Giovanni Semerano
Encyclopedia
Giovanni Semerano was an Italian
philologist who studied the languages of Ancient Mesopotamia
.
He obtained his degree in Florence, where among his teachers were the Hellenist Ettore Bignone, the philologist Giorgio Pasquali and the semitists Giuseppe Furlani, Giacomo Devoto and Bruno Migliorini
.
At the beginning of his career he taught Greek and Latin in a High School. In 1950 he was appointed Supervisor of Bibliography for the Veneto
and in 1955 for Tuscany
. He taught some lessons of Medieval Latin at the University of Florence
in a School of Latin palaeography. Afterwards he was director of the Biblioteca Laurenziana and then of the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale of Florence. In 1967 he was honoured with the gold medal for culture merits. He was an honorary member of the Accademia Etrusca. He was also a member of the Oriental Institute of Chicago.
theory - taken for granted by mainstream historical linguistics. He highlighted the fact that Indoeuropean is only a constructed language, with no written records. Through comparison of a huge amount of words without convincing etymology
in European languages, he supposes that these originated in Mesopotamia
, from the Akkadian
and Sumerian
languages. According to his supporters, Semerano's works have helped better understand the story of all European languages, not only the ancient and classic ones like Greek
, Latin and Etruscan
, but also all other languages and dialects, both modern and ancient, in Italy and Europe.
Among the various important scholars who agree with Semerano's thesis there are: Umberto Galimberti (philosopher), Massimo Cacciari
(philosopher), Franco Cardini (historian of the Middle Ages), Luciano Canfora (philologist), Emanuele Severino
(philosopher), Elémire Zolla (philosopher).. With the partial exception of Canfora, there are no linguists among them. He is extensively quoted by Jacques R. Pauwels in his 2009 book, Beneath the Dust of Time - also a non-linguist.
and one on Latin
and modern entries. The other two volumes treat thousands of ancient and modern words of European languages, that should be related to the age-old Semitic languages
, like Hebrew
, Arabic
, Sanskrit, Chinese
and many more African languages. Several pages are dedicated to Etruscan
.
The book starts by assuming an old cultural protohistoric
unity of Europe
and the Middle East
, on the basis of a Mesopotamic derivation of many geographic and ethnic terms. The original meaning of the name of many cities, people, rivers, characters, belongings, typical verbs of thought and hand activities are also usually included in a generic Mediterranean substrate that gathers all that cannot be categorized in the Indoeuropean linguistic framework (Continental). The author suggests that the Akkadian language
, the language with the oldest and widest written records, should be rather used as an alternative reference framework, since it also belongs to the family of Semitic languages
and has the oldest evidence of Sumerian
substrate, like the tens of thousands of tablets written in cuneiform, discovered in the archives of the old city of Ebla
in Syria
(Assyria
) and dug out by the archaeologists during an Italian mission in 1968.
According to the author this linguistic framework proves the influence that Mesopotamia
had on European civilizations, radiated along the Continental path of the Danube
and along the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea
, from Africa
to Ireland
. along the old trade roads of amber
, tin
and iron
.
matrix. This allows the author to reinterpret radically the entire environment of Archaic and Classic Greece, no longer regarded as a miraculous island of rationality, but as a part of a unique community including Mesopotamia
, Anatolia
and Egypt
.
The theory of the volume is based on a new interpretation of the term Ápeiron
, central in Anaximander
's philosophy. Anaximander defines the element from which all things originate with the Greek
term àpeiron, commonly held to be formed from a(alpha privative, "without") and péras ("determination", "limit"), and thus translated as "endless", "unlimited". According to Semerano, though, since the word péras has a short e, whereas àpeiron has a diphthong
ei that reads as a long closed "e", the diphthong cannot be produced by the short e of péras.
Semerano derives it from a collision of the Semitic
term' apar, the biblical
' afar and with the Akkadic eperu, all meaning "earth". The notorious fragment of Anaximander, in which we read that all things originate and come back to the All' àpeiron would not be referred to a philosophical conception of endlessness, but to a concept of "belonging to the earth" that we can find in a previous sapiential tradition of Asian origin exemplified in the Bible
: "dust you are and to dust you will return".
On the basis of this interpretation, Semerano reviews the whole development of previous sophistic
philosophy with an anti-idealistic and anti-metaphysic principle, reconsidering the differences and similarities between ancient thinkers and ascribing most of them to corpuscular physics
, that brings together Anaximander
, Thales
and Democritus
.
linguists. He does not consider subsequent modifications (for instance, the so-called wave model, in German
Wellentheorie), that could correct and refine the first hypotheses. Such refining, it has to be said, is progressively approaching to the area where Indoeuropean should have been created (today's Anatolia) in the Mesopotamic area.
