The Origins of Writing, the Alphabet and the Syllable PA - LEXILINE JOURNAL 563

This is the 11th posting in this series [updated for Luvian in a later posting, and in further amended form subsequently published as a book under the title Ancient Signs]. It begins the syllabic grid with the Syllable PA. Each syllable will be presented in its own posting.

First there is a scan of the page, followed by the text with clickable links, a format necessitated by Blogger not resolving online the Aegean Font and Microsoft Word images.

TABLE I

TABLE OF CYPRIOT SYLLABARY, MINOAN LINEAR B, PHAISTOS DISK, AXE OF ARKALOCHORI, OLD ELAMITE and SUMERIAN SIGN CONCORDANCE
A Table of the Sign Concordance of: 1) The Cypriot Syllabary, 2) Linear B -- Michael Ventris and John Chadwick, 3) the Phaistos Disk -- Andis Kaulins, 4) the Axe of Arkalochori -- Andis Kaulins, 5) Old Elamite Script -- Andis Kaulins, 6) Sumerian Pictographs and Egyptian Hieroglyphs

Syllabic Value of the Sign (Symbol) (there was no universally established AEIOU vowel system yet in this era, and there were dipthongs, so that a strict AEIOU system here is a bit misleading)	Cypriot Syllabary signs from the BabelMap (Unicode Character Map for Windows)	Linear B (Ventris & followers) (standard Bennet numbers in parentheses) Aegean Font	Phaistos Disk (Kaulins) (first deciphered by him in the years 1978- 1980)	Axe of Arkalochori (Kaulins) (these same basic signs are also on the Phaistos Disk). This column also provides explanatory photo images for various Minoan symbols	Elamite Script (Kaulins) (same basic signs as the Phaistos Disk -  see also here)	Sumerian Pictographs and/or Egyptian Hieroglyphs and/or sign commentary on individual symbols
PA (and BA ?) In Linear B, sign B03 has been assigned a value of PA and sign B16 was originally assigned a value of PA2, correctly BA, but later changed in error to QA. The first word on the Axe of Arkalochori is βασιλεύς, thus negating in Linear B the transcription qa si-re-u which is correctly ba-si-leu-s. In Linear B signs, the meaning is often not the vertical line but usually the other sign elements. In B16 it is an abstract head with ears placed at the top of the vertical.	Cypriot syllabary: 𐠞 PA Cypriot syllabary: 𐠢 PU "scraping tool" scraper above line as earth viz. the ground	Linear B 𐀞(03) PA 𐀣(16) Sign B16 once read as PA2, now read in error as QA. Correct is BA	Phaistos Disk 𐇑 PA Some think this to be the Peleset,[1] people of Keftiu, Crete. More likely is "warrior" πολεμιστής πολεμίζω Thracian "peltast" πελταστής later Greek ὁπ[o]λίτης hoplitēs	The Axe of Arkalochori. (2 drawing variants) 󿼉or󿼃 PA Warrior image found at William H. Stiebing, Jr., Invasions of the Sea Peoples, Bibl. Arch. Review The warrior image suggests a warrior sign	Old Elamite PA The abstracted sign in Old Elamite shows the head and neck in profile view.	Sumerian PAR2 BAR "sharp tool, pick, head?" (Jaritz #118) PA2 BA "division, scraping tool" (Jaritz #005)

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[1] The Peleset are listed in the hieroglyphs of Egypt among the so-called Sea Peoples. These hieroglyphs are reproduced below from the Wikipedia. The erroneous mainstream scholarship reading of those Egyptian hieroglyphs is n3 ḫ3t.w n p3 ym (try pronouncing that artificial notation !), allegedly meaning "Sea Peoples" or "People of Foreign Lands". The hieroglyphs are followed by a list of ethnic names. My reading of those same hieroglyphs shows the corrected reading to result in terms strikingly similar to Greek. Ponder what the following hieroglyphic readings tell us about Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs in terms of Ancient Greek connections generally.

n3 ḫ3t.w n p3 ym

An- thro- po- n- y- my     hydro (or) naiya    peir-aikos (peir-as)

ἀνθρω [ἀνθρώπων]...ἐπωνυμιa... (Ναιά, νᾶμα, ὕδωρ)...πειραικός (πεῖρας)

= Names of peoples of the border countries beyond the limit (mouth) of the Nile.

Note: The Nile: in Ancient Egyptian iteru or Ḥ'pī [Latvian upe "river], Coptic piaro (Sahidic) or phiaro (Bohairic).

