Eteocypriot
Encyclopedia
Eteocypriot was a pre-Indo-European
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...

 language spoken in Iron Age
Iron Age
The Iron Age is the archaeological period generally occurring after the Bronze Age, marked by the prevalent use of iron. The early period of the age is characterized by the widespread use of iron or steel. The adoption of such material coincided with other changes in society, including differing...

 Cyprus
Cyprus
Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country, member of the European Union, in the Eastern Mediterranean, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria and north of Egypt. It is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.The earliest known human activity on the...

. The name means "true" or "original Cyprian" parallel to Eteocretan, both of which names are used by modern scholarship to mean the pre-Greek languages of those places. Eteocypriot was written in the Cypriot syllabary
Cypriot syllabary
The Cypriot syllabary is a syllabic script used in Iron Age Cyprus, from ca. the 11th to the 4th centuries BCE, when it was replaced by the Greek alphabet. A pioneer of that change was king Evagoras of Salamis...

, a syllabic script derived from Linear A
Linear A
Linear A is one of two scripts used in ancient Crete before Mycenaean Greek Linear B; Cretan hieroglyphs is the second script. In Minoan times, before the Mycenaean Greek dominion, Linear A was the official script for the palaces and religious activities, and hieroglyphs were mainly used on seals....

 (via the Cypro-Minoan variant Linear C). The language was under pressure from Arcadocypriot
Arcadocypriot
Arcadocypriot or southern Achaean was an ancient Greek dialect spoken in Arcadia in the central Peloponnese and in Cyprus. Its resemblance to Mycenaean Greek, as it is known from the Linear B corpus, suggests that Arcadocypriot is its descendant...

 Greek from ca. the 10th century BC and finally became extinct in c. the 4th century BC.

The language is as yet unknown except for a small vocabulary attested in bilingual inscriptions. Such topics as syntax
Syntax
In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....

 and possible inflection
Inflection
In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case...

 or agglutination
Agglutination
In contemporary linguistics, agglutination usually refers to the kind of morphological derivation in which there is a one-to-one correspondence between affixes and syntactical categories. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglutinative languages...

 remain a mystery. Partial translations depend to a large extent on the language or language group assumed by the translator, but there is no consistency. It is conjectured by some linguists to be related to the Etruscan
Etruscan language
The Etruscan language was spoken and written by the Etruscan civilization, in what is present-day Italy, in the ancient region of Etruria and in parts of Lombardy, Veneto, and Emilia-Romagna...

 and Lemnian
Lemnian language
The Lemnian language is a language of the 6th century BC spoken on the island of Lemnos. It is mainly attested by an inscription found on a funerary stele, termed the Lemnos stele, discovered in 1885 near Kaminia. However, fragments of inscriptions on local pottery show that it was spoken there by...

 languages, and by others to be Northwest Semitic. Those who do not advocate any of those theories often adopt the default of an unknown pre-Greek language. Due to the small number of texts found, there is currently much unproven speculation.

The Amathus Bilingual

The most famous Eteocypriot inscription is a bilingual text inscribed on a black marble slab found on the acropolis
Acropolis
Acropolis means "high city" in Greek, literally city on the extremity and is usually translated into English as Citadel . For purposes of defense, early people naturally chose elevated ground to build a new settlement, frequently a hill with precipitous sides...

 of Amathus
Amathus
Amathus was one of the most ancient royal cities of Cyprus, on the southern coast in front of Agios Tychonas, about 24 miles west of Larnaca and 6 miles east of Limassol...

 about 1913, dated to around 600 BC and written in both the Attic dialect of Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...

 and Eteocypriot. The Eteocypriot text in Cypriot characters runs right to left; the Greek text in all capital Greek letters, left to right. The following are the syllabic values of the symbols of the Eteocypriot text (left to right) and the Greek text as is:
Eteocypriot:
1: a-na ma-to-ri u-mi-e-s[a]-i mu-ku-la-i la-sa-na a-ri-si-to-no-se a-ra-to-wa-na-ka-so-ko-o-se
2: ke-ra-ke-re-tu-lo-se ta-ka-na-[?-?]-so-ti a-lo ka-i-li-po-ti

A suggested pronunciation is:
1: Ana mator-i um-iesa-i Mukula-i Lasana Ariston-ose Artowanaksoko-ose
2: kera keretul-ose. Ta kana (kuno) sot-i, ail-o kail-i pot-i.

