of Etruscan individuals concluded that the Etruscans were autochthonous and genetically similar to the Early Iron Age

Paleo-Sardinian and Minoan) "developed on the continent in the course of the Neolithic Revolution".[22] The lack of recent Anatolian-related admixture and Iranian-related ancestry among the Etruscans, who genetically joined firmly to the European cluster, might also suggest that the presence of a handful of inscriptions found at Lemnos, in a language related to Etruscan and Raetic, "could represent population movements departing from the Italian peninsula".[21]

Vowels

Like Etruscan, the Lemnian language appears to have had a four-vowel system, consisting of "i", "e", "a" and "o". Other languages in the neighbourhood of the Lemnian area, namely Hittite and Akkadian, had similar four-vowel systems, suggesting early areal influence.

Lemnos Stele

Lemnos stele

The stele, also known as the stele of Kaminia, was found built into a church wall in

Miltiades invaded Lemnos and hellenized it.[23] The stele bears a low-relief bust of a man and is inscribed in an alphabet similar to the western ("Chalcidian") Greek alphabet. The inscription is in Boustrophedon style, and has been transliterated
but had not been successfully translated until serious linguistic analysis based on comparisons with Etruscan, combined with breakthroughs in Etruscan's own translation started to yield fruit.

The inscription consists of 198 characters forming 33 to 40 words, word separation sometimes indicated with one to three dots. The text on the front consists of three parts, two written vertically (1; 6-7) and one horizontally (2-5). Comprehensible is the phrase sivai avis šialχvis ('lived forty' years, B.3), reminiscent of Etruscan maχs śealχis-c ('and forty-five years'), seeming to refer to the person to whom this funerary monument was dedicated, holaiesi φokiašiale ('to Holaie Phokiaš' B.1), who appeared to have been an official called maras at some point marasm avis aomai ('and was a maras one year'B3), compare Etruscan -m "and" (postposition), and maru. [24] Oddly, this text also contains a word naφoθ that seems to be connected to Etruscan nefts "nephew/uncle"; but this is a fairly clear borrowing from Latin nepot-, suggesting that the speakers of this language migrated at some point from the Italic peninsula (or independently borrowed this Indo-European word from somewhere else).[25]

G.Kleinschmidt in 1893 proposed such translation of expression haralio eptesio - king έπιτιδημι. It is a high probability that here king/tyrant of Athens Hippias was mentioned. Tyrand Hippias died in Lemnos in 490 BC.[26]

Transcription:

front:
A.1. holaies:naφoθ:siasi
A.2. maras:mav
A.3. šialχveis:avis
A.4. evišθo:seronaiθ
A.5. sivai
A.6. aker:tavarsio
A.7. vanalašial:seronai:morinail
side:
B.1. holaiesi:φokiašiale:seronaiθ:evišθo:toverona
B.2. rom:haralio:sivai:eptesio:arai:tis:φoke
B.3. sivai:avis:šialχvis:marasm:avis:aomai

Hephaistia inscription

Another Lemnian inscription was found during excavations at

boustrophedonic
script.

Transcription:

upper line (left to right):
hktaonosi:heloke
lower line (right to left):
soromš:aslaš

