The unsolved mystery of Aegean writing presentation. History of pedagogy

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 Thus, the long-outdated hypothesis about the appearance of writing in ancient Greece under the influence of Egypt is finally eliminated / 10, p. 114/.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 of ​​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.

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, but 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.

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The Origin of Writing in the Aegean Culture

Ancient Eastern civilizations gave humanity the first examples of schools. The further development of the school was carried out at the next stage of historical development - in the era of antiquity. Achievements in the field of content, methods and organization of education for the younger generation in Ancient Greece and the Hellenistic states and their understanding by ancient rhetoricians and philosophers were an important stage in the subsequent evolution of the school and pedagogical thought.

The territory and time boundaries of the ancient world are enormous: from the 3rd millennium BC. e., when ancient Greek culture was just emerging in the Aegean Sea basin, on the islands and the mainland, and until the 5th century. n. e., when the Greco-Roman world collapsed, mixed with the barbarian world, Christianity, and gave birth to the Middle Ages. Geographically, the ancient world at different stages of its development covered the lands of three continents from the Atlantic Ocean to Egypt, Central Asia and India.

On the islands of the Aegean Sea, primarily on Crete and on the mainland coast of Greece, in the 3rd-2nd millennia BC. e. A special type of culture has developed, in many ways similar to ancient eastern civilizations, with many threads, both economic and cultural, associated with Egypt, Asia Minor, Phenicia, and Mesopotamia. In the conditions of this original culture, already in the 3rd millennium BC. e. A specific type of writing arose in Crete, dating back to the pictographic signs of the ancient Balkan script and to the proto-Sumerian cuneiform script. Writing originated here along with the emergence and development of temples, priestly and palace households.

In the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. In this region, the syllabary (Cretan) letter became widespread, which was owned not only by priests, but also by servants of the royal palaces and even rich townspeople. It is worth noting that the Cretan letter had signs for conveying both consonants and vowels, and a number of other signs of a gradual transition to alphabetic writing.

Like ancient Eastern civilizations, centers of learning were initially created here at temples and royal palaces. Thus, at the palace of the Cretan king there was a special room for servant-scribes and their students. Cretan scribes established firm rules for writing: the direction of writing is from left to right, the arrangement of lines is from top to bottom; they began to highlight capital letters and a red line. All this became, to one degree or another, the property of European written culture in subsequent centuries.

There are many mysteries and secrets associated with world archeology. And these mysteries are not always on the surface and as huge as the Egyptian pyramids. Sometimes they easily fit into the hands of a person, but for many centuries and millennia they are hidden in the ground. Until archaeologists bring them into the light of day.

The next working day on July 3, 1908 of the Italian expedition excavating the ruins of the royal palace in Festos, on the island of Crete, was coming to an end when archaeologist L. Pernier, who was clearing one of the utility rooms of the palace, discovered a small disk of well-fired clay.

According to archaeological data, the Phaistos Disc should be dated to approximately 1600 BC. e. - the period of formation of the Cretan-Minoan civilization. For a long time, the question remained open about the place of manufacture of the ceramic disk - whether it was made on the island of Crete itself or whether it was brought here by someone. But during excavations in the thirties of the last century of a cave sanctuary in Arkochora (Central Crete), a cult copper ax with an engraved inscription was found, on which signs from the Phaistos Disc were found.

In addition, as the study of other archaeological finds has shown, Cretan ceramics masters, long before the production of the Phaistos Disc, knew the technique of applying images stamped with specially made matrices to the surface of a clay object before firing it.

HOW VENTRIS READ WHAT EVANS FOUND

Note that the first examples of such so-called linear writing were discovered by the famous English archaeologist Arthur Evans in 1900 during excavations of another large Cretan city of Knossos. In total, Evans found there samples of three, clearly related types of Minoan writing. The first of them included signs that, like ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, were pictorial in nature and depicted various specific objects. Evans called it Cretan hieroglyphics. Two other types of writing of the ancient Cretans with signs of generalized outlines, for the most part clearly losing direct resemblance to their pictorial prototypes, received the names Linear A and Linear B.

