'Mother' in Minoan? - Aegean words for motherhood and childbirth

My next post will be an illustration of the difficulties one faces when doing an in-depth research of Aegean languages. It also nicely illustrates how revarding it can be if we not only collect the tiny shards diligently, but also try to re-assemble the vase from them (Let us hope hope what I fitted, belongs to the same vase, and not some artificial hybrid abomination, though).

The Lemnos stele is perhaps the most famous Aegean relic ever found: sole testament to a now-extinct language once spoken on the island and beyond. The most striking feature of Lemnian language is its close relation to Etruscan: like some "missing link" in paleontology, this is the ultimate proof of the latter one's origins in the Aegean region. Despite the clear affinity of the overwhelming majority of Lemnian phrases to Etruscan ones, there are quite a few ones on the stele that fiercely resist translation. One of these phrases is the enigmatic 'Zeronaith ewistho'. It is clearly a stand-alone phrase, as it is repated (in different context) on the other side as 'ewistho Zeronaith'. I have capitalized the term 'Zeronaith' because of one simple reason: its *-ith ending would normally indicate a locative case, so Zerona was likely a township or village of some sort. It is also mentioned in the phrase 'wanalasial Zeronai Morinail' - as pertaining to the city of Myrina, capital of Lemnos. The *-o ending (corresponding to Etruscan *-u ) on the other word is clearly a marker of past participle. But what could a phrase "ewisth-ed at Zerona" mean?


I am not the first one to ponder over the meaning of the cited expression. Others have already suggested that it might refer to some honorary title. Though I am heavily doubting that. The stele already features one word suspicious of detailing a title or magistrate of some sort: maraz. It seems to be unrelated to the Etruscan *mur- = 'to die' term. So "maraz maw sialhweiz awiz" does not refer to how long Holaie lived, but rather his rank at his death. The word maw is not a numeral as repeatedly and wrongly assumed, but an unknown adjective to maraz (if related to Hittite muwa = 'powerful', could it have been "grand judge"?). Thus the last sentence on the stele: "Ziwai awiz sialhwiz, marazm awiz aomai" should mean something like: "died sixty years old, became maraz a year before" or something similar (-m is a verbal conjunction, just like in Etruscan). Interestingly enough, in the Lycian language, the word maraza meant 'judge' or 'arbitrator' (thanks to prof Melchert's Lycian dictionary). Looks like a clear borrowing or shared vocabulary there.

This way we clearly diminished the possibility that ewistho Zeronaith refers to a title. Then what could it mean? It was so important that it was repeated twice, just like the age of Holaie. This gives a fairly logical guess at its meaning: "born in Zerona"! That would remain nothing more than an elegant theory if we had gotten no help from other Aegean sources. This is what I attempt to do in the current post: gleaning bits of evidence from other Aegean languages, namely Eteocypriot and Minoan. Unfortunately, no help avails from Etruscan.

In the other corner of the Aegean region (though geographically outside it), similarly mysterious inscriptions have yielded evidence of the Eteocretan language, once spoken in and around the city of Amathous on classical Cyprus. One of the Eteocpriot inscriptions yield an interesting phrase, worth to examine. The gravestone inscription I am speating of, is the following:

TU   A-LI-RA-NI   O-I-TE   TU-SU   TA-LE-JA   PA-KU-KE   A-NO-TI   TA-SO-TI   A-PU-E-MA   O-I-TE   A-LI-RA-NI   MA-NA   A-SO-NA   TU-KA   I-MI-NO-NA   A-JA-I   A-KO-?   A-NA   TA-SO   A-SO-NA   TU-KA   I-MI-NO-NA   TU-MI-RA   O-I-TE   I-MI-KA-NI   O-I-TE   TA-KO   E-NE-MI-NA   O-I-TE   TA-RA-WO   E-NE-MI-NA   ?-KA-LA-WA-TI-KE   MU-SO-TI