Moreover Semerano's assertions, according to which the existence of Indoeuropean would be implausible, has no evidence in archeaeological finds which confirm the theory. For example, the decipherment (successfully completed and enriched through the introduction of new historical data) of Hittite
tablets started from the point that it was an Indoeuropean language written in the cuneiform script
.
Semerano's whole theory is based on a wide series of approaches of heterogeneous theories with no proposal of an alternative and consistent model to traditional linguistics and with no explanation and definition of linguistic laws that headed the derivation of the various languages examined by the ancient Mesopotamic languages.
, where we read of pòntos apèiritos: on Semerano's thesis, this should not be translated as "endless sea" but "earthen sea", which seems unlikely.
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
philologist who studied the languages of Ancient Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia is a toponym for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran.Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the...
.
He obtained his degree in Florence, where among his teachers were the Hellenist Ettore Bignone, the philologist Giorgio Pasquali and the semitists Giuseppe Furlani, Giacomo Devoto and Bruno Migliorini
Bruno Migliorini
Bruno Migliorini was an Italian linguist and philologist. He was the author of one of the first scientific histories of Italian language and was president of the Accademia della Crusca.-Biography:...
.
At the beginning of his career he taught Greek and Latin in a High School. In 1950 he was appointed Supervisor of Bibliography for the Veneto
Veneto
Veneto is one of the 20 regions of Italy. Its population is about 5 million, ranking 5th in Italy.Veneto had been for more than a millennium an independent state, the Republic of Venice, until it was eventually annexed by Italy in 1866 after brief Austrian and French rule...
and in 1955 for Tuscany
Tuscany
Tuscany is a region in Italy. It has an area of about 23,000 square kilometres and a population of about 3.75 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence ....
. He taught some lessons of Medieval Latin at the University of Florence
University of Florence
The University of Florence is a higher study institute in Florence, central Italy. One of the largest and oldest universities in the country, it consists of 12 faculties...
in a School of Latin palaeography. Afterwards he was director of the Biblioteca Laurenziana and then of the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale of Florence. In 1967 he was honoured with the gold medal for culture merits. He was an honorary member of the Accademia Etrusca. He was also a member of the Oriental Institute of Chicago.
Theory
Semerano rejected the IndoeuropeanIndo-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...
theory - taken for granted by mainstream historical linguistics. He highlighted the fact that Indoeuropean is only a constructed language, with no written records. Through comparison of a huge amount of words without convincing etymology
Etymology
Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time.For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts in these languages and texts about the languages to gather knowledge about how words were used during...
in European languages, he supposes that these originated in Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia is a toponym for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran.Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the...
, from the Akkadian
Akkadian language
Akkadian is an extinct Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest attested Semitic language, it used the cuneiform writing system derived ultimately from ancient Sumerian, an unrelated language isolate...
and Sumerian
Sumerian language
Sumerian is the language of ancient Sumer, which was spoken in southern Mesopotamia since at least the 4th millennium BC. During the 3rd millennium BC, there developed a very intimate cultural symbiosis between the Sumerians and the Akkadians, which included widespread bilingualism...
languages. According to his supporters, Semerano's works have helped better understand the story of all European languages, not only the ancient and classic ones like Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
, Latin and 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...
, but also all other languages and dialects, both modern and ancient, in Italy and Europe.
Among the various important scholars who agree with Semerano's thesis there are: Umberto Galimberti (philosopher), Massimo Cacciari
Massimo Cacciari
Massimo Cacciari is an Italian philosopher and politician.Born in Venice, Massimo Cacciari graduated in philosophy from the University of Padua , where he also received his doctorate, writing a thesis on Immanuel Kant's "Critique of Judgment." In 1985, he became professor of Aesthetics at the...
(philosopher), Franco Cardini (historian of the Middle Ages), Luciano Canfora (philologist), Emanuele Severino
Emanuele Severino
Emanuele Severino is one of the most important contemporary Italian philosophers.Severino studied at the University of Pavia under Gustavo Bontadini, though he broke publicly from Bontadini in 1970 while both were on the faculty of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan...
(philosopher), Elémire Zolla (philosopher).. With the partial exception of Canfora, there are no linguists among them. He is extensively quoted by Jacques R. Pauwels in his 2009 book, Beneath the Dust of Time - also a non-linguist.
