Aegean letter. History of Pedagogy Controversial and Misidentification

2. How the mystery of Egyptian hieroglyphs was solved. On July 15, 1799, a group of French soldiers under the command of Captain Pierre-François Bouchard, during the construction of Fort Saint-Julien near the city of Rosetta, discovered a stone slab with three identical texts engraved on it (two texts in ancient Egyptian and one in ancient Greek. Rosetta Stone. Since 1802, it has been kept in the British Museum. Many scientists have struggled to solve them. Who managed to do it?

Jean-François Champollion made a breakthrough in science on September 14, 1822, making sure that he could read and translate any ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic texts. Thanks to him, scientists today can read ancient Egyptian texts and solve more and more riddles.

3. The school trained scribes and priests. In an ancient Egyptian school. Relief from the tomb School tuition was paid, and only wealthy Egyptians could afford to educate their children. Only boys attended school. The duration of training was long (from 5 to 17 years). The main goal of the training was to prepare officials who knew writing and mathematical calculations.

Teaching writing What can be said about the teaching methods in the Egyptian school? The motto of the Egyptian school was the words recorded in one of the ancient papyri: “The child carries his ear on his back, you need to beat him so that he hears.” At first, the students wrote on shards of broken dishes. And only older students who were already good at the art of writing were trusted with papyrus.

Areas of knowledge of the ancient Egyptians: Mathematics: They created their own simple number system, knew how to multiply and divide, and calculate the area of ​​figures. Chemistry: We made embalming compounds, used various mineral and organic additives to color raw materials, and learned how to make glass. Astronomy: They created a map of the starry sky visible in Egypt, compiled a calendar, and were able to determine when the Nile flood would begin. A water clock was used to measure time. Medicine: The Egyptians knew large organs: the heart, blood vessels, kidneys, intestines, muscles, etc. They were the first to describe the brain. They knew several hundred medicinal plants. When treating fractures, Egyptian healers used wooden splints or bandaged the damaged limb with linen cloth soaked in hardening resin.

DECORDING OF THE “PHAESTUS DISC” / Y. A. YARALIEV

CHAPTER II

Creto-Mycenaean writing

The first archaeological research in Crete was carried out in 1876, when a local resident, the namesake of the legendary Cretan king, Minos Kalokerinos, partially excavated the ruins of a huge building near the city of Heraklion, in which the American scientist William Stillman recognized the famous Knossos labyrinth in 1884 /37/ . Since 1884, an expedition of Italian archaeologists began working on the southern coast of Crete. Of particular importance were the many years of excavations of the grandiose palace in Knossos, which from 1900 to 1930 were carried out by the outstanding English scientist Arthur Evans. In 1935, he completed the publication of his major work, which laid the foundations for the periodization of Bronze Age Cretan culture /38/.

Archaeological finds show that the Balkan massif of pre-Greek tribes created their own independent writing almost at the same time as the Sumerians in Mesopotamia, whose oldest writing is known in the middle of the 4th millennium BC. As for the Egyptian pictographic system, created in the second half of the 4th millennium BC, it is contemporaneous with the Balkan pictography. Thus, the long-outdated hypothesis about the appearance of writing in ancient Greece under the influence of Egypt is finally eliminated / 10, p. 114/.

In layers dating back to the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC, seals covered with drawings and symbols were found. Later, more complex combinations appear - from two or more symbols-drawings. All of these are undoubtedly pictograms. In Lerna, Tiryns and Zigouries, impressions of the same seal with a spiral design were found. Monuments of this phase of writing have been found in many places on Crete, but particularly important are the inscriptions discovered at Phaistos in the “Ancient Palace” layer, dating from 1900-1700. BC. But on later seals there are no longer just drawings, but signs that convey words or parts of words. And even later, writing was streamlined and brought into a system, and a new principle of using signs was introduced: pictograms, which previously denoted entire individual words (concepts), acquired the meaning of only the initial syllables of these words. Thus, a syllabary arose, usually called a syllabary. Over time, some of the logographic-verbal signs began to be used as syllabic signs - syllabograms, using the so-called “acrophonic” principle, i.e. using

The initial syllable of a given word. By analogy with them, signs were then selected to convey all other syllables found in the language of the ancient inhabitants of Crete - the “Minoans” (Pelasgians).

Then “Linear A” appears, which ceases to be used at the end of the Late Minoan period, i.e. around the middle of the 15th century. BC. This occurs simultaneously with the collapse of the pre-Greek Cretan civilization itself, which is associated with the consequences of a natural disaster - a catastrophic volcanic eruption around 1450 BC. on the island of Thera (modern Santorini) 110 km north of Crete (according to the Greek archaeologist S. Marinatos) or with the death of the legendary Atlantis, accompanied by a destructive earthquake, tsunami and the fall of a thick layer of ash, and with the invasion of Crete from the Greek mainland - Achaeans. Since the alien language (Greek) had now become dominant in Crete, they switched to using “Linear B,” adapted for it, to compile economic reporting documents.

As has been pointed out repeatedly, the presence of a pre-Indo-European linguistic layer in the south of the Balkan Peninsula (including Crete and other islands of the Aegean Sea) can no longer raise any doubts. Ancient linguistic Balkan studies came to establish this fact in two different ways. On the one hand, as a result of a consistent analysis of the substrate pre-Greek vocabulary of this region, for some of which Indo-European etymologies are clearly absent, a special group of languages ​​is identified, united under the common conventional name “Aegean”. On the other hand, the reading of the Cretan texts of “Linear A” (after deciphering the related “Linear B”), although it did not lead to a complete interpretation of their content, still made it possible to get some idea about their language, which received the conventional name “Minoan”.

