Lemnian language

The Lemnian language was spoken on the island of Lemnos, Greece, in the second half of the 6th century BC.[1] It is mainly attested by an inscription found on a funerary stele, termed the Lemnos stele, discovered in 1885 near Kaminia. Fragments of inscriptions on local pottery show that it was spoken there by a community.[2] In 2009, a newly discovered inscription was reported from the site of Hephaistia, the principal ancient city of Lemnos.[3] Lemnian is largely accepted as being a Tyrsenian language, and as such related to Etruscan and Raetic.[4][5][1] After the Athenians conquered the island in the latter half of the 6th century BC, Lemnian was replaced by Attic Greek.

Lemnian
RegionLemnos, Greece
Extinctattested 6th century BC
Tyrsenian
  • Lemnian
Language codes
ISO 639-3xle
xle
Glottologlemn1237
Location of Lemnos

Writing system

The Lemnian inscriptions are in Western Greek alphabet, also called "red alphabet". The red type is found in most parts of central and northern mainland Greece (Thessaly, Boeotia and most of the Peloponnese), as well as the island of Euboea, and in colonies associated with these places, including most colonies in Italy.[6] The alphabet used for Lemnian inscriptions is similar to an archaic variant used to write the Etruscan language in southern Etruria.[7]

Classification
Tyrrhenian language family tree as proposed by de Simone and Marchesini (2013)[8]

A relationship between Lemnian, Raetic and Etruscan, as a Tyrsenian language family, has been proposed by German linguist Helmut Rix due to close connections in vocabulary and grammar.[4] For example,

  • Both Etruscan and Lemnian share two unique dative cases, type-I *-si and type-II *-ale, shown both on the Lemnos Stele (Hulaie-ši, 'for Hulaie', Φukiasi-ale, 'for the Phocaean') and in inscriptions written in Etruscan (aule-si, 'to Aule', on the Cippus Perusinus; as well as the inscription mi mulu Laris-ale Velχaina-si, meaning 'I was blessed for Laris Velchaina');[1]
  • A few lexical correspondences have been noted, such as Lemnian avis ('year') and Etruscan avils (genitive case); or Lemnian šialχvis ('sixty') and Etruscan šealχls (genitive case), both sharing the same internal structure "number + decade suffix + inflectional ending" (Lemnian: ši + alχvi + -s, Etruscan: še + alχl + s);[1]
  • They also share the genitive in *-s and a simple past tense in *-a-i (Etruscan -⟨e⟩ as in ame 'was' (< *amai); Lemnian -⟨ai⟩ as in šivai, meaning 'lived').

Rix's Tyrsenian family is supported by a number of linguists such as Stefan Schumacher,[9][10] Carlo De Simone,[11] Norbert Oettinger,[12] Simona Marchesini,[8] or Rex E. Wallace.[1] Common features between Etruscan, Raetic, and Lemnian have been observed in morphology, phonology, and syntax. On the other hand, few lexical correspondences are documented, at least partly due to the scanty number of Raetic and Lemnian texts and possibly to the early date at which the languages split.[13][14] The Tyrsenian family (or Common Tyrrhenic) is often considered to be Paleo-European and to predate the arrival of Indo-European languages in southern Europe.[15]

According to Dutch historian Luuk De Ligt, the Lemnian language could have arrived in the Aegean Sea during the Late Bronze Age, when Mycenaean rulers recruited groups of mercenaries from Sicily, Sardinia and various parts of the Italian peninsula.[16]

Scholars such as Norbert Oettinger, Michel Gras and Carlo De Simone think that Lemnian is the testimony of an Etruscan commercial settlement on the island that took place before 700 BC, not related to the Sea Peoples.[17][18][19]

After more than 90 years of archaeological excavations at Lemnos, nothing has been found that would support a migration from Lemnos to Etruria or to the Alps where Raetic was spoken. The indigenous inhabitants of Lemnos, also called in ancient times Sinteis, were the Sintians, a Thracian population.[20]

A 2021 archeogenetic analysis of Etruscan individuals concluded that the Etruscans were autochthonous and genetically similar to the Early Iron Age Latins, and that the Etruscan language, and therefore the other languages of the Tyrrhenian family, may be a surviving language of the ones that were widespread in Europe from at least the Neolithic period before the arrival of the Indo-European languages,[21] as already argued by German geneticist Johannes Krause who concluded that it is likely that the Etruscan language (as well as Basque, Paleo-Sardinian and Minoan) "developed on the continent in the course of the Neolithic Revolution".[22] The lack of recent Anatolian-related admixture and Iranian-related ancestry among the Etruscans, who genetically joined firmly to the European cluster, might also suggest that the presence of a handful of inscriptions found at Lemnos, in a language related to Etruscan and Raetic, "could represent population movements departing from the Italian peninsula".[21]

Vowels

Like Etruscan, the Lemnian language appears to have had a four-vowel system, consisting of "i", "e", "a" and "o". Other languages in the neighbourhood of the Lemnian area, namely Hittite and Akkadian, had similar four-vowel systems, suggesting early areal influence.

