PALEOGRAMMATOLOGY AND ALPHABET

The science of paleogrammatology 

and the evolution of the alphabet

                I am not here to blind you with SCIENCE but with SIGNS.

Anyone who knew me during my years as a lecturer at Massey University (1970 till 2001) thinks of me as a teacher of religion. Certainly, in 1970, I came from Melbourne University with a masterate in Hebrew Bible theology and a doctorate in Syriac Christian mysticism, to establish Religious Studies in the Faculty of Humanities at Massey University in Palmerston North. First it was a non-entity without a department to belong to, then a sub-department, next a thriving little independent department (when small was beautiful and in this case rationally economic), and finally as an unmentionable segment of the School of History, Philosophy, Politics, and Classical Studies (no space left for including Religious Studies). In this same connection, in the years 1962 and 1963, I was a lecturer in a theological college in South Australia.
    However, at Massey university I endeavoured to present my subject not as theology but as “phenomenology of religion”, and as a science, Religionswissenschaft (religion-science) as it is known in German. And yet it has often been observed that I do not go around spouting religion so much as languages and scripts, or to be technical, talking about linguistics (the scientific study of languages and their structure), epigraphy (the study of inscriptions), and palaeography (study of ancient writings and inscriptions, which involves dating, deciphering, interpreting).
    Originally, however, I was a secondary school teacher at Granville Boys High School in Sydney, from 1959 to 1961 (Crocodile Dundee alias Paul Hogan was a pupil there, but not in my time); my teaching subjects were Latin, French, English, and Ancient History; and subsequently in other states of Australia I gave instruction in German, and also ancient Hebrew and Greek. Along the way I have learnt many other ancient and modern languages in order to read original texts and academic literature in my fields of study, which are many and various. So I can claim to be a linguist and an antiquarian (I live more in the Bronze Age and the Iron Age than in the current Gas Age).
     Now, the subject of this discourse is “paleogrammatology” (a word I have invented and which you have now discovered), and paleogrammatology is not about ancient languages but about ancient letters (Greek paleo, old; and grammata, written characters, from the verb grapho, write or draw). So we will be talking, in the English language, about scripts or writing systems, rather than about languages.
    In 1964, I was teaching English, French, and German in Launceston, in Tasmania, and on the side I was studying extramurally for a London University degree in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Syriac (its title was Master of Theology, and I failed it). This also involved reading ancient inscriptions in Hebrew, Phoenician, and Moabite (all dialects of the same language, which I call Canaanian, the language of Canaan (Kana`an), which the benighted English blithely pronounce as Keinen. I had already been delving into the ancient languages and scripts of the Bible lands in 1958, while I was supposed to be studying for my Diploma in Education at Sydney University.
    While I was at Granville Boys High (it had been Granville Tech, before I came and introduced foreign languages into the curriculum, and it was still a tough environment) I organized a linguistics club after school hours, with some of my brightest students. By digging deeply and archaeologically in my filing cabinet (which has traveled over land and sea with me since then) I have found the exercise book in which I kept notes, including the name of the group as the “Granville Linguistic Society”.  We also talked about “writing”, which is not strictly a part of linguistics, and we had as one of our resources a table of the development of many of the letters of the alphabet from Egyptian hieroglyphs, taken from the back of a breakfast-cereal packet (corn flakes, to be scientifically accurate, probably Kellogg brand). Looking at that incomplete and inaccurate chart now, in my humble capacity as an expert on the original alphabet (the proto-alphabet, I have dubbed it) I see that it did not do too much damage to the minds of those eager young learners.
    I hope they remember me with affection, and likewise those fifty (quinquaginta, cinquante, fünfzig) good keen lads in my Ancient History class; this was my most glorious year in education; if any of those twelve-year-olds misbehaved in the classroom the rest would hiss him; and whenever I arrived to begin each lesson there was always someone waiting at the door for me with something to show and tell; antiquarianism is such fun. I now feel, with regret, that when I had to take detention classes after school, instead of making them sit there in silent penance for their disruptive behaviour in other people’s classes, I should have encouraged them to practise yoga meditation, or stimulated them with the origin of the letters of the alphabet. But my knowledge was rudimentary and as imprecise as any other expert’s opinions in those unenlightened times, as the successive editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica show. They still have not got it right.
    During my year in Tasmania (1964), teaching English, French, and German at Scotch (sic!) College in Launceston (sick indeed, as tuberculosis had raged there before I joined the staff), I also began reading seriously about decipherment of mysterious scripts (including the proto-alphabet). For resources, I only had my own books, purchased by mail from Blackwell’s bookshop in Oxford, and those available in the local public library.
    One thing I remembered ever after from that search (it was not yet research of my own): some of the great decipherers, having cracked the code of one particular script, then thought they had obtained the key to open other doors leading to the decoding of more undeciphered scripts, and in the process they made idiots of themselves. So in my own sleuthing in this treacherous minefield, I have trodden warily, with that warning in mind. (A related anecdotal real-life experience: once, at the Suez Canal in Egypt, I got out of the bus and went running over the landscape for exercise; I was called back urgently by a local Arab, because there were bombs in the ground.)
     Nevertheless, in spite of that caveat about thinking you have discovered the key, when I eventually worked out the origins of the alphabet, I became more audacious. After identifying the source of each letter (Aleph and Alpha an ox; Bayt and Beta a house; Gaml and Gamma a boomerang; Dalt and Delta a door, and so on), building on the “experiments” and discoveries of my predecessors, I did begin trying to unravel other enigmatic scripts, because I had in fact found the key to open their locked gateways. In a word: ACROPHONY, also known as “the acrophonic principle”.
    My first lecture on the subject of ancient scripts (particularly the proto-alphabet) was presented at a language and literature conference in Christchurch in January 1987; it was ground-breaking (though not earth-shaking. like their recent devastating earthquakes); it was published in 1988 as “Recent discoveries illuminating the origin of the alphabet”. Strange to say, it did not contain the word acrophony, nor the term acrophonic principle, though this was the underlying unstated assumption of my thesis.
    The word acrophony (as distinct from cacophony, “bad sound”) is apparently not in common or decent usage, since it is absent from my Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English (1990); but acrophobia is there as “fear of heights” (from Greek akron, “summit”), and, more significantly, acronym, which refers to a noun or name constructed from the initial (or “top”) letters of other words (radar from radio detection and ranging;  RADA from Royal Academy of Dramatic Art). Accordingly, acrophony is “summit sound”, and refers to taking the initial letter of a word that goes with a particular depiction of some object or symbol.