There is linguistic, archaeological and historical evidence for the complex, multi-ethnic composition of the population of Crete during the Early and Middle Minoan periods, which included at least three components: Minoan, Pelasgian and Anatolian. Only after the addition around the 16th century. BC. A common Cretan Minoan language could finally take shape under a unified Knossos power. It was based on the Early Minoan language of the 3rd millennium BC, which absorbed elements of other languages ​​it defeated in Crete /39/. Clarifying the relationship between the language of its creators - “Minoan” and “Aegean” is one of the most pressing problems for linguistic minoistics.

The ancient inhabitants of Crete wrote their letters on clay tablets, on household pottery utensils, on walls, on leather, and on palm leaves /41/. Naturally, those that were written on clay have reached us. These are either clay tablets, square or palm leaf shaped, most of which (168 out of a total of 220 according to /41/) were found in Agia Triada, or inscriptions on vessels. The inscriptions consisted not only of signs denoting syllables, but also ideograms - signs, words and concepts (animal, person, etc.) that explained the syllabic spelling that preceded them.

In Cretan hieroglyphs, a strictly defined direction of writing was not accepted: hieroglyphs were written from top to bottom, right to left and left to right /37/. A fairly common way of writing hieroglyphic texts was the one that the ancient Greeks later called “boustrophedon” (“how oxen walk in arable land”). It is characterized by turning each subsequent line in the opposite direction, which is why the inscription runs like a “snake”. A spiral arrangement of inscription tape is also often found.

Evans showed that of the other writing systems of Crete in the 2nd millennium BC, the so-called “Linear A” was directly derived from hieroglyphics. He managed to unravel the system of numerical notations developed by the Minoans, the creators of Cretan hieroglyphics and Linear A. This system was decimal and included separate digits only to indicate the numbers I (vertical line), 10 (horizontal line), 100 (circle), 1000 (circle with four rays diverging in different directions), 10000 (circle with four rays diverging in different directions and horizontal line inside it), with the help of which all other numbers were transmitted. Not only could they add, subtract, divide, and multiply whole numbers, but they also knew fractions and could calculate percentages.

For a long time, the Cretans founded their colonies on the island of Cyprus. And here, already in the Bronze Age, as A. Evans established, a special type of writing arose, called Cypro-Minoan (“Cypriot” branch of Linear A). The texts of the Cypro-Minoan letter have not yet been read. The total number of characters in it is slightly more than 50. And this suggests that the oldest letter of Cyprus was syllabic (perhaps it also had determiners, as in linear A and B). The Greeks who settled in Cyprus reformed these letters. There are no determiners, much less logograms in the Cypriot letter; it is a purely phonetic system. Only, unlike the alphabetic recording system, its signs convey not sounds, but syllables.

Thus, Cretan archaeological epigraphy includes: a) “picture marks” on seals, whose age is 40-45 centuries BC. and the late inscription on the “Phaistos Disc”, in its form a stamped letter, which dates back to the last phase of the Middle Minoan period (XVII-XVI centuries BC); b) Linear A, which continues to exist in the 16th century. (and even in the 15th century /41/) BC; c) Linear B of the early Greek period, i.e. this letter dates back to around 1400 BC.

Some tablets, written in Linear A by the island's indigenous inhabitants, date back to the 19th century. BC. /42/.In Linear A there are 80 characters, and in its late Greek version, Linear B, there are 89. All these characters represent open syllables: either a “pure vowel” (G) or “consonant and vowel” (SG). Some signs in linear B even convey a syllable consisting of two consonants + a vowel sound (SSG). Linear A and B have 55 characters in common; 5 characters of linear A have no correspondence in linear B, and 10 characters of linear B have no correspondence in linear A.

Researchers established the phonetic significance of linear syllabic signs on the basis of the following principles /43, p. 11-13/.

1. Identity or similarity with the signs of the Cypriot syllabary.
2. Identity or similarity with Phoenician-Greek-Etruscan letters.
3. Combinatorial considerations based on data from the inscription.
4. Logography, i.e. the identity of the phonetic significance of the sign with the word denoting an object expressed using a pictogram. Acrophonic method, i.e. the identity of the phonetic significance of the sign with the initial syllable of the word denoting an object expressed using a pictogram (ideogram).
5. Combinatorial etymological considerations.
6. Convergence of opinions among experts regarding the phonetic significance of signs.

Based on the fact that the ancient inhabitants of the Aegean Sea of ​​Asia Minor, Sicily, Italy, Spain, France did not speak languages ​​of the Indo-European group /44, p. 157/, linguists-decipherers believed that when trying to read ancient inscriptions from the island of Crete, one should proceed from the fact that this language could be anything, but not “Aryan”, and certainly not Greek. After all, it was the Achaean Greeks who defeated the civilization of Crete and Mycenae.

It should be noted that the Cretan hieroglyphic writing on seals and on clay tablets has not yet been read by any scientist in the world. Firstly, the hieroglyphic texts are very short - a few characters, and secondly, the texts themselves are few and, therefore, the set of Cretan characters is also small - there are less than 150 of them. It is not yet known in what language these texts should be read.

In 1931, an attempt was made to read the Cretan-Mycenaean writings using the language of the Basque inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula. Later, other non-Indo-European languages ​​were also used, with the help of which decipherers wanted to read the mysterious texts, but all these attempts were unsuccessful. The Czech scientist B. Grozny made an attempt in 1949 to read the Cretan-Mycenaean signs, comparing them with the signs of the Hittites, Sumerians, inhabitants of the Indus Valley, Phoenicians, and ancient Cypriots; however, it did not lead to success. In fact, Ivan the Terrible developed a very strange language: it mixed a wide variety of elements. The content of the texts, read by Ivan the Terrible from the tablets, was devoid of clear meaning. In 1943-1950 American mathematician Alice Kober conducted research on the mysterious writings of Mycenae and Crete from a new angle: by compiling a table of stable combinations of characters, she was able to discover endings for the masculine and feminine gender, as well as establish grammatical endings. But she could not read a single word or even a syllable with complete confidence.