See also

Notes

  1. ^ a b c d e Wallace 2018.
  2. ^ Bonfante 1990, p. 90.
  3. ^ de Simone 2009.
  4. ^ a b Rix 1998.
  5. ^ Schumacher 1998.
  6. ISBN 9781405153263
    .
  7. ^ Marchesini, Simona (2009). Le lingue frammentarie dell'Italia antica (in Italian) (1st ed.). Milan: Hoepli. pp. 105–106.
  8. ^ a b Carlo de Simone, Simona Marchesini (Eds), La lamina di Demlfeld [= Mediterranea. Quaderni annuali dell'Istituto di Studi sulle Civiltà italiche e del Mediterraneo antico del Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche. Supplemento 8], Pisa – Roma: 2013.
  9. ^ Schumacher, Stefan (1999) Die Raetischen Inschriften: Gegenwärtiger Forschungsstand, spezifische Probleme und Zukunfstaussichten in I Reti / Die Räter, Atti del simposio 23-25 settembre 1993, Castello di Stenico, Trento, Archeologia delle Alpi, a cura di G. Ciurletti - F. Marzatico Archaoalp pp. 334-369 (German)
  10. ^ Schumacher, Stefan (2004) Die Raetischen Inschriften. Geschichte und heutiger Stand der Forschung Archaeolingua. Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft. (German)
  11. ^ de Simone Carlo (2009) La nuova iscrizione tirsenica di Efestia in Aglaia Archontidou, Carlo de Simone, Emanuele Greco (Eds.), Gli scavi di Efestia e la nuova iscrizione ‘tirsenica’, TRIPODES 11, 2009, pp. 3-58. Vol. 11 pp. 3-58 (Italian)
  12. ^ Oettinger, Norbert (2010) "Seevölker und Etrusker", in Yoram Cohen, Amir Gilan, and Jared L. Miller (eds.) Pax Hethitica Studies on the Hittites and their Neighbours in Honour of Itamar Singer (in German), Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, pp. 233–246
  13. ^ Simona Marchesini (translation by Melanie Rockenhaus) (2013). "Raetic (languages)". Mnamon - Ancient Writing Systems in the Mediterranean. Scuola Normale Superiore. Retrieved 26 July 2018.
  14. ^ Kluge Sindy; Salomon Corinna; Schumacher Stefan (2013–2018). "Raetica". Thesaurus Inscriptionum Raeticarum. Department of Linguistics, University of Vienna. Retrieved 26 July 2018.
  15. ^ Mellaart, James (1975), "The Neolithic of the Near East" (Thames and Hudson)
  16. ^ De Ligt, Luuk. "An Eteocretan' inscription from Praisos and the homeland of the Sea Peoples" (PDF). talanta.nl. ALANTA XL-XLI (2008-2009), 151-172.
  17. ISBN 9780195170726
    . Etruscan origins lie in the distant past. Despite the claim by Herodotus, who wrote that Etruscans migrated to Italy from Lydia in the eastern Mediterranean, there is no material or linguistic evidence to support this. Etruscan material culture developed in an unbroken chain from Bronze Age antecedents. As for linguistic relationships, Lydian is an Indo-European language. Lemnian, which is attested by a few inscriptions discovered near Kaminia on the island of Lemnos, was a dialect of Etruscan introduced to the island by commercial adventurers. Linguistic similarities connecting Etruscan with Raetic, a language spoken in the sub-Alpine regions of northeastern Italy, further militate against the idea of eastern origins.
  18. ^ Carlo de Simone, La nuova Iscrizione ‘Tirsenica’ di Lemnos (Efestia, teatro): considerazioni generali, in Rasenna: Journal of the Center for Etruscan Studies, pp. 1–34.
  19. ISBN 978-0-691-04811-6
    .
  20. ISBN 978-960-9559-03-4
    .
  21. ^
    PMID 34559560
    .
  22. ISBN 9780593229422
    . It's likely that Basque, Paleo-Sardinian, Minoan, and Etruscan developed on the continent in the course of the Neolithic Revolution. Sadly, the true diversity of the languages that once existed in Europe will never be known.
  23. ^ Herodotus, 6.136-140
  24. ^ Wallace, Rex E. (2018), "Lemnian language", Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Classics, Oxford University Press
  25. ^ Eichner, Heiner (2012) "Neues zur Sprache der Stele von Lemnos (Erster Teil)" Gorgias Press. Voprosy âzykovogo rodstva Vol.7 (1), p.9-32
  26. ^ Kleinschmidt, G. (1893). Zwei lemnische Inschriften: Übersetzt und erklärt von G. Kleinschmidt. Separatabdruck aus Heft III der Zeitschrift des Insterburger Alterthumsvereins (in German). C. R. Wilhelmi.
  27. ^ Carlo de Simone, La Nuova Iscrizione ‘Tirsenica’ di Lemnos (Efestia, teatro): considerazioni generali, Rasenna: Journal of the Center for Etruscan Studies: Vol. 3: Iss. 1, Article 1, 2011. (Italian)

References

External links
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