The Ethnicity of the Sea Peoples - RePub - Erasmus Universiteit ...

APPENDIX I: ON THE DECIPHERMENT OF CRETAN
HIEROGLYPHIC
As there are only two other hieroglyphic writing systems
current in the region, from a comparative point of view the
Cretan hieroglyphic (= CH) script may be assumed to be
related to either Egyptian hieroglyphic (= Eg.) to the
southeast of Crete or Luwian hieroglyphic (= LH) from
Anatolia to the northeast of Crete. Both these two possible
lines of approach have been put into practice in the past.
Thus Arthur Evans, the discoverer of the script, started to
compare Cretan hieroglyphic signs to Luwian counterparts,
609 whereas at a later stage he rather preferred to look
for correspondences with Egyptian. 610 Next, three of the
pioneers in the deciphering process of Luwian hieroglyphic,
Ignace Gelb, 611 Helmuth Bossert, 612 and Piero
Meriggi, 613 pointed out numerous relationships of Cretan
hieroglyphic with the script they were engaged with. Since
then, Turkish scholars like Sedat Alp614 and Nimet Özgüç,
who were involved in the earliest manifestations of the
Luwian hieroglyphic script during the Middle Bronze Age,
showed an awareness of Cretan connections.
The whole matter received renewed attention at the
time that Jan Best definitely succeeded to place the famous
discus of Phaistos in an Anatolian context, first by demonstrating
the relationship of signs D 11 and D 39 to the Luwian
symbols of royalty, winged sun-disc (LH *190), and
of lightning (LH *199), 615 and later by embedding the
Luwian connection in a network of internal evidence in the
form of a doublet and triplets and a vowel analysis. 616
Working out this relationship, it turned out that of the total
amount of 47 signs on the discus, 29 can convincingly be
609 Evans 1895: 33 ff.
610 Evans 1909.
611 Gelb 1931: 79 ff.
612 Bossert 1932: 5 ff.
613 Vergessene Städte am Indus, Frühe Kulturen in Pakistan vom
8. bis 2. Jahrtausend v. Chr., Mainz am Rhein, Verlag Philipp von
Zabern, 1987, p. 204, Abb. 177.
614 Alp 1968: 276.
615 Best 1981b: 49-56; numbering of the Luwian hieroglyphic
signs according to Laroche 1960a.
616 Best & Woudhuizen 1988: 30-53.
123
linked up with a Luwian hieroglyphic counterpart. 617
However, as soon realized, the script of the discus is not an
isolated phenomenon on Crete, but further attested for a
double-axe from Arkalokhori and an altar-stone from Malia.
618 As a matter of fact, as indicated by the 14 correspondences
in sum listed in table 4 below, it is nothing but
a manifestation – be it on the largest extant scale – of Cretan
hieroglyphic itself. 619 Mutatis mutandis, the possible
relationship of the latter script with Luwian hieroglyphic
comes to the fore again.
This relationship is a viable one, as I hope to show in
my table 4 below. In this table I present a list of correspondences
between Cretan hieroglyphic and Luwian hieroglyphic
for signs which occur in a reasonably clear
context. This list, which is an elaboration of earlier efforts,
620 includes signs from the discus of Phaistos and the
aforesaid double-axe from Arkalokhori, which texts, for
reasons beyond my comprehension, are omitted from the
recent corpus of Cretan hieroglyphic inscriptions (=
CHIC). 621 In order to overcome this omission, I have assigned
to these two texts a number adding up to the last
one recorded for CHIC, thus the double-axe of Arkalokhori
becomes # 332 and the discus of Phaistos # 333. I
further present the numbering of the signs according to
Evans’ original publication (1909) next to that of CHIC,
because in a number of instances he distinguishes a sign
which is not recognized as such by CHIC. Finally, for
brevity’s sake I refer to standard formulas by an abbreviation,
thus the libation formula is referred to as LF and the
profane formulas as PF 1-7. 622
617 Achterberg, Best, Enzler, Rietveld & Woudhuizen 2004, section
4.
618 Best & Woudhuizen 1988: 87, fig. 1b; Best & Woudhuizen
1989: 74, fig. 1b; 77, fig. 2c.
619 Best & Woudhuizen 1988: 86-9; Best & Woudhuizen 1989:
73-7; 97-128.
620 Best & Woudhuizen 1988: 87, fig. 3; Woudhuizen 1992c: Pl.
XXVI.
621 Olivier & Godart 1996.
622 Woudhuizen 2001b: 608-12 (= LF & PF 1-6); Woudhuizen
2002a: 124 (= PF 7).