In 1951, the young English architect Michael Ventris continued his research on Alice Kober. Based on calculations of the repetition of signs and combinations of one sign with another, skillfully using the achievements of other researchers, Ventris managed to create a “grid”; out of 88 different characters, 66 fell into the “grid”. Careful research by Ventris showed that the Greek language fits perfectly into the “grid”, although many of the resulting words sounded strange, because the language in which they were written was several hundred years older than Homeric.

Thus, after lengthy searches, guesses and assumptions, M. Ventris, in collaboration with Jones Chadwick, a specialist in ancient Greek dialects, was able to convincingly prove that the language of the Cretan-Mycenaean inscriptions written in Linear B is Greek /45/. Based on the age of the inscriptions, it is assumed that the Greeks settled in Greece quite early - XIV-XIII centuries BC. According to experts, the decipherment of Linear B is the initial basis for an attack on Linear A, Cypro-Minoan and the ancient Cypriot script. Indeed, the decipherment of the letter carried out by M. Ventris not only made it possible to read the most ancient Greek texts of the second half of the 2nd millennium BC, but also created the basis for a fruitful study of the written monuments of the Aegean period of the pre-Greek period.

Based on the fact that many of the characters in Linear A and B are the same, one can read almost all texts written in Linear A without understanding almost anything. It is important that linear B contains several Minoan words (the same as linear A; apparently, names or place names). Such parallels support the conclusion that the signs of linear A and linear B were read the same way.

It is not possible to complete the decipherment of Linear A texts composed in the “Minoan” language, primarily due to the fact that the relationship of this language with any other known language has not been proven. All attempts to read in Greek (as in the case of Linear B) the texts of Linear A were unsuccessful. P. Kretschmer (on /46/) in a solid monograph published in 1896, proved that the ancient population of the Aegean spoke a language that had nothing in common with Greek and in general with the Indo-European family. Later, the Bulgarian academician V. Georgiev puts forward another theory: the Pelasgians were not Greeks, but they spoke a language that goes back to the Indo-European base language /47/ (see below for details).

However, a large amount of evidence argues against the hypothesis about the Indo-European character of the Minoan language. According to the author /48/, V. Georgiev’s thesis that there has never been a non-Indo-European population in Greece at all seems very strange, and his desire to give all pre-Greek onomastics Indo-European etymologies looks extremely unconvincing. In general, V. Georgiev’s statements regarding the genetic connections between individual ancient languages ​​of the Balkans, Aegean and Asia Minor can be quite difficult to understand. Moreover, referring to different, and sometimes even to the same time, completely different statements are usually made in the same categorical form.

“The fact is that linear writing consists of two types of syllabic signs. Some signs convey G (vowel sounds), others - SG (a combination of a consonant and a vowel). This means that the creators of Linear writing spoke a language that differed from Indo-European in its syllabic structure. In Indo-European languages, there are often words in which two or more consonants are located next to each other, and many words begin with two or three consonants” /49/. The Cretan linear writing is not suitable for transmitting a language with consonantal groups: we encounter a regular alternation of consonants and vowels, which is completely adequately conveyed by syllabic writing and for which “the Cretan linear writing seems to have been created” /50, p.99/. It is the nature of the phonetic structure (SGSGSG) of the pre-Greek Cretan language that should help the successful application of the etymological method for the complete decipherment and interpretation of documents of linear A. In this case, according to A.A. Molchanov /51/, great attention should be paid to the probable similarity of the Minoan language with pre-Indo-European substrate languages ​​of Asia Minor and related ones.

It is lost in the mists of time and, apparently, is associated with signs that were used from time to time for the purpose of identifying and registering a wide variety of objects. One of the varieties of such signs were, for example, the so-called pottery signs, attested already at the end of the Neolithic not only on Crete and other islands of the Aegean Sea, but also in mainland Greece, in particular in Lerna, another - the so-called stonemasons' marks dating back to the beginning II millennium BC e. and later, mainly in Crete, the third and most important variety is pictographic (i.e., picture) signs on seals and their impressions. The latter are found on Crete already in the early period of the Bronze Age and increase in number around the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. e. Since the time of A. Evans they have been commonly called Cretan hieroglyphics or, more precisely, pictography. Moreover, here, as a rule, it is impossible to establish the degree of relationship not only between images cut out on different sides of the print, but even between images located on the same side (or on the same print). A number of combinations are particularly common; according to A. Evans, they convey widespread proper names with titles. There are also inscriptions on objects with holes. In this case, we are apparently talking about stable formulas for talismans or amulets that were worn suspended around the neck.

A further stage in the development of images that give the impression of a coherent text is noted on Cretan seals (so far only as an exception, and on one oblong seal). As for signs of this type, here, of course, a decisive step has been taken from a simple image of an object to written symbolism, within the framework of which its image becomes a symbol of the word as a carrier of a definitely phonetic, i.e., sound quality. Without a doubt, these functions were already performed by combinations of signs inscribed side by side on a wide variety of clay objects that appeared around the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. e., and above all on clay tablets, which are among the most significant monuments of Aegean writing of the Bronze Age.

On Cretan seals, pictographic signs are presented in their traditional, still fully pictorial appearance and later - throughout the 2nd millennium BC. e., while on clay figured images are conveyed only by simple contours consisting of straight and curved lines, either drawn with a brush dipped in ink paint, or drawn on wet clay with a cutter. This method of writing indicates that it was also widely used when writing on soft materials - mainly papyrus, dried palm leaves or tanned animal skins. However, samples of recordings on such material have not survived to this day due to its fragility.

Scripts of the Aegean and Cyprus on the time axis

In Aegean epigraphy, for the mentioned contour writing style, since the time of A. Evans, the name “linear writing” proposed by him has been used, the earliest examples of which, due to the close relationship of its signs with pictographic signs on seals, Evans attributed to hieroglyphics. Today, when the number of discovered early linear texts has increased, it is preferable to talk about hieroglyphic or pictographic italic or simply about the so-called Cretan proto-linear writing. However, the question of whether in some cases we are already dealing with examples of a later writing system, the so-called Linear A, is often a subject of debate.

