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The Phrygian alphabetHistory of the alphabet :
Once
upon a time were the Phoenicians, Semitic people who wanted to transcribe
their language in a written form. They elaborate a system which took
in account only the consonants because, as Semites, they didn’t use
vowels. They spread this new system across the Mediterranean, where
they had some business to do. But
most of the people they met needed vowels. It’s in Cilicia, SE Turkey
(nowadays in the Mersin area) where the first use of vowels are found.
It is now accepted by the scholars that the Greeks went to seek for
their alphabet there by a sea road and that the Phrygians also, but
by a land road. After a first period of independent elaboration, the
two people worked together and numerous exchanges can be seen. This
is how the first inscriptions appears in the middle of the 8th
c. The Phrygian alphabet :
The
Paleo-phrygian alphabet counts 19 letters. 17 appears in every area
of Phrygia. They are similar to the Greek ones for the typography
and their likely pronunciation. Two don’t appear in every region or
their form varies. Our understanding of the Phrygian :We
cannot understand the Phrygian but we can read it. The typography
is close to the Greek one and we can assume that the letters are pronounced
in the same way. The endings according to their function in the sentence
are similar. Therefore we can read Phrygian and propose an order in
the sentence but the signification is obscure. We need a bilingual
dictionary to understand the meaning of the words.
Use of the Paleo-phrygian inscriptions :
They
are mostly engraved on the rock-cut monuments. They are monumental
inscriptions and certainly official. The message can not be understood
but it’s important to note the occurrences of different words. For
example, ‘Midas’ appears on the Midas Monument : what is his role
? King, god, priest ? Or someone else ? Graffites
are another kind of inscriptions. They mostly consist of only one
word, certainly a person’s name expressing an ownership. Their historical
value is not very consequent but they give some information on Phrygian
anthroponyms (= names of person) New Phrygian :
Neo-Phrygian
appears in the 2-3rd c. AD, mostly on funerary steles.
It is written like paleo-phrygian but transcribes or Greek or Phrygian
stereotyped curse and protection spells. Neo-Phrygian
comes after some centuries of complete interruption of Phrygian writing.
Did a tradition exist but didn’t leave any remains ?
Bibliography
The most important book on the old Phrygian alphabet is : · Brixhe, C., Lejeune, M., Corpus d’inscriptions paléo-phrygiennes, IFEA, Editions Recherche sur les civilisations, Paris 1984. Some other interesting books : · Jeffery, L.H., The Local Scripts of archaic Greece, Oxford 1961. · Lemaire, A., “L’écriture phénicienne en Cilicie et la diffusion des écritures alphabétiques”, C.Baurain, C.Bonnet, V.Krings (éds.), Phoinikeia Grammata, lire et écrire en Méditerranée, Actes du colloque de Liège, 15-18 novembre 1989, Société des études classiques, Naumur, 1991, p.133-136. · Masson, O., “Anatolian languages”, CAH III/2, 1991, p. 666-676. · Röllig, W., “L’alphabet”, V.Krings (éd.), La civilisation phénicienne et punique, manuel de recherche, E.J.Brill, Leiden, 1995, p.193-214. ![]() |