This text presents a rich inventory of pronouns and other terms, but it is the word O-I-TE that interests us at this moment. In terms of occurrances, this is the only Eteocretan text that contains this word. Its surprisingly high frequency spurred some scholars to believe that this was a conjunction of some sort. Nevertheless, I tried substituting that meaning into the text and all I got was a fairly meaningless and overstrained structure. A conjunction should divide words and sentences of equal and symmetric structure, not completely different ones. And be featured in a fixed order within a sentence. Therefore I believe O-I-TE is actually a noun or adjective added on (as an explanation) to a number of phrases within the text: e.g. A-LI-RA-NI. In the row before the last, it is added on to a number of words that seem to be either nouns or adjectives (because of the *-na ending, a well-known Aegean formative). The sequence TU-MI-RA   I-MI-KA-NI   PU   E-NE-MI-NA   PA-NA-MO is also featured in a different inscription. [PU seems to be a pronoun, a counterpart to TU, perhaps in a sense that/what or something like that. Interestingly, it was written as an enclitic, fused to the following word.] It seems like, therefore that we have an expanded phrase here, with a high emphasis on the phrase O-I-TE.

What could this have been? It was already suggested by some that - because it is added on to the phrase A-LI-RA-NI that seems to be a name, that it expresses some sort title or familial relationship. It has been proposed that its meaning might have been 'mother', nevertheless, it is a word quite dissimilar to the Etruscan ati. Even if it is unrelated to the Etruscan word for 'mother', it displays a certain degree of similarity to the term ewistho. There are at least three important things to observe with oite:

First, the Cypriot Syllabary system has a separate sign for WI (and used by Eteocretan in word-initial position as well), so O-I- is not an approximation for *wi-. Instead, this unusual diphtong (for an Aegean language) might have evolved from something like *aui-. Second, there is no distinction between 't' and 'th' in the Cypriot script (even if it might have existed in Linear A), so we must assume Eteocyprot has lost the Proto-Aegean aspirated consonants. This way, we can suppose a general development *th -> *t in Eteocypriot, that had already happened in the Bronze age (As far as I can judge, the Cypro-Minoan script had no signs for aspirated consonants at all, those inherited from Linear A were lost quite early, already in the middle of the 2nd millenium BC). Lastly, the Cypriot syllabary differs slightly from Linear A and B in terms of orthography. Not only word-terminal consonants are written out in Cypriot syllabary (with a helper vowel -e), but consonantal clusters with sybillants are also resolved (those with nasals are simplified still). For example, the word άριστος = 'noble' is written as A-RI-TO in Linear B, but A-RI-SI-TO-SE in Cypriot Linear C. This way we can be pretty sure that there was no -s- within the phrase O-I-TE (otherwise it would have been O-I-SE-TE). The cited observations enable us to reconstruct a putative original form of oite as *awithe. As for the explanation for the lack of -s- or an "s mobile", see later.

Some Minoan finds may also reinforce our theory about the meaning of the above-mentioned words. If we look at the Phaistos Disc, our eyes can meet a pretty interesting sign: Pha *06, a sign obviously depicting a woman of some sort. The interesting thing is, that - unlike most depictions of women in Minoan art - this one looks rather stocky. This fact was for long used by those disbelieving the Cretan origins of the disc, as an argument. While I can confirm the fact that the shape of this woman is a bit unusual for the depiction of "ordinary" women in Crete, it is neither of foreign origin, nor accidentally crudely designed. What if it was intentionally drawn this way? Well, pregnant women, they do have an oversized belly. And could we imagine a more elegant way of expressing the term 'mother' in hieroglyphs, than drawing an image of a pregnant woman?