Among the most significant examples of pictographic protolinear italics is a small group of very early clay tablets from Festus, some of which probably date back to the 19th century. BC e., as well as several inscriptions on vessels from Knossos in the first centuries of the 2nd millennium BC. e. These texts are mostly short, but on the tablets it is sometimes possible to distinguish words written phonetically using syllabic signs (about 60 in total) from concepts expressed through symbols (ideographically) and often accompanied by special numerical or metric designations. The direction of the letter has also not yet been strictly fixed. The texts show signs of inflection, but the written language continues to remain unknown.

The number of surviving Cretan hieroglyphic texts (including protolinear ones) is quite small. In addition to seals and their impressions with very brief inscriptions, totaling about 200, we have about 30 more clay tablets and 60 inscriptions on other clay objects containing from two to 30 characters in the text, i.e. in total about 300 samples of the period from 2200 to 1470 BC e.

In the 17th century BC e. pictographic protolinear italic disappears in Crete, and is replaced by Linear A. However, the pictorial valley version of Cretan pictograms was preserved on seals until the beginning of the second half of the 2nd millennium BC. e.

2. Second Cretan writing, the so-called Linear A, represents a further stage in the development of pictographic protolinear italics. Essentially, it is syllabic in nature. The number of phonetic signs has increased, and some of them have been replaced by new ones, so that only a third of the phonetic signs of Linear A coincide with the signs of pictographic writing. The ideograms complementing the syllabic text are stabilized, and the system of numerical and metric notations is streamlined and simplified. Writing is now almost always read from left to right. Individual words are (primarily on tablets) separated from each other by dots or vertical lines. The currently known samples of Linear A represent a whole complex of variant written subsystems, differing from each other in individual details depending on the time and place of distribution of a particular subsystem. There are currently about a hundred precisely established and reliably decipherable syllabic signs of Linear A.

The total number of examples of Linear A is approximately 2000 copies, including about 320 clay tablets, 1500 very brief inscriptions on clay labels, pendants and the like, and about 100 linear texts on other materials (metal, stone, wall paintings, ceramics) . However, of this entire number, only a little more than 600 inscriptions have epigraphic significance. If we do not take into account the already mentioned very early tablets from Festus, the signs of which for the most part should be considered as proto-linear pictographic italics, then the oldest examples of Linear A writing can be considered inscriptions made in ink paint on two clay cups from Knossos, dating from approximately the middle of the 17th century . BC e.

To date, examples of Linear A have been found in thirty sites on Crete and at least five other Aegean islands, indicating a significant spread of this script among the Cretan population between 1650 and 1470. BC BC: clay tablets alone were found in eleven different areas of Crete. Recently, special attention has been attracted to the recently opened archives of tablets in Zakro in the eastern part of Crete (about 30 copies) and in Chania in the west of the island (about 85 fragments of tablets), but the most significant collection of samples of this writing continues to be the archive of tablets today. discovered during excavations in Agia Triada in southern Crete and dating back to the beginning of the 15th century. BC e. In this place, closely connected with the nearby palace at Phaistos, over 150 clay tablets were found with records of obvious economic content. Along with them were discovered hundreds of small clay tags and pendants with seal impressions with just one or no more than a few Linear A signs, undoubtedly indicating the name of the item or the name of the owner.

The tablets from Agia Triada represent the most developed and at the same time the most studied repertoire of Linear A characters. As a rule, these tablets have the shape of a rectangle, the height of which ranges from four to nine lines of text. Linear signs were drawn on the still wet clay, after which the tablets were dried in the sun. The archive tablets from Agia Triada are among the latest Linear A monuments and date, like some isolated examples from other Cretan sites, to approximately 1470 BC. e., when all of Crete suffered the terrible catastrophe mentioned above. The only very important evidence for the use of Linear A on Crete at a later time is an inscription of three characters on a vessel discovered in the 14th century layer. BC e. in Knossos.

There are known cases of finds of individual samples of Linear A outside of Crete, especially on those islands of the Aegean Sea, which, as can be judged on the basis of the monuments of material culture found here, around the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. e. were under Cretan influence or were even directly part of the Cretan maritime power (Thera, Melos, Rhodes, Keos, Kythera). Some researchers consider certain written monuments from the mainland to be the same. Thus, the opinion is sometimes expressed that at least some of the signs inscribed on Mycenaean vases dating from the 13th century. BC e. and found in mainland Greece, belongs more likely to Linear A rather than Linear B. However, only two Cretan signs from Mycenaean folos in Peristeria in the western Peloponnese (XV century BC) have any significant significance, to one of which there is a later analogue in the “treasury of Atreus” in Mycenae (XIII century BC), and, in addition, a sign on a small copper cauldron found by Schliemann in Mycenae during excavations of shaft tombs of the 16th century. BC e. As for the more isolated finds, which continue rather the traditions of the ancient Cretan signs of potters and masons, their external form and chronological dating speak more likely of the existence of some other epigraphic source than of the sign repertoire of Linear A.

Let us point out that in Emalia (region of Lycia in Asia Minor) a written monument was found with four imprinted linear signs, one of which is certainly a numerical designation, and the other three, in all likelihood, indicate the name of the owner. In addition, an inscription of three characters inscribed on a votive silver dish from the Syrian city of Ugarit is sometimes classified as Linear A texts.

