Translating KN Za 10

This is the post where I now willingly put myself in the bullets. This is something I owe after expressing my critique of Bayndor's recent post on the Minoan libation table known as KN Za 10.

Which transliteration is right?

As long as the ivory tower makes it difficult for the general public to access artifact photos, we're left to the mercy of various scholars with greater access and biased agendas. With no way to rationally judge what's correct for ourselves, we can do little but defer to the competence of, say, the contributors of GORILA 4 and of John Younger who present the opening of the inscription as TA-NU-MU-TI. Alternative readings co-exist such as TA-NU-A-TI, motivated by idle Semitic comparisons, and TA-NU-TA2-TI, equally based on subjective expectations.

Translating Minoan based on a Proto-Aegean model

I continue to be encouraged by a historically guided comparison of Minoan to Etruscan, not only because of the shared vocabulary but also parallels in grammatical structure. The comparisons also yield contextually sound phrases further guiding my inquiries. Thus for KN Za 10, I would like to offer my following attempt:

KN Za 10
• TA-NU-MU-TI • YA-SA-SA-RA-MA-NA • DA-WA-SI • DU-WA-TO • I-YA •
Tan muti Asásaramana ṭausi. Ṭawáto iya.
The pit of Asásarama is filled(?). It is filled(?) here.

First, on the lexical level, many terms here directly relate to Etruscan vocabulary. The first word tan (TA-NU) is identical to the Etruscan accusative distal demonstrative. Due to Cyprian Syncope, the Etruscan equivalents can be regularly predicted so that Minoan iya contracts to Etruscan ei like clockwork and Minoan muti links with Etruscan muθ (see LL 12.iii: muθ hilarθ une & LL 12.v: muθ hilarθ una = '[the] mundus [is] enclosed with libation.'). Although I find no Etruscan equivalent for a verb like ṭausi, we might deduce that a meaning of 'offering to', 'filling' or 'pouring to' is a reasonable approximation of the intended meaning of the inscription.

The grammar too is parallel to Etruscan, demonstrating the same SOV word order that I've previously sussed out from the common Libation Formula: Asásarame una kanasi 'Before Asásarama a libation is brought.' (cf. Etruscan un 'libation' and cen 'to bear'). Note how the demonstrative tan signals the accusative object muti by means of its specific inflection. By comparison with Etruscan, we may predict nominative *ta. Minoan verbs, often in -SI or -TE, trail both the subject and object, as here and also in Etruscan sentences. This inscription suggests a new verb stem to analyse, *ṭau, whose Etruscan equivalent would be *zau. (I have yet to ponder a relationship with the word zavena which I've so far translated as 'kantharos' in my Etruscan database.) It's possible that an apparent intransitive participle ṭawáto (cf. Etruscan intransitive participle -θ) reflects a separate verb stem or something else altogether since the introductory accusative noun phrase shows that ṭausi must logically be transitive. For ṭausi, we would expect a transitive participle form, *ṭawau (cf. Etruscan transitive participle -u), paralleling ṭinau in HT 16 (= Etruscan zinu 'formed, fashioned').

The phrase also fits context since what more do we expect from the inscription other than it describe the ritual purpose of the object it marks and to whom it was dedicated? And the notion that a same term for a ritual pit works in both Etruscan and Minoan is exciting but also historically plausible considering that it's generally accepted that Etruscans have brought several common traditions from Asia Minor to Italy. On the Minoan libation table, there are indeed pits for the ritual pouring of libation. The pits serve in a sense like the physical mouths of the gods.

Praisos #2

I was reading the latest post from Minoan Language Blog entitled Place-names on Cretan sealstones - A key to the decipherment of Minoan hieroglyphs? where in re of the artifact Praisos #2 the author observes: "Unfortunately there is no word separation; yet - if we follow van Effenterre's considerations - we can be almost sure that the word *inai was separate." This is a sound conclusion I can agree with given the likely division between two consecutive iotas. (For those unfamiliar with this artifact, please take a gaze Ray Brown's Eteocretan Language Pages from which I've borrowed the pictures below.)

A lack of word separation can be a source of headache for the would-be decipherer but it's common in ancient texts like this one. What could help is trying to deduce what are the likeliest rules of syllable structure and grammar this language might have had. For me, since I've strongly felt over the years that Eteocretan is related to Minoan and Etruscan, I'm guided by a generalized "Proto-Aegean" model of grammar and syllable structure. So let me explain what that is and how it leads me to separating the words as I do below.