The other interesting thing in the mentioned sign is its phonetic value. Since its shape is pretty special, but the sign is otherwise common on the disc, it very likely corresponds to a well-known Linear A sign. From the very few signs that can plausibely derived from a "woman-shape", only E and WI match reasonanably well. Together with (the much less probable matches) DE and KE, these are about the only signs, that could possibly be derived from such a special shape. Now, the value 'E' can be quickly excluded, based on the junctions with other signs: QE-E or I-E are practically impossible in Linear A (should have been -e- and -i-je-). This leaves us with the value WI as the most probable one. Indeed, it is not impossible to derive the (slightly asymmetric, pyramid-shaped) WI sign of Linear A and B from an image depicting a woman. The sign is otherwise pretty rare in Linear A (practically missing from the Hieroglyphic corpus), but does occur word-initially in some phrases, e.g. WI-TE-RO [HT25], WI-NA-DU [KH5] or WI-TE-JA-MU [PL Zf1].

At this point, we could settle with the fact that the word for woman (or a particular type of women, say 'mother') probably began with wi- in the Minoan language. But the story does not end here. By sheer luck, it seems that we have even more on the Phaistos Disc. It is interesting to observe that the words that begin with Pha *06 also, almost invariably continue with signs certainly (Pha *35 = 'TE') or putatively (Pha *18 [TI? TU?]) belonging to the T-series (th+vowel?) of Minoan syllabaries. Thus it is possible that the entire word WI-T(E) (supposedly 'child-bearer', thus 'mother') is written out on the disc, in various compound phrases. As many scholars suggest that what the disc features is a hymn or prayer, it would make much of a sense when referring to female deities. While there are a gret number of different "wedged" terms on that document, none of them were identified with a theonym so far. But one cannot resist the lure of the thought, that the most common one, *45-*07 stands for the original Minoan name of great goddess Razija (sign *45 undoubtedly corresponds to Lin AB RA2). And indeed - what epithet could fit better for titaness Rhea, who gave birth to almost the entire pantheon of Olympic gods, than 'mother'?

At this point, it is obligatory to look at the inventory of other language families, that might have existed in that region. Interestingly, one of the Proto-Indo-European phrases reconstructed, h₁euhdhr (= 'udder') does show a high similarity to ewistho and the rest. An 'h' could have easily evolved to 's' in some languages and disappeared in the rest. Although it invariably refers to privy parts of female animals, and never human ones in IE languages, in a lingustic group only marginally related to Proto-IE, one can easily imagine a shift of meaning. And that could have led straight to the words we see here. It can perhaps be compared to what we see in some modern languages, e.g. in Spanish mamá means mother, formed in an analogue to mama = breast. It is also interesting to see that a semi-related stem of proto-IE: udero-, normally meaning 'belly' or 'gut', evolved to words like ὑστέρα (Greek) and uterus (Latin), specifically meaning 'womb' in languages of the Mediterranean. Although it is hard to track the origins of medical terms (because the ancients were no masters of human anatomy), cross-contamination of word stems seems like an attractive explanation. Since these words do have a similar form to our reconstructed Aegean phrases, relating to motherhood and childbirth, it is tempting to see an Aegean (Minoan and perhaps Etruscan) influence over the meaning of this stem, shifting it from 'intestines' to 'uterus'.

Exploring the patterns on the (in)famous Phaistos Disc

Here I am again, back to blogging after a brief pause - the FIFA football (soccer) world championship can really make one attach to the TV screens - even if your own country's team is not playing...
For everyone's favour, I am returning to the Phaistos Disc. This is an all-time hot topic of fame-hungry amateur would-be decipherers and pseudo-linguists, so I promise to be as cautious and methodical as possible. We have to maintain a strictly scientific appproach even when half of the world love to think otherwise. Just to make clear: my objective here is not to "read" the disc word-by-word, but to understand a bit more of its structure, and thereby - so I hope - reveal something of its true meaning.