Greek:
3: Η ПΟΛΙΣ Η АΜАΘΟΥΣΙΩΝ ΑΡΙΣΤΩΝΑ
4: ΑΡΙΣΤΩΝΑΚΤΟΣ ΕΥΠΑΤΡΙΔΗΝ

which might be rendered into modern script as:
3:
4: .

A suggested translation is:
The polis of Amathusians, to Ariston (son of) Aristonax, nobleman.


Cyrus Gordon translates this text as
The city of the Amathusans (honored) the noble Ariston (son) of Aristonax.


Gordon's translation is based on Greek inscriptions in general and the fact that "the noble Ariston" is in the accusative case
Accusative case
The accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of prepositions...

, implying a transitive verb
Transitive verb
In syntax, a transitive verb is a verb that requires both a direct subject and one or more objects. The term is used to contrast intransitive verbs, which do not have objects.-Examples:Some examples of sentences with transitive verbs:...

. Gordon explains that "the verb is omitted ... in such dedicatory inscriptions". The grammar of the Greek, however, is not necessarily that of the Eteocypriot.

The inscription is important as verifying that the symbols of the unknown language do in fact have about the same phonetic values as they do when they are used to represent Greek. Gordon says "This bilingual proves that the signs in Eteocypriot texts have the same values as in the Cypriot Greek texts, ...." However, as a bilingual it uses only a few Greek syllables to translate many Eteocypriot ones, which adds to its mystery.

See also

  • Cypriot syllabary
    Cypriot syllabary
    The Cypriot syllabary is a syllabic script used in Iron Age Cyprus, from ca. the 11th to the 4th centuries BCE, when it was replaced by the Greek alphabet. A pioneer of that change was king Evagoras of Salamis...

  • Linear C
  • Etruscan civilization
    Etruscan civilization
    Etruscan civilization is the modern English name given to a civilization of ancient Italy in the area corresponding roughly to Tuscany. The ancient Romans called its creators the Tusci or Etrusci...

  • Aegean languages
  • Etruscan language
    Etruscan language
    The Etruscan language was spoken and written by the Etruscan civilization, in what is present-day Italy, in the ancient region of Etruria and in parts of Lombardy, Veneto, and Emilia-Romagna...

  • Liber Linteus
    Liber Linteus
    The Liber Linteus Zagrabiensis is the longest Etruscan text and the only extant linen book...

    – An Etruscan inscription.
  • Tabula Cortonensis
    Tabula Cortonensis
    The Tabula Cortonensis is a 2200-year-old, bronze artifact of Etruscan origin, discovered in Cortona, Italy. It may record for posterity the details of an ancient real estate transaction which took place in the ancient Tuscan city of Cortona, known to the Etruscans as Curtun...

    – An Etruscan inscription.
  • Cippus perusinus
    Cippus Perusinus
    The Cippus Perusinus is a stone tablet discovered on the hill of San Marco, near Perugia, Italy, in 1822. The tablet bears 46 lines of Etruscan text exquisitely carved into it...

    – An Etruscan inscription.
  • Pyrgi Tablets
    Pyrgi Tablets
    The Pyrgi Tablets, found in a 1964 excavation of a sanctuary of ancient Pyrgi on the Tyrrhenian coast of Italy , are three golden leaves that record a dedication made around 500 BC by Thefarie Velianas, king of Caere, to the Phoenician goddess ʻAshtaret. Pyrgi was the port of the southern Etruscan...

    – An Etruscan inscription.
  • Lemnian language
    Lemnian language
    The Lemnian language is a language of the 6th century BC spoken on the island of Lemnos. It is mainly attested by an inscription found on a funerary stele, termed the Lemnos stele, discovered in 1885 near Kaminia. However, fragments of inscriptions on local pottery show that it was spoken there by...

  • Eteocretan
  • Cortona
    Cortona
    Cortona is a town and comune in the province of Arezzo, in Tuscany, Italy. It is the main cultural and artistic center of the Val di Chiana after Arezzo.-History:...

    – Ancient Etruscan city (Curtun).

Sources

  • Jones Tom B., Notes on the Eteocypriot inscriptions, American journal of philology. LXXI 1950, c. 401–407

External links

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