The Origins of Writing and the Alphabet as a Derivation from Syllabic Script - 5 - LexiLine Journal 557

[In amended form later published as a book under the title Ancient Signs] 
 
I gave a syllabic value of LI  to the flying bird sign on the Phaistos Disk 30 years ago, not knowing of the existence of the archaic Ancient Greek term ἁλιάετος "osprey, sea eagle", a term now serving as "internal" confirmation of the correct decipherment of that syllable (then based on Latvian LIdo "to fly"). As written at creteuguide.info:

"On the south coast, near Matala, you can find ospreys.... In Minoan times, Matala was most likely the port for the Palace of Phaistos, which is about 10 km north of the village." [emphasis added]

F. The Elamite Connection to Crete and the Origin of Writing in the Western World (or) Who Discovered Ancient Greek Letters? [5]

The subsequent syllabic grid includes a column of signs and symbols from two Old Elamite scripts, which this author has deciphered to be Ancient Greek. The appropriate decipherments follow in this work subsequent to the syllabic grid. How could there possibly be any connection of Crete to far distant Elam, now a part of modern Iran? Sampled scholars tend to reject this hypothesis without thinking. What about the hypothesis that Minoan texts came to Crete via ancient seafaring merchants trading with Elam? It is after all at Elam that the technology of stamping letters into clay is first found, archaeologically speaking. Is this a case of technology transfer?

There is in fact ancient -- legendary -- source material about the discovery of ancient Greek letters which points clearly to technology transfer from one or more ancient locations. Is there an element of truth in these old accounts? How much?

Gaius Julius Hyginus (ca. 64 BC – AD 17), who lived at the time of Christ, passed on many Greek tales in unadulterated form in his Fabulae, of which tale Number 277 deals with "Ancient Inventors". He wrote as follows:

"CCLXXVII. FIRST INVENTORS. The Parcae, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos invented seven Greek letters - A B H T I Y. Others say that Mercury invented them from the flight of cranes, which, when they fly, form letters. Palamedes, too, son of Nauplius, invented eleven letters; Simonides, too, invented four letters – Ó E Z PH; Epicharmus of Sicily, two - P and PS. The Greek letters Mercury is said to have brought to Egypt, and from Egypt Cadmus took them to Greece. Cadmus in exile from Arcadia, took them to Italy, and his mother Carmenta changed them to Latin to the number of 15. Apollo on the lyre added the rest...." [emphasis for Palamedes added]

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[5] This material is adapted from Andis Kaulins, The Phaistos Disc: An Ancient Enigma Solved: Two corroborative Old Elamite scripts can be deciphered using the Greek syllabic values obtained for the Phaistos Disc by A. Kaulins in 1980, International Conference on the Phaistos Disk, London, Society of Antiquaries, Burlington House, October 31, 2008,

The Origins of Writing and the Alphabet as a Derivation from Syllabic Script - 4 - LexiLine Journal 556

[In amended form later published as a book under the title Ancient Signs] 
 
E. Structure of the Seven-Column Syllabic Grid of the Kaulins Minoan Aegean Sign Concordance (MinAegCon)

The Syllabic Grid of the Kaulins Minoan Aegean Sign Concordance (MinAegCon) has a table format of seven columns which are filled with text and images for the purpose of providing the greatest amount of information in the smallest possible area. This design permits quick and effective presentation and analysis of the alleged common genetic interlock of syllabic signs from the various sources. The reader can see at a glance the signs under discussion and their syllabic values, including comments about the words (and the objects) from which the syllables originated

A sample row from the seven-column table is shown below for the syllable LI.

1.      The first column in the table identifies the syllable in question.

2.      The second column gives the comparable sign in the Cypriot Syllabary and its currently accepted syllabic reading.

3.   The third column provides the comparable Linear B sign together with its currently accepted syllabic reading and, where required, its corrected reading, especially for /R/ and /L/ phonemes and the Q-based and J-based syllables.