After a brief look at the disc, it becomes clear that the text recorded here is strikingly repetitive. Not only words are repeated, but entire phrases, even complete sentences. As problematic these repetitions in interpretation might be, they enable us to reconstruct the sentence-boundaries on the disc. The rules are quite simple: Whenever a complete phrase starts to repeat, it is at the start of a new sentence. Pertial repetitions may hint at parts of a compound sentence. With this method, we can get a structured version of the disc's contents (see the next figure below):


The disc actually contains two almost equally long texts. The texts occupy the shape of two snakes, and seem to be continuous from one side to the other. Though side A was historically considered to be the initial one by Evans, just looking at the repetitions of words (the first invocation on side B overflows to side A) suggests that the first side where the text starts is actually side B. The structure of the text is quite unique: After one or two long sentences (that I labelled introduction) a strongly repetitive part starts, perhaps 3 or 4 sentences long. The rich use of many special terms, conjunctions and pronouns in these repetitive parts inspired me to call them invocations (more on that later). This overall pattern is repeated two times - once on side B and once on side A. If we use a technique similar to what bioinformatics call "sequence alignment", the structure of the disc is even more easier to oversee:


This structural grouping reveals plenty of interesting features. First of all, there are the words marked with a 'wedge'. Markings of this sort were common in contemporary writing systems, for example, in Cuneiform Hittite, wedges ("Glossenkeil") were used for foreign words, like modern-day single or double quotes. In Egyptian, the ring-like cartouche marks were used to emphasize personal names, just like a capitalization. The only question: what was the objective of the scribe when putting these markups on the disc to stress certain words? It is obvious that the markings are associated to certain words and stems, but not specific positions in a sentence, so they are not phonetic or 'rhythmic' marks. Some words can apparently loose their marking if their grammatical case changes. This makes the phenomenon similar to certain modern languages, that capitalize proper names in writing, but not their adjectival or other derivatives. (English is a bad example, but the ortography of my native language, Hungarian, behaves exacly that way.)

The hint that these markings could signify proper names comes from the other corner of the Aegean. The Enkomi Cylinder, the longest Cypro-Minoan document discovered so far, shows a slightly similar feature. Though word-divisors (•) are commonly used on Linear A documents to divide words, they quite often divide phrases only, with individual words written continuously together. A similar dot can be encountered on the Enkomi Cylinder, but strictly and exclusively after certain phrases. The dots do not divide words in this case: rather, they are markups for some important terms, very likely names (for example, TA-LA-KA and SA-RA-NI, the latter being suspiciously similar to the Philistine term for 'prince', seren). This leaves us to ponder if the wedges on the disc are actually appropriately modified word-divisor dots, featured only after names. So the markups are likely equivalents of the Egyptian cartouche - used to stress proper names or any other important term, object or title that can be interpreted as a name.

Our second most important revelation is that the words on the disc show both prefix and suffix elements. As I expressed it in many posts before, the 'prefixes' are typically of a pronominal nature in Linear A, in fact attached particles and not grammatic prefixes. On the other hand, the disc also yields a number of suffixes, some of which we are already familiar with: like the -TE suffix (*-(a)the), used in the context of place-names in Linear A (as a type of locative or elative case). Its counterpair, the -QE suffix is fully novel. Judged by their consistent contrasting, I would suggest a locative-like sense of meaning to the -QE suffix as well. It is pure speculation, but the difference of meaning between -TE and -QE could have been based on something simple, like distance contrasting (-TE pointing afar and -QE pointing near). This would explain why the -QE suffix is never encountered on administrative tablets. But no matter how enticing, we clearly need to understand the text better before drawing such conclusions. Alternatively, this suffix could also mark an adjectival derivative or a different case.


The prefix-like pronominal elements are certainly the most interesting features of the text, not only because of their frequency, but also their uniqueness. No Linear A text has ever yielded particles I-QE-, MA- or SA-. Their use here can perfectly be explained by a change in context: While the tablets are strictly accounting texts, the Phaistos Disc is of a very different nature. This is hinted at by the similarity of the MA- and SA- particles (possessive pronouns?) to the well-attested Linear A verbal endings in -MI (1st person sing.) and -SI (3rd person sing.). The I-QE- prefix I already analysed in a previous post: it seems to be a simple conjunction (...and...), too redundant to be featured in the tablets' compressed context. Although likely derived from a deictic *i-, it carries the meaning 'and' instead. Such shifts in meaning are not uncommon in languages: for example, there is the Hittite conjunction nu-, literally meaning 'now', but typically used in the sense of 'and'. Another strange parallel between Minoan and Hittite we find here is the (stylistically perhaps bad) habit to frequently start new sentences with a conjunction ('and') in otherwise fully coherent texts.

