DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9804#0181
ETEO-CRETAN AND MINOAN 155
late intruders. Such Indo-Europeans must have played
a leading part, if not the only part, in developing
Minoan and Mycenaean civilisation. If, on the other
hand, we accept as more probable the view that regards
Indo-Europeans of any kind as appearing comparatively
late in the history of the ^Egean, we must conclude that
Minoan and its continental neighbour Lycian were akin
to the Central Asia Minor languages,1 Vannic, Mitannian,
and Hittite or Arzawa,! which stretch in a chain, north
to south, from Armenia to North Syria. In both cases
the givers of the -nth names cover the whole area, and
there is no reason to imagine that they spoke a different
language from the Minoans.
An examination, however, of the evidence gives us no
decisive reason for connecting the termination -nth with
Prsesos and its inscriptions. In the " Barxe" and
" Nomos " fragments it does not occur among the twelve
certain and eight probable terminations that Professor
Conway acutely recognised,5 and in the " Neikar"
fragment the nearest thing to it is an apparent -enfas.'
Though it is found, too, in Crete, as a place and name
1 Both Krctschmer and Fick, op. cit., believe that a non-Indo-
European Asia Minor tongue akin to Lycian once prevailed in
Greece ; but the former (pp. 180-2, 408) places the intrusion
of Indo-European into some if not all parts of the " Mycenaean "
world before the end of Late Minoan II. Fick's date (p. 3),
even for the incoming of the Indo-European Phrygians, is not
much before 1000 B.C. H. R. Hall, O.C.G. pp. 94-7 and J.H.S.
xxv. p. 324, takes a similar view to Fick as to the " Asianic "
character of Minoan.
2 For a good account of them see Sayce, A.C.I. 1907, pp. 160-
86. His identification of Hittite with the language of the
two Tell-el-Amarna letters connected with the King of Arzawa
(pp. 174-5) is confirmed by H. Winckler, O.L.Z. Dec. 15,
1906 (Sonderahzug, Wolf Peiser, Berlin, pp. 14-15), as the
result of his excavations in 1906 at Boghaz Keui or Pteria in
Cappadocia.
3 B.S.A. viii. p. 141.
1 Ibid. x. p. 120. See also my own note, ibid. p. 124.
late intruders. Such Indo-Europeans must have played
a leading part, if not the only part, in developing
Minoan and Mycenaean civilisation. If, on the other
hand, we accept as more probable the view that regards
Indo-Europeans of any kind as appearing comparatively
late in the history of the ^Egean, we must conclude that
Minoan and its continental neighbour Lycian were akin
to the Central Asia Minor languages,1 Vannic, Mitannian,
and Hittite or Arzawa,! which stretch in a chain, north
to south, from Armenia to North Syria. In both cases
the givers of the -nth names cover the whole area, and
there is no reason to imagine that they spoke a different
language from the Minoans.
An examination, however, of the evidence gives us no
decisive reason for connecting the termination -nth with
Prsesos and its inscriptions. In the " Barxe" and
" Nomos " fragments it does not occur among the twelve
certain and eight probable terminations that Professor
Conway acutely recognised,5 and in the " Neikar"
fragment the nearest thing to it is an apparent -enfas.'
Though it is found, too, in Crete, as a place and name
1 Both Krctschmer and Fick, op. cit., believe that a non-Indo-
European Asia Minor tongue akin to Lycian once prevailed in
Greece ; but the former (pp. 180-2, 408) places the intrusion
of Indo-European into some if not all parts of the " Mycenaean "
world before the end of Late Minoan II. Fick's date (p. 3),
even for the incoming of the Indo-European Phrygians, is not
much before 1000 B.C. H. R. Hall, O.C.G. pp. 94-7 and J.H.S.
xxv. p. 324, takes a similar view to Fick as to the " Asianic "
character of Minoan.
2 For a good account of them see Sayce, A.C.I. 1907, pp. 160-
86. His identification of Hittite with the language of the
two Tell-el-Amarna letters connected with the King of Arzawa
(pp. 174-5) is confirmed by H. Winckler, O.L.Z. Dec. 15,
1906 (Sonderahzug, Wolf Peiser, Berlin, pp. 14-15), as the
result of his excavations in 1906 at Boghaz Keui or Pteria in
Cappadocia.
3 B.S.A. viii. p. 141.
1 Ibid. x. p. 120. See also my own note, ibid. p. 124.