An Archaeologist's Thoroughly Researched Translation of Pylos Tablet 64l-1952 (Ventris).
Category: Poetry
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An Archaeologist’s Thoroughly Researched Translation of Pylos Tablet 64l-1952 (Ventris)
Hello Rita, Eve and David and all of Rita-s friends. Yes, that is for sure! A great job. After all, it was I who approved it, and Rita surpassed my wildest dreams on her work on this justly famous tablet. I granted her 98 % (no one is perfect, not even Rita, ha ha! Richard)
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The remains of Akrotiri
WOW! Fabulous post, Rita ! I simply have to repost this one!
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Comparison Between the Paleo-Hebrew Alphabets and Hieratic Egyptian & the Phoenician Alphabet: Click to ENLARGE
Comparison Between the Paleo-Hebrew Alphabets and Hieratic Egyptian & the Phoenician Alphabet: Click to ENLARGE
This chart clearly illustrates the comparison between both Early (right) and Late (left) Paleo-Hebrew with Hieratic Egyptian & Ancient Phoenician. The comparison between the Late Paleo-Hebrew with the Phoenician alphabet establishes beyond a reasonable doubt that they are virtually one and the same alphabet, based on the soundly reasoned inference that they developed simultaneously in the historical time line, implying in turn that the cross-cultural and cross-economic exchanges between these two civilizations was very intense. This quotation from Wikipedia is particularly telling,
Phoenician had long-term effects on the social structures of the civilizations which came in contact with it. As mentioned above, the script was the first widespread phonetic script. Its simplicity not only allowed it to be used in multiple languages, but it also allowed the common people to learn how to write. This upset the long-standing status of writing systems only being learned and employed by members of the royal and religious hierarchies of society, who used writing as an instrument of power to control access to information by the larger population.
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The Phoenician alphabet is also often tagged Proto-Canaanite for inscriptions anterior to 1050 BCE. It is the first ever consonantal proto-alphabet, otherwise known as abjad. The Phoenician alphabet was derived from Egyptian hieroglyphics on the one hand and from cursive Hieratic Egyptian on the other. What is particularly striking about the Phoenician and Proto-Hebrew alphabets, which are mirror images of one another, is the fact that the former was used to write one of the earliest Semitic languages, while the latter was confined to Hebrew (also Semitic, but eventually to become completely unlike Arabic).This may come as somewhat of a shock to die hard Jews and die-in-the-wool Muslims alike, but it is an incontestable historical fact which cannot be lightly brushed aside. It is absolutely essential to understand that these twin alphabets were far more ancient than the latter-day Hebrew alphabet, which was nevertheless a descendant of the Proto-Hebrew and the Phoenician alphabets alike. While the Phoenician alphabet was the scriptural medium for early Semitic Phoenician, that civilization, being far more ancient than Islam, was in intimate contact with Judeo-Palestine, with whom it cultivated friendly cultural and economic ties. In other words, the religious overlay imputed to the latter-day Hebrew alphabet, itself indirectly derived from the Phoenician alphabet versus the Arabic alphabet, was utterly absent from the consciousness of both the early Semitic Phoenicians and Hebrews. Of course, the Arabic alphabet eventually did develop on its own from the 6th. century AD, characteristically unlike the Phoenician and Proto-Hebrew alphabets in every conceivable way. The Similarities Among Hieratic Egyptian, the Phoenician alphabet, Early Proto-Hebrew and Late Proto-Hebrew: Now let’s take a good close look at the alphabets in this chart. 1. Oddly enough, Early Proto-Hebrew bears but a faint resemblance with the Phoenician and Late Proto-Hebrew alphabets, but it does have some points in common with Hieratic Egyptian. Given this scenario, it somehow strikes me that Early Proto-Hebrew was anterior to both the Phoenician and Late Proto-Hebrew alphabets; otherwise, how are we to explain all these bizarre discrepancies? Not that I would know, as I am no expert in Egyptian hieroglyphics or Hieratic Egyptian. I leave it to the expert linguists in that domain to enlighten us, and I certainly hope they will. 2. For all intents and purposes, the Phoenician and Late Proto-Hebrew alphabets are identical. 