Features of a common Proto-Aegean language family

As I've said before, I define a hypothetical ancestor of Minoan, Etruscan, Lemnian, Rhaetic, Eteocretan and Eteocypriot which I call Proto-Aegean. It would have been a fairly "syllabic" language (ie. no consonant clusters) with a mild stress accent lying by default on the initial syllable, although occasionally on the second. Judging by Etruscan alone, internal reconstruction affirms this conclusion about stress as it nicely explains the eventual development of initial clusters in Etruscan words that must have once had stress on the second syllable. I maintain there were no long vowels in its simple 5-vowel, V-shaped system consisting of *a, *e, *i, *o, and *u. Stops had no voice contrast and only a plain/aspirated distinction (ie. plain *t versus aspirated *tʰ). It had a default SOV word order.

Internal reconstruction also strongly suggests a Pre-Etruscan stage with the loss of word-final vowels (eg. Etruscan avil 'year' < *awilu). In Etrusco-Lemnian languages, there is an odd overabundance of word-final aspirated stops but this aspiration is explainable as a residue of the "whispered" word-final schwas as they disappeared beside word-medial plosives, eg. *ḳota 'four' > Etruscan huθ /hutʰ/. I also deduce that Proto-Aegean had certain grammatical features such as two tenses (unmarked present-future tense & a simple past in *-i) preceded optionally by modal markers like perfective *-ka (hence the perfective past *-ka-i becomes Etruscan -ce).


Enough! Let's parse and interpret!

So, long story short, based on considerations like the above, this is what I can currently pick out from this artifact:

[...]ona  desieme  tepimits  φa[...]
[...]do--iarala  φraisoi  inai[...]
[...]  restnm  tor  sar  doφ  sano
[...]satois  steφ  siatiun[...]
[...]anime  stepal  une  utat
[...]  sano  moselos  φraisona
[...]tsa  adoφ  tena
[...]ma  prainai  reri[...]
[...]irei  rerei  e[...]
[...]n   rirano[...]
[...]askes[...]
[...]it[...]

The most certain word or word stem repeated in this document by far is φraiso, the city of Praisos from where this artifact derives. Based on Etruscan vocabulary and grammar, I offer the following possible connections that I can perceive:

desieme 'with sacrifice' (= Etr tesiame [PyrT 1.x])
φraisoi 'in Praisos' (= Etr -i [locative])
φraisona 'Praisian, of Praisos' (= Etr -na  [pertinentive])
restn-m 'then wine lees' (= Etr restm-c 'and lees' [TCort A.ii])
tor 'to give' (= Etr tur [LL 11.iv])
doφ 'oath' (= Etr θuφ)
sar 'ten' (= Etr śar [TCort ii])
utat '(it is) served, (it is) delivered' (= Etr uθ 'to deliver' [LL 10.xiii])
une 'with libation' (= Etr une [LL 8.xvii])
tena '(they) present, (they) offer' (= Etr tena [CPer B.ii])

If my assigned values are even half on-track, it suggests that the topic of this artifact involves much the same as we might find on Etruscan stelae - a list of performed rites (presumably involving wine and lees, libations, oaths and animal sacrifice) performed in Praisos as a religious commemoration of a person, deity and/or event.


UPDATES
(2011 June 24) On Bayndor's advice, I corrected a typo that I'd copied and pasted from Ray Brown's website: *desime should be desieme and *tora should be tor. I've also changed the Etruscan comparandum for tor to reflect the newly apparent infinitive (ie. -a marks the present-future tense and an unmarked form represents an infinitive which has a meaning of 'to X' or 'X-ing' when translating into English).

A modification of Indo-Aegean, plus some new grammatical ideas on Minoan

I like to explore new ideas and test them as always. One of my ever-evolving ideas is on the idea that Indo-European and Aegean are related to a common Proto-Indo-Aegean ancestor datable to 7000 BCE. Or so I've been thinking up to now but...