The cited prefix elements can easily be read because of the fairly unique 'cat head' (MA) and 'linen' (SA) signs of Linear A. Others are trickier: for example, there is the bell-shaped sign Pha *07. It is undoubtedly a prefix-like element too, but not that easy to read. We can approach it from several direction. If we took a pure statistical (position and frequency) approach, we would get the best parallel in Linear AB *57 = JA. This is what Thorsten Timm already suggested, but there is a problem: the shape of Lin AB JA sign is so different from Pha *07, that a direct derivation is impossible. On the other hand, if we sought for similarly shaped signs in Linear A, we could get the sign Lin AB *37 = TI as the best match: and that is also a reasonably good match based on the terminal-heavy distribution of Pha *07. Linear A sign *41 = SI has a similar distribution too, but a somewhat dissimilar shape. But there is still a minor problem with this approach: Hieroglyphics have no bell-shaped signs at all. To overcome this problem, we can apply a third approach: searching for signs (in Hieroglyphics) that depict the same object as Pha *07. As the most probable object it could be is a female breast, the Hiero sign *34 (depicting a pair of breasts), clearly corresponding to Lin AB *59 = TA offers itself as a viable parallel. Now there is a different problem: the disc does have a sign (Pha *14) similar to Lin AB TA in shape, but obviously not depicting a pair of breasts!

To sum up, it seems that the disc contains first person references as well as numerous instances of proper names and phrases never seen on the tablets. I have a growing feeling that it is fitting to see the Phaistos Disc as an early example of poetry, a hymn very likely serving a religious purpose (as hinted at by the snake-shape, an attribute of a certain Minoan goddess). Religious hymns and prayers very often combine a rigidly repetitive structure with a high frequency of first and second person pronouns. As a simple example, let me cite the Lord's Prayer (Anglican/Catholic traditional version, the pronouns are highlighted in bold):

Our father who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name,
thy kingdom come,
thy will be done
as on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead not us into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom, and the power
and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.

A marvel of Minoan finds: the double-axe of Arkalochori

It was long due to write a bit of the famous Arkalochori Axe, since we already talked about it a lot when discussing the authenticity of the Phaistos Disc. This decorative double-axe ("labrys") has become renown because of the unique (or almost unique) inscription it bears. Its signs are not from the Linear A syllabary, even if they resemble to Linear A a lot. They are clearly not Hieroglyphs either. The only other script they resemble apart from Linear A, is that of the Phaistos Disc. In truth, they are somewhat 'in-between' Linear A, the Hieroglyphs and the Phaistos syllabary.

I was not the first one to realize the high value of this artefact in our understanding of the variations of the Cretan writing systems. In fact it was Thorsten Timm, who first proposed a direct connection between the Phaistos Disc and the Linear A syllabary; using this very axe as a proof that the evolution of Cretan writing was far more complex as once we had thought. He also pinpointed that the signs of the Phaistos Disc are by no means exotic or exceptional: they are just plain variations of the well-known Linear A signs, just with some fancy design. Although I do not agree with some of the values Timm has proposed, I perfectly agree with the basis of his theory. Although I cannot link a page of his book, here is the link to his website. I think it is worth to pay a visit.