3. Except for lamedth and tav (taw), neither the Phoenician and Late Proto-Hebrew alphabets resemble Hieratic Egyptian and the Early Proto-Hebrew in any significant way, which is particularly surprising to this author. The early Proto-Hebrew letter vav mirrors both its Hieratic and Phoenician equivalents, as well as the letter waw in Proto-Hebrew, the latter merely being an avatar of the previous three. Lamedh is also equivalent in all four scripts. If we take it as oriented right, Hieratic Egyptian tadhe bears a close resemblance to early Proto-Hebrew nun & tsade, which instead are oriented left. There is absolutely nothing unusual in this phenomenon, which is so common to so many ancient scripts that it boggles the mind. Early Proto-Hebrew qof, horizontally oriented, bears a close resemblance to its equivalent, the vertically oriented Phoenician letter koph, while its tav resembles one of the two versions of the Phoenician tav. Just to complicate matters or to frustrate the living daylights out of us, taw in the Late Paleo-Hebrew alphabet resembles the other version of Phoenician tav. PS If anyone who is an expert in Egyptian hieroglyphics or Hieratic Egyptian is willing to enlighten us poor ignorant folk on the finer points of their relationship with the other scripts we have discussed here, please do contact us, commenting on the inevitable errors in this post. Richard
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Parménides, Heidegger
fascinating spiritual take on ancient Greek philosophy and Martin Heidegger.
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Renacimiento Pagano
About Latin, to be sure, but fascinating. Richard
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La Revolución Cultural de la Invención de la Escritura
Ancient Legal Documents!
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An Introductory Glossary of General Linguistics Terminology: Part C: R-Z
An Introductory Glossary of General Linguistics Terminology: Part C: R-Z: This glossary is ostensibly not comprehensive in any sense of the term, but it serves as a solid baseline introduction to linguistics terminology.
R
recursive definition: a definition that refers to itself and thus defines an infinite set of things. = circular definition. Recursive definitions are all too frequently found in research, and they are a dangerous trap.
rhotacism: 1. an exaggerated use of the sound of the letter R 2. inability to pronounce the letter R. + 3. a linguistic phenomenon in which a consonant changes into an R, as in Latin flos, where flos becomes florem in the accusative case.
root: a morpheme from a lexical class, typically verbal, nominal or adjectival, from which a lexical word is built (by adding affixes). Examples: -song- in -songster- + -sing- in -singer- + -singing- See also, stem
S
segment: any discrete unit or phone (sound), produced by the vocal apparatus, or a representation of such a unit.
semanteme: an indivisible unit of meaning. See also: semantics, semiology
semantic role: the underlying relationship that a participant has with the main verb in a clause. Also known as: semantic case, thematic role, theta role (generative grammar), and deep case (case grammar). Semantic role is the actual role a participant plays in some real or imagined situation, apart from the linguistic encoding of those situations.
Examples (active & passive):
If, in some real or imagined situation, someone named John purposely hits someone named Bill, then John is the agent and Bill is the patient of the hitting event. Therefore, the semantic role of Bill is the same (patient=object) in both of the following sentences: John hit Bill. Bill was hit by John. In both of the above sentences, John has the semantic role of agent.
semantics: 1. (linguistics) the science of the meaning of words. 2. the study of the relationship between words and their meanings. 3. the individual meanings of words, as opposed to the overall meaning of a passage. 4. the study of meaning in language; in generative grammar: how the meanings of words combine to form complex meanings of phrases and sentences.
semi-consonant: see semi-vowel (English only)
semiology: the study of meaning.
semiotics: the study of signs and symbols, especially as means of language or communication.
semi-vowel: speech sound produced with a little more constriction of the airflow in the oral cavity than a vowel. Semi-vowels in English = l & r, but not in any other modern Occidental Indo-European language, in which l & r are pure consonants. In English only, semi-vowels or semi-consonants are the result of the great vowel shift in the Middle Ages, which softened the harder consonantal pronunciation of l & r typical of French, German, Greek, Italian, Spanish, Russian and many other Occidental languages into a much softer l & r.