I decided to explore a radical new extrapolation that's got a grip on my mind recently. What would be the consequences to my theories if Proto-Indo-Aegean were dated to as much as a thousand years later in 6000 BCE? The first interesting thing about this fresh perspective is that 6000 BCE is just about the time before Proto-Semitic began to affect Mid IE (MIE) according to my currently defined chronology. Another interesting thing is that if we take for granted a more Balkans-positioned MIE vis-à-vis the later Ukraine-positioned PIE proper, then it begs the question: Where would this theoretical Proto-Aegean of mine be sitting at this time? The most obvious answer would be that it would lie somewhere to the west and/or south of the Balkans in the general area that it historically emerged (see graphic above). Yet my theory also positions Old IE (OIE) back in the northerly territory occupied by later Late IE such that the geographical path from OIE to MIE to PIE looks like a meandering vee that points towards the Aegean Sea (see graphic below). This isn't problematic since nothing says that languages have to spread progressively in only one direction over the course of time. However, this pattern, if taken as correct for the sake of argument, teases in me a further idea that Aegean would have been brought to Greece and/or Turkey by that very southerly movement that brought Mid IE into the same trading zone. It's as if to say that what I call "Old IE" circa 7000 BCE is to be revised as a still-evolving Indo-Aegean and the beginning of the Mid IE period should be called "Old IE" at 6000 BCE. It's as if the temporary spread of an early stage of PIE to the Balkans and the spread of a related Aegean branch perfectly coincide to warrant further pondering.


Given the general conceptual arguments in favour of this deviation from standard, I went towards examining all the morphological what-ifs with even more profound consequences. The unfortunate problem with Etruscan, Lemnian and Rhaetic (and probably too with Eteo-Cypriot and Eteo-Cretan) is that no personal endings appear to be attached to verbs in these languages despite the fact that many features like the 1ps and its oblique form (mi and mini), demonstratives and the declensional system (ie. the demonstrative accusative, s-genitive, animate and inanimate plural endings) all find direct connections to PIE. If Aegean is related to PIE then something has happened to these endings and they've disappeared at some unknown point in time motivated perhaps by reasons that are lost in the mists of time.

I refuse to believe the answers aren't recoverable and I don't particularly like mist. I've been poring over Minoan texts recently and while very hesitant at first, I've been rethinking on the published but nonetheless speculative view by some that -SI and -TI are the 3ps and 3pp endings respectively. This is an obviously PIE-inspired interpretation and given the lack of success in translating Minoan with PIE values, we have reason to be skeptical.

Yet...

It's interesting to observe that if we stick by my values of the Libation Formula such that *una (U-NA) means 'libation' (cf. Etruscan un 'libation') with plural *unar (U-NA-RU), and *kan- in KA-NA-SI/KA-NA-TI is cognate with Etruscan cen- 'to bring', then not only do we have a perfectly sensible phrase "a libation was given"/"libations were given" that coincides with the fact that it's written on several Cretan libation tables, but if we take the variation KA-NA-TI in PK Za 11 to be correctly read and written on purpose by scribes to indicate a different inflection, then what we have here is a language with personal endings that apparently have not been completely lost! It would seem that -TI might indeed correlate with plural subjects while -SI would correlate with singular ones.

If we additionally corroborate this with CR (?) Zf 1 (an inscribed gold pin) where we find a perfectly Etruscoid sentence with the ubiquitous SOV word order and with intriguingly Indo-European-like verbal endings, A-MA-WA-SI KA-NI-JA-MI (*Amawasi kaniami 'I (ie. the pin itself) was brought for Amawa'^[1]), then we have a very exciting verbal system that might help crack the language: 1ps *-mi (cf. PIE *-mi), 3ps *-si (cf. PIE *-ti), and 3pp *-ãti (cf. PIE *-énti).

The reasons for this strange hodgepodge grammar, neither fully Etruscan nor fully PIE by any sensible definition, would then relate back to the modified chronology that I suggest above. Speculation? You bet. But worth a look, I think.


NOTES
^[1] Ego-focussed dedicatory inscriptions such as these were plentiful in later Etruria and were also found in the Greek and Faliscan languages as well. Read for example Pallottino, The Etruscans (1955), p.253 (see link) who testifies to the Faliscan inscription eco quto ... enotenosio ... 'I (am) the pitcher of ... Enotenus ...'.