The inscription on the Axe of Aralohori is a rather short one: there are three vertical columns, filled with no more than 6 signs each. There are no word-dividers or any other auxiliary signs, but it is reasonable that the text runs from the top to the bottom. (Actually, I do not know about any writing system in the word that would have an upside-down direction of writing or reading...) The order of the columns - on the other hand - is open to debate. I lean toward the left-to right direction, since this is most natural with respect to Linear A. Remember, in Linear A, the faces of figures are not fixed to the start of lines, rather they are fixed by convention: human faces, pig-heads and eagles - for example - point to the end of script, while other animal heads like sheep or kine, point to the opposite direction. It is worth to observe that this inscription (unlike that of the Phaistos Disc) does respect traditional direction of objects - the 'cat head' (Lin AB *80 = MA) is drawn face-to-face (as in Linear A) and not in profile like on the Disc. This is how the inscribed face of the double-axe looks like:


The transliteration of the signs on the axe is again, not the simplest task. Despite their close relationship to Linear A signs, some figures are nearly unrecognizable. Keeping these problems and the doubtful readings in mind, one can give the following transcript of the axe's signs (the numbering of columns runs from left to right):


1st column: I-DA-MA-NA-RI?-*86
2nd column: I-SE?-NA-I-MA-TE
3rd column: SI?-RE-DA

We find three instances of the 'plumed head' sign. As we have seen before, it most likely corresponds to the Linear AB *28 = 'I' sign. In this instance, we not only find them as word-initials (as seen on the Disc), but they also give out meaningful words! The part I-DA-MA-NA- is strongly reminiscent of the I-DA-MA-TE phrase found in Linear A (AR Zf 1 and 2, engraved on double-axes made from gold and silver) or the place-name I-DA-MI (SY Za 1, as part of the libation formula). Our senses tell us compellingly, that this word has something to do with the name of Mount Ida, the sacred mountain of Crete. But this can be misleading: The stem we find here is *(i)-dam (or *(i)-tam), with an 'm' on its end (and not just ida), similar to the case of JA-SA-SA-RA-ME: *(j)-asasaram-e , with an 'm' in the stem (the Luwian-based analysis jasa+sara+me appears to be incorrect). The mentioned words apparently reflect the structure *(i)-dam-ate and *(i)-dam-i, the stem being *dam (perhaps *tam or even *itam). The 'i' vowel may be either part of the stem or a separate deictic particle (if I-DA-MA-TE is the same as DA-MA-TE, on KY Za 2). As for me, I suspect that this stem is originally without i- and it means 'sanctuary'. (Compare with Etruscan tmia = 'temple' and Luwian dammaranza = '[a group of] priestesses'.)

While the shape of the 'cat head' (Lin AB 'MA'), 'twig' (Lin AB 'DA') and 'dotted column' (Lin AB 'NA') signs pose no problem of reading, some signs are trickier. The last sign of the first column is undoubtedly Lin AB *86, the 'boat' sign (of a value not yet deciphered) but rotated with 90 degrees (as on the Disc). The second sign in the last column ('RE'), on the other hand, continues the Hieroglyphic tradition in depicting not only three petals of a 'lily flower' (as Lin AB 'RE'), but also a row of leaves on its stem. Since this type of design is common in Hieroglyphics (in overwhelmingly word-terminal positions, just like Lin AB 'RE'), there can be no doubts that it displays the original shape of the 'RE' sign. As we know that the Cretan writing systems originally do not distinguish between 'r' and 'l' sounds, it is tempting to believe, this glyph indeed represents a lily flower, not only in shape, but also in sound. The Greek word for lilies, λειριον, from which the Latin word lilium (and ultimately the English word, lily) comes from, is pretty much possibly of Cretan origin. The phonetic value of the lily sign (either 're' or 'le') nicely admits an acrophonic derivation from a form *le:ri or similar.

Finally, apart from simple variations of signs: mirror images, like in the case of 'DA' or the addition of extra strokes, as in the case of 'NA', there remains a bunch of problematic signs to read. For example, there is the first sign in the rightmost column, that appears almost identical to the Hieroglyphic 'arrow' sign (not to be confused with the 'arrow-head' sign, that is likely 'TI'). The same arrow-sign is also featured on the Disc, in that case with fletching. Linear A offers a number of possible descendants, among these the sign 'SI' appears to be the best candidate (though still far from certain).

