The Minoan language is a non-Hellenic language of Crete that was spoken before the invasion of Mycenaean armies. It was written in Linear A, a syllabary used extensively up to 1420 BCE, primarily for the purposes of religious inscriptions and administrative records in the Minoan civilization. Ancient Greece is the period of Greek history spanning much of the Mediterranean and Black Sea basins and lasting for close to a millennium, until the rise of Christianity. ... Crete (Greek Κρήτη Kriti; called Candia in the Venetian period and Turkish: Girit) is the largest of the Greek islands and the fifth largest in the Mediterranean Sea. ... Mycenaean can have the following meanings: coming from or belonging to the ancient town of Mycenae in Pelloponese in Greece; belonging to the culture of the Mycenaean period of the eastern Mediterranean in the late Bronze Age; the Mycenaean language, an ancient form of Greek, known from inscriptions in Linear... Linear A etched on tablets found in Akrotiri, Santorini. ... A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent (or approximate) syllables, which make up words. ... Fresco from the Palace of Minos, Knossos, Crete The Minoans were a pre-Hellenic Bronze Age civilization in Crete in the Aegean Sea, flourishing from approximately 2600 to 1450 BC when their culture was superseded by the Mycenaean culture, which drew upon the Minoans. ...

The Eteocretan (i.e True Cretan) language is likely descended from Minoan and largely written in a Euboean-derived script that was the norm after the Hellenic Dark Ages, although Linear scripts did continue on side-by-side for some time afterwards in the form of a few tiny religious inscriptions. Euboea or Negropont (Modern Greek: Εύβοια Evia, Ancient Greek Εúβοια Eúboia; see also List of traditional Greek place names), is the largest island of the Greek archipelago. ... The Greek Dark Ages (ca. ...

The Eteocretans are mentioned in Homer's Odyssey and by Strabo as living on southern Crete, alongside Kydones in the west (according to Strabo also indigenous) and Greek Achaeans and Dorians in the east. The Homère Caetani bust at the Louvre, a 2nd century Roman copy of a 2nd century BC Greek original. ... Odysseus and Nausicaä - by Charles Gleyre For other uses, see Odyssey (disambiguation). ... the Greek georgapher Strabo, in a 16th‑century engraving. ... The Achaeans (also Akhaians, Greek Αχαιοί) is the collective name given to the Greek forces in Homers Iliad. ... The Dorians were one of the ancient Hellenic tribes acknowledged by Greek writers. ...

Very little is known about Eteocretan except that it may be the descendent of a language used in the Linear A tablets. It is generally described as non-Indo-European or rather pre-Indo-European. The late Prof. Cyrus Gordon, better known for his work on Ugaritic, argued that it was a Semitic language closely related to Phoenician, but his attempted decipherments have been proven to be inaccurate and have not been accepted by other linguists. A relationship with Luwian, an Anatolian language belonging to the Indoeuropean family, has also been suggested. Linear A etched on tablets found in Akrotiri, Santorini. ... Some archaeologists and ethnographers use the term Old Europe to characterize the autochthonous (aboriginal) peoples who were living in Neolithic southeastern Europe before the immigration of Indo-European peoples (for this reason also called Pre-Indo-European). ... Cyrus Herzl Gordon (1908 - 2001), was an American scholar of Near Eastern cultures and a leading expert on ancient languages. ... The Ugaritic language is known to us only in the form of writings found in the lost city of Ugarit in Syria since its discovery by French archaeologists in 1928. ... 14th century BC diplomatic letter in Akkadian, found in Tell Amarna. ... Phoenician was a language originally spoken in the coastal region then called Phoenicia /Canaan (now Lebanon, coastal Syria and northern Israel ). Phoenician is a Semitic language of the Canaanite subgroup, closely related to Hebrew and Aramaic. ... Luwian (sometimes spelled Luwiyan) is an Anatolian language known in three forms: (1) Cuneiform Luwian, (2) Hieroglyphic-Luwian and (3), the somewhat later Lycian. ... The Anatolian languages are a group of extinct languages, either Indo-European or (in some classifications) closely related to Indo-European, which were spoken in Asia Minor, including Hittite. ...

Despite the fall of the Minoan civilization, inscriptions in Eteocretan survive dating from the 7th century BC to the 3rd century BC, typically written in the local archaic Greek alphabet and the Ionian Greek alphabet. Five inscriptions have been found that are surely Eteocretan, two in Dreros and three in Praisos in the Cretan prefecture of Lasithi. There are several other inscriptions that might be Eteocretan. Due to technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some special characters in this article. ... Ionia (Greek Ιωνία; see also List of traditional Greek place names) was an ancient region of southwestern coastal Anatolia (now in Turkey) on the Aegean Sea. ... Dreros (modern Driros) near Neapolis in the district of Lassithi, Crete, is a post-Minoan archaeological site, 16 km. ... Lasithi (Greek: Λασήθι) is a prefecture of Greece on the island of Crete. ...