simulfix: a change or replacement of vowels or consonants (usually vowels) which changes the meaning of a word. Examples (English): -eat- becomes -ate - in past tense + -tooth- becomes -teeth- when plural.
speech community: a group of people sharing characteristic patterns of vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation.
stative verb: a verb that expresses a state of affairs or being rather than action. Stative verbs differ from verbs of action not just in meaning but in formal structure and usage. Some verbs can be both stative, expressing a state of affairs, and active. Stative English verbs include: be, concern, have. The verb -become- is both stative and active.
stem: a morphological constituent larger than the root and smaller than the word. Derivational affixes are inside of the stem, and inflectional affixes attach to the stem. Examples: root = run + stem = runner + word = runners & root = sing + stem = singer + word = singers
stress: a syllable having relative force or prominence.
substantive: (broadly) a word or word group functioning syntactically as a noun.
suffix: an affix that is attached to the end of a root or stem. Example (English): the past tense suffix -ed- attaches to the end of the verb stem -walk- to form the past tense -walked- Likewise, -ingest- to -ingested- & -transport- to -transported-.
syllabary: 1. table or list of syllabic letters or syllables 2. writing system where each character represents a complete syllable. Minoan Linear A, Mycenaean Linear B & Arcado-Cypriot are all syllabaries.
syllable: 1.a unit of spoken language that is next bigger than a speech sound and consists of one or more vowel sounds alone or of a syllabic consonant alone or of either with one or more consonant sounds preceding or following; 2. one or more letters (as syl, la, and ble) in a word (as syllable) usually set off from the rest of the word by a centered dot or a hyphen and roughly corresponding to the syllables of spoken language and treated as helps to pronunciation or as guides to placing hyphens at the end of a line.
synchronic: relating to the study of a language at only one point in its history. For instance, when a researcher limits his or her study to Mycenaean Linear B in the context of ancient Greek, the research is synchronic. Thus, synchronic linguistics is a key definition in the study of Minoan Linear A, Mycenaean Linear B, Arcado-Cypriot Linear C & Homeric Greek.
syncretism: the fusion of different inflexional forms.
synecdoche: a figure of speech in which the one of the following (or its reverse) is expressed either as: (a) a part stands for a whole (b) an individual stands for a class OR (c) a material stands for a thing. Examples (English): -fifty head- referring to -50 head of cattle- & -cat- referring to -lion-.
synonomy: the relationship between words (or expressions) of sameness of meaning in some or all contexts. Synonyms: words (or expressions) that have the same meaning in some or all contexts. Examples: car = automobile + house = residence
syntagma: syntactic string of words that forms a part of some larger syntactic unit; a construction.
syntax: the study of the rules governing the way words and morphemes are combined to form phrases and sentences.
synthetic: pertaining to the joining of bound morphemes in a word. Compare analytic
synthetic language: a language with a high morpheme-per-word ratio, as opposed to a low morpheme-per-word ratio in what is described as an isolating language. Agglutinative languages tend to exhibit synthetic properties. Indo-European languages, Greek + languages of the Romance family (Latin, Italian, French, Romanian, Spanish etc.), of the Germanic family (English, German, Swedish etc.), of the Slavic family (Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Czech, Slovak,Serbo-Croatian etc.) and of the Indoaryan family (Sanskrit, Hindi, Persian etc.) are all synthetic languages.
T
time deixis: time diexis refers to time relative to a temporal reference point. Typically, this point is the moment of utterance. Examples (English)= Temporal adverbs: now/then/yesterday/today/tomorrow = adverbial function.
tmesis: (prosody) the insertion of one or more words between the components of a compound word. Example: How bright (+the) chit (+and) chat, inserted into chit-chat
trope: the figurative use of an expression. Tropes include euphemisms, hyperbole (exaggeration), irony, litotes (understatement), metaphor, metonymy, onomatopoeia and various other devices.
typology: the systematic classification of the types of something according to their common characteristics.