Despite intensive research, all efforts to unravel the Linear A language are still only halfway there. In essence, here we are talking about solving two problems: first of all, to decipher the writing itself, that is, to determine the syllabic meanings of individual characters, and then to interpret the language of the texts, that is, to establish their content based on a detailed grammatical analysis. The first stage was completed quite successfully. Significant help here was provided by the external similarity of Linear A with the later Linear B, deciphered in 1952. The latter was, in essence, a special version of Linear A, which arose around the 15th century. BC e. (if not earlier) based on a modification of an older writing system. Having compared individual characters of both writing systems, the Swedish researcher A. Furumark in 1976 came to the conclusion that of the approximately 75 characters of Linear A contained on monuments from Agia Triada, 33 are completely identical and 31 characters are very similar to the characters of the linear syllabary letter B. And since the latter has already been deciphered and the syllabic meaning of its signs is known, we are able to phonetically read the graphic signs of the texts of linear letter A with the same degree of reliability with which a modern Greek can read a text written in Cyrillic, without having any idea about the basics of Russian writing and not knowing Russian. In itself, reading the text written in Cyrillic would have been only partially difficult for him. For example, he would read the word “cancer” correctly, while, for example, in the word “wife” he would not be able to identify the first letter at all. But he also would not be able to read the word “window” correctly, since he does not know that the Russian pronunciation of this word is “akno”. A similar situation finds researchers today who are trying to read texts written in Linear A. They read some things correctly, but some of the Linear A characters remain incomprehensible. However, those signs whose graphic representation is identical in both writing systems do not necessarily have the same phonetic meaning. And a completely insurmountable obstacle is the fact that the Linear A language was definitely not similar to any of the currently known languages ​​of antiquity. This means that even if it were possible to read the texts correctly, their content would become no more understandable than it is currently known thanks to the accompanying ideograms. All attempts to connect Linear A with one of the ancient languages ​​known to us to date are based on single and random analogies that are alien to the language system as a whole. Thus, the American researcher J. Gordon, apparently, successfully identified (in 1966) a number of Semitic words in the texts of Linear A, but his conclusion about the Semitic nature of the language is not convincing, since here we are talking about concepts that are undoubtedly entered the language of the ancient Cretans as borrowings of cultural vocabulary denoting certain objects of eastern origin. If the Czech language has the word hřrbitov (“cemetery”), this does not mean at all that the Czech language belongs to the Germanic group, since in this case we are talking about just one of the words that the Czech language once borrowed from German (cf. German Friedhof).

It is very likely that the pre-Greek population of Crete belonged to the oldest Mediterranean ethnic community, the language of which was very significantly different from the languages ​​of the Indo-European family, characterized by the presence of inflections, or endings (for example, Mr., -a, -u, etc.), including and from Hittite, which is sometimes considered a Linear A language. Obviously, we are talking about one of the languages ​​of the agglutinating type, which are attested among the pre-Indo-European languages ​​of ancient Anatolia, i.e., present-day Asia Minor (in particular, Proto-Hattian and Hurrian). Therefore, the attempts to decipher Linear A that have taken place so far seem premature.

A number of Cretan epigraphic monuments, standing aside from the main direction of development of the written language of Crete, date back to the time of the greatest spread of Linear A. This includes, in particular, the Theetic Disk (circa 1600 BC - a round clay plate inscribed [more precisely, imprinted] on both sides with 241 impressions of 45 pictographic figured matrices). The text of the Phaistos Disc is resolutely indecipherable, despite repeated attempts by dozens of serious and less serious decipherers. Some consider it an object imported from Asia Minor, although without providing serious evidence in favor of this assumption. Some other monuments also stand out, including the inscription on a bronze ax from Arkalochori and on a sacrificial stone from Mallia (also around 1600 BC).

In Bronze Age Cyprus, over 400 Cypro-Minoan inscriptions are attested, representing a wide time range (ca. 1525-1050 BC) and not forming any coherent written system. Their entire set can be divided into the following four groups:

a) The archaic stage of the development of writing is represented by an inscription on a fragment of a tablet from Enkomi at the end of the 16th century. BC e., further - an inscription on a fragment of a burnt clay tablet, also from Enkomi, dating back to approximately 1500 BC. e., and two other fragments of tablets. It is the texts on the tablets that reveal significant similarities with similar monuments of Linear A.

b) The evolutionary line, the beginning of which is represented by these tablets, reaches its apogee in a number of inscriptions of the 14th-12th centuries. BC BC, contained on a wide variety of objects, and in particular on fragments of vessels, on stone and metal objects, and above all on a special kind of clay disks of unknown purpose, found mainly in Enkomi (a total of more than 80 copies). However, the most extensive monument of this type is a large burnt clay roller, presumably dating back to the 14th century. BC e. The plate contains 27 lines of easily readable text and resembles similar Babylonian objects, although the latter have inscriptions in cuneiform. This monument allows us to characterize today this evolutionary line of Cypriot writing (abbreviated as KM 1) as a complex of more or less variant writing systems containing several dozen syllabic signs and, unlike the Aegean systems, essentially without ideograms (however, numerical designations are sometimes found here). Monuments of this letter, the latest of which date back to the middle of the 11th century. BC e., record, in all likelihood, one or more “eteo-Cypriot” (i.e., pre-Cypriot) languages ​​spoken by the pre-Greek population of Cyprus, about whose ethnicity, as well as about the Minoan Cretans, it is impossible to say anything definite.

c) Around the middle of the 13th century. BC e. in ancient Ugarit on the opposite coast of Syria, type KM 1 develops from type KM 3, attested by four more or less fragmentary tablets and several inscriptions on fragments of clay and metal vessels.

d) A completely independent group of Cypro-Minoan writing (group KM 2) is represented by signs on four fragments of tablets from Enkomi, found in layers of the late 13th - early 12th centuries. BC e. Two of these texts are quite extensive. There are a total of more than 1,300 images on all four tablets, consisting of 58 different characters. This system is associated with the main evolutionary line of the Cypriot script, however, it deviates from the line of KM 1 not only by a number of epigraphic features (compared to KM 3 it has a different style, closer to cuneiform, and a number of new characters), but also reveals some differences in the internal structure of individual words. The latter circumstance, in all likelihood, should mean that the language of the KM 2 variant differed from the language of other Cypriot texts. First of all, there are undoubted signs of linguistic inflection. Plates like KM 2/3 deserve attention for a number of other reasons. So does the archaic Cypriot tablet, dating from about 1500 BC. BC, these tablets, unlike the unfired clay tablets from the Aegean, were fired immediately after the records were compiled. Therefore, there is reason to believe that they were intended for records whose content retained their meaning for a longer time. These tablets are characterized by a complete absence of ideographic signs.

