26 Nov 2009

Minoan citynames with an Egyptian accent

John Strange (in Caphtor/Keftiu: A new investigation, p.21) shows Minoan citynames written out in Egyptian as they were known during the reign of Amenhotep III in the 14th century BCE. The picture below is courtesy of this reference via Google Books.

I noticed something in these lists that involves the way that these names are spelled in Egyptian characters. It has me wondering about whether people are transcribing things quite right. Based on the common transliterations I see, it would appear that all people see in these lists is alphabetic writing of the foreign names. I personally see in this a mixture of alphabetic and rebus writing.

Notice #3 (Kydonia), #8 (Kythera) and #10 (Knossos)? The three all begin with the symbol of upraised arms followed by a single stroke. Normally this is the way of writing 'soul', often written out "the Budge way" as ka to avoid the pesky issues concerning vocalism in a script that normally didn't write vowels (except in foreign names like the above, of course). The actual pronunciation in Middle Egyptian was likely *kuʔ. It just so happens that a syllabic reading of this symbol as ku suffices excellently when sounding out the names Kydonia and Kythera. Knossos can also be read this way if we keep in mind that the stress is placed on the second syllable. What I find interesting is not only that we can get away with reading this out syllabically based on a literal reading, but also that this symbol of all things was chosen, a symbol clearly of religious importance. It'll relate to what I write below in a minute.

Also look at #8 (Kythera) again. We see a mouth symbol followed by another one of those strokes. In everyday writing, this would write the literal word for "mouth" and was probably pronounced *rāʔa or *rāʔ by this time (> Coptic ro). Just as before, a syllabic pronunciation based on the literal reading, ra, gives us precisely the vocalism we need in the name Kythera. Interesting, no?

Now back to the religious symbolism in the first set of examples, it continues on in #2 where we see another spiritual glyph starting off what is thought to either spell out Phaistos or Pisaia, a bird which normally represents a second aspect of our tripartite being, the ba (according to Budge spelling, at least). Again, the actual pronunciation was slightly different, probably *baʔ, but in this case Budge's spelling is close enough to reality. If we can get away with syllabically reading ku and ra, why not also ba here? If so, the alternative reading suggested, Pisaia, is not possible. Yet while this works in favor of the reading Phaistos, this interpretation also remains problematic if going by the Mycenaean name *Phaistós (PA-I-TO).

7 comments:

  1. Along these lines, I would suggest maybe checking out stuff on Egyptian "Group-Writing" for foreign names and vocabulary.

    Perhaps something like Hoch's Semitic Words in Egyptian Texts of the New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period?

    I'm afraid that's the only good book I know of on the phenomenon.

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  2. Yes, well, here's the odd thing. Allen in Middle Egyptian: An introduction to the language and culture of hieroglyphs admits on page 220: "Two systems of group writing are known from Egyptian texts, one used in the Middle Kingdom and the other in the New Kingdom. [...] By the New Kingdom the practice of using short Egyptian words in group writing had been largely abandoned in favor of a new system based on CV syllables."

    This New Kingdom system is what seems to me to appear right on this very artifact! Yet... we continue to write these Cretan names in a way that misleads. Authors continue to transcribe them consonantally rather than syllabically, completely ignoring what is already known about this New Kingdom group writing. WHY???

    For example, Kydonia as you see written above in hieroglyphs is rewritten out by Egyptologists confusingly as k3-t-w-n-3-y rather than ku-tu-na-y(a). Quite obviously, the glottal stop '3' is meaningless here and hardly likely to have been honestly pronounced. And furthermore, the actual vocalization of the implicated Egyptian words (ie. *kuʔ 'soul', *rāʔ 'mouth' > Coptic ro, *baʔ 'soul' > Coptic bai) at the time of this artifact are also overlooked yet this may be very important to the very selection of these symbols. Doesn't that seem a little odd?

    In effect, we admit that they're meant to be pronounced syllabically yet we completely ignore the syllables and completely ignore the state of the spoken language at the time. Hunh??

    So it comes back to my suspicion that this artifact is not being properly thought through and as a result Egypt's Cretan neighbours continue to be shrouded in an artificial modern mystery that we could have solved decades ago. We should talk more about these details.