A thought on the real name for the land of the Minoans

On page 844 of Bromiley's The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1988), an intriguing and researched summary of the true name for the land of the Minoans is to be discovered:

"In an Ugaritic text concerning the abode of Kothar-wa-Ḫasis, the god of artisans, the word kptr occurs: kptr ksu ṯbth ḥkpt arṣ nḥlth, 'Caphtor is the throne of his sitting, Ḥkpt the land of his inheritance' (UT, `nt VI:14-16). The passage seems to preserve a memory of a connection with Crete as the home of their crafts; Ḥkpt may be another name for Crete or one of its regions. Economic texts from Mari speak of Kaptara, and an Akkadian text from Ugarit refers to ships arriving from Kapturi. C. H. Gordon had raised the question whether the words kpt-r and ḥ-kpt may include some morphological elements, a preformative ḥ- and a sufformative -r, leaving kpt as the basic word (Ugaritic Literature [1949], p.23 n.1), and relating this to Egyptian kft-yw. But the persistance of r in Hebrew, Akkadian and Ugaritic forms, plus the fact that final -r could become -yw by phonetic decay (see CAPHTOR II), rather support kptr/kftr as the original word."

So we can conclude with some degree of confidence that the name sounded something like *Kʰaputar, give or take some variation. For the sake of argument, I will suggest this specific form and what follows is a whole lot of speculation. I personally think of speculation as a necessary tool in the learning process, used to invigorate new paths of research and I always strive to improve my arguments with facts and evidence or to eventually abandon them, whichever logic guides me to do. However, for those overly evidentialist sorts that find any speculation without evidence too distasteful to even express, you may be spared reading further.

I'm very interested in the Minoan language and have been pursuing a hunch for years that the likeliest relationship it has is to the 'Etrusco-Cypriot' languages (Etruscan, Lemnian, Rhaetic, Eteo-Cretan and Eteo-Cypriot) whose epicenter lies in Western Anatolia and Cyprus, formerly known as the kingdoms of Alashiya, Arzawa and Assuwa. I also have a hunch that by 1400 BCE, Minoan had become a dead language but still used in ritual while, in the everyday world of the commoners, a mix of Greek and Etrusco-Cypriot languages survived on in Crete.

If I take the name *Kʰaputar for granted, I'm reminded of a plural suffix *-r that I see in the Minoan Libation Formula sometimes marking the word *una 'libation' (written syllabically as U-NA-; in the sequence U-NA(-RU)-KA-NA-SI, *una(-r) kana-si '(we) bear libation(s)', compare Etruscan -r [animate plural], un 'libation' and cenu 'brought'). Without this ending, we're tentatively left with a singular word *kʰaputa. Wild imagination may lead one to see similarity between it and the Latin-derived word 'capital' however this leads to another interesting mystery: Where does Latin caput 'head, summit' come from?

Some etymologists try very hard to make caput a Proto-Indo-European word.^[1] However, it's unclear to me why anyone would be so determined to force the word to be PIE given the meager basis. At most, they're reduced to label it vaguely as a 'regional term' or an 'Italo-Germanic innovation' which only skips over the problem of how the word came to be. However, let's try a new idea. Let's suppose for a moment that this odd word is entirely non-IE and a loan from a theoretical Old Etruscan word *χapuθ (> (?) Late Etruscan *χafθ), lent also at some point to Germanic (hence Old English heafod). At this juncture, I think many readers here might predict where I'm going with these crazy ideas.

Is it just possible that the word for 'head, summit' in both Minoan and Etrusco-Cypriot during the mid 2nd millenium BCE was originally *kʰaputa? From there, *Kʰaputar 'The Summits'(?) would become the word for the entire Minoan region, perhaps in connection to the Horns of Consecration, a very sacred and prominent symbol undoubtedly related to the Egyptian aker symbol representing the sun both emerging from and setting into the two horizons.

Now naturally, these are so far just a delightful multiplication of hypotheses and fun wordgames to toy with while passing the toke around. I recognize that it remains incumbent on me to prove them with tangible evidence if I'm ever to insist this hypothesis to others. So, as always, I'll just have to see where these ideas take me.


NOTES
^[1] Mallory/Adams, Encyclopedia of Indo-European culture (1997), pp.260-261: kaput (see link).

Minoans, Greeks, the Po Valley and Arretium

Something I googled up the other day makes me start thinking again about the precise extent of Minoan trade. Clark, Prehistoric Europe - The economic basis (1966), page 186, reads:

"Although there is no direct proof that the rich copper deposits of Etruria began to be worked for the Minoan market, it is suggestive that the earliest metal equipment of Italy should show Early Minoan influence, notably in the daggers with mid-rib and rivetted tang found in cemetaries of the Remedello culture of the Po Valley and in the central Italian Rinaldoni culture."