The second sign of the middle column is more problematic. There are two possible approaches to decipher it. First, it is similar to the Hieroglyphic 'wing' sign, that likely reads 'KU'. But if we look for parallels in Linear A, we might get a match with the sign 'SE': even if that 'vine' winds in a different direction, it is still fairly similar in general graphic concept to this sign on the Axe. Unfortunately, both readings are possible using Linear A parallels, so we are left fairly helpless. Out of these two, I preferred the 'SE' reading, as I expected the 'wing' sign already to be turned into the well-known 'flying eagle' (KU) by the age this axe was made. It is good to observe that the columns [NA signs] were dotted like in Linear A, not solid like in Hieroglyphics. The Phaistos Disc, also displays flying birds [KU] - the Linear A version - instead of an isolated flapping wing, like Hieroglyphics.

The fifth sign of the left column is perhaps the most mysterious one. It is not even faintly similar to most Linear A signs, and finding its Hieroglyphic parallels is equally hard. Perhaps because the sign is poorly designed, lacking important details, or perhaps it is just damaged. From the Phaistos Disc, it might correspond to the 'sitting bird' sign, with two legs (that has no clear ancestor in Hieroglyphics). Based upon this observation, I very tentatively assigned the value 'RI', but I am aware that I might not even be close to the true match. If you have any better ideas of a counterpart in Linear A or Hieroglyphics, I would love to hear it!

The 'I'-particle of Minoan language

Although it was not my intention to start discussion on the Phaistos Disc or anything related so early on; but since you asked for it, I will start discussing a topic that goes well beyond the Linear A inscriptions. Our search for the mysterious initial 'I'-particle of the Minoan language shall lead us through all the writing systems of ancient Crete.

As we saw in a previous post on the Libation Formula, the initial J- does seem to carry meaning in the Minoan language. In that post, I mentioned without proof that this J- is the same as the I- part seen on some other words on the tablets. Now we shall look at some of these examples, one-by-one:

Word with I-	Related word	Notes on meaning
JA-SA-SA-RA-ME (TL Za 1)	A-SA-SA-RA-ME (PR Za 1)	A word related to religious devotion
I-DA-MA-TE (AR Zf1)	DA-MA-TE (KY Za 2)	Not 'ida-mater', but rather a place-name
I-QA-*118 (HT44)	QA-*118 (KH 10)	Also occurs in the form of QA-*118-RA-RE (*qazir-ale?)
I-TI-TI-KU-NI (HT 96)	TI-TI-KU (HT 35)	A suffix *-i was also added (locative?)
JA-DI-KI-TE-TE-DU-PU2-RE (PK Za 15)	A-DI-KI-TE-TE-? (PK Za 11)	Likely a compound word (*adikthethe duphre)
JA-TA-I-*301-U-JA (AP Za 1)	A-TA-I-*301-WA-JA (IO Za 2)	Sign -U- stands for *wu (a substitute for WA)
JA-WA-PA3 (SY Za5)	A-WA-PI (KN Zf 31)	This identitification is dubious
I-PA-SA-JA (KH 10)	PA-SE-JA (HT 93)	This identitification is dubious
I-NA-WA (PH 6)	n/a	NA-WA probably means 'temple' (Greek Naos, archaic Nawos)

As we see above, there are quite a few examples that demonstrate the use of this mysterious I-/J- particle. Most scholars up to date interpreted these particles as prefixes. Nevertheless, we know that the Greek pronouns like 'τον' were typically written together with the word they referred to in Linear B. If Greek were extinct, we might very well think it was a prefixing language by looking at the tablets!