The Origins of European Culture
The origins of the European culture (not yet translated into English) has as subtitle Rivelazioni della linguistica storica (Revelations of historic linguistics - Leo Olschki, Florence 1984-1994). It is divided into 4 volumes, two of which are on etymology: one on GreekGreek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
and one on Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
and modern entries. The other two volumes treat thousands of ancient and modern words of European languages, that should be related to the age-old Semitic languages
Semitic languages
The Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 270 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa...
, like Hebrew
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
, Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
, Sanskrit, Chinese
Chinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
and many more African languages. Several pages are dedicated to 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...
.
The book starts by assuming an old cultural protohistoric
Protohistory
Protohistory refers to a period between prehistory and history, during which a culture or civilization has not yet developed writing, but other cultures have already noted its existence in their own writings...
unity of Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and the Middle East
Middle East
The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...
, on the basis of a Mesopotamic derivation of many geographic and ethnic terms. The original meaning of the name of many cities, people, rivers, characters, belongings, typical verbs of thought and hand activities are also usually included in a generic Mediterranean substrate that gathers all that cannot be categorized in the Indoeuropean linguistic framework (Continental). The author suggests that the Akkadian language
Akkadian language
Akkadian is an extinct Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest attested Semitic language, it used the cuneiform writing system derived ultimately from ancient Sumerian, an unrelated language isolate...
, the language with the oldest and widest written records, should be rather used as an alternative reference framework, since it also belongs to the family of Semitic languages
Semitic languages
The Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 270 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa...
and has the oldest evidence of Sumerian
Sumerian language
Sumerian is the language of ancient Sumer, which was spoken in southern Mesopotamia since at least the 4th millennium BC. During the 3rd millennium BC, there developed a very intimate cultural symbiosis between the Sumerians and the Akkadians, which included widespread bilingualism...
substrate, like the tens of thousands of tablets written in cuneiform, discovered in the archives of the old city of Ebla
Ebla
Ebla Idlib Governorate, Syria) was an ancient city about southwest of Aleppo. It was an important city-state in two periods, first in the late third millennium BC, then again between 1800 and 1650 BC....
in Syria
Syria
Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....
(Assyria
Assyria
Assyria was a Semitic Akkadian kingdom, extant as a nation state from the mid–23rd century BC to 608 BC centred on the Upper Tigris river, in northern Mesopotamia , that came to rule regional empires a number of times through history. It was named for its original capital, the ancient city of Assur...
) and dug out by the archaeologists during an Italian mission in 1968.
According to the author this linguistic framework proves the influence that Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia is a toponym for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran.Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the...
had on European civilizations, radiated along the Continental path of the Danube
Danube
The Danube is a river in the Central Europe and the Europe's second longest river after the Volga. It is classified as an international waterway....
and along the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea
Mediterranean Sea
The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean surrounded by the Mediterranean region and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Anatolia and Europe, on the south by North Africa, and on the east by the Levant...
, from Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
to Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
. along the old trade roads of amber
Amber
Amber is fossilized tree resin , which has been appreciated for its color and natural beauty since Neolithic times. Amber is used as an ingredient in perfumes, as a healing agent in folk medicine, and as jewelry. There are five classes of amber, defined on the basis of their chemical constituents...
, tin
Tin
Tin is a chemical element with the symbol Sn and atomic number 50. It is a main group metal in group 14 of the periodic table. Tin shows chemical similarity to both neighboring group 14 elements, germanium and lead and has two possible oxidation states, +2 and the slightly more stable +4...
and iron
Iron
Iron is a chemical element with the symbol Fe and atomic number 26. It is a metal in the first transition series. It is the most common element forming the planet Earth as a whole, forming much of Earth's outer and inner core. It is the fourth most common element in the Earth's crust...
.
L'infinito: un equivoco millenario
The work (The endlessness: a millenary misunderstanding), with the subtitle of Le antiche civiltà del Vicino Oriente e le origini del pensiero greco (The oldest civilizations of the Middle East and the origins of the Greek thought), (edited by Bruno Mondadori, 2001, collana "Sintesi" ISBN 8842497622), aims to revise all languages as entities originating from a common Akkadic and SumerianSumerian language
Sumerian is the language of ancient Sumer, which was spoken in southern Mesopotamia since at least the 4th millennium BC. During the 3rd millennium BC, there developed a very intimate cultural symbiosis between the Sumerians and the Akkadians, which included widespread bilingualism...
matrix. This allows the author to reinterpret radically the entire environment of Archaic and Classic Greece, no longer regarded as a miraculous island of rationality, but as a part of a unique community including Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia is a toponym for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran.Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the...