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  3. Out of curiosity, are there any specific books you can suggest that deal with the real historical vocalizations of hieroglyphs in Middle Egyptian (as opposed to the "Buuuuuudge" vocalizations)?

    Also, it looks as though the one for Phaistos is something like b-ba-i-ʃa-w-i-y. (I'm guessing the first "b" is just to clarify the pronunciation of the bird glyph as "ba") You said that the "ba" glyph was really *baʔ - are some of the other glyphs here actually pronounced otherwise?

    I realize I sound like a complete and utter neophyte, but I'm quite curious about this potential onomastic connection to Minoan Crete. (The book you linked to is pretty darn neat!)

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  4. Seadog Driftwood: "Out of curiosity, are there any specific books you can suggest that deal with the real historical vocalizations of hieroglyphs in Middle Egyptian (as opposed to the "Buuuuuudge" vocalizations)?"

    In a post-Budge world, Ancient Egyptian: A linguistic introduction (1995) by Antonio Loprieno is one reference worth keeping. Roger Woodard also goes into detail in The Ancient Languages of Mesopotamia, Egypt and Aksum (2008).

    That being said, there is internal disagreement and no perceivable, commonmost view. For example, to choose a most ironic example, Woodard reconstructs *meʔʕə(t) 'truth' while Loprieno claims *muʀʕat > *muʔʕə. So what is the truth? Sadly, we have only fragmentary evidence from Egyptian names written in nearby languages to help us (eg. Babylonian Nimmuria to write nb-mȝʕt-rʕ, evidently the syllable -mu- being only an irritating approximation of 'truth'). I'm collecting my own data to wrap my head around it myself.

    "Also, it looks as though the one for Phaistos is something like b-ba-i-ʃa-w-i-y. (I'm guessing the first "b" is just to clarify the pronunciation of the bird glyph as "ba") You said that the "ba" glyph was really *baʔ - are some of the other glyphs here actually pronounced otherwise?"

    It just seems to me that, at least in this artifact alone, the symbols followed with single stroke are meant to be read literally with the vocalism of the object they identify. So 'soul' = ku and 'mouth' = ra based on the actual pronunciations of these words at the time.

    As for Phaistos, this is what I was going to get at in a later post... and then... my mind got stuck on other pesky problems. Now I have new questions that muddle things somewhat. Are these names from Minoan or Mycenaean Greek? This artifact is late enough that Minoan could have been supplanted by Greek. AARRRRRRRGGGGHHH!!!! Blasted!

    Nonetheless, the spelling of Phaistos as seeming b3-i-š3-w-y is suspicious since it doesn't appear match anything in either Greek or Minoan. Yet, it would be odd if Phaistos, an important Minoan center, were left out in this list.

    So basically, now I really don't know what to think.

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  5. What is being translated as M* in columns 4, 6 and 11 is DI in my Egyptian references. I've checked Zauzich (1992) and Faulkner (1970).

    It is only if I drop back to Budge that I get an M* value for this symbol. I always try to double-check when I'm relying on Budge. Yes, because of Stargate. ;> I find that I can usually trust Budge on determinative style defintions but not necessarily on phonetics.

    Are there recent references which give this symbol an M* phonetic value? I may need to update my own library.

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  6. Kim: "Are there recent references which give this symbol an M* phonetic value?"

    Ignoring my above link to John Strange's 1980 book, is Allen, Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs (2010), p.190 sufficiently recent enough for your tastes? Granted it's the second edition of a book published a very very ancient time ago, back in 2001 CE when dinosaurs roamed the earth. ;o)

    The hieroglyph in this artifact is being interpreted as mj (based on mj 'to come' > Sahidic amou) although a similar di-hieroglyph is also used in Egyptian.

    So now, if di were truly the value here, then m-w-k-i-n-w "Mycenae" becomes a meaningless name *di-w-k-i-n-w. What do your sources claim these places to be then?

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  7. Oops, my bad. It appears to be first published even longer ago, way way way back in 1999, when a powerful wizard known simply as "The Artist Formerly Known As" ruled over the land, and verily it was good. (Okay, okay, I'll stop joking now. I'm done. :oP)

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