Having dismissed the prefix theory, only one possible conclusion remains: the I-particle is a genuine pronoun or article. From its occurrances, a use like a definite article appears quite probable. For example if *nawa meant temple, then I-NA-WA (*i nawa) could have meant "the temple" (or even *i nawath = "at the temple"). Fully conforming this theory, the I-particle is most common on the first word of table headers. Even in the Libation formula, the I-particle can only be found if the sentence is long, thus necessitating repetition of the initial phrases.

Why have I talked about the Phaistos Disc so mysteriously in the introduction? Because the very disc is the greatest vault of I-particles ever found. Almost every second word begins with such a particle!

Looking at the disc, one thing immediately becomes clear: the heavy repetition of stems, words, and even complete sequences. Perhaps the most repetitive feature of the disc are the 'plumed-head' - 'cake' sign pairs, that precede roughly every second word. We know that this is just an attached particle because of two things: First, there are many words that occur both with and without this sequence. Second, there is an example of scribal error on side B, where these two particles were seemingly inserted after the following word had already been stamped into the surface.


How does this sequence (*02 - *12) read? First, we know that sign Pha *02 occurs in other words as well, but always as an initial. It is not a logogram that many have claimed before, for we see the same head on the Arkalochori axe as well - again, as initials. To find its Linear A counterpart, we have to look at carefully the signs of the Libation Formula, where the scribes had the time to fully work out the shape of the signs, unlike the clay tablets. Once we examined the Linear A signs, our eye will unfailingly tell that Linear A sign *28 (that is, the 'I' sign) is the plumed head! The only peculiarity of this sign is, that the 'hairy head' does not face the start of writing. But it is undoubtedly a head. The prominent hair is - again - not a mere fashion of that age. Since we also have a "bald but bearded" head on the Disc, it is clear that sign Lin A *28 and Pha *02 stood for 'hair'. (perhaps the word for 'hair' began with i- in the Minoan language)

For those still doubting in the identification of signs, that are mirrored in Linear A with respect to that of the Phaistos disc, one has to keep in mind that the very script (Linear A and B) did not fix the direction of animal and human heads toward the start point. This often resulted in figures pointing away from the start point with their head, towards the right side - directly to the opposite of what we would expect in a (classic) hieroglyphic script, like the Egyptian or Luwian Hieroglyphs, or even the Phaistos disc itself (where the figures were aligned just to give a better look). To provide examples, I will show a few Phaistos Disc signs and their Linear A counterparts. (Just watch the rotations and reflections!)


So we now see that sign Pha *02 is 'I'. This fits well with the notion that pure vowel signs should occur frequently as word-initials. As for the following 'cake' sign (Pha *12), the only Linear A candidates are KA (Lin AB *77) and QE (Lin AB *78). Based on shapes, the latter is much more likely. This line of thoughts gives the reading I-QE.

Now, what on earth could this particle mean? The initial 'I' was possibly used in Phaistos Disc words B3, B11 and B17 in a way identical to that of Linear A. But I-QE is not identical to the initial 'I', yet closely related, based on its usage. It looks like some sort of copula or conjunction between different phrases or sentences. Searching for parallels in languages like Etruscan, a word struck my eyes: it is the adjective Iχ meaning 'thus', 'then' or 'so' (e.g. check the Cippus Perusinus to see its use). Could this be a reflection of an earlier *iχe or *iχwe form?

Given the very repetitive structure of the Disc, it would not be surprising at all to see a word like 'thus' being repeated after each and every phrase. The inscription being in the form of two snakes (remember the Snake Goddess), together with its structure suggest ritualistic use of the language, probably a prayer. In such contexts, conjunctions like 'thus' are not only usual, but outright expected.

Searching for similar I- particles in the Hieroglyhic script was however disappointing. The 'head' sign is rare, and words beginning with it are even less frequent. This can partly be explained by the shortness of the texts (bare names and titles, no sentences). Also, there are problems with the correspondence between signs. Since going into this matter would go beyond the scope of the current post, I decided to break this post off here, and continue the discussion some time later.