4.      The fourth column provides the comparable sign on the Phaistos Disk.

5.      The fifth column provides the comparable sign on the Axe of Arkalochori.

6.      The sixth column provides the comparable sign in Old Elamite script.

7.     The seventh column provides Sumerian pictographs and/or Egyptian hieroglyphs which could be considered to be genetically related, showing a potential line of development from Sumerian to Elamite to Minoan script.

Blogger does not reproduce Aegean Font Signs or Microsoft Word .doc images online.
Creating special embedded links for them would involve a great deal of time.
Hence, I first show the Word table excerpt as a scanned image (links not active).
Below that is the original table with Aegean Fonts and images missing, but active links.
The reader thus has the complete info, but not the complete publication,
which will be published in due time in full elsewhere.

Plus, having each syllable as a separate image has advantages for users.

This notice appears only once, not on subsequent postings in this series.

The Syllable LI in the Minoan Aegean Sign Concordance (by Andis Kaulins)

LI A sign of the osprey or sea eagle, in archaic Greek called ἁλιάετος and in Linear B an abstracted sign of talons, beak and wings. Considered for Linear B but discarded was the alternative of a flower like the Madonna lily λείριον. The lily is among the most ancient cultivated ornamental flowers. In Crete it was the most frequent floral motif of Minoan art... the sacred flower...

Cypriot syllabary: �� LI ἁλιάετος The sign could be a bird in the air with the line below the wing element representing the ground, i.e. the earth.

Linear B: Is read as RAI in error (33) LI ἁλιάετος an abstracted sign of talons, beak and wings. In Linear B not E-RAI- but E-LAI- for ἔλαιον "olive oil".

Phaistos Disk �� LI ἁλιάετος archaic "sea eagle, osprey" On the south coast, near Matala, you can find ospreys." creteuguide.info - continue at column right

No comparable Axe sign Wikipedia Osprey image "In Minoan times, Matala was most likely the port for the Palace of Phaistos, which is about 10 km north of the village." crete-guide.info

Elamite: LI This sign has an uncertain depiction. Is it a simplified abstracted drawing of a bird wing, talon prey and sky?

Sumerian LID or LIT (Jaritz #759) beak and bird head? Egyptian Hieroglyphs A ἁλιάετος not Horus

The Origins of Writing and the Alphabet as a Derivation from Syllabic Script - 3 - LexiLine Journal 555

[In amended form later published as a book under the title Ancient Signs] 


Not everyone will accord with exactly that exceptional laudatory sentiment, but the importance of the Linear B decipherment is undoubted. Accordingly, although some decipherment improvements in Mycenaean Greek are suggested subsequently in the course of this article, this takes nothing away from the genius of the original decipherment work. Whatever is done always builds on the work of others.

C. The /L/ and /R/ Phonemes in Mycenaean Greek Linear B Script

What kinds of improvements are going to be suggested in this work?

The subsequent table of Minoan Aegean Sign Concordance contains numerous improvements, especially in the analysis of the origin of the signs.

That analysis shows, for example, that Linear B script had both an /R/ and an /L/ phoneme and also R-based and L-based syllabic signs. An L phoneme is currently negated in Linear B by classical philologists, but this unfortunate view does not bear up to critical scrutiny. Currently, R-based syllables are applied erroneously in Linear B to words clearly containing the /L/ phoneme in both modern and Ancient Greek.

In Linear B the following well-known examples can be cited:

• the current transcription QA-SI-RE-U is transliterated as βασιλεύς
• the current transcription A-PI-QO-RO is transliterated as αμφίπολοι, and
• the current transcription QO-U-KO-RO is transliterated as βουκόλοι.

As shown subsequently by the Minoan Aegean Sign Concordance, Mycenaean Greek in fact had both an /R/ phoneme and an /L/ phoneme. A correct syllabic grid of Linear B must therefore include the syllabic values LA, LE, LI, LO, and LU. The syllabic grid of Ventris and Chadwick does not do this and is thus erroneous on that score. The missing L-based syllables are provided in this work.

