The Carian alphabets are a number of regional scripts used to write the
Carian language of western
Anatolia
Anatolia, tr, Anadolu Yarımadası), and the Anatolian plateau, also known as Asia Minor, is a large peninsula in Western Asia and the westernmost protrusion of the Asian continent. It constitutes the major part of modern-day Turkey. The re ...
. They consisted of some 30
alphabet
An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syll ...
ic letters, with several geographic variants in
Caria
Caria (; from Greek: Καρία, ''Karia''; tr, Karya) was a region of western Anatolia extending along the coast from mid-Ionia (Mycale) south to Lycia and east to Phrygia. The Ionians, Ionian and Dorians, Dorian Greeks colonized the west of i ...
and a homogeneous variant attested from the
Nile
The Nile, , Bohairic , lg, Kiira , Nobiin language, Nobiin: Áman Dawū is a major north-flowing river in northeastern Africa. It flows into the Mediterranean Sea. The Nile is the longest river in Africa and has historically been considered ...
delta, where
Carian
The Carian language is an extinct language of the Luwic subgroup of the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family. The Carian language was spoken in Caria, a region of western Anatolia between the ancient regions of Lycia and Lydia, ...
mercenaries
A mercenary, sometimes also known as a soldier of fortune or hired gun, is a private individual, particularly a soldier, that joins a military conflict for personal profit, is otherwise an outsider to the conflict, and is not a member of any o ...
fought for the Egyptian pharaohs. They were written left-to-right in Caria (apart from the Carian–Lydian city of
Tralleis) and right-to-left in Egypt.
Carian was deciphered primarily through Egyptian–Carian bilingual tomb inscriptions, starting with John Ray in 1981; previously only a few sound values and the alphabetic nature of the script had been demonstrated. The readings of Ray and subsequent scholars were largely confirmed with a Carian–Greek bilingual inscription discovered in
Kaunos
Kaunos (Carian: ''Kbid'';. Translator Chris Markham.
Lycian: ''Khbide''; Ancient Greek: ; la, Caunus) was a city of ancient Caria and in Anatolia, a few kilometres west of the modern town of Dalyan, Muğla Province, Turkey.
The Calbys ...
in 1996, which for the first time verified personal names, but the identification of many letters remains provisional and debated, and a few are wholly unknown.
The Carian alphabet resembles the Greek alphabet, but the exact Greek variant from which it could have originated, hasn't yet been identified. The main reason for this is that some of the Greek letters have different sound values in Carian.
[Scriptsource.org - Carian](_blank)
"Visually, the letters bear a close resemblance to Greek letters. Decipherment was initially attempted on the assumption that those letters which looked like Greek represented the same sounds as their closest visual Greek equivalents. However it has since been established that the phonetic values of the two scripts are very different. For example the theta θ symbol represents ‘th’ in Greek but ‘q’ in Carian. Carian was generally written from left to right, although Egyptian writers wrote primarily from right to left. It was written without spaces between words." Two hypotheses have been suggested to explain this. The first is that the Greek letters were randomly attributed to phonetic values; though some letters retained their Greek value. The second proposed by Adiego (2007), is "that the Carian alphabet underwent a strong process of cursivisation, dramatically changing the form of many letters. At a certain point this graphic system underwent a change to 'capital' letters, for which the Greek capital letters were used as models - but now only from a formal point of view, disregarding their phonetic values (...).".
Scripts
There is a range of graphic variation between cities in Caria, some of which extreme enough to have separate Unicode characters. The Kaunos alphabet is thought to be complete. There may be other letters in Egyptian cities outside Memphis, but they need to be confirmed. There is considerable geographical variation in all letters, especially the representation of the lateral phonemes ''l'' and ''λ''.
The letters with identified values in the various cities are as follows:
Origin
The Carian scripts, which have a common origin, have long puzzled scholars. Most of the letters resemble letters of the Greek alphabet, but their sound values are generally unrelated to the values of the Greek letters. This is unusual among the
alphabets of Asia Minor
Various alphabetic writing systems were in use in Iron Age Anatolia to record Anatolian languages and Phrygian. Several of these languages had previously been written with logographic and syllabic scripts.
The alphabets of Asia Minor proper s ...
, which generally approximate the Greek alphabet fairly well, both in sound and shape, apart from sounds which had no equivalent in Greek. However, the Carian sound values are not completely disconnected:
𐊠 (Greek Α),
𐊫 (Greek Ο),
𐊰 (Greek Ϻ
san), and
𐊲 (Greek Υ) are as close to Greek as any Anatolian alphabet, and
𐊷, which resembles Greek Β, has the similar sound , which it shares with Greek-derived
Lydian 𐤡.