Examples of various types of Cypro-Minoan writing: 1 - KM 1: clay roller from Enkomi (XIV century BC);
2 - KM 2: large clay tablet from Enkomi (circa 1200 BC);
3 - KM 3: clay tablet from Ugarit (circa 1250 BC)

The fact that the KM 2 tablets date from the period of the migration of the bulk of the Greek-speaking Mycenaean Achaeans to Cyprus (after 1230 BC) means that we could be talking about records compiled in Greek. However, it has still not been possible to decipher the tablets. Therefore, this hypothesis, quite acceptable in historical terms, remains so far devoid of any linguistic justification. The end of the XIII and the entire XII century BC. e. in the Eastern Mediterranean is characterized by such complex movements of various peoples (Dorians in Greece, Phrygians in Asia Minor, the so-called “peoples of the sea” throughout this region) that the mentioned group of tablets from Enkomi can equally well record any non-Indo-European language of one of the Asia Minor or Western Asian peoples, for example the so-called Hurrian. This hypothesis can be confirmed, first of all, by the fact that the so-called classical Cypriot letter, which emerged as a result of the further development of the Cypro-Minoan writing, resembles a linear version of the main evolutionary line of Cypro-Minoan writing - KM 1, but in no case the “cuneiform” form of KM 2 the mentioned four tablets from Enkomi.

5. Classic Cypriot script attested in Cyprus from the 8th to the end of the 3rd century. BC e. a total of more than 700 written monuments of the most varied nature, often very extensive. This letter was used both by the bulk of the population of Cyprus at that time and by the remnants of the native pre-Greek population (however, few non-Greek inscriptions have survived). In 1871, the Englishman J. Smith laid the foundation for the decipherment of writing, and an analysis of classical Cypriot texts written in Greek soon showed that behind them was a Greek dialect close to the Arcadian dialect of the Peloponnese. Currently, there are two main variants of the classical Cypriot script - eastern, or common Cypriot (55 syllabic characters), and western, or pathos (less than 50 characters have been defined today). This letter does not contain ideograms, its direction in the Paphos area is usually from left to right, and in other areas, as a rule, from right to left.

During the 3rd century. BC e. the classical Cypriot script - the last relic of the Aegean-Cypriot syllabic writing systems of the Bronze Age - was finally supplanted by the Greek alphabet.

There is indisputable evidence of the spread of Aegean writing systems as a result of cultural exchange further to the east. The oldest of them is considered to be the Cretan sign inscribed above the cuneiform text of a vessel from Gazer in Palestine (XVII century BC). Somewhat later, an inscription was compiled on a bronze dagger from Tel ed-Duwer (Lachish, around 1600 BC), containing four characters, of which at least the last has an exact analogue in all Aegean and Cypriot writing systems. Indisputable evidence of the familiarity of the local population with writing of the Aegean-Cypriot type is the above-mentioned group of four inscriptions on clay tablets from Ras Shamra (Ugarit) in Syria, made with signs of a special variant of the Cypriot-Minoan script KM 3, similar in its “cuneiform” style to the four later tablets from Enkomi. These Ugaritic samples do not lose their cultural and historical significance even if we are talking only about fragments of inscriptions compiled in Cyprus and brought to Ugarit. These documents were compiled approximately in the middle of the 13th century. BC e., because shortly before Ugarit was destroyed as a result of the invasion of the "peoples of the sea" around 1190 BC. e.

Also of interest are the “linear” marks on bricks from Beth Shaan (west of the middle Jordan River), which were discovered there along with marks on Mycenaean vessels of the 12th century. BC BC, and especially three longer texts on clay tablets from the area of ​​Tel Deir Allah in Jordan. They date back to approximately 1200 BC. e., and the writing presented on them gives the impression of a simplified version of Linear A without ideograms and at first glance resembles classical Cypriot writing. However, a closer connection with the Aegean writing systems cannot be traced here.

There is also a number of other, less certain evidence of the spread of Aegean writing as a result of cultural exchange in both the east and west of the Mediterranean. The author of this book (co-authored with I. Vladar) dwells on this question, as well as on the question of the penetration of early Mediterranean writing systems into the depths of South-Eastern and Central Europe, in an article published in the journal “Slovenská archeológia” (1977, no. 25, pp. 391 et seq.). The reader can glean more detailed information from the above article, but here we will mention only two extremely interesting monuments discovered on the territory of Yugoslavia (in Vatin, northeast of Belgrade), the possible connections of which with the Aegean were pointed out to us in his time by I. Vladar , thereby giving impetus to their epigraphic interpretation in the mentioned article.

The first of these finds is a disc-shaped ceramic object, flat on the back side, the thickness of which increases on the front side towards the center, where a small round edge protrudes. On both sides the disk is bordered by a number of rounded lines (28 on the back side and 26 on the front). On the reverse side, an ornament is drawn inside the double circle, and on the edge in the middle there are several asymmetrical images formed by horizontal and vertical lines and giving the impression of written characters.

The second find has the shape of a spindle, along the circumference of which on one plane there is a series of images, also formed by horizontal and vertical lines. Both items belong to the Vatina-Vršac culture, so named due to its discovery in the localities of the same name in north-eastern Yugoslavia. The archaeological culture to which these finds belong is certainly associated with the Mycenaean culture of the time of the greatest development of shaft tombs.