Lemnos Stele
Lemnos stele

The stele, also known as the stele of Kaminia, was found built into a church wall in Kaminia and is now at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. The 6th century date is based on the fact that in 510 BC the Athenian Miltiades invaded Lemnos and Hellenized it.[23] The stele bears a low-relief bust of a man and is inscribed in an alphabet similar to the western ("Chalcidian") Greek alphabet. The inscription is in Boustrophedon style, and has been transliterated but had not been successfully translated until serious linguistic analysis based on comparisons with Etruscan, combined with breakthroughs in Etruscan's own translation started to yield fruit.

The inscription consists of 198 characters forming 33 to 40 words, word separation sometimes indicated with one to three dots. The text on the front consists of three parts, two written vertically (1; 6-7) and one horizontally (2-5). Comprehensible is the phrase sivai avis šialχvis ('lived forty' years, B.3), reminiscent of Etruscan maχs śealχis-c ('and forty-five years'), seeming to refer to the person to whom this funerary monument was dedicated, holaiesi φokiašiale ('to Holaie Phokiaš' B.1), who appeared to have been an official called maras at some point marasm avis aomai ('and was a maras one year'B3), compare Etruscan -m "and" (postposition), and maru. [24] Oddly, this text also contains a word naφoθ that seems to be connected to Etruscan nefts "nephew/uncle"; but this is a fairly clear borrowing from Latin nepot-, suggesting that the speakers of this language migrated at some point from the Italic peninsula (or independently borrowed this Indo-European word from somewhere else).[25]

Transcription:

front:
A.1. holaies:naφoθ:siasi
A.2. maras:mav
A.3. šialχveis:avis
A.4. evišθo:seronaiθ
A.5. sivai
A.6. aker:tavarsio
A.7. vanalašial:seronai:morinail
side:
B.1. holaiesi:φokiašiale:seronaiθ:evišθo:toverona
B.2. rom:haralio:sivai:eptesio:arai:tis:φoke
B.3. sivai:avis:šialχvis:marasm:avis:aomai

Hephaistia inscription

Another Lemnian inscription was found during excavations at Hephaistia on the island of Lemnos in 2009.[26] The inscription consists of 26 letters arranged in two lines of boustrophedonic script.

Transcription:

upper line (left to right):
hktaonosi:heloke
lower line (right to left):
soromš:aslaš

