La cercetarea tablitelor, au participat pana acum urmatoarele categorii profesionale:
- arheologi fara specializare in epigrafie - arheologi cu cunostinte de epigrafie - specialisti in sisteme de scriere>asirologie>scriere sumeriana >proto-scriere sumeriana -specialisti pluridisciplinari (din fiecare un pic....) -cercetatori autodidacti "amatori"
Ca atare, au rezultat opinii care doar partial si sporadic sant convergente; principalele teorii sant:
- tablitele apartin civilizatiei Danubiene (Vinca), scrib "Turdasean", scrisul este autohton si datorita complexitatii si caracterului extrem de arhaic al tipului de scris nu poate fi descifrat
- tablitele dateaza imediat dupa faza proto-scrierii sumeriene care a inceput la 3200BC si au varsta cca 2750 BC si nu prezinta scris sumerian propriu-zis ci scris "de factura sumeriana". Autorul presupus a fi comerciant (sumerian?)
- Au fost evidentiate legaturi directe intre scrierile Egeene si cea sumeriana. Scrierile Egeene nu au aparut din neant nici local ci au avut la origine scrierea sumeriana.Minoanii au fost la origine migranti sumerieni, care vorbeau un dialect apropiat de limba sumeriana. Nu au fost observate nici consemnate legaturi ale tablitelor de la Tartaria cu acest fenomen (nici cu scrierea sumeriana nici cu ceele Egeene)./E.PAPAKITSOS & I.KENANIDIS
- Legaturi intre semnele tablitelor si scrierea Linear B/in rev. ANISTORITON
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Desi deja in urma cu lunide zile, aproape 1 an am afirmat ca semnele tablitelor au cel mai apropiat corespondent si similaritate cu cele sumeriene, si apreciind ca fiind cu totul improbabil ca scribul sa fie nativ sumerian, am apreciat ca tablitele provin din aria Egeeana si scribul ar fi putut fi un prospector sau comerciant sumerian, dar mai degraba un urmas al unui nativ sumerian.
Cu toate ca am citit cca 4 lucrari ale cercetatorilor Evangelos Papakitsos si Iannis Kenanidis care au afirmat ca scrierile egeene sant rezultatul direct al adaptarii scrierii sumeriene, ca minoanii au fost de fapt urmasii primilor migranti sumerieni stabiliti in Creta.Au spus deasemenea ca amprenta si caracterul tipic sumerian s-a conservat si transmis pana inspre era noastra si pana in scrierea eteo-cretana.
Probabil datorita faptului ca acele afirmatii le-am considerat mai degraba ipoteze, si datorita faptului ca demonstratia dansilor nu mi s-a parut prea convingatoare, nu le-am dat importanta cuvenita. Mai ales ca intr-o lucrare de-a mea am analizat exemplificarile dansilor si am remarcat si spus ca nu sant cele mai fericite, pentru ca eu pot da exemplificari mai bune, si care au o mai mare acuratete. Foarte interesant, pe undeva eu inca tot cautam sa gasesc de unde provine scribul !!.
Cu oarece intarziere "mi-a cazut fisa" ca dansii tocmai mai mult decat au sugerat originea scrierilor Egeene, dar si a minoanilor. De fapt eu am avut in ipoteza o prezenta sumeriana timpurie in Europa, dar nu aveam dovezi ferme pentru sustinere.
Ceea ce au facut dansii a venit ca o confirmare a ipotezei mele, provenind de la niste prestigiosi oameni de stiinta, care altfel,daca nu era adevarat, probabil nu ar fi sustinut nici in ruptul capului intaietatea altcuiva decat a stramosilor grecilor !
Asta seamana a fi la mine reactie intarziata, lentoare in gandire? Eu cautam scribul nu stiu pe unde, realizand totusi ca nu putea sa fi fost sumerian numai daca era teleportat. !
...............Dar sumerianul era de fapt la 2 pasi in Creta, "deghizat" in minoan. Asa incat nu a mai fost necesar sa banuiesc ca un comerciant ar fi ajuns in aria Vinca tocmai din Sumer, putea sa vina de mai aproape din Creta.
Daca tablitele au fost scrise in Creta nici nu ar mai fi necesara deplasarea scribului.