, Anatolia
Anatolia
Anatolia is a geographic and historical term denoting the westernmost protrusion of Asia, comprising the majority of the Republic of Turkey...
and Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
.
The theory of the volume is based on a new interpretation of the term Ápeiron
Apeiron (cosmology)
Apeiron is a Greek word meaning unlimited, infinite or indefinite from ἀ- a-, "without" and πεῖραρ peirar, "end, limit", the Ionic Greek form of πέρας peras, "end, limit, boundary".-Apeiron as an origin:...
, central in Anaximander
Anaximander
Anaximander was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who lived in Miletus, a city of Ionia; Milet in modern Turkey. He belonged to the Milesian school and learned the teachings of his master Thales...
's philosophy. Anaximander defines the element from which all things originate with the Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
term àpeiron, commonly held to be formed from a(alpha privative, "without") and péras ("determination", "limit"), and thus translated as "endless", "unlimited". According to Semerano, though, since the word péras has a short e, whereas àpeiron has a diphthong
Diphthong
A diphthong , also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel...
ei that reads as a long closed "e", the diphthong cannot be produced by the short e of péras.
Semerano derives it from a collision of the Semitic
Semitic languages
The Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 270 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa...
term
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
: "dust you are and to dust you will return".
On the basis of this interpretation, Semerano reviews the whole development of previous sophistic
Sophism
Sophism in the modern definition is a specious argument used for deceiving someone. In ancient Greece, sophists were a category of teachers who specialized in using the tools of philosophy and rhetoric for the purpose of teaching aretê — excellence, or virtue — predominantly to young statesmen and...
philosophy with an anti-idealistic and anti-metaphysic principle, reconsidering the differences and similarities between ancient thinkers and ascribing most of them to corpuscular physics
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
, that brings together Anaximander
Anaximander
Anaximander was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who lived in Miletus, a city of Ionia; Milet in modern Turkey. He belonged to the Milesian school and learned the teachings of his master Thales...
, Thales
Thales
Thales of Miletus was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher from Miletus in Asia Minor, and one of the Seven Sages of Greece. Many, most notably Aristotle, regard him as the first philosopher in the Greek tradition...
and Democritus
Democritus
Democritus was an Ancient Greek philosopher born in Abdera, Thrace, Greece. He was an influential pre-Socratic philosopher and pupil of Leucippus, who formulated an atomic theory for the cosmos....
.
Other works
- The People that Defeated Death: The Etruscans and their Language- (Bruno Mondadori, 2003)
- The Myth of the Indo-European Language- (Bruno Mondadori, 2005)
Indoeuropean language theory
Semerano's objections to the Indoeuropean language theory are essentially objections to the theory as propounded by early nineteenth century GermanGermany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
linguists. He does not consider subsequent modifications (for instance, the so-called wave model, in German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
Wellentheorie), that could correct and refine the first hypotheses. Such refining, it has to be said, is progressively approaching to the area where Indoeuropean should have been created (today's Anatolia) in the Mesopotamic area.
Moreover Semerano's assertions, according to which the existence of Indoeuropean would be implausible, has no evidence in archeaeological finds which confirm the theory. For example, the decipherment (successfully completed and enriched through the introduction of new historical data) of Hittite
Hittite language
Hittite is the extinct language once spoken by the Hittites, a people who created an empire centred on Hattusa in north-central Anatolia...
tablets started from the point that it was an Indoeuropean language written in the cuneiform script
Cuneiform script
Cuneiform script )) is one of the earliest known forms of written expression. Emerging in Sumer around the 30th century BC, with predecessors reaching into the late 4th millennium , cuneiform writing began as a system of pictographs...
.
Semerano's whole theory is based on a wide series of approaches of heterogeneous theories with no proposal of an alternative and consistent model to traditional linguistics and with no explanation and definition of linguistic laws that headed the derivation of the various languages examined by the ancient Mesopotamic languages.
Derivation of Ápeiron
In his reconstruction of the derivation of Ápeiron, Semerano appears not to know an essential element: in the Ionic dialect, unlike the Attic dialect and many other Greek dialects, the alternation between "e" (short vowel) and "ei" (diphthong), is quite common and originates from well-known linguistic dynamics. There are also synonyms of Anaximander's term in HomerHomer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
, where we read of pòntos apèiritos: on Semerano's thesis, this should not be translated as "endless sea" but "earthen sea", which seems unlikely.