Attempts to decipher the Cretan writings began with their discovery, but for a long time were unsuccessful. Just before World War II, a very young British researcher, Michael Ventris (1922-1956), began work on deciphering Linear B, and was destined to solve this most difficult task. The path to its success was largely paved by the works of American scientists - Alice Kober and Emett Bonett.

Success came to Ventris in 1952, when, using the results of a formal analysis of inscriptions carried out by Kober, he was able to develop much more deeply her observations about the presence of grammatical endings in the language under study and was able to create a special coordinate grid reflecting their alternation. Now it remained to find out which of the ancient languages ​​could fit into the grid he had obtained.

For many years, Ventris thought that the language of the Linear B tablets should be Etruscan, since the language of the Etruscans, the ancient inhabitants of Italy, judging by many sources, is associated with its origins in the Aegean world. In any case, he did not allow the idea that it could be Greek. At one time, following the theory of his compatriot Evans, Ventris even wrote: “The hypothesis that the Minoan language could be Greek is, of course, based on a clear disregard for historical probability.”

ATTEMPT BY ATTEMPT

Thanks to the achievements of Ventris, it was indeed possible to read the vast majority of inscriptions made in Linear A, many of the characters of which coincide with the characters of Linear B. With the writing of the Phaistos Disc, everything is much more complicated. The successes can be called only partial. Moreover, not only professional linguists, but also numerous amateurs and enthusiasts are struggling to decipher it.

Thus, linguist A. Molchanov, with the care and thoroughness of a true professional, carried out his analysis of the text and came to the conclusion that the so-called sign 02 - a human head with a cock's comb - conveys a mixed image of a man and a rooster - an animal that has been revered since ancient times on the island of Crete as an attribute supreme solar deity.

According to the ancient mythological and historical tradition, the ancient Cretan rulers, descendants of King Minos, traced their family to the sun god and the rooster served as their family emblem. The fact that the prototype for sign 02 was a sacred dynastic symbol allowed Molchanov to consider it a determinative, in other words, a determinant of the names of the Minoan rulers. In the text this sign is accompanied by 19 words. Consequently, it gives the names of 19 Minoan rulers.

Journalist Vladimir Mikhailov, after many years of work on decrypting the disk, has found, as he believes, the key to the secret. In his opinion, the disc reproduces the prayers that Cretan grain growers sang while cultivating the fields and harvesting crops. On the front side of the disc there is supposedly a prayer for the “revival of the grain spirit.”

However, the most original interpretation of the text of the Phaistos Disc was proposed by the well-known Gennady Grinevich, a geologist by profession. Considering the inscriptions of the Phaistos disc to be similar to the Slavic writing of the “devils and cuts” type, he deciphers the front side of the disc as follows:

“The sorrows of the past cannot be counted, but the sorrows of the present are more bitter. In a new place you will feel them. Together. What else has God sent us? Place in God's world. Don't count the feuds as past. Surround the place that God wished for you in close rows. Protect it day and night. Not a place - a will. Her children are still alive, knowing whose they are in this world.” Text on the back: “We will live again, there will be worship of God, everything will be in the past - we will forget who we are. There are children - there are ties - let's forget who we are. What to count, God. Rysiyuniya enchants the eyes. There is no escape from it, no cure for it. More than once we will hear: whose will you be, lynxes, what honors do you have, helmets in curls, talk about you? If we don’t eat it yet, we’ll eat it.”

Signs of the Phaistos Disc and their phonetic meanings according to Grinevich

Text of the Phaistos Disc in line layout

So, despite some successes, the mystery of the writing of the Phaistos Disc remains almost as insoluble as it was a century ago. How sad it is to realize this.

Victor BUMAGIN
"Secrets and Riddles. Steps" December 2013

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

Cretan hieroglyphs - central and eastern parts of Crete: “Archanesian letter” (the most ancient stage, the final pre-palace

Discovery and decipherment The Cyprus letter has been known since the mid-19th century. The main decryption work was done by George Smith.

Language. The inscriptions in hieroglyphs and Linear A are readable only in fragments, so it is currently impossible to determine

Later monuments and disappearance In the Eteocritan inscription in the Greek alphabet from Psychro III, the word επιθι is duplicated in Cretan