Acum i-mi explic complet de ce semnele seamana in cea mai mare masura cu cele sumeriene, nefiind identice dar o parte sant similare cu cele folosite in scrierile Egeene si Anatoliene.Cunoscand la nivel multumitor scrierea sumeriana pre-cuneiforma, dar si cele Egeene, am putut face o dubla comparatie ( a semnelor de pe tablite simultan cu cele sumeriene si totodata cu cele Egeene).Acest lucru nu l-a mai facut nimeni.
Vedeti dumneavoastra, de multe ori s-a intamplat in istorie ca oamenii de stiinta sa anticipeze existenta unui fenomen sau obiect initial ca o ipoteza, pe baze pur teoretice.
Dupa ce fenomenul sau obiectul a fost decelat faptic, fizic, de-abea atunci teoria s-a confirmat dovedit ca fiind adevarata.
Aici avem asemanator, cercetatorii Papakitsos si Kenanidis au emis ipoteza aparitiei scrierilor Egeene ca urmare directa a influentei scrierii sumeriene.Au putut si incepe prin a exemplifica faptic prin incercarile de citire a doua inscriptii, cea de la Psychro si cea a pietrei de la Malia.
Dar sprijinul perfect vine de la tablitele de la Tartaria.
Din Grecia avenit fundamentul teoretic si inceputul demonstratiei existentei fenomenului (scris de sorginte sumeriana in Europa), dar sprijinul si dovada, echivalentul fizic perfect sant tablitele de la Tartaria.Pentru ca prezinta caracteristici aproape depline a unei scrieri de tip sumerian.
In vara, atunci cand am gasit similaritati cu scrierile Egeene, si am luat legatura cu cercetatorul canadian Richard Vallance , acesta m-a incurajat si m-a inclus in lista mondiala a cercetatorilor care studiaza Epoca bronzului Egeeana.
Cand am luat legatura cu cercetatorii Papakitsos si Kenanidis, acestia avand in minte vechimea exagerata a tablitelor atot-vehiculata anterior, s-au exprimat ca nu ar fi scriere egeeana si nici legatura cu scrierile Egeene intrucat tablitele de la Tartaria sant mai vechi preced (scrierile Egeene).
ACUM SANT SIGUR,SI POT AFIRMA CA:
-TABLITELE AU VECHIMEA ULTERIOARA LUI 3.000BC, f.f.POSIBIL 2500-2000BC
- LOCUL DE ORIGINE A TABLITELOR: aria EGEEANA,Ciclade dar mai sigur CRETA (sau chiar TARTARIA?/vezi analiza argilei)
- IDENTITATEA SCRIBULUI: MINOAN= MIGRANT SUMERIAN STABILIT IN CRETA, sau mai degraba URMAS AL UNUI NATIV SUMERIAN STABILIT IN CRETA OCUPATIE: MESERIAS ex.metalurg SAU PROSPECTOR/COMERCIANT
- SCRIS "DE FACTURA SUMERIANA" . Un set de icoane este COMUN SCRIERILOR SUMERIANA SI EGEEANA! Apoi, foarte posibil in jumatatea de sus a tablitei rotunde, am putea avea SCRIS PROPRIU-ZIS, ARHAIC GREC.
- LIMBA , UN GEN DE "CREOLA" (mai apropiata de sumeriana decat de orice alta limba?)
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Acum dupa mine au ramas in mare doar doua posibilitati. Daca sant o faza incipienta de scris, ar putea fi,
- o reflectare ,exemplificare deci o productie locala Europeana a proto-scrierii sumeriene sau a a celei minoane-miceniene sau mai mult decat atat chiar o asemenea varianta locala de scris incipient.
- o reflectare grosiera (imitatie) a uneia din acestea de mai sus, si posibil continand in plus scris adevarat doar in jumatatea de sus a tablitei rotunde.
DAR RAMANE O PROBLEMA SI INCA UNA FOARTE MARE: CHIAR DACA PRIN EXTREM IDENTIFICAND SEMNELE, AM EXTRAGE ECHIVALENTUL IN SUNETE SAU CUVINTE, NU AM STI CE INSEAMNA NECUNOSCAND LIMBA IN CARE AU FOST SCRISE. ACEEASI PROBLEMA O AU CEI CARE LA ORA ACTUALA FAC MARI EFORTURI SA IDENTIFICE SCRISUL LINEAR A SI LIMBA CORESPONDENTA,MINOICA.