See also

Notes
  1. Wallace 2018.
  2. Bonfante 1990, p. 90.
  3. de Simone 2009.
  4. Rix 1998.
  5. Schumacher 1998.
  6. Woodard, Roger D. (2010). "Phoinikeia grammata: an alphabet for the Greek language". In Bakker, Egbert J. (ed.). A companion to the ancient Greek language. Oxford: Blackwell. pp. 26-46. ISBN 9781405153263.
  7. Marchesini, Simona (2009). Le lingue frammentarie dell'Italia antica (in Italian) (1st ed.). Milan: Hoepli. pp. 105–106.
  8. Carlo de Simone, Simona Marchesini (Eds), La lamina di Demlfeld [= Mediterranea. Quaderni annuali dell'Istituto di Studi sulle Civiltà italiche e del Mediterraneo antico del Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche. Supplemento 8], Pisa – Roma: 2013.
  9. Schumacher 1999, p. .
  10. Schumacher 2004, p. .
  11. de Simone Carlo (2009) La nuova iscrizione tirsenica di Efestia in Aglaia Archontidou, Carlo de Simone, Emanuele Greco (Eds.), Gli scavi di Efestia e la nuova iscrizione ‘tirsenica’, TRIPODES 11, 2009, pp. 3-58. Vol. 11 pp. 3-58 (Italian)
  12. Oettinger, Norbert (2010) "Seevölker und Etrusker", in Yoram Cohen, Amir Gilan, and Jared L. Miller (eds.) Pax Hethitica Studies on the Hittites and their Neighbours in Honour of Itamar Singer (in German), Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, pp. 233–246
  13. Simona Marchesini (translation by Melanie Rockenhaus) (2013). "Raetic (languages)". Mnamon - Ancient Writing Systems in the Mediterranean. Scuola Normale Superiore. Retrieved 26 July 2018.
  14. Kluge Sindy, Salomon Corinna, Schumacher Stefan (2013–2018). "Raetica". Thesaurus Inscriptionum Raeticarum. Department of Linguistics, University of Vienna. Retrieved 26 July 2018.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  15. Mellaart, James (1975), "The Neolithic of the Near East" (Thames and Hudson)
  16. De Ligt, Luuk. "An Eteocretan' inscription from Praisos and the homeland of the Sea Peoples" (PDF). talanta.nl. ALANTA XL-XLI (2008-2009), 151-172.
  17. Wallace, Rex E. (2010). "Italy, Languages of". In Gagarin, Michael (ed.). The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. pp. 97–102. doi:10.1093/acref/9780195170726.001.0001. ISBN 9780195170726. Etruscan origins lie in the distant past. Despite the claim by Herodotus, who wrote that Etruscans migrated to Italy from Lydia in the eastern Mediterranean, there is no material or linguistic evidence to support this. Etruscan material culture developed in an unbroken chain from Bronze Age antecedents. As for linguistic relationships, Lydian is an Indo-European language. Lemnian, which is attested by a few inscriptions discovered near Kaminia on the island of Lemnos, was a dialect of Etruscan introduced to the island by commercial adventurers. Linguistic similarities connecting Etruscan with Raetic, a language spoken in the sub-Alpine regions of northeastern Italy, further militate against the idea of eastern origins.
  18. Carlo de Simone, La nuova Iscrizione ‘Tirsenica’ di Lemnos (Efestia, teatro): considerazioni generali, in Rasenna: Journal of the Center for Etruscan Studies, pp. 1–34.
  19. Robert Drews, The End of the Bronze Age: Changes in Warfare and the Catastrophe of ca. 1200 B.C, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995, p. 59, ISBN 978-0-691-04811-6.
  20. Ficuciello, Lucia (2013). Lemnos. Cultura, storia, archeologia, topografia di un'isola del nord-Egeo. Monografie della Scuola Archeologica di Atene e delle Missioni Italiane in Oriente 20, 1/1 (in Italian). Athens: Scuola Archeologica Italiana di Atene. pp. 68–116. ISBN 978-960-9559-03-4.
  21. Posth, Cosimo; Zaro, Valentina; Spyrou, Maria A. (24 September 2021). "The origin and legacy of the Etruscans through a 2000-year archeogenomic time transect". Science Advances. Washington DC: American Association for the Advancement of Science. 7 (39): eabi7673. Bibcode:2021SciA....7.7673P. doi:10.1126/sciadv.abi7673. PMC 8462907. PMID 34559560.
  22. Krause, Johannes; Trappe, Thomas (2021) [2019]. A Short History of Humanity: A New History of Old Europe [Die Reise unserer Gene: Eine Geschichte über uns und unsere Vorfahren]. Translated by Waight, Caroline (I ed.). New York: Random House. p. 217. ISBN 9780593229422. It's likely that Basque, Paleo-Sardinian, Minoan, and Etruscan developed on the continent in the course of the Neolithic Revolution. Sadly, the true diversity of the languages that once existed in Europe will never be known.
  23. Herodotus, 6.136-140
  24. Wallace, Rex E. (2018), "Lemnian language", Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Classics, Oxford University Press
  25. Eichner, Heiner (2012) "Neues zur Sprache der Stele von Lemnos (Erster Teil)" Gorgias Press. Voprosy âzykovogo rodstva Vol.7 (1), p.9-32
  26. Carlo de Simone, La Nuova Iscrizione ‘Tirsenica’ di Lemnos (Efestia, teatro): considerazioni generali, Rasenna: Journal of the Center for Etruscan Studies: Vol. 3: Iss. 1, Article 1, 2011. (Italian)

References
  • Agostiniani, Luciano (2012). "Sulla grafia e la lingua delle iscrizioni anelleniche di Lemnos". In Bellelli, Vincenzo (ed.). Le origini degli Etruschi : storia, archeologia, antropologia. L'Erma di Bretschneider. ISBN 978-88-913-0059-1.
  • Beschi, Luigi (2000). "Cabirio di Lemno: testamonianze litterarie ed epigrafiche". Annuario della Scuola Archeologica di Atene e delle Missioni Italiane in Oriente. 74–75: 7–192.
  • Bonfante, Larissa (1990). Etruscan. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-07118-2.
  • Eichner, Heiner (2012) "Neues zur Sprache der Stele von Lemnos (Erster Teil)" Gorgias Press. Voprosy âzykovogo rodstva Vol.7 (1), p.9-32
  • Eichner, Heiner (2013) "Neues zur Sprache der Stele von Lemnos (Zweiter Teil)" Gorgias Press. Voprosy âzykovogo rodstva Vol.10 (1), p.1-42.
  • Ficuciello, Lucia (2013). Lemnos. Cultura, storia, archeologia, topografia di un'isola del nord-Egeo. Athens: Scuola Archeologica Italiana di Atene. ISBN 978-960-9559-03-4.
  • Rix, Helmut (1998). Rätisch und Etruskisch [Rhaetian & Etruscan]. Vorträge und kleinere Schriften (in German). Innsbruck: Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck.
  • Schumacher, Stefan (1998). "Sprachliche Gemeinsamkeiten zwischen Rätisch und Etruskisch". Der Schlern (in German). 72: 90–114.
  • de Simone, Carlo (2009). "La nuova iscrizione tirsenica di Efestia". Tripodes. Vol. 11. pp. 3–58.
  • Steinbauer, Dieter H. (1999). Neues Handbuch des Etruskischen. St. Katharinen: Scripta Mercaturae Verlag.
  • Wallace, Rex E. (2018), "Lemnian language", Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Classics, Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.013.8222, ISBN 978-0-19-938113-5
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