This piece of text reinvigorates my hunch that the very reason why Etruscans, when considered to be the offshoot of peoples with like languages in Western Anatolia and surrounding islands (ie. Eteocretan, Eteocypriot, Minoan), ended up in Western Italy by the first millenium BCE was because trading routes and mining sites were in some way already established in the Po Valley, Western Italy and Sardinia during late Minoan times.

I came across this while reopening the case concerning the etymology of Arretium, a town in NE Etruria, which I can confidently say is unanalysable in the Etruscan language, despite Arretium being purportedly founded by the Etruscans themselves... but this is a slightly separate issue. For that, another quote seems interestingly apt, but in part related to my first quote above, from Voyage to the other world - The legacy of Sutton Hoo (1992), ed. by Kendall/Wells, p.31:

"By the fifth century B.C., true Celtic art was born - called by archaeologists the Early La Tène style after its type-site in Switzerland. The inspiration for this art again seems to have come through northern Italy and the Adriatic. This process is probably due to a shifting of trade routes between temperate Europe and the Mediterranean as trade from Massalia began to decline and the focus of Greek trade shifted to the Po Valley."

In other words, a historical continuity of trade between Northern Italy and Greece via the Adriatic since Minoan times. So this is in part why I'm now pursuing a hunch that Arretium could perhaps be a Greek name in the end, namely from Erythrion, a name built on the word erythros 'red' (< PIE *h₁reudʰ-) which could presumably be inspired by copper mining in the area. Interestingly, Erythrion is attested elsewhere as a personal name. The name would then also presumably pass into Old Etruscan as *Aritium with the -r- dropped to naturalize pronunciation for Etrurian ears and predictably shortened to Aritim as attested.

"Proto-Aegean" - What I mean and what I don't

Language Hat recently gave me good review^[1] and of course I'm very thrilled and flattered. However, there was something in there that made me want to write a response and clarification:

"Talk of things like 'Proto-Aegean' makes me nervous, but this guy is no pushover for sloppy comparisons and hand-waving correspondences"

Gee, thanks! Erh, I think? Well, I can't say that I didn't bring upon myself this nervous skepticism. Being skeptical of what one reads, particularly when reading a quirky online blogger one isn't familiar with, is actually healthy and I expect it if one's skepticism is based firmly on objective reasoning rather than subjective feelings. It's a good sign that one's brain is functioning. The term "Proto-Aegean" isn't part of the linguist's general lexicon as yet and I'm fully aware of that fact. So I need to explain what I mean by "Proto-Aegean" in order to help people understand that I'm not as kooky as I may seem at first glance.

First off, let's go through all the nutty ideas commonly out there that I absolutely reject. I reject any attempts to translate an undeciphered language such as Etruscan or Minoan based purely on look-alike matches with random foreign languages. I do however support methodical analysis of grammatical patterns and context to deduce a more sensible translation that's a little more multi-dimensional. I reject the work of those who casually connect Minoans to Semitic by extracting inscribed words out of context or who believe that Etruscan is a language closely related to Turkish, Luwian, Abkhaz, Klingon, Esperanto or any other clearly absurd language. I really don't care whether these nutty theories are published in a book or not, or whether the theorists have a degree or not, so I guess I'm irreverent that way. I do however accept detailed morphological comparisons between language groups that show me that the author actually thought about what (s)he was writing at least several months in advance. For Etruscan however, no such detailed analyses of grammar or comparisons to other language families currently exist. In fact, 'mystery' is far more sellable than the nauseating details that I like to explore on this blog, so I doubt that I'll see a comprehensive book published on the Etruscan language for some time to come. This blog is in large part a rebellion against the dumbed-down websites and books out there on ancient languages and proto-languages. I feel that we can do much better. Our global society needs to stop thinking like mindless, relativistic vegetables and to start valuing the power of logic and self-education more.

So concerning the issue of the origins of the Etruscans, everything that we may attribute to the term 'Etruscan', whether it be Etruscan religious practices^[2] (e.g. haruspical rites), alphabet^[3], or language^[4] appear to point to eastern origins. Whatever trivial aspect of Etruscan civilization remains which can be said to be autochthonous often turns out to be of non-Etruscan origin, attributable to some Indo-European-speaking people such as Faliscans, Romans or Sabines. Herodotus records in Histories 1.94 that the Etruscans are of Lydian origin and I think that this is fundamentally correct. It's easy in the modern age to dismiss Herodotus as the 'Father of Lies' as I've sometimes read, but how many of these armchair skeptics have bothered to read word for word what the classical historian actually said in original Greek to know what they're fighting against? I've seen people distort Herodotus' account to mean somehow that Etruscans were Lydian speaking or that this is some proof that Etruscans spoke Turkish (even though the Turkish language is an import from Central Asia during the Middle Ages and closely related to Mongolian)! So given all these simple facts, I like to connect the dots and state the obvious: The Etruscans are from Anatolia. If others are too fearful of this conclusion that many other academics have suggested despite my footnotes and the several facts I cite throughout my blog, well sheesh. What can ya do?