D. Multiple Sources are used to determine the Origin of Syllabic Signs

The syllabic grid which follows subsequently in this work is a giant leap forward in the analysis of ancient syllabic scripts. Ventris created a syllabic grid applicable only to Linear B, while the syllabic grid presented here covers six different sources, all in one inter-connected syllabic grid: 1) the Cypriot Syllabary, 2) Linear B, 3) the Phaistos Disk, 4) the Axe of Arkalochori, 5) two Old Elamite Scripts, and 6) comparable syllabic signs in Sumerian pictographs and Egyptian hieroglyphs. This produces a symbiotic syllabic grid system with countervailing checks and balances.

The Origins of Writing and the Alphabet as a Derivation from Syllabic Script - 2 - LexiLine Journal 554

[In amended form later published as a book under the title Ancient Signs]

In addition, written signs and symbols permit the creation of "languages" whose function far exceeds the limits of human speech. Modern software programming languages, for example, apply written symbols as "machine language" to a host of hardware applications that would be impossible without writing. In human history, the digital revolution was preceded by the writing revolution, the discovery of script.

Without the advent of writing, the mass of mankind would languish in ignorance, as it still does today in regions marked by illiteracy. The written word opened up a magic reservoir of human talents and abilities from which many of us on this planet profit every day. Whatever the origins of writing may be, we are indebted to the men and women who invented, introduced and dispersed this technology to the world.

B. Michael Ventris, John Chadwick and the Decipherment of Minoan Linear B as Mycenaean Greek

When Michael Ventris deciphered Minoan Linear B as Mycenaean Greek, it was a landmark achievement that opened the doors of understanding to a previously closed world. Ancient Mycenaean Greek is written communication that represents the initial stages of writing in the Western world. This was the dawn of modern man.

Ventris, an amateur classical scholar whose profession was actually that of an architect, was -- after the initial decipherment -- assisted in his efforts by John Chadwick, a Greek philologist at Cambridge University, culminating in the joint publication of the pioneering Documents in Mycenaean Greek. [4] That publication enabled a much greater understanding of our common historical "written heritage". Ventris and Chadwick (and also previous Linear B researchers such as Alice Kober) thus revealed to us some of the mysteries of the origins of writing in Western Civilization. Andrew Robinson wrote as follows about this singular achievement:

"Experts dubbed Ventris’s decipherment the Everest of Greek archaeology. An American classicist remarked, Mr. Ventris would have no trouble getting a job as scribe for King Minos. A French scholar [Georges Dumézil, upon hearing of the untimely early death of Ventris:], noted, devant les siècles son oeuvre est faite (in the centuries to come his reputation is secure). Today, his achievement ranks above even the nineteenth-century reading of Egyptian hieroglyphic and Babylonian cuneiform, or the late twentieth-century reading of the Mayan glyphs of Central America, as the greatest intellectual triumph in archaeological decipherment."

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[4] Michael Ventris and John Chadwick, Documents in Mycenaean Greek, Volume I,  1956 (1st edition), corrected 1959; Volume II, 1973 (the 2nd edition consists of both volumes).

The Origins of Writing and the Alphabet as a Derivation from Syllabic Script - 1 - LexiLine Journal 553

This posting starts a series of postings [which in amended form were subsequently published as a book under the title Ancient Signs] that I will be making throughout the year regarding my sign concordance of ancient scripts, a "meshing" of ancient pictographic, hieroglyphic and syllabic scripts which will provide everyone a highly useful tool for future and further study of the origins of writing on our planet by ancient cultures. There will also be new decipherments.

There is very little doubt, based on my work, that the scripts of antiquity in my concordance point to a single origin and that they all retain very visible elements of their common ancestry.

It is a very ambitious project, indeed, so ambitious that even I can say in advance that there will be many aspects of this work that will need to be improved in the course of time. And there will be errors. That is unavoidable. But this is the beginning. One has to start. You have to take the first step.