Adiego (2007) therefore suggests that the original Carian script was adopted from cursive Greek, and that it was later restructured, perhaps for monumental inscription, by imitating the form of the most graphically similar Greek print letters without considering their phonetic values. Thus a , which in its cursive form may have had a curved top, was modeled after Greek ''qoppa'' (Ϙ) rather than its ancestral ''tau'' (Τ) to become
𐊭. Carian , from archaic Greek 𐌌, would have been simplified and was therefore closer in shape to Greek Ν than Μ when it was remodeled as
𐊪. Indeed, many of the regional variants of Carian letters parallel Greek variants:
𐊥 ![CarianR](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/CarianR.png)
are common graphic variants of
digamma
Digamma or wau (uppercase: Ϝ, lowercase: ϝ, numeral: ϛ) is an archaic letter of the Greek alphabet. It originally stood for the sound but it has remained in use principally as a Greek numeral for 6. Whereas it was originally called ''waw' ...
,
𐊨 ʘ of
theta
Theta (, ; uppercase: Θ or ; lowercase: θ or ; grc, ''thē̂ta'' ; Modern: ''thī́ta'' ) is the eighth letter of the Greek alphabet, derived from the Phoenician letter Teth . In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 9.
Gr ...
,
𐊬 Λ of both
gamma
Gamma (uppercase , lowercase ; ''gámma'') is the third letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 3. In Ancient Greek, the letter gamma represented a voiced velar stop . In Modern Greek, this letter re ...
and
lambda
Lambda (}, ''lám(b)da'') is the 11th letter of the Greek alphabet, representing the voiced alveolar lateral approximant . In the system of Greek numerals, lambda has a value of 30. Lambda is derived from the Phoenician Lamed . Lambda gave rise ...
, 𐌓
𐊯 𐌃 of
rho
Rho (uppercase Ρ, lowercase ρ or ; el, ρο or el, ρω, label=none) is the 17th letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 100. It is derived from Phoenician letter res . Its uppercase form uses the sa ...
,
𐊵 𐊜 of
phi
Phi (; uppercase Φ, lowercase φ or ϕ; grc, ϕεῖ ''pheî'' ; Modern Greek: ''fi'' ) is the 21st letter of the Greek alphabet.
In Archaic and Classical Greek (c. 9th century BC to 4th century BC), it represented an aspirated voicele ...
,
𐊴 𐊛 of
chi
Chi or CHI may refer to:
Greek
*Chi (letter), the Greek letter (uppercase Χ, lowercase χ);
Chinese
*Chi (length), ''Chi'' (length) (尺), a traditional unit of length, about ⅓ meter
*Chi (mythology) (螭), a dragon
*Chi (surname) (池, pin ...
,
𐊲 V of
upsilon
Upsilon (, ; uppercase Υ, lowercase υ; el, ''ýpsilon'' ) or ypsilon is the 20th letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, grc, Υʹ, label=none has a value of 400. It is derived from the Phoenician waw .
Etym ...
, and
𐋏 𐊺 parallel Η 𐌇
eta
Eta (uppercase , lowercase ; grc, ἦτα ''ē̂ta'' or ell, ήτα ''ita'' ) is the seventh letter of the Greek alphabet, representing the close front unrounded vowel . Originally denoting the voiceless glottal fricative in most dialects, ...
. This could also explain why one of the rarest letters,
𐊱, has the form of one of the most common Greek letters. However, no such proto-Carian cursive script is attested, so these etymologies are speculative.
Further developments occurred within each script; in Kaunos, for example, it would seem that
𐊮 and
𐊭 both came to resemble a Latin P, and so were distinguished with an extra line in one:
𐌓 ,
𐊯 .
Decipherment
Numerous attempts at deciphering the Carian inscriptions were made during the 20th century. After World War II, most of the known Carian inscriptions were collected and published, which provided good basis for decipherment.
In the 1960s the Russian researcher
Vitaly Shevoroshkin
Vitaly Victorovich Shevoroshkin ( rus, Виталий Викторович Шеворошкин) is an American linguist of Russian origin, specializing in the study of ancient Mediterranean languages. Shevoroshkin was born in 1932 in Georgia (US ...
showed that earlier assumptions that the script was a
syllabic
Syllabic may refer to:
*Syllable, a unit of speech sound, considered the building block of words
**Syllabic consonant, a consonant that forms the nucleus of a syllable
*Syllabary, writing system using symbols for syllables
*Abugida, writing system ...
or
semisyllabic writing system was false. He devoted many years to his study, and used proper methodology. He made it clear that Carian was indeed alphabetically written, but made few significant advances in the understanding of the language. He took the values of letters resembling those of the
Greek alphabet
The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BCE. It is derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and was the earliest known alphabetic script to have distinct letters for vowels as we ...
for granted, which proved to be unfounded.
[Ignacio-Javier Adiego Lajara]
''The Carian Language''.
Volume 86 of Handbook of Oriental Studies. BRILL, 2006 p179ff
Other researchers of Carian were H. Stoltenberg, O. Masson,
Yuri Otkupshchikov Yuri Otkupshchikov (russian: Юрий Владимирович Откупщиков; 29 August 1924, Kazan – 25 September 2010, St. Petersburg; also spelled ''Otkupscikov'', ''Otkupsikov'', ''Otkupschikov'', ''Otkupschtschikov'') was a Soviet and ...
, P. Meriggi (1966), and R. Gusmani (1975), but their work was not widely accepted.
Stoltenberg, like Shevoroshkin, and most others, generally attributed Greek values to Carian symbols.