U
unbound root: a root which can occur by itself as a separate word. Another morpheme need not be affixed to it to make it a word. Examples: root (instead of – roots- -rooted- - rooting- etc.) & think (instead of -thinks- -thinking- -think-tank- etc.)
univocal: 1. having only one possible meaning. -or- 2. containing only one vowel
Ursprache: proto-language, such as the proto-language from ancient Greek and Sanskrit presumably arose. Although we can never know the actual structure, vocabulary etc. of a proto-language, we can attempt to re-construct it retrogressively.
V
vocable: a word or utterance, especially with reference to its form rather than its meaning
vowel: speech sound produced without a significant constriction of the airflow in the oral cavity.
vowel modification: an addition or alteration to the basic way that a vowel is articulated. For instance, in most languages, including English, most vowels can be articulated as long or short, as in: -a- in -father- (short) in -ate- (long), -e- in -set- (short) -meet- (long) & -o- in -got- (short) -goat- (long)
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Military Ideograms in Linear B for spear, arrow, axe, (long) sword, short sword or dagger, horn, bow & arrow: Click to ENLARGE
Military Ideograms in Linear B for spear, arrow, axe, (long) sword, short sword or dagger, horn, bow & arrow: Click to ENLARGE
With the exception of the last one on the bottom right, these military ideograms speak for themselves. Mrs. Rita Roberts of Crete and I are of the opinion that her decipherment of B259 comes down to “bow and arrow”, in light of a Linear B seal inscribed with an archer wielding a bow and arrow she recently found on the internet and we posted here, which looks uncannily like the syllabogram itself. The very last ideogram (bottom right), with the arrow pointing at it, is as yet undeciphered. Mrs. Roberts, Spyros Bakas, in the graduate program for Mycenaean Studies at the University of Warsaw, the Association of Historical Studies (Koryvantes), Athens and I myself are all working together to find a solution for a tenable decipherment of this last ideogram. Should any one of you reading this post have any further suggestions for its decipherment, please feel free to leave a comment on this post.
Richard
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To All My Dear Friends,Have a Blessed Friday..جمعة مباركة..Einen gesegneten Freitag..Un bon vendredi..Tener un bendito Viernes ..Cumamız Mübarek Olsun.. ❤️
Lovely! Richard Vallance Janke, Canada (Anglican). Reblogging this, Semra! God bless you.
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Military Syllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B, including 2 newly deciphered:
Military Syllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B, including 2 newly deciphered: Here we find 2 illustrations of military syllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B. Just click on each one to ENLARGE it. Illustrations of a typical Double Axe, Minoan (left) & Mycenaean fresco (right): Click to ENLARGE
Military Syllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B for the Axe & Double-Axe or Labrys: Click to ENLARGE
It is questionable whether or not the word dapu for “labrys” is in fact of Mycenaean Greek etymology, since it is somewhat of a stretch to correlate the Linear B spelling dapu with the corresponding ancient Greek orthography labrys. This sort of thing happens often enough in Linear B, making it difficult and sometimes even impossible to interpret a small cross-section of Mycenaean Greek words as Greek words (if that is what they are). Just as there are thousands of words in ancient Greek and modern Greek of non-Greek etymology, there were many of the same in Mycenaean Greek. I need only cite two examples, both of which make perfect sense even in English, but neither of which are of Greek etymology even in Mycenaean Greek, to drive my point home. We have for instance serino for “celery”, obviously the same as the English word, when you take into account that the Mycenaean “r” = Greek & English “l”. So also with sasama for “sesame”, a word which has quite literally been unchanged, apart from minor spelling variations to account for orthographic conventions in various languages, ancient & modern, ever since its first appearance in ancient languages right on down to today in English and other Occidental languages. It may possibly be Minoan. If it can ever be established that even a few of such words in Mycenaean Greek are actually of non-Greek origin, these words might provide a clue to the possible decipherment of the Minoan language, with the proviso that they are in fact Minoan. Unless any of these words actually appear either alone or as part of attested Minoan words from the online database of extant Minoan words in the Linear A texts in phonetic transcription by Professor John G. Younger, here:
we are caught in a vicious circle. Of course, neither serino nor sasama appear in this database. Around and round we go on an endless merry-go-round.
Military Syllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B on Chariots and related ideograms: Click to ENLARGE
More in the next post...
Richard
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