The Origins of Writing in Western Civilization and the Kaulins Minoan Aegean Sign Concordance (MinAegCon™) [1]: A Syllabic Grid of Mycenaean Greek Linear B Script, the Cypriot Syllabary, the Phaistos Disk, two Old Elamite Scripts, the Inscription on the Axe of Arkalochori, and Comparable Signs from Sumerian Pictographs and Egyptian Hieroglyphs

by Andis Kaulins [2]

The origin of writing in Western Civilization was a technological quantum leap without which our modern world would not be possible. This publication unravels more of the mystery of how written script came to the Western world.

I. An Introduction to the Minoan Aegean Sign Concordance

A. Communication History and the David W. Packard Minoan Legacy

The importance of the study of ancient writing -- a fascinating field in its own right --is often underestimated. The origin of script impacts modern technology and the methods of modern digital science. Consider, for example, that David W. Packard, co-founder of Hewlett-Packard Co., wrote his dissertation on Minoan Linear A. [3]

Communication between human beings is the fundamental essence of the spoken languages of mankind. When those languages were put into written form, the scope of communication expanded beyond the immediate audience of listeners to all those humans who can read whatever is written. Modern communication depends a lot on literacy. Just think of Facebook and Twitter. Moreover, the written word not only communicates, but it also records human expression and knowledge for posterity.

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[1] The acronym MinAegCon (TM) was coined as a trademark on December 27, 2010. A Google search gave no hits on that same day. MinAegCon can be used to cite to this work, together with the name of the author, location and year: Andis Kaulins, Germany 2011.

[2] J.D. (Doctor of Jurisprudence) Stanford University Law School. Former FFA Lecturer in Anglo-American Law, Legal Research and Legal Writing, University of Trier Law School. Co-author of the Langenscheidt & Routledge German-English, English-German Dictionary of Business, Commerce and Finance (4th ed. 2010). Author of: The Phaistos Disc: Hieroglyphic Greek with Euclidean Dimensions (Darmstadt, 1980), The Phaistos Disc: An Ancient Enigma Solved: Two corroborative Old Elamite scripts can be deciphered using the Greek syllabic values obtained for the Phaistos Disc by A. Kaulins in 1980, International Conference on the Phaistos Disk, London, Society of Antiquaries, Burlington House, October 31, 2008, Stars Stones and Scholars: The Decipherment of the Megaliths, Trafford, 2003 & 2006; Zum Ursprung des Horus-Glaubens im vordynastischen Ägypten (The Origin of the Cult of Horus in Predynastic Egypt), Efodon Synesis, 2005; Sternensteine - Darstellungen frühgeschichtlicher Astronomie am Beispiel der Externsteine (Star Stones - Prehistoric Astronomy and the Extern Stones), Forschungskreis Walther Machalett für Vor und Frühgeschichte, 2005; Die Himmelsscheibe von Nebra : Beweisführung und Deutung (The Sky Disk of Nebra: Evidence and Interpretation), Efodon Synesis, 2005; Der Bodenhimmel der Oesterholzer Mark um die Spitze der "Externsteinpyramide" (A Megalithic Sky Map at Oesterholz), Efodon Synesis, 2006; Das Tanum System - ein alteuropäisches Vermessungssystem? (The Tanum System: Ancient Seafarers as Megalithic Surveyors of Europe and Africa), Forschungskreis Externsteine., 2007; Der Osnabrücker Bodenhimmel (The Hermetic Planisphere at Osnabrück), Forschungskreis Externsteine, 2008.

[3] David W. Packard, Minoan Linear A, University of California Press in Berkeley, California, 1974.

Ancient World Searfaring Proven Without a Doubt - LexiLine Journal 552

One of the pillars of my theories about ancient megaliths, the ancient survey of the earth by the stars, and the spread of languages, is the assumption that world seafaring existed prior to the modern era.

This has now been proven without a doubt.