The Egyptian hieroglyph for the Mediterranean is  (in my reading ἀέξω (αὔξω) εὐρεῖα naiya peiras viz. ἀέξω εὐρεῖα nama/hydro peiras meaning "great wide river limit" viz. "mouth of the Nile") and for the Nile is [ (hydro) which is the same as Greek ὕδωρ "udro-, hydro, water" viz. νᾶμα "nama" or naiya (Ναιάς). Nama in Greek means anything flowing, running water, stream, spring, and could have the same N-root as Greek Νεῖλος for "Nile" as in ὕδος τὸ Νείλου, to which compare Arabic: النيل‎, an-nīl. The N- root is retained in English in naval, nautical and nymph (Ναιάς), Finnish nevo "sea", Swedish ny "new river", and Russian Neva.

One can see clearly from the "Sea Peoples" hieroglyph that the term anthro- derived from *ana-terra, in Greek *ana- *xer- i.e. χέρσος.

The Origins of Writing and the Alphabet as a Derivation from Syllabic Script - 10 - LexiLine Journal 562

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

Ancient Greek terms are taken primarily from the following sources:

• The online Perseus Digital Library, Gregory R. Crane, Editor-in-Chief, Tufts University at http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/, which wrote on December 13, 2010:

"The Perseus Digital Library is pleased to publish TEI XML digital editions for Plutarch, Athenaeus, the Greek Anthology, Elegy and Iambus and for most of Lucian. This increases the available Plutarch from roughly 100,000 to the surviving 1,150,000 words. Athenaeus and the Greek Anthology are new within the Perseus Digital Library, with roughly 270,000 and 160,000 words of Greek. The 13,000 words for J.M. Edmonds Elegy and Iambus include both the surviving poetic quotations and major contexts in which these poems are quoted. The 200,000 words of Lucian represent roughly 70% of the surviving works attributed to that author. In all, this places more than 1.6 million words of Greek in circulation. With this release, we have also changed the license for opensource texts to Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike, removing the non-commercial restriction that we adopted in March 2006 when we first began making our XML source texts available under a CC license. See our post on the Stoa Consortium blog for full details on the release."

• Henry George Liddell & Robert Scott. A Greek-English Lexicon, rev. and augm. by Sir Henry Stuart Jones & Roderick McKenzie. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1940, Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University,  Gregory R. Crane, Editor-in-Chief, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3Dpe%2Fleku

• The above also includes the Greek Dictionary Headword Search Results, so that a search e.g. for the root of my surname Kaulins, entering "kaul" gives the following results, showing how this tool can be used for research:

καυλεῖον LSJ 0 0 [unavailable] καυλέω LSJ 30 0 form a stalk καυληδόν LSJ 0 0 like a stalk καυλίας LSJ 0 0 extracted from a stalk καυλικός LSJ 0 0 like a stalk, cauline καυλίνης LSJ 0 0 a kind of καύλινος LSJ, Middle Liddell 0 0 made of a stalk καυλίον LSJ 0 0 sea-weed καυλίσκος LSJ 1 1 branch of a candlestick καυλίζομαι LSJ 0 0 have a shaft καυλοειδής LSJ 0 0 like a stem καυλοφορέω LSJ 0 0 run to stalk καυλοκινάρα LSJ 0 0 artichoke stem, καυλοκλυστήρ LSJ 0 0 [unavailable] καυλοκοπία LSJ 0 0 cutting of stalks καυλομύκητες LSJ, Middle Liddell 0 0 stalk-fungi καυλοπώλης LSJ 0 0 greengrocer καυλός LSJ, Middle Liddell, Autenrieth 63 33 spear-shaft καυλώδης LSJ 0 0 running to stem καυλωτός LSJ 0 0 with a stalk [emphasis added to most frequent entry] 

•  Lexilogos, Ancient Greek Dictionary online by Xavier Negre, which searches both in the above-cited Perseus database as well as Woodhouse's English-Greek Dictionary, located at The University of Chicago Library http://www.lexilogos.com/english/greek_ancient_dictionary.htm
  
  

The Origins of Writing and the Alphabet as a Derivation from Syllabic Script - 9 - LexiLine Journal 561

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

H. Cypriot Syllabary, Linear B Signs and Ancient Greek Terms

The signs of the Cypriot Syllabary and the Linear B Signs used in this work are taken from the Aegean Font, which does not reproduce online via Blogger, so I use scans for online purposes.

Software for the Aegean Font in Microsoft Word was the BabelMap Unicode Character Map for Windows, BabelMap Version 6.0.0.2, Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7Build, Copyright (c) Andrew West 2002-2010, http://www.BabelStone.co.uk/Software/BabelMap.html.