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EXTRASE DIN LUCRARILE DOMNILOR EVANGELOS PAPKITSOS si IANNIS KENANIDIS:
A Comparative Linguistic Study about the Sumerian Influence on the Creation of the Aegean Scripts Ioannis K. Kenanidis1 , Evangelos C. Papakitsos*2 file:///C:/Users/User/Downloads/Minoan_Sumerian.pdf
COMMENTARY
Every script in the world always conforms to the special features of the language it is initially devised for, and every script always is precise enough in phonemically representing the language it is created for. It is clear that the Aegean scripts are syllabic of the CVtype (consonant-vowel); i.e., all signs represent syllables ending in a vowel only, with no consonant clusters. This means that the script was originally devised for a CV-type language, namely a language in which all consonants are followed by vowels. There are many such languages, a very well-known of them being the Japanese. When a script is devised for a CV-type language, it is naturally a CV-type syllabary, as it is actually the case with the Japanese kana syllabaries. A CV-type pure syllabary was never initially devised for any language other than a CV-type language. While today we know of many CV-type languages, all Greek dialects were (and remain) foreign to the CV pattern. Another linguistic direction is required [2]: “In contrast with mainland Greece, Cyprus and Crete in the 2nd millennium are both multilingual societies in which the different languages are written down. It is tempting to assume that this points to stronger links with the Near East than with Greece.” It is recognized by eminent Greek linguists that there was a linguistic substratum in the Aegean area (e.g., see [33][41]). Other proposals about an adstratum instead [42] do not change the essence of our argument. This substratum is not regarded as Indo-European (IE), based on the unknown etymology of plant-names and toponyms [33]. The Aegean scripts denote that a CVtype language was spoken by those who created them. None of the IE languages is of the CV-type. The mainland of Greece and of Anatolia was inhabited by people speaking IE languages. The existence of a Semitic language (e.g., Akkadian) is also very probable in Crete, but it is not of a CV-type either. All such proposals roughly correspond to all the different ethnic groups that may have inhabited Crete or retained merchant delegations there. None of them, though, spoke a CV-type language. Ancient Egyptian was not of the CV-type, if we judge from Coptic, from renderings of Ancient Egyptian in other languages and from the ancient Egyptian script itself. Egyptian was an AfroAsiatic language, and those languages are generally not of the CV-type. Consequently [9]: “Without doubt, the Minoans at the beginning of the second millennium did not 're-invent' writing independently, even if they were well able to take their first steps in this direction without knowledge of the Mesopotamian or Egyptian systems. However, starting with ideas from elsewhere, they created an original and astonishingly uncomplicated system for recording the sounds of their language by means of signs.” So, the issue of identifying the language behind the Aegean scripts remains the same: all the languages around Aegean, which we know of hitherto, are incompatible to the CV-pattern. CV-type languages are usually agglutinative ones. Duhoux suggests that Linear-A is "agglutinative rather than conjugating"because of the high number of affixes it contains (in 59% of the words) compared to Linear-B (12% respectively) [43]. What we seek is a non-IE agglutinative language of those times (3rd millennium BC) to fit with the “kana” pattern of Linear-A/B and their predecessor. Olivier states that [9]: “A priori, no language attested in the third or second millennium from the eastern Mediterranean or its surrounding areas can be excluded … the languages spoken by people from the coasts of Asia Minor or Syro-Palestine must be favoured. … Between 3000/2600 and 1450, the period of the birth and development of Cretan Hieroglyphic and Linear A, … the introduction of a language known to us from elsewhere is unlikely.” The nearby agglutinative language of the 3rd millennium BC, well-studied and recorded, is the Sumerian. Additionally, the only highly civilized people close enough, speaking an agglutinative language well known to have CV-type phonotactics, were the Sumerians (or the bilingual Akkadian scribes / scholars because of the “sprachbund” [44][45]). Thus, the present research had been directed towards a comparative study for discovering any relation between the Sumerian language and the Aegean scripts. EVIDENCE Firstly, we will concentrate on some aspects of linguistic taxonomy and methodology before we proceed to the direct evidence of the last subsection (A Sample). A Protolinear Script There is a suggestion that Linear-A constitutes a linearization of the Akkadian cuneiform signs [22]. However, it is normal for a script to evolve from pictorial signs (as the Sumerian pre-cuneiform and the Aegean writing signs too) into non-recognizable forms (as the late cuneiform), and rarely the reverse. It has been recognized that Linear-B is not simply a derivative of Linear-A, just as the creation of the Aegean scripts does not constitute a simple process of evolution, from the Cretan Hieroglyphics to Linear-B [27][35]. There are Aegean inscriptions found in various places (Tel Haror, Tel Lachish, Samothrace and Troy) that both Linear-A and B scripts have to be taken into account for their interpretation [46]. Although there are several different theories for explaining this necessity, there is also the possibility of a Protolinear script [47], which both Linear-A/B evolved from, for conveying different languages. In other words, the Protolinear could be the parent of Linear-A and Linear-B, while the Cretan Hieroglyphic could be regarded mainly, but not exclusively [8], as the decorative and ritual form of that system for use especially on seals [48].The hypothesized Protolinear script consists of 120 syllabograms of the V and CV patterns, as they have been found in Linear-A/B scripts, one for each syllable of a dialect close to the Archaic Sumerian language. There are also a few signs of disyllabic nature. The signs are those that are common to both Linear-A and B scripts (62) and those that are exclusive to each syllabary. So, we have a script of simplified icons (signs) depicting items, where the phonetic value of each sign is related to the Archaic Sumerian word for the depicted item. Many of them are related to the associated signs of the Cretan Hieroglyphic, also to the Sumerian pictograms and sometimes to the cuneiform equivalents. A sample is presented in the next section, for the curious reader. One debatable feature of such a script would be the interpretation of the items depicted by the icons and another is the assignment of the phonetic value to each sign.
THE METHODOLOGY We cannot recognize what an ancient sign depicted by simply looking at a modern hand copy of it in a list presenting a tentatively reconstructed syllabary and putting our imagination to work. To go to the pictorial origin, we have to see all forms of the letter in all related scripts, and observe carefully how objects are usually depicted in the Minoan art. We have to study, in addition, the logograms of Linear-A/B and the Cretan Hieroglyphic too, and also observe the tendencies of each script. When the hitherto unknown phonetic value of signs (e.g., /ru/, /to/) is discovered, then it is tested in the actual context of the signs and so confirms that it makes really good sense. It should be understood that the original script was pictographic as much as it was linear: every sign was a sketch readily recognizable by all as a common object, the whole name of which was instantly recalled by all speakers of the language of the nation that created the script. The comparative study was conducted in parallel including four factors: § the depicted object and its sign of the Aegean script, § the relation and similarity of the previous sign to equivalent Sumerian ones, § the assigned phonetic value of the sign of the Aegean script, § the similarity of the previous phonetic value to Sumerian words denoting the depicted object. At least three factors should match in order to confirm the relation. Following the above mentioned methodology, the entire set of Linear-A/B signs can be identified as monosyllabic (rarely disyllabic) Sumerian words naming the depicted objects, noting that in Sumerian language a closing consonant of a monosyllabic word (i.e., CV-C) was not pronounced unless it was followed by a vowel in the case of compounding or affixation. Thus, in all the following examples, the closing consonant is separated by a dash. This is a predominant rule of the Sumerian phonology that facilitated the process of creating the syllabary by using the rebus principle. The rebus principle is merely the use of a picture to stand not for the object depicted, but for the name of the depicted object, even in context where the sound of that name stands for something totally different than the object shown. There is an important rule that always goes together with this principle: the whole name of the depicted object is used and not a part of the name (unlike the acrophonic principle). The rebus principle had been invented by the Sumerians, according to Fischer [4], whose influence expanded to Nile, Iran, Indus Valley and maybe to the Balkans (as he suspects, and it is argued too herein, through the Aegean scripts). The phonology of the used words is of a dialect close to, but simpler than, the Archaic Sumerian (the reconstruction is explained, together with the transcription system, in [49])……………………………
DISCUSSION Based on the very small number of different handwritings that are recognized on Linear-B tablets of Knossos and Pylos (111 of the so called “Hands”), Hooker [54] suggested the existence of a scribal guild, favored also by Finkelberg [46]. This is a reasonable explanation for the observed incongruity of Linear-B to the phonotactics of the Mycenaean Greek language, provided we deduce that the scribes were non-Greeks, and their script was originally devised from a nonGreek language. This can also explain why they did not even slightly enhance the script in order to represent the Greek language somewhat more precisely, for their own convenience, just as the Cypriot Greeks did with the Cypriot Syllabary. This could also be the reason why Linear-B was completely forgotten when the Achaean palaces declined, so the non-Greek scribes working there could not find employment. Then, no documented writing system was used in Greece for a period of about 350 years, after which the Greeks adopted a non-Greek script again: the Phoenician alphabet………………………..
