Eteocypriot language

<h2 id="corpus">Corpus</h2>
Several hundred inscriptions written in the Cypriot syllabary (VI–III BC) cannot be interpreted in Greek. While it does not necessarily imply that all of them are non-Greek, there are at least two locations where multiple inscriptions with clearly non-Greek content were found:

<ul><li><a href="/facts/Amathus/Gh6yUETK">Amathus</a> (including a bilingual Eteocypriot-Greek text)</li>
<li>a few short inscriptions from Golgoi (currently <a href="/facts/Athienou/Hj0S7Grz">Athienou</a>: Markus Egetmeyer suggested that their language (which he calls Golgian resp. Golgisch in German) may be different from those of Amathus<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:5" href="#fn:5">5</a>).</li></ul>
While the language of <a href="/facts/Cypro-Minoan/kQ1ja2ta">Cypro-Minoan</a> inscriptions is often supposed to be the same as (or ancestral to) Eteocypriot, that has yet to be proven, as the script is only partly legible.

<h2 id="amathus-bilingual">Amathus bilingual</h2>
Main article: <a href="/facts/Amathus_bilingual/mIE6mt2t">Amathus bilingual</a>
The most famous Eteocypriot inscription is the <a href="/facts/Amathus_bilingual/mIE6mt2t">Amathus bilingual</a>, a bilingual text inscribed on a black marble slab found on the <a href="/facts/Acropolis/5Je8NC6c">acropolis</a> of <a href="/facts/Amathus/Gh6yUETK">Amathus</a> about 1913, dated to around 600 BC and written in both the <a href="/facts/Attic_dialect/C6Ix7vNu">Attic dialect</a> of <a href="/facts/Ancient_Greek/LIK7NlUh">Ancient Greek</a> and Eteocypriot. The Eteocypriot text in Cypriot characters runs right to left; the Greek text in all capital <a href="/facts/Greek_letters/1cHwB8Dg">Greek letters</a>, 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 class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:6" href="#fn:6">6</a>
Greek:
3: Η ПΟΛΙΣ Η АΜАΘΟΥΣΙΩΝ ΑΡΙΣΤΩΝΑ
4: ΑΡΙΣΤΩΝΑΚΤΟΣ ΕΥΠΑΤΡΙΔΗΝ
which might be rendered into modern script as:
3: Ἡ πόλις ἡ Ἀμαθουσίων Ἀριστῶνα
4: 'Ἀριστώνακτος, εὐπατρίδην.
<a href="/facts/Cyrus_H._Gordon/whEwndTM">Cyrus H. Gordon</a> translates this text as

The city of the Amathusans (honored) the noble Ariston (son) of Aristonax.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:7" href="#fn:7">7</a>
Gordon's translation is based on Greek inscriptions in general and the fact that "the noble Ariston" is in the <a href="/facts/Accusative_case/HA1Q81qd">accusative case</a>, implying a <a href="/facts/Transitive_verb/3TtAs9FH">transitive verb</a>. Gordon explains that "the verb is omitted ... in such dedicatory inscriptions".
The inscription is important as verifying that the symbols of the unknown language, 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...."<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:8" href="#fn:8">8</a>