In the 16th century BC e. the strong influence of Mycenaean culture, emanating from the Helladic region, can be traced far to the north at the Danube and from there through southwestern Romania and adjacent areas of northwestern Bulgaria to northern Yugoslavia (classical phase of the Vatina-Vršac culture) and on to the Carpathian Basin. On the territory of Czechoslovakia, this influence is represented by the classical phase of the “Otomani” (Barca 1) and “Magyar” (Nitriansky Hradok) cultures, as well as the early Vetezhov culture (in Moravia), with which subsequent phases of these cultures are associated (“Otomani”: Spišský -Štvrtok, Streda nad Bodrog; Magyarovskaya: Nitra, Vráble, Vesele; Vetezhovskaya: Blucina, Hradisko u Kroměříže, Olomouc). In these cultures, the influence of the geographically distant Mycenaean Greece is most pronounced around 1500 BC. e., then over the next few decades its traces quickly disappear and appear again - but in a different form - only in the 13th century. BC e.

A careful analysis of the objects from Vatin led us to the conclusion that the images on them definitely give the impression not of a simple ornament, but rather of a chain of written characters. Coincidences with the repertoire of Linear A and B signs indicate a clear similarity of Vatin images with the signs of both systems; however, taking into account that the finds from Vatin date back to the 16th century. BC e., the source of their origin should be seen rather in Linear A. The latter is known in the Aegean primarily as a written reality of Cretan culture, although there are some indirect indications of familiarity with it in the circle of Mycenaean culture. The positive results of comparing the Vatin images with the signs of the Aegean linear writing systems do not mean, however, that the totality of images on the Vatin disk or spindle can literally be read using linear signs. In both cases, we are undoubtedly talking about highly stylized “written” signs, the appearance of which became possible thanks to only a rather superficial acquaintance with the Aegean writing systems. From time to time, the signs of these systems penetrated into the depths of Europe, where they easily became a decorative element, especially if the object decorated with them was similar to some Aegean product. This applies in particular to the batting disc. If it was an imitation of the pommel of a Mycenaean sword or dagger, as J. Mackay believes, then the use of linear writing motifs in its decoration is quite understandable. And although until now linear signs directly on the hilts of Mycenaean swords have not been attested, it is quite possible to assume that they could have been used there to indicate the name of the owner and one of such specimens could have served as a model for the Vatin master. The latter could use the Mycenaean model simultaneously to achieve two goals: on the one hand, to imitate the very pommel of the sword in a material alien to it, i.e., in clay, on the other hand, to imitate a linear inscription on the protruding edge of this top made with quasi-linear images, devoid of their communicative functions.

In both cases we are, in all likelihood, dealing with a curious consequence of the intense influence of the Aegean written culture. True, this is just a highly stylized artistic phenomenon, devoid of any specific communicative meaning. But, despite the latter circumstance, both objects are for us valuable evidence of the intense influence of Aegean culture on other areas around the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. e.

See for example: Vladár J., Bartoněk A., 1977, p. 391 et seq.; Bartoněk A., 1981; 1969; Grumach E., 1969; Buchholz H.-G., 1969; Hiller St., 1978; Heubeck A., 1979. A systematic review of the bibliography is provided by the special periodicals “Nestor” (USA) and “Studies in Mycenaean Dialect and Inscriptions” (Great Britain). (For Aegean scripts, see also: Friedrich I. Deciphering forgotten scripts and languages. M., 1961; aka. History of writing. M., 1979; Secrets of ancient writings. Decryption problems. M., 1976; Gelb I. E. Experience in learning writing; When the letters are silent. M., 1970; Molchanov A. A. Mysterious writings... - Note trans.)

A complete edition of the texts composed in pictographic writing is still missing. The fundamental work here continues to be the work of A. Evans, published in 1909 (see list of references).

Different researchers give different numbers of characters in Linear A (maximum - 120). Cm.: Heubeck A., 1979, p. 14.

Currently, there is an excellent edition of linear texts A: GORILA, 1976. Compare: Brice W. S., 1961.

Cm.: Grumach E., 1969, p. 254. So far we are talking only about isolated finds.

An example of an agglutinating type of language is Hungarian. (Grammatical relations and word formation in languages ​​of the agglutinating type are realized through internal affixes. - Note trans.)

Previously, there have been numerous attempts to interpret Linear A as Greek, Hittite, Luwian, Northwestern Semitic and others, but all of them turned out to be unconvincing. See for example: Bartoněk A., 1964b p. 201 et seq.; 1969, p. 140 et seq.; Vladar J; Bartoněk A., 1977, p. 399 et seq.; Heubeck A. 1979, p. 20 et seq. (From works published in Russian, see articles by A.F. Deyanov, M. Pope and G. Neumann in the collection “Secrets of Ancient Writings”. For a popular presentation of the subject, see: Kondratov A. M., Shevoroshkin V. V. When the writing is silent, p. 51-73. For information on the ancient languages ​​of Asia Minor and Asia Minor, see: Dyakonov I. M. Languages ​​of ancient Western Asia. M., 1967; Ancient languages ​​of Asia Minor. M., 1980; Gamkrelidze T. V., Ivanov V. V. Indo-European language and Indo-Europeans. T. 1-2. Tb., 1984. - Note lane).

The latest critical edition of the text of the Phaistos Disc was prepared by J.-P. Olivie. Cm.: Olivier J.-P., 1975.

Editions of texts and studies on this issue are given in the notes to Chapter 6.

Initially, there were, naturally, much more individual fragments. The publication of A. Heubeck counts 6000 of them for Knossos, and 1445 units for Pylos, many of which were subsequently connected to each other. Cm.: Heubeck A., 1979, p. 24 et seq.

Popham M. R. - Kadmos. 1966, p. 17 et seq.; A.J.A. 1975, No. 79, p. 372 et seq. (about 1375); Hood M.S.F.- Kadmos. 1965, No. 4, p. 16 et seq.: SMEA. 1967, No. 2, p. 63 et seq. (about 1350); Smith S. N. 1961.

Smith G., 1872, p. 129 et seq.; Thumb A., Scherer A., 1959, p. 141 et seq.

Recently, an inscription from the 11th century was found in Paphos. BC e., composed in Greek using syllabary signs, which undoubtedly represents a transitional stage from the Cypriot-Minoan to the classical Cypriot writing. Cm.: Soesbergen R. G.,- Glotta. 1981, No. 20, p. 486.

