Eteocypriot is an

extinct Extinction is the termination of an organism by the death of its Endling, last member. A taxon may become Functional extinction, functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to Reproduction, reproduce and ...

non-Indo-European language that was spoken in

Cyprus Cyprus (), officially the Republic of Cyprus, is an island country in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Situated in West Asia, its cultural identity and geopolitical orientation are overwhelmingly Southeast European. Cyprus is the List of isl ...

by a non-Hellenic population during the

Iron Age The Iron Age () is the final epoch of the three historical Metal Ages, after the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age. It has also been considered as the final age of the three-age division starting with prehistory (before recorded history) and progre ...

. The name means "true" or "original Cypriot" parallel to Eteocretan, both of which names are used by modern

scholars A scholar is a person who is a researcher or has expertise in an academic discipline. A scholar can also be an academic, who works as a professor, teacher, or researcher at a university. An academic usually holds an advanced degree or a terminal ...

to mean the non-Greek languages of those places. Eteocypriot was written in the

Cypriot syllabary The Cypriot or Cypriote syllabary (also Classical Cypriot Syllabary) is a syllabary, syllabic script used in Iron Age Cyprus, from about the 11th to the 4th centuries BCE, when it was replaced by the Greek alphabet. It has been suggested that t ...

, a syllabic script derived from

Linear A Linear A is a writing system that was used by the Minoans of Crete from 1800 BC to 1450 BC. Linear A was the primary script used in Minoan palaces, palace and religious writings of the Minoan civilization. It evolved into Linear B, ...

(via the Cypro-Minoan variant Linear C). The language was under pressure from Arcadocypriot Greek from about the 10th century BC and finally became extinct in about the 4th century BC. The language is as yet unknown except for a small vocabulary attested in bilingual inscriptions. Such topics as

syntax In linguistics, syntax ( ) is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituenc ...

and possible

inflection In linguistic Morphology (linguistics), morphology, inflection (less commonly, inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical category, grammatical categories such as grammatical tense, ...

agglutination In linguistics, agglutination is a morphology (linguistics), morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes (word parts), each of which corresponds to a single Syntax, syntactic feature. Languages that use agglu ...

remain an enigma. Partial translations depend to a large extent on the language or language group assumed by the translator, but there is no consistency. Due to the small number of texts found, there is currently much unproven speculation about the origin of the language and its speakers. It is conjectured by some to be related to the

Etruscan __NOTOC__ Etruscan may refer to: Ancient civilization *Etruscan civilization (1st millennium BC) and related things: **Etruscan language ** Etruscan architecture **Etruscan art **Etruscan cities **Etruscan coins **Etruscan history **Etruscan myt ...

and Lemnian languages,

Hurrian The Hurrians (; ; also called Hari, Khurrites, Hourri, Churri, Hurri) were a people who inhabited the Ancient Near East during the Bronze Age. They spoke the Hurro-Urartian language, Hurrian language, and lived throughout northern Syria (region) ...

Northwest Semitic Northwest Semitic is a division of the Semitic languages comprising the indigenous languages of the Levant. It emerged from Proto-Semitic language, Proto-Semitic in the Early Bronze Age. It is first attested in proper names identified as Amorite l ...

, an unknown pre-Indo-European language, or a language used in some of the

Cypro-Minoan The Cypro-Minoan syllabary (CM), more commonly called the Cypro-Minoan Script, is an undeciphered syllabary used on the island of Cyprus and at its trading partners during the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age (c. 1550–1050 BC). The term "Cy ...

inscriptions, a collection of poorly-understood inscriptions from

Bronze Age The Bronze Age () was a historical period characterised principally by the use of bronze tools and the development of complex urban societies, as well as the adoption of writing in some areas. The Bronze Age is the middle principal period of ...

Cyprus, as both Cypro-Minoan and Eteocypriot share a common genitive suffix ''-o-ti''.

Corpus

Several hundred inscriptions written in the Cypriot syllabary (VI–III BC) cannot be interpreted in Greek. While it does not necessarily imply that all of them are non-Greek, there are at least two locations where multiple inscriptions with clearly non-Greek content were found: * Amathus (including a bilingual Eteocypriot-Greek text) * a few short inscriptions from Golgoi (currently Athienou: Markus Egetmeyer suggested that their language (which he calls ''Golgian'' resp. ''Golgisch'' in German) may be different from those of Amathus). While the language of

inscriptions is often supposed to be the same as (or ancestral to) Eteocypriot, that has yet to be proven, as the script is only partly legible.

Amathus bilingual

The most famous Eteocypriot inscription is the Amathus bilingual, a bilingual text inscribed on a black marble slab found on the

acropolis An acropolis was the settlement of an upper part of an ancient Greek city, especially a citadel, and frequently a hill with precipitous sides, mainly chosen for purposes of defense. The term is typically used to refer to the Acropolis of Athens ...

of Amathus about 1913, dated to around 600 BC and written in both the Attic dialect of

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...

and Eteocypriot. The Eteocypriot text in Cypriot characters runs right to left; the Greek text in all capital

Greek letters The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and is the earliest known alphabetic script to systematically write vowels as we ...

, left to right. The following are the syllabic values of the symbols of the Eteocypriot text (left to right) and the Greek text as is: :Eteocypriot: :: 1: :: 2: The inscription is given as portrayed in Gordon, ''Evidence'', Page 5. Breaks in the stone obscure the syllables in brackets. :Greek: :: 3: :: 4: :which might be rendered into modern script as: :: 3: :: 4: . Cyrus H. Gordon translates this text as ::''The city of the Amathusans (honored) the noble Ariston (son) of Aristonax.''''Forgotten Scripts'', p. 120. Gordon's translation is based on Greek inscriptions in general and the fact that "the noble Ariston" is in the

accusative case In grammar, the accusative case ( abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to receive the direct object of a transitive verb. In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: "me", "him", "he ...

, implying a

transitive verb A transitive verb is a verb that entails one or more transitive objects, for example, 'enjoys' in ''Amadeus enjoys music''. This contrasts with intransitive verbs, which do not entail transitive objects, for example, 'arose' in ''Beatrice arose ...

. Gordon explains that "the verb is omitted ... in such dedicatory inscriptions". The inscription is important as verifying that the symbols of the unknown language, in fact, have about the same phonetic values as they do when they are used to represent Greek. Gordon says, "This bilingual proves that the signs in Eteocypriot texts have the same values as in the Cypriot Greek texts...."

References

Sources

* * * Jones, Tom B., Notes on the Eteocypriot inscriptions, American journal of philology. LXXI 1950, c. 401–407 * * Masson, Olivier,
Leds inscriptions étéochypriotes
, in: Syria 30 (1–2), 1953, pp. 83–88. * Masson, Olivier,
Inscriptions étéochypriotes
, in: in: Syria 34 (1–2), 1957, pp. 61–80. *Duhoux, Yves,
Eteocypriot and Cypro-Minoan 1–3
, in: Kadmos 48, 2000, pp. 39–75, .

External links

Paleolexicon – History, Prehistory and the Language of Cyprus
{{DEFAULTSORT:Eteocypriot Language Aegean languages in the Bronze Age Languages of Cyprus Extinct languages of Europe Prehistoric Cyprus Pre-Indo-European languages Unclassified languages of Europe Languages attested from the 10th century BC Languages extinct in the 4th century BC