The Aegean Font is from George Douros, Kolokotroni 3, Larissa 41223, Greece, as Unicode Fonts for Ancient Scripts, Copyright (c) George Douros 2010, and provides:

"Fonts in ‘Unicode Fonts for Ancient Scripts’ are offered free for any use; they may be opened, edited, modified, regenerated, posted, packaged and redistributed."

As concerns the Aegean font as written at BabelMap:

"Aegean covers the following scripts and symbols supported by The Unicode Standard 5.2: Basic Latin, Greek and Coptic, Greek Extended, some Punctuation and other Symbols, Linear B Syllabary, Linear B Ideograms, Aegean Numbers, Ancient Greek Numbers, Ancient Symbols, Phaistos Disc, Lycian, Carian, Old Italic, Ugaritic, Old Persian, Cypriot Syllabary, Phoenician, Lydian, and Archaic Greek Musical Notation.

Aegean allocates in the Supplementary Private Use Plane 15, the following scripts and symbols, as yet unsupported by Unicode: Cretan Hieroglyphs, Cypro-Minoan, Linear A, the Arkalochori Axe, Ancient Greek and Old Italic variant alphabets.

In this version:

• Cretan Hieroglyphs are redesigned and expanded to cover signs on seals.

• Cypro-Minoan is entirely new and in agreement with the latest edition of the inscriptions.

• Idalion, Akanthou, Eteocypriot, Ancient and Recent Paphian variants of the Cypriot Syllabary are available as its Open Type Stylistic Sets I-V."

Useful for the Cypriot syllabary was T.B. Mitford, The Tsepsis Stele and some Others, St. Andrews University, http://campus.usal.es/~revistas_trabajo/index.php/0544-3733/article/viewFile/2769/2810

Palaeolexicon -- a word study tool of ancient languages -- was used as the source for Cypriot and Linear B words as found in the Cypriot Syllabic Word Index http://www.palaeolexicon.com/default.aspx?static=12&wid=305# and the Linear B Word Index http://www.palaeolexicon.com/default.aspx?static=12&wid=305#.

The Origins of Writing and the Alphabet as a Derivation from Syllabic Script - 8 - LexiLine Journal 560

[In amended form later published as a book under the title Ancient Signs] 
 
G. Sumerian Pictographs and Egyptian Hieroglyphs as Syllabic Signs

An examination of comparable Sumerian pictographs and Egyptian hieroglyphs as syllabic signs seemed logical given the legends relating to Greek letters, which suggest a foreign origin to Greek script.

If it were possible that the Minoan Aegean signs were similar to Old Elamite script, i.e. an ancient connection by sea to Elam (today's Iran) via merchant trade, then some ancient relationship to Sumerian signs in the Ancient Near East was also possible. Moreover, given the legend of Cadmus bringing the Greek letters to Greece via Egypt, it seemed worthwhile to also look at comparable Pharaonic hieroglyphs.

In this connection various online sites were used as resources. A glossary of Sumerian terms is found e.g. at the ETCSL (Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature) but that source is very weak because it does provide the original signs -- so that one can not check whether transcriptions and transliterations are correct.

Patrick C. Ryan [7] provides a Sumerian Archaic Sign Table and a Sumerian Sign Value Register as well as Proto-Language Monosyllables with Correspondent Sumerian and Egyptian Signs, all of which are quite valuable as resources for the signs themselves, although I sometimes disagree strongly with the analysis given by Jaritz and Ryan to the meanings and origins of the signs, some of which are better clarified here through an analysis of comparable Minoan Aegean signs. Nevertheless, given the dearth of sign materials online for Sumerian, Ryan's online resources are of significant importance for providing essential Sumerian materials and he must be commended for recognizing that these signs and symbols are related to other languages of the world. Sumerian signs are cited to their Jaritz number. Ryan writes:

"The sign numbers are those of Jaritz' Schriftarchäologie der altmesopotamischen Kultur (1967). Unfortunately, the register materials in this book were not carefully proofed before publication so an unknown number of errors are present. I have made many corrections as I have found them but there are undoubtedly more errors present. Where I have discovered a questionable sign number assignment for a reading, I have placed a question mark after it. In some cases, the sign reading or its proper subscript may be in question, or the subscript may not be known by me, which sign reading also bears a question mark."

The Wikipedia has numerous pages on Egyptian hieroglyphs, see e.g. Gardiner's Sign List, the A-L list and M-Z list. Other resources are cited when used in this text.