Etruscan is also not alone but is widely accepted to have been related to Lemnian and Rhaetic^[5]. Lemnian was spoken on the island of Lemnos in... {drumroll please}... the Aegean. Big shocker there. So moving on with my spooky Proto-Aegean concept with my head held high, I think I'll get a little cocky. I suggest (more tentatively, I admit) that Eteo-Cretan, Eteo-Cypriot and Minoan^[6], languages also centering around the Aegean islands and Cyprus, were also part of this Proto-Aegean linguistic group.


So now let's draw a circle around Greece, Western Anatolia, Cyprus, Crete and the Aegean islands. We then start to see the linguistic pattern that I'm getting at. An entire language family forgotten in the mists of time and modern-day mystery mongering. What's somewhat irritating to me and which should be irritating to you, the reader, is how we have an 'Etruscan mystery', a 'Minoan mystery', an 'Eteo-Cretan mystery' and an 'Eteo-Cypriot mystery' going on at the same time. If you research any one of these subjects, you'll get next to nothing on their languages or their translations. It's all "Who knows?" and "What if?". Why is this region and this time period such a freakin' mystery? Is it really because we lack information to piece it all together or is it because our power of concentration lacks get-up-and-go to solve problems without the use of a computer crutch?

Anyways, this is what I mean by "Proto-Aegean". It sits there before you readers, waiting to be developed further.


NOTES
^[1] While Language Hat gave me a good review, the blogger for whatever reason has a very laissez-faire policy on comments such that his commentbox filled up quickly with the most obscene rhetoric from anonymous trolls. I deemed it wise therefore to promply divorce this blog from that senselessness completely. The original review with comments are here but I also made a response with pictures of the original comments on his site that I found were deeply offensive for him to have published.
^[2] I've already discussed the comparison of the Babylonian liver model with the Etruscan Piacenza Liver model as one clear piece of proof that Etruscan haruspicy originated from the same practices found in Western Anatolia and the Fertile Crescent in my unfinished, multi-part rant called Finding Structure in the Piacenza Liver despite academic claptrap. If you don't believe me, you can always consult the Encyclopedia Britannica at your local library that will tell you the same thing I am here (minus the museum photo of the Babylonian artifact, that is).
^[3] See for example Fischer, A History of Writing (2001), p.88, fig.54 (link). Keep in mind that the author here falls into the trap of assuming a priori that Etruscans obtained their alphabet from the Greeks rather than directly from Phoenicians. However the existence of the Pyrgi Tablets proves that trading contacts between Etruscans and Phoenicians were already well established before 500 BCE. Simultaneously, there is no conclusive proof as yet that Etruscans obtained their alphabet specifically from the Greeks, nor do I wager that we will ever find it.
^[4] R.S.P Beekes explores the Anatolian origin of Etruscans in his article The Origin of the Etruscans [pdf]. Also some words are clearly of direct Semitic origin which can be seen most clearly in the numerals (e.g. Etruscan śar '10' versus Phoenician ʕsr, Hebrew ʕeśer-, Tigre ʕasər and Ugaritic ʕašar-).
^[5] Fortson, Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction (2004), p.246 (see link).
^[6] An interesting quote from Chadwick, The Decipherment of Linear B (1967), p.34 (see link) reads: "In 1940, a new name appears for the first time in the literature of the subject: Michael Ventris, then only eighteen years old. His article called 'Introducing the Minoan Language' was published in the American Journal of Archaeology; [...] The basic idea was to find a language which might be related to Minoan. Ventris' candidate was Etruscan;" However interestingly, Ventris sought to connect Linear B, rather than Linear A, to the Etruscan language. Too bad. Regardless, he managed to decipher Linear B as an older form of Greek, leaving Linear A undeciphered to this day.

UPDATES
(Feb 20 2008) I created a quick illustrative graphic of this conjectured Proto-Aegean. Enjoy!