<h2 id="sources">Sources</h2>
<ul><li><a href="/facts/Cyrus_Gordon/whEwndTM">Gordon, Cyrus</a> (1966). <a href="https://archive.org/details/gordon-evidence-for-the-minoan-language-1966">Evidence for the Minoan Language</a>. Ventnor, New Jersey: Ventnor Publishers.</li>
<li><a href="/facts/Cyrus_Gordon/whEwndTM">Gordon, Cyrus</a> (1982). <a href="https://archive.org/details/forgottenscripts0000gord">Forgotten Scripts: Their Ongoing Discovery and Decipherment: Revised and Enlarged Edition</a>. New York: Basic Books, Inc. <a href="/facts/ISBN_(identifier)/15AdSPa9">ISBN</a> 0-465-02484-X.</li>
<li>Jones, Tom B., Notes on the Eteocypriot inscriptions, American journal of philology. LXXI 1950, c. 401–407</li>
<li>Steele, Philippa M. (2013). A linguistic history of Ancient Cyprus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. <a href="/facts/ISBN_(identifier)/15AdSPa9">ISBN</a> 978-1-107-04286-5.</li>
<li><a href="/facts/Olivier_Masson/IVpkSMnC">Masson, Olivier</a>, "<a href="https://www.persee.fr/doc/syria_0039-7946_1953_num_30_1_4957">Leds inscriptions étéochypriotes</a>", in: <a href="/facts/Syria_(journal)/Mn62ntdX">Syria</a> 30 (1–2), 1953, pp. 83–88.</li>
<li><a href="/facts/Olivier_Masson/IVpkSMnC">Masson, Olivier</a>, "<a href="https://www.persee.fr/doc/syria_0039-7946_1957_num_34_1_5277#">Inscriptions étéochypriotes</a>", in: in: <a href="/facts/Syria_(journal)/Mn62ntdX">Syria</a> 34 (1–2), 1957, pp. 61–80.</li>
<li>Duhoux, Yves, "<a href="https://www.academia.edu/26457464/Eteocypriot_and_Cypro_Minoan_1_3">Eteocypriot and Cypro-Minoan 1–3</a>", in: Kadmos 48, 2000, pp. 39–75, <a href="/facts/Doi_(identifier)/muM9Etpq">doi</a>:<a href="https://doi.org/10.1515%2FKADMOS.2009.003">10.1515/KADMOS.2009.003</a>.</li></ul>
<h2 id="external-links">External links</h2>
<ul><li><a href="http://phaistos.narod.ru/Ana.htm">этеокипрское ('EteoCypriot', in Russian)</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.omniglot.com/writing/cypriot.htm">Omniglot – The Cypriot Syllabry</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.palaeolexicon.com/Cypriot">Paleolexicon – History, Prehistory and the Language of Cyprus</a></li></ul>

<h2 id="references">References</h2>

<ol>
<li id="fn:1">The derivation is given in Partridge, Eric (1983) Origins: A short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, New York: Greenwich House, ISBN 0-517-41425-2. The term Eteocypriot was devised by Friedrich in 1932, according to Olivier Masson in ETEO-CYPRIOT, an article in Zbornik, Issues 4–5, 2002–2003. Eteocretan is based on a genuine Ancient Greek word. <a href="/wiki/ISBN_(identifier)" target="_blank">/wiki/ISBN_(identifier)</a> <a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:2">Petit, Thierry (1999). "Eteocypriot myth and amathusian reality" (PDF). Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology. 12 (1): 108–120. doi:10.1558/jmea.v12i1.108. HAL ffhalshs-00001435. [Eteocypriot] is a Hurrian dialect [and] was not the first spoken language in Cyprus. <a href="https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00001435/file/TPMyth.pdf" target="_blank">https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00001435/file/TPMyth.pdf</a> <a href="#fnref:2" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:3">Steele, Philippa M. (24 January 2018). "Eteocypriot". Oxford Classical Dictionary. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.013.8218. ISBN 978-0-19-938113-5. Retrieved 17 February 2024. Eteocypriot had survived from the Cypriot Bronze Age (perhaps related to a language written in the undeciphered Cypro-Minoan script.) <a href="978-0-19-938113-5" target="_blank">978-0-19-938113-5</a> <a href="#fnref:3" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:4">Valério, Miguel Filipe Grandão (2016). Investigating the Signs and Sounds of Cypro-Minoan (PhD thesis). Universitat de Barcelona. Retrieved 17 February 2024. <a href="https://www.tdx.cat/handle/10803/385842#page=1" target="_blank">https://www.tdx.cat/handle/10803/385842#page=1</a> <a href="#fnref:4" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:5">M. Egetmeyer, '"Sprechen Sie Golgisch?" Anmerkungen zu einer übersehenen Sprache' Études mycéniennes 2010: 427–434 <a href="https://archive.today/20151119230058/http://www.aegeussociety.org/en/index.php/new-books/etudes-myceniennes-2012/" target="_blank">https://archive.today/20151119230058/http://www.aegeussociety.org/en/index.php/new-books/etudes-myceniennes-2012/</a> <a href="#fnref:5" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:6">The inscription is given as portrayed in Gordon, Evidence, Page 5. Breaks in the stone obscure the syllables in brackets. <a href="#fnref:6" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:7">Forgotten Scripts, p. 120. <a href="#fnref:7" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:8">Forgotten Scripts, p. 120. <a href="#fnref:8" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
</ol>

Eteocypriot language open-in-new

Eteocypriot language