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[7] It was on Patrick C. Ryan's suggestion that I started the online group ACE (Ancient Cultures Explored) in 1997 to replace the defunct ANE list at the University of Chicago. ACE was changed in 1999 to the LexiLine list, which still exists today online, primarily as a newsletter on the History of Civilization. See http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/LexiLine/message/595 and http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/LexiLine/message/1403 and

http://lexiline.blogspot.com/2002_03_01_archive.html.

The Origins of Writing and the Alphabet as a Derivation from Syllabic Script - 7 - LexiLine Journal 559

[In amended form later published as a book under the title Ancient Signs] 
 
Right now, prior to the presentation of the syllabic grid, it is sufficient to know that an Elamite connection may not be as far-fetched as it may appear at first glance. To that purpose, the following rock carving on a cliff in Elam is illustrative.

An Ancient Rock Carving of Elamite [6] Royalty Suggests a Western Element


The Elamite connection to Crete and to Minoan culture is more easily understood when one has more fundamental knowledge of things such as the ancient rock drawings of Elam, which show early Elamites in dress different than other inhabitants of this region. There is a distinct "Western" look, with women given equal standing on monuments, an equal standing also found in antiquity on Crete artefacts, in early Greek culture and even on early Dynastic Pharaonic Egyptian monuments, but for all purposes lacking in the ancient cultures of the Ancient Near East.

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[6] This photograph was found at http://www.zorpia.com/Vistapars/journal/1755777 where it is written "Ayapir - Izeh, Khozestan. Originally called Ayapir, Izeh is known for its large number of reliefs as the Town of Rock. Izeh is an ancient town located at the northwest of Ahvaz, it takes approximately 210 km from Ahvaz to Izeh by passing Ramhormoz and Baghemalek. This ancient town has the biggest gathered collection of archaeological sites and monuments, for instance; Sabz ali and Zebarjad tepes which refer to Zarzian period and the rock bas-relief galleries which show special religious scenes. The Izeh Plain and the town of Izeh viewed from Eshkafte Soleiman: The Eshkafte Soleiman, Elamite carvings."

The Origins of Writing and the Alphabet as a Derivation from Syllabic Script - 6 - LexiLine Journal 558

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

Accordingly, the ancient record tells us that the initial Greek letters, which constitute the origins of writing in Western Europe, were viewed as a conglomeration of inputs. The first Greek letters viz. signs were taken from ancient sources.

One of the inventors of Greek letters mentioned by Hyginus has a clear connection to Crete: he is Palamedes, son of Nauplius and Clymene ("Asia"), the daughter of Catreus, king of Crete, son of the first king of Crete, Minos, and grandfather of Menelaus, the Greek husband of Helen of Troy. Catreus of Crete was thus the grandfather of Palamedes, an important name in the history of writing.

Grandfather Catreus had many children. He gave his two daughters to a merchant mariner, Nauplius, to be married off in foreign lands, but Nauplius allegedly took Clymene for himself and sailed off into the sunset. Where did they go?

Clymene in ancient Greek sources is also called Asia, which some allege is how the continent Asia got its name, thus pointing to a possible geographic Asian destiny. Indeed, Herodotus is puzzled by Ancient Greek usage of women's names to describe large areas such as Asia or Europe (Europa of Tyre). Is the answer "royal settlement", by which the daughters of the Greek king so married gave their names to regions?

It is Clymene's son Palamedes who subsequently surfaces (from a thus far unknown location) as the greatest Greek inventor of antiquity, for Palamedes not only allegedly invented eleven of the Greek letters, but it is also said that he invented counting, currency, weights and measures, military ranks, dice, pessoi (a type of chess), and made improvements in winemaking (an art perhaps originating in Iran).

Amazing -- and generally unbelievable -- but all this could be true in the ancient era if the inventions of Palamedes were obtained by technology transfer from a foreign land. After all, the Roman Mercury (Greek Hermes) is "the bringer of letters", and Mercury also has the same meaning as "merchant". These inventions were thus arguably brought to Greece from a distant land via travelling merchants, just as suggested by the story of Catreus and his daughter Clymene and merchant Nauplius.

As we have discovered, this foreign land is (or could be) Elam, the land – as we claim here - where the couple Clymene and Nauplius from Crete ultimately settled.

Elam is the land in which letters were first stamped onto clay, just as on the Phaistos Disk, but long before the Minoans of Crete. An existing technology was thus -- in our opinion -- imported to ancient Crete from one of the most ancient cultures of the Ancient Near East. We will discuss this idea in detail subsequently.

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,