Known inscriptions

Dreros 1

1: ---rmaw|et|isalabre|komn

2: ---d|men|inai|isaluria|lmo

3: ----tonturonmēa.oaoiewad

4: eturo---munadoa-enē--

5: --matritaia--

Part of the inscription (lines 3 to 5) is written in Greek, probably the Doric dialect. Due to the lack of preservation of many of the words, it is difficult to ascertain what even the Greek text is saying. It has been pointed out that <ewade> (lines 3-4) may be "it is decided". Another suggestion is that <turon> (line 4) and <ton turon> (line 3) refers to "goat cheese" which is further connected to what are believed to be Pelasgian words for 'goat' found in various forms in Greek dialects (ιξάλη, ιζάλη, ιζάνη, ισάλη, ισσέλα, ιτθέλα, ισθλη, ισσέλη) showing a goat-like root *it^sala which is perhaps present in Eteocretan <isalabre> (line 1) and <isaluria> (line 2). The word <inai> is found also on the Praisos 2 artifact on line 2 and may be a verb (cf. Etruscan <en-aš> and <en-iac-a>). Distribution of Greek dialects, ca. ... Ancient Greek writers used the name Pelasgian to refer to groups of people who preceded the Greeks and dwelt in several locations in mainland Greece, Crete, and other regions of the Aegean as neighbors of the Hellenes. ... Etruscan was a language spoken and written in the ancient region of Etruria (current Tuscany) and in parts of what are now Lombardy, Veneto, and Emilia-Romagna (where the Etruscans were displaced by Gauls), in Italy. ...

Dreros 2

The following inscription was published by Henri van Effenterre in Bulletin de correspondance hellénique 70, 1946 (Paris), pages 602 & 603. The artifact originates from the Delphinion in Dreros and contains an inscription written on a long block made from grey schist. It is not preserved in entirety and so there are chips on either end of the artifact that obscure the text. Parts of the artifact have been lost but thankfully we at least have what was recorded before its disappearance.

1: --S|TUPRMĒRIĒIAomo

2: saidaperenorkioisi|a--

3: --kaθarongenoito

The text is in fact a bilingual inscription. Part of the text is recognizably Doric Greek, and so there is hope that the Eteocretan text at least partially repeat similar notions. The Greek section of the text was written above in miniscule letters and is translated thus:

Ομοσαι δαπερ Ενορκίοισι.

Omosai d-haper Enorkioisi.

But may he swear [these] very things to the Oath-Keepers (aka 'the gods').

Α.... καθαρον γένοιτο.

A---- kaθaron genoito.

… may it become pure.

The Eteocretan text is much shorter suggesting that it is merely a summary of the Greek text:

--S|TUPRMĒRIĒIA

Praisos 1

1: --nkalmitke

2: os barze a-- o--

3: --ark-agset med-

4: arkrkokles de---

5: --asegdnanit

Praisos 2

1: --onadesimetepimitsφa

2: --do--iaralaφraisoiinai vac.

3: --restnmtorasardoφsano

4: --satoissteφ-satiun vac.

5: -animestepaluneutat vac.

6: -sanomoselosφraisona

7: --tsaadoφtena--

8: --maprainaireri--

9: --ireirereie---

10: --nrirano--

11: --askes--

12: --i-t--

13: ---

What is intriguing about this longer text is its evident mention of the city of Praisos, showing differing inflections as well. We see this city's name on line 2 (<φraiso-i> 'in Praisos') and again on line 6 (<φraiso-na> 'of Praisos').

Praisos 3

1: -x-nnumit

2: --atarkomn

3: ---ēdēsdea

4: --sōpeirari

5: --en tasetwseu

6: --nnasiroukles

7: --irermēiamarφ

8: --eirerφinasdan

9: --mamdedikark

10: --risrairariφ

11: ---nneikarx

12: --taridoēi

13: --enba

14: --dnas

15: -----

16: ---

Praisos 4

1:----uo--

2:---oit||s--

3:--φ|ras|---

4:---is--

Praisos 5

1: --artia--

2: --e-at--

3: -----a--

4: --θert---

5: vacat

6: --kosa--

7: --tern--

8: --komne--

9: --atate--

10: --dears--

11: vacat

Praisos 6

1: --ea--

2: --arr---

3: vacat

See also

• Cretan hieroglyphs
• Linear A
• Aegean languages - Language family to which Eteocretan belongs.
• Etruscan language
• Lemnian language
• Eteocypriot

Cretan hieroglyphs are found on artifacts of Bronze Age Minoan Crete (early to mid 2nd millennium BC, MM I to MM III, overlapping with Linear A from MM IIA at the earliest). ... Linear A etched on tablets found in Akrotiri, Santorini. ... The Aegean languages are a presumed language family originally spreading horizontally from Greece to Western Turkey and vertically from the southern Grecian coastline, across the Aegean islands, to Crete sometime before 1200 BCE. It is certain that Etruscan, Rhaetic and Lemnian are part of this grouping. ... Etruscan was a language spoken and written in the ancient region of Etruria (current Tuscany) and in parts of what are now Lombardy, Veneto, and Emilia-Romagna (where the Etruscans were displaced by Gauls), in Italy. ... The Lemnian language is the language of a 6th century BC inscription found on a funerary stela on the island of Lemnos (termed the Lemnos stele, discovered in 1885 near Kaminia). ... Eteocypriot was a language spoken in and around the Aegean islands by 600 BCE. It was written in the Cypriot syllabary, a syllabic script derived from Linear A which was used in Cyprus up to the 4th century BCE. It is conjectured by some linguists to be related to the...

External links

• Eteocretan language homepage