DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.7519#0304
A SURVEY OF THE MINOAN CIVILIZATION 269
One or two words may even survive to the present day, such as
end or ijid'iye (here), idd (?iow) and era (there), or the old-fashioned
word &yXa (tomb), sometimes heard in Lasithi. Certainly place-
names of a Minoan character lasted well down into Classical
times, as one can see from the names of streams and hills in such
documents as the Olous-Lato boundary treaty. Unfortunately
the only name that is still applied to-day is purely Greek. The
Kalos Lakkos, near Ellenika village, still marks the boundary
between the districts of Elounta (Olous) and Agios Nikolaos
(Lato pros Kamara).
What the language of the Minoans was it is as yet impossible
to say, except that it was not Greek. The L.H.mi inscription
from Asine,1 where the Minoan characters approximate to the
Cypriote syllabary, has indeed been translated into Greek.
But that is precisely what one would expect at this period when
the courtly Minoan tongue, which was no doubt used for all
official purposes like our Norman French in England, had died
out and the common tongue of the native population was written
in its stead. For if one thing is clearer than another it is that
neither the Minoan script nor the Cypriote syllabary was
composed for a language of the Greek type, and racially there
is a world of difference between the two peoples.
It would be a profitless task to guess at it. The material
is there and is arranged. We can only hope for a bilingual
clue ; perhaps a bill of lading in Egyptian and Minoan will one
day be found at Komo. Even then it may turn out to be a
dead language which has left no descendant behind to help
in its decipherment. All that we can safely say is that the
probabilities lie in the direction of its being an Anatolian
language, perhaps allied with Lykian, Cilician, or Carian, since,
as we have seen, it is from those parts that the race seems to
have come. Two documents which should help us have
unfortunately little to offer. One is a schoolboy's writing-
board from Egypt of early XVIIIth-Dynasty date.2 On one
side is a list of names headed ' to make names of Keftiu '.
Some of the names, however, are Egyptian, such as Sennefer
and Sennefert; one, Benjeber, is Semitic. One, however, is of
considerable interest, Akesh, which it has been reasonably
suggested is the same name as Achish (Ikausu), the Philistine
friend of David. With it must go another name, Akesht,
perhaps the feminine.
1 Persson, Schrift und Sprache in Alt-Kreta.
2 Peet, in Essays in Aegean Archaeology, 90 ff.
One or two words may even survive to the present day, such as
end or ijid'iye (here), idd (?iow) and era (there), or the old-fashioned
word &yXa (tomb), sometimes heard in Lasithi. Certainly place-
names of a Minoan character lasted well down into Classical
times, as one can see from the names of streams and hills in such
documents as the Olous-Lato boundary treaty. Unfortunately
the only name that is still applied to-day is purely Greek. The
Kalos Lakkos, near Ellenika village, still marks the boundary
between the districts of Elounta (Olous) and Agios Nikolaos
(Lato pros Kamara).
What the language of the Minoans was it is as yet impossible
to say, except that it was not Greek. The L.H.mi inscription
from Asine,1 where the Minoan characters approximate to the
Cypriote syllabary, has indeed been translated into Greek.
But that is precisely what one would expect at this period when
the courtly Minoan tongue, which was no doubt used for all
official purposes like our Norman French in England, had died
out and the common tongue of the native population was written
in its stead. For if one thing is clearer than another it is that
neither the Minoan script nor the Cypriote syllabary was
composed for a language of the Greek type, and racially there
is a world of difference between the two peoples.
It would be a profitless task to guess at it. The material
is there and is arranged. We can only hope for a bilingual
clue ; perhaps a bill of lading in Egyptian and Minoan will one
day be found at Komo. Even then it may turn out to be a
dead language which has left no descendant behind to help
in its decipherment. All that we can safely say is that the
probabilities lie in the direction of its being an Anatolian
language, perhaps allied with Lykian, Cilician, or Carian, since,
as we have seen, it is from those parts that the race seems to
have come. Two documents which should help us have
unfortunately little to offer. One is a schoolboy's writing-
board from Egypt of early XVIIIth-Dynasty date.2 On one
side is a list of names headed ' to make names of Keftiu '.
Some of the names, however, are Egyptian, such as Sennefer
and Sennefert; one, Benjeber, is Semitic. One, however, is of
considerable interest, Akesh, which it has been reasonably
suggested is the same name as Achish (Ikausu), the Philistine
friend of David. With it must go another name, Akesht,
perhaps the feminine.
1 Persson, Schrift und Sprache in Alt-Kreta.
2 Peet, in Essays in Aegean Archaeology, 90 ff.