The notion of a scribal guild can be extended in the past, for the creation of Linear-A and the Cretan Hieroglyphics, as a minimalistic reasonable assumption (although many evidence regarding culture and religion indicate a much stronger oriental relationship that its presentation is beyond the scope of this article). A relatively small number of Sumerian seals-makers and scribes could have been hired, from the communities of the Levant [55], in order to create the necessary infrastructure for the development of the contemporary commercial best practices. They were, after all, the original inventors of such practices with a long tradition and expertise at the end of the 3rd millennium BC. Even for the case of bilingual Akkadian scribes, the choice of the Sumerian language for devising the Aegean scripts would be a significant advantage, because monosyllabic words could be easily found in order to match common or culturally important objects for the signs of a syllabary. The creation of these scripts is a distinct trade-mark compared to the rest (Eastern Mediterranean) of that era, which is an ever-lasting desirable commercial asset. Once the Minoan authorities / society had decided to develop their commerce, both domestically and overseas, they would inevitably have to deal with the contemporary international best-practices (i.e., sealing of goods and keeping records). For example, about the usage of clay sealings [9]: “As in the Near East such objects generally served to secure the integrity of the contents of various types of container.” About the usage of scripts, it is suggested that Linear-A conveys a Semitic language (as a lingua franca) written by Luwian scribes in order to adhere to international standards [22]. In this respect, generally and diachronically, there are only two options: § to develop the required practices from scratch, which is usually a costly and slow trial-anderror process or § to hire professionals, being experts in the required practices. The latter option is mutually beneficial. The employer acquires the proper practices quickly and safely, while the employees assure their prosperity by having the monopoly of know-how. Who possessed such know-how at the end of the 3rd millennium BC? Sumerians proved to be excellent traders and colonists throughout the entire Near East, even at the end of the Uruk period [56]. According to Kramer [57]: “…by the third millennium BC, there is good reason to believe that Sumerian culture and civilization had penetrated, at least to some extent, as far East as India and as far West as the Mediterranean, as far South as Ancient Ethiopia and as far North as the Caspian”. Crete was known to Mesopotamia at least since the era of Sargon the Great, who lived approximately between the 24th and the 23rd centuries BC [58]. On the tablets of Mari (18th century BC) it is stated that “the hand of Sargon” had reached places beyond the “upper sea” (Mediterranean) as far as the island of copper (Cyprus) and Kaptara. The latter is regarded as the most ancient reference to Crete, “Kaptara” being its Akkadian name [14]. The name for Mediterranean in Sumerian is “ab-ba igi-nim”, found in many texts, e.g. in the inscription on the statue of Gudea (Period: Lagash II, ca. 2200-2100 BC): “a-ab-ba igi-nim-ta (from the Upper Sea = Mediterranean) a-ab-ba sig-gasze3” (to the Lower Sea = Persian Gulf). Even with some chronological inaccuracy, the previous period (24th to 18th centuries BC) adequately covers the creation time of the Aegean scripts. What could be the “hand” of Sargon the Great other than merchant stations and/or delegations, at least? Nevertheless, both linguistic and non-linguistic pieces of evidence, that will be presented shortly, indicate a longer and deeper Sumerian influence on the Aegean civilization of the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, the inadequacy of the Linear-A/B scripts to convey properly the phonology of the Mycenaean Greek, or the other languages proposed in Crete, is attributed herein to the origins of those syllabaries. Notably, considering the conveyed languages by Linear-A, all proposals are based on the comparative study of toponyms and anthroponyms or divinity names. Such a study, though, is not necessary when an Akkadian name is written in Akkadian cuneiform or a Luwian one in a relevant script. The Aegean scripts are acting like a distorting filter for the languages that they convey, making their identification even more difficult. Such a distortion is more or less always expected in the conveyance of words transmitted through a foreign writing system. Based on the previous linguistic evidence and conditions, it has been suggested that a very suitable candidate language as the base for creating the Aegean scripts could be the Sumerian. Being an agglutinative language, it both exhibits the matching syllabic pattern of the CV-type, and it can justify the phonetic values of the Linear-A/B and Cypro-Minoan signs as well, through the rebus principle. It is also suggested that the formation of each Aegean script could have been conducted in the late 3rd millennium BC by means of absorption from a parent script, named Protolinear, being created by a scribal guild of Sumerian linguistic origin.
