Linear A tablet Hagia Triada 95
From: Franz Gnaedinger (frgn_at_bluemail.ch)
Date: 07/21/04
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Date: 21 Jul 2004 00:13:29 -0700
Allow me to start a thread on Linear A with a message of mine
from the thread on the Trojan war, with a few corrections,
to be followed by a comment for Peter T. Daniels.
---
Walther Hinz, following Cyrus H. Gordon, identified Linear A
as a northwestern Semitic language, kin to Ugaritic, Eblaite,
Phoenician and Canaanitic; a bureaucratic script for bureaucrats,
full of abbreviations, and a bungled script, therefore harder to
tackle than Linear B. Follows Walther Hinz's decipherment of
the Linar A tablet Hagia Triada 95, partly relying on Cyrus H.
Gordon's attempt:
da-du-ma-tha plus a sign for cereals
da-me (dachnme) 10 (measures)
sa-ru (sharu) 20 ku-ni-shu (kunishu)
10 di-de-ru (disharu) 10 qe-
la-u (Babylonian qualu) 7
Dadumatha (the one loved by Baal) obtains 10 measures of millet
(one measure being several liters, perhaps up to some ten liters),
10 measures of wheat from Minut (in Syria, famous for its fine
wheat; Ebla, today Tell Mardich, 40 km south of Aleppo, known as
Mi-nu-ti-um in 2200 BC), 20 measures of barley, 10 measures of
emmer, 10 measures of oat, 7 measures of roasted grain (a delicacy).
Translation of the other side:
Adu (Hadda, Baal) obtains 10 measures of barley, 10 measures of
millet, 10 measures of wheat from Minut, 10 measures of emmer,
10 measures of oat, 10 measures of roasted grain.
Adu or Hadda was also known in Ugaritic. He was a god of
thunderstorms, called Haddad in Mesopotamia and Elam, and Baal
in Canaa.
Now for Dadumatha. Cyrus H. Gordon recognized Ugaritic dd as
loved by. In Ugaritic, Dadumatha appeard as d-d-m-sh. Ygael
Yadin found the name d-d-y-m-sh on a Hebrew seal. Matha means
chief, lord, master, hence Dadumatha means the one loved by
the Lord, the one loved by Baal. Walther Hinz concludes that
Dadumatha was one of the many names of a goddess known as Anat
in Canaa, Hathor and later Isis in Egypt, Rhea in later Crete,
and Hellas in Athens. The Linear A tablet Hagia Triada 95
testifies to a cult of Adu (Baal) and Dadumatha (according to
Derk Ohlenroth a Demeter name) in Crete, and the above amounts
of cereals granted by the palace of Hagia Triada had been used
for sacrificial meals in honor of the god and his consort.
---
Peter T. Daniels: here is what Walther Hinz wrote about the
kinship of Minoan and Eblaite. The dwellers of Ebla (now Tell
Mardich, some 40 km south of Aleppo) had cuneiform signs for
both r and l, already in 2300 BC, however, they echanged
the signs freely, for example writing bu-ka-lu when meaning
bu-ka-ru = first born; and lyra once gi-na-rum, next time
gi-na-lum. The Minoans pronounced r and l in the same way,
as the Japanese do, and always wrote r also when meaning l.
This peculiar exchange of r and l occurred in only two
Mediterrannean languages, namely Eblaite and Minoan,
and proves the kinship of the two languages, and that Minoan
was a semitic language (after Prof Dr Walther Hinz, Museion
2000, ABZ Zurich, June 1991).
I find the above translation of HT 95 most appealing;
however, kowing little or nothing about the languages
involved I can't possibly judge its validity. The only
"proof" of a valid decipherment and translation is its
utility: does it allow to decipher similar documents?
(there are some 300 Linear A tablets, about half of them
from Hagia Triada, further ones from Kato Zakros, none
from Knossos), and/or does it open a window on the past?
Methinks the above tranlation of HT 95 is good enough
to be rendered online. Why is Linear A still such a
conundrum? perhaps because nobody (apart from Jan Best
and Walther Hinz) followed Cyrus H. Gorden?
Regards Franz Gnaedinger www.seshat.ch
(Readers in German may order a free copy of the said
article via e-mail, but please use an e-mail address on
my website, the above address and account is a spam trap)
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