In 1972, an Egyptologist K. Zauzich investigated bilingual texts in Carian and Egyptian (what became known as 'Egyptian approach'). This was an important step in decipherment, that produced good results.
This method was further developed by T. Kowalski in 1975, which was his only publication on the subject.
[THOMAS W. KOWALSKI (1975)]
LETTRES CARIENNES: ESSAI DE DECHIFFREMENT DE L’ECRITURE CARIENNE
Kadmos. Volume 14, Issue 1, Pages 73–93, DOI 10.1515/kadm.1975.14.1.73
The British Egyptologist
John D. Ray
John David Ray (born 22 December 1945) is a British Egyptologist and academic. He is the current Sir Herbert Thompson Professor of Egyptology at the University of Cambridge. His principal field of interest covers the Late and Hellenistic periods ...
apparently worked independently from Kowalski; nevertheless he produced similar results (1981, 1983). He used Carian–Egyptian
bilingual inscription
In epigraphy, a multilingual inscription is an inscription that includes the same text in two or more languages. A bilingual is an inscription that includes the same text in two languages (or trilingual in the case of three languages, etc.). Mul ...
s that had been neglected until then. His big breakthrough was the reading of the name
Psammetichus (Egyptian Pharaoh) in Carian.
The radically different values that Ray assigned to the letters initially met with scepticism.
Ignasi-Xavier Adiego, along with
Diether Schürr Diether is a German given name, composed of the elements ''theod, diet'' "people" and ''her'' "army".
It is distinct from, but in Modern German has become homophonic with, the name Dieter (disambiguation), Dieter, which is a short form of Dietrich ...
, started to contribute to the project in the early 1990s. In his 1993 book ''Studia Carica'', Adiego offered the decipherment values for letters that are now known as the ‘Ray-Schürr-Adiego system’. This system now gained wider acceptance. The discovery of a new
bilingual inscription
In epigraphy, a multilingual inscription is an inscription that includes the same text in two or more languages. A bilingual is an inscription that includes the same text in two languages (or trilingual in the case of three languages, etc.). Mul ...
in 1996 (the
Kaunos
Kaunos (Carian: ''Kbid'';. Translator Chris Markham.
Lycian: ''Khbide''; Ancient Greek: ; la, Caunus) was a city of ancient Caria and in Anatolia, a few kilometres west of the modern town of Dalyan, Muğla Province, Turkey.
The Calbys ...
Carian-Greek bilingual inscription) confirmed the essential validity of their decipherment.
Unicode
Carian was added to the
Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
Standard in April, 2008 with the release of version 5.1.
It is encoded in Plane 1 (
Supplementary Multilingual Plane
In the Unicode standard, a plane is a continuous group of 65,536 (216) code points. There are 17 planes, identified by the numbers 0 to 16, which corresponds with the possible values 00–1016 of the first two positions in six position hexadecimal ...
).
The Unicode block for Carian is U+102A0–U+102DF:
𐊡𐋊𐋋𐋌𐋍 are graphic variants, as are
𐊤𐋈𐋐,
𐋎𐊦𐋏,
𐊺𐋏,
𐊼𐊽,
𐋂𐋃,
𐋁𐋀, and possibly
𐋇𐊶.
See also
*
Alphabets of Asia Minor
Various alphabetic writing systems were in use in Iron Age Anatolia to record Anatolian languages and Phrygian. Several of these languages had previously been written with logographic and syllabic scripts.
The alphabets of Asia Minor proper s ...
References
* Adiego Lajara, I.J. ''The Carian Language''. With an appendix by
Koray Konuk
Koray is a Turkish given name. It is composed of "Kor" and "Ay". In Turkish "Kor" means "Ember" and "Ay" means "Moon". Thus, "Koray" means "a moon in the colour of ember".
Notable people with the name include:
Given name
* Koray Aldemir, Germa ...
. Leiden: Brill, 2007,
* H. Craig Melchert, "Carian", in Woodward ed. ''The Ancient Languages of Asia Minor'', 2008.
* Davies, Anna Morpurgo, "Decipherment" in ''International Encyclopedia of Linguistics'', William J. Frawley, ed., 2nd ed. (Oxford, 2003) I:421.
* Everson, Michael (2006-01-12).
Proposal to encode the Carian script in the SMP of the UCS" Contains many useful illustrations and tables.
* Schürr, Diether, "Zur Bestimmung der Lautwerte des karischen Alphabets 1971-1991", ''Kadmos'' 31:127-156 (1992).
* Swiggers & Jenniges, in: P.T. Daniels & W. Bright (eds.), ''The World's Writing Systems'' (New York/Oxford, 1996), pp. 285–286.
* Vidal M.C. "European Alphabets, Ancient Classical", in ''
Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics
The ''Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics'', first published in 1994 (edited by Ronald E. Asher), with a 2nd edition in 2006 (edited by Keith Brown), is an encyclopedia of all matters related to language and linguistics.
Reception
The ''Jo ...
'', 2nd ed., 2006.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Carian Script
Obsolete writing systems
Alphabets
Carian language
7th-century BC establishments
1st-century BC disestablishments