A Decipherment of the Eteocretan Inscription from Psychro (Crete) Ioannis K. Kenanidis1* and Evangelos C. Papakitsos file:///C:/Users/User/Downloads/Kenanidis432017ARJASS36988deciphermentofinscription.pdf
- INTRODUCTION In 1958, Marinatos [1] reported the existence of an inscription from Psychro (Crete) that belonged to the private collection of Dr. S. Giamalakis (Fig. 1). It was engraved on a piece of stone, the shape of which showed that it was made to fit into an architectural construction, namely into an empty triangle formed over a door of a very small structure. Based essentially on Kritzas [2], Brown [3] attempted to prove that the inscription is a modern fake, his main argument being that it contains what appear to be Minoan syllabic signs (those three at the bottom of the inscription), that is signs of a script supposed to have been extinct 900 years before the inscription that was dated to 300 BC; another one of Kritzas’ arguments is that the inscription is on baked clay and not stone – something that has nothing to do with the language of the inscription anyway. Kenanidis & Papakitsos [4] have presented all arguments proving that the inscription is genuine. Those who discarded the inscription as a fake have relieved themselves of the obligation to interpret it, however, as we hold that the inscription is genuine, we must interpret it here in accordance to all our previous research.
Knowing that the conventionally called Eteocretan inscriptions convey more than one language, we had to determine which language is conveyed by the Psychro inscription. One factor that makes this difficult is that the inscription language is for the most part rendered in a script foreign to the language conveyed, so the phonemes are not expected to be rendered with precision [4]. Another difficulty is that even when the language is determined, we still have to understand the specific features of that language for the given date and place. These difficulties have been overcome by following the latest linguistic evidence about the affinity of the Aegean scripts to Sumerian [15,16,17,18] and especially by confirming the existence of a Cretan Protolinear script [12,19,20,21,22,23, 24]. It is exactly the following three facts that made others regard the inscription as fake or unreadable, which opened our way to read it:1) We were facilitated by the fact that this inscription is well preserved, with not even one letter missing or unreadable. 2) The three Minoan syllabograms on the inscription clearly point to the fact that the whole inscription is in the language of those who originally created the Minoan civilization along with the Cretan Protolinear script. 3) It was impossible for others to explain how the Minoan script survived until 300 BC, while that very fact confirms the existence of the Cretan Protolinear script: As explained in previous works, the Cretan Protolinear script was created by the Minoans, who were Sumerian settlers [12,20,21,22]; the Cretan Protolinear script in the form of Linear A and Linear B was used by all the different nations that inhabited Crete and the Aegean.
However, in the hands of non-Minoans (i.e. Hands of nonSumerians) the Cretan Protolinear script was distorted as time passed, and eventually forgotten, because the script was difficult for nonMinoans (=non-Sumerians).
On the other hand, in the hands of Minoan Sumerians the Cretan Protolinear script could not be significantly distorted or forgotten, no matter how many generations would pass.
This is because the Cretan Protolinear script (henceforth in this work referred to simply as “Protolinear”) was phonetic and pictographic at the same time: every phonetic (syllabic) sign was a sketch of a readily recognizable object in the Minoan Sumerian culture.
So, for those who had Minoan Sumerian as their first language, every syllabic sign had the native name of the thing that the sign depicted, and they always knew what the signs depicted. They could not alter the shape of the signs lest they would be no more recognizable and if a sign was not recognizable it could not have a native (Minoan Sumerian) name, so it could not have a phonetic value.