ArchaeologyAshNews writes at Set Sail for Singapore! about the recent discovery of an ancient sailing vessel, the cargo of which convincingly proves ancient world seafaring long before the modern era.

That posting is about:

"[T]he 1998 discovery of a ninth-century shipwreck and its astonishing cargo of about 60,000 objects from Tang dynasty China, ranging from mass-produced ceramics to rare and extraordinary items of finely worked gold. The cargo had laid undisturbed on the ocean floor for more than 1,100 years until sea-cucumber divers discovered it off the coast of Indonesia's Belitung Island. The ship, an Arab dhow, and its contents confirm the existence of a direct maritime trade route (alluded to in ancient Chinese and Arabic texts) from China to the Persian Gulf and beyond-well before the Portuguese set sail in the 15th century."

For the original story, see ArtKnowledgeNews.com at
Smithsonian and Singapore Organize World Tour of Shipwreck Treasure

(http://bit.ly/awByF7)

The Origin of Is "Is": The Concepts of Everything, All, Are, Is, I, Being, Self in Proto-Indo-European based on Bantu and Other Evidence - LexiLine Journal 551

This as -- The Origin of Is "Is" -- begins a series of postings titled PROTO-INDO-EUROPEAN ORIGINS, suggesting how certain terms developed in proto-Indo-European.

This series, depending on the words chosen, may in some cases or may not in many cases accept the hypothetical word roots assigned to terms by mainstream linguists, many of which are demonstrably false.

Rather, new facts, especially in genetics, demand revision of outdated concepts that have concentrated on the languages of Western Europe, contrary to the actual genetic and archaeological record. Be sure to first read Principles of Historical Language Reconstruction (PHILANGRECON).


The text of the above graphic, created with bubbl.us 2.0 beta, is:

THE ORIGIN OF IS "IS" © 2010 by Andis Kaulins

In proto-Indo-European, the "to be" concept of "is"
and related terms are derived from a basic
concept for "all that is" applied to "the self, the I".

The conventional etymology for the English term "is" from the Online Etymological Dictionary is: "O.E. is, from Gmc. stem *es- (cf. O.H.G., Ger., Goth. ist, O.N. es, er), from PIE *es-ti- (cf. Skt. asti, Gk. esti, L. est, Lith. esti, O.C.S. jesti), from base *es- "to be." O.E. lost the final -t-."

That etymology taken from mainstream sources does not hold water as an examination of the most archaic Indo-European languages, Latvian and Lithuanian, clearly proves, supported by the evidence of the Bantu words for "all" and "everything" in existence, i.e. the full ESSence of being. There was no original "T" at the end of what was ESSentially an ES- word.

African Bantu (Bukusu) -esi "all"; (Asu) ósè "all, everything"; (Basa) so "all"; (Kinyamwezi) ɔ́sɛ̀ "all"; (Yao) kòòsè "all". The Yao form shows the term gutturalized whence Bantu ku "man", kau "young man". Compare kungs ("sir") and kundze ("lady") in Latvian. In English, the words "all" (All in German means "space"), "area", and "are" are related forms coming from the "be" form of "is", such as Latvian ir ("is") and ārā "outside", i.e. the outdoor space as extensions of self, whence Hittite arha "away (from)".

es "I (the self)" in Latvian
viss "all, everything" Latvian
aš "I (the self)" Lithuanian

esu "am" in Latvian (being as a self-extension)
ēst  "to eat", i.e. selfing,
German essen "to eat"

īst(s) "real, ex-ist-ing" in Latvian

(m)ūsu "our", (m)ēs "we" in Latvian

us in English
is in English
as in English

ich "I"
ik "I"
in German
and Nordic
languages

es "it" German
ist "is" German

ego "I" in Latin
est "is" in Latin

The widespread s-mobile prefix (the verbal prefix of "self-action", depending on language) as s-, š, z-, ž, sa-, ša si-, ši, su-, šu, aiz, iz-, uz- and variables.

In Hittite, es- is a denominative for "to become what the base word means", i.e. as (like -(n)ess).