Masson E., 1974b; Buchholz H.-G., 1969, pp. 128 et seq.

Makkay J., 1968, p. 96.

“The Art of the Aegean World” - Image of the Minotaur. GOAT check. Northern Propylaea. Palace at Knossos. Get acquainted with Creto-Mycenaean art. Lion Gate. Sinkwine. Technologies used. Time Machine. Antique vase. Mycenaean art. Priestess. Vases. The Riddle of the Minotaur. Aegean art. Practical work. Name. Knossos palace.

“Artistic culture of the Ancient World” - Bell-shaped vessel. Venus of Willendorf. A special area of ​​primitive fine art is ornament. Stonehenge. Dolmens. Salisbury. Bison. People wrote stories about these animals. What did primitive artists paint with? Goat. Ancient civilizations. Work plan. From what sources do scientists learn about primitive culture?

“Culture of Babylon” - Mesopotamia. Culture of Mesopotamia. Ladder. Hanging Gardens. Old Babylonian period. City. Art of the Neo-Babylonian Kingdom. Gate of Ishtar. Geographical features of Mesopotamia. Pillar made of black basalt. Bible prophecies. Akkad. Assyria. Herodotus about Babylon. Palace decorations. House. The gate was lined with blue tiles.

“Lion Gate” - The pediment crowning the gate is made of solid limestone and decorated with a relief image of two lions. The lions' heads have not survived. In a strictly symmetrical bas-relief design, lions rise onto the façade of a building, surrounding a column. Lion Gate - entrance gate of the Acropolis of Mycenae Built in the mid-13th century BC. e. along with the expansion of the city's fortress wall.

“Culture of Ancient Asia” - Towers. Residents of the city. Invention of writing. External part. Golden helmet. Standard of Ur. Ruins of the gate. Babylon. Tower of Babel. Relief of the palace. Statue of Gudea. Architecture of Mesopotamia. Sumerian cuneiform. Cylinder print. Art. Stele with the goddess Ishtar. Hero taming a lion.

“The culture of ancient civilizations” - Sumer is gradually declining. Ishtar Gate (VI century BC). The most ancient civilizations. Frieze with archers. Babylonian clay tablet depicting a map of the world. Ruins of the White Temple. Clay tablet from the library of Ashurbanipal. Copper sculptural head of King Sargon the Ancient. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon are one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

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Aegean script is a group of related scripts of original origin. Originated on about. Crete during the Minoan civilization of the late 3rd - early. 2 thousand BC e. Later, the related writings of Cyprus also evolved from the Cretan writings, which lost a number of characteristics (ideograms and numbers), but retained the syllabic character of the writing.

Cretan hieroglyphs - central and eastern parts of Crete: “Archanesian script” (the most ancient stage, the final pre-palace period) “Hieroglyphs A” (appearance - purely pictorial signs) “Hieroglyphs B” (simplified drawings, developed into Linear A) Linear writing A (the signs have mostly lost their resemblance to the original drawings) - arose in the south of the island and gradually occupied most of Crete, except for the southwest, and also spread to the Cyclades Linear B (further development of Linear A) - in addition to Crete, it was widespread in Most of the cultural centers of the Mycenaean civilization Although the form of the signs changed greatly during this period, the composition of the signs and their meanings did not undergo fundamental changes, therefore the indicated writings can be considered as chronological variants of the same writing - the Cretan letter.

Discovery and decipherment The Cyprus letter has been known since the mid-19th century. The main decryption work was done by George Smith. The writings of Crete were unknown until the end of the 19th century. , when they were discovered by A. Evans. During his lifetime, Evans published only a small part of the inscriptions, hoping to decipher them himself. Linear B was deciphered by M. Ventris and J. Chadwick in 1950. Its inscriptions are in Greek (see Mycenaean civilization) using numerous ideograms, as well as abbreviations in the Minoan language. With their help, it was possible to partially read the inscriptions made by earlier types of writing, but not to understand them - the language of the linear A inscriptions and “hieroglyphic” inscriptions (see Eteocritan language) has not been deciphered to this day. The Cypro-Minoan script and Cretan hieroglyphs have been studied even less well, where we can speak with relative confidence about reading no more than 20-30 characters for each type of writing.

Language. Inscriptions in hieroglyphs and Linear A are only legible in fragments, so it is currently impossible to determine how much their language changed as the writing system changed. The Trojan script appears to be an imported Linear A text rather than a native script. The Phaistos disk has not been deciphered, however, according to its structural characteristics, according to G. Neumann, its language could be the same as the language of Linear A. At first glance, the text of the ax from Arkalochori has the same characteristics. The Linear B inscriptions were made in Greek, but this writing system is characterized by a number of features that are completely alien to the Greek language, but apparently reflect the morphological phenomena of the language for which the Cretan letter was originally created: voiced and voiceless consonants were not distinguished (possibly in the Eteocritan language they alternated during inflection) the consonants l, m, n, r, s at the end of closed syllables were not displayed in writing; to other consonants at the end of closed syllables, the “empty” vowel of the subsequent syllable was added (for example, Ko-no-so = Knossos). The inscriptions in Philistine Linear script have not been interpreted in any way due to their exceptional brevity. The language of the Cypro-Minoan letter, apparently, has nothing in common with the languages ​​of Crete, since the letter was borrowed by speakers of a completely different, unrelated culture. The Cypriot script was mainly used for the Greek language, but the few inscriptions in the south of the island are in the Eteocypriot language, the ancestry of which is unknown.

Later monuments and disappearance In the Eteocritan inscription in the Greek alphabet from Psychro III, the word επιθι is duplicated in Cretan Linear A characters as i-pi-ti. Currently, most researchers consider the inscription to be a fake; There is no other evidence of the existence of Aegean writing on Crete and mainland Greece after the Bronze Collapse. A tablet with an inscription in Cryptominoan script.