This is why the Protolinear script could not be altered in Minoan hands; while for non-Minoans there was no connection between depicted object and phonetic use of the Protolinear signs. Therefore, the Protolinear script survived unaltered as long as the Minoan nation existed. And we know that the Minoan Sumerian language, as other non-Greek languages spoken in Crete, was spoken not only until 300 BC but also much later [21], because those populations were relatively isolated geographically and socially. The Sumerian language in Mesopotamia remained in use as a classical and hieratic language until about the year 100 AD [25]. It was easy for a language to be kept for many centuries among different languages when there was no obligatory schooling and no mass media. An example is the many languages mentioned in the Bible, Acts 2, all spoken during the 1st century AD, including Elamite, a language no less old than Sumerian, and languages “of Mesopotamian people” among which were Sumerian and Akkadian – all those languages, when the eastern part of the Roman empire was rapidly Hellenised and the empire’s official language was Latin. We shall also briefly mention what is detailed in [21], that even after the pre-Greek languages were forgotten, they left some impressive phonological traits in some dialects of Crete and other islands: the most outstanding being a retroflex “l”; also, a strong tendency to eliminate consonant clusters, and the emphatic pronunciation of some stop consonants, to mention only a few traits that have been left from Sumerian. Apart from linguistic evidence, there is an abundance of cultural instances that show the influence and lingering of the Minoan Civilization even through the Classical times. The comparison of the Bronze Age Aegean (culturally Minoan) wall paintings to the Etruscan ones reveals a remarkable resemblance [26]. Those who have an idea of the Minoan religious symbols and ideas will be impressed by the coins of Tenedos island (Fig. 2) minted in the 5th and 4th centuries BC. Such coins are presented here because they most loudly prove that the Minoan Sumerian culture and religious ideas were totally alive in some Greek city states inhabited by Greeks of Minoan ancestry at least until the 4th century BC, while those symbols are a mystery for modern archaeologists as they were for the other ancient Greeks as well, who could only make up some totally fanciful and frivolous interpretations [27,28,29]. To be serious with the interpretation, on the right of Fig. 2, the coin’s verso depicts a double axe which is the most renowned religious symbol of the Minoans. The double axe symbolised the power and the duality of God An, the supreme deity of both the Minoans [12] and the Mesopotamian Sumerians [30]. The double axe symbol was also used as a very common syllabic (phonetic) sign in the Aegean scripts [12,20,21,23] and it is present, although not so common in the Sumerian (preCuneiform) pictography [17,22]. On the coin’s recto, the double-face head (manly face left, woman’s face right) clearly symbolised the same duality of the deity (masculine-feminine, yin-yang Kenanidis and Papakitsos; ARJASS, 4(3): 1-10, 2017;as we would say in modern terms). Although this representation can be interpreted as Zeus and Hera (or another mythological couple) as many scholars speculate [29], yet such a dual head representation has never been seen elsewhere in the entire Antiquity: it was a non Greek symbol that surprised the Greeks, but it was quite ordinary for the Minoans who saw a dual deity everywhere and represented the duality of the deity by all their religious symbols. Since such important Minoan Sumerian cultural elements were kept alive in a Greek city state during the 5th and 4th century BC, we cannot find any justification for considering strange a Minoan inscription in Crete of the year 300 BC. We understand that the Psychro inscription (Fig. 1) spoke about something related to building and dedicating a small shrine, because of the stone’s triangular shape that was obviously made to fit into a triangle formed over a door of a small structure …………………..
- CONCLUSION
- It has been demonstrated so far that the Psychro inscription can be meaningfully deciphered through the conservative Sumerian dialect of Crete, spoken by the the scribe’s ancestors who had invented the Cretan Protolinear syllabary.This particular scribe used the Greek alphabet for the most part of this inscription, because it was the writing system known by all people in Crete and around the Aegean, and also because the Greek alphabet was the only available writing system proper for writing on hard material, and the only system actually used for stone inscriptions. On the other hand, the Cretan Protolinear syllabary was used almost exclusively on unbaked clay tablets, and it was only suited for writing on soft material; still, the word “cətiləə”, being so important culturally and ritually as explained, had to be written in the Cretan Protolinear that was the national script, hailing from a most ancient tradition, for the person who wrote the inscription. It is something analogous to using some Greek phrases in the Orthodox Eucharist ceremony conducted in a non-Greek language. Although it is only this stone that we know of the whole structure built, the inscription was true when it said “this shrine will not ever collapse”: it is the shrine of the Minoan civilization.
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