ACROPHONY the key to ancient syllabaries and the original alphabet (a consonantary)

Step 1 REBUS (whole word) > a syllabogram (Mesopotamia, logo-syllabary) (ab, ba, bat)

Step 2 REBUS (first syllable) > a syllabogram (Canaan, and then Crete, Anatolia, Mesoamerica)

Step 3 REBUS (initial consonant) > a consonantogram (Canaan, proto-alphabet)

The results of my research show that the original letters of the proto-alphabet (Canaanian logo-consonantary) could act as:

(1) an acrophonic consonantogram (picture of snake > nakhash > N)

(2) a complex consonantogram (N–Kh-Sh + T = “copper”)

(3) a logogram (snake > nakhash)

See further on this subject:
http://sites.google.com/site/collesseum/alphabetevolution
Also available there is a typology of scripts and my table of signs charting the development of the alphabet out of the Canaanian syllabary that preceded it, and with the assistance of Egyptian hieroglyphs. It is something to print out and hang on the wall.

Is Paleogrammatology a science?

Establishing TAXONOMY with TYPOLOGY should make it a scientific procedure. Right?

Like paleontology and paleobotany we have FOSSILS to work on, in the form of clay tablets (and even papyrus rolls), and these stones still cry out.

PALEOGRAMMATOLOGY study of ancient writing systems

GRAMMATOLOGY study of scripts and their components

EPIGRAPHY study of inscriptions

PALEOGRAPHY study of ancient writings: involves dating, deciphering, interpreting

Linguistics, the scientific study of languages and their structure (cp physics, mathematics)

Grammatology, scientific study of writing systems, not “grammatics” or “graphics” (cp geology, biology)


TYPOLOGY OF ANCIENT SCRIPTS

SEMASIOGRAPHY communication through Sematograms or Ideograms

LOGOGRAPHY communication through Logographs/Logograms, Morphographic

PHONOGRAPHY communication through Phonograms (have sound-value but no meaning)

SYLLABARY a system of Syllabograms  (ba bi bu)

LOGOSYLLABARY a system of Logograms and Syllabograms (Mesopotamia, Canaan)

CONSONANTARY a system of Consonantograms (b g d) Abgad (Abjad)  (Phoenician alphabet)

LOGOCONSONANTARY a system of Logograms and Consonantograms (Egypt, proto-alphabet)

VOCOCONSONANTARY (ALPHABET) includes vocalic letters (vowel-signs)  (Greek alphabet)

ALPHASYLLABARY a special system of syllabograms (each basic sign has the vowel /a/ built into it, but appendages indicate the other vowels [(Abugida) Abagada Abagidu]  (Ethiopic, Indic)


Logography is practically impossible; English and Chinese texts are virtually logographic but both provide some phonetic assistance; generally, look at each word and say it (from memory: to too two), not sound it out, as is possible with Mâori or Suomi (Finnish).



TYPOLOGY OF CHARACTERS

GRAMMATA = Characters or Letters

LOGOGRAM or LOGOGRAPH represents a word

XENOGRAM a sign borrowed from another system (& =et = and)

PHONOGRAM represents a sound, single or syllabic, but has no meaning

REBOGRAM a phonogram used to represent other words or parts of words (rebus)

ACROPHONOGRAM says only the first consonant (a consonantogram) or syllable (syllabogram) of the word that goes with a particular image (depiction or symbol)

SYLLABOGRAM represents a syllable, bu, gi, du

CONSONANTOGRAM represents a consonant

VOCALOGRAM represents a vowel

ORTHOGRAM a determinative sign, written but not spoken,

PICTOGRAM or PICTOGRAPH? A picture telling a story?

SEMATOGRAM (IDEOGRAM) signs not attached to speech (heart-sign for love)

PALEOGRAM  could mean an ancient letter or sign?!

POLYPHONOGRAM more than one possible reference (Mesopotamia)

A sign may belong to more than one category, and function in more than one way in different settings

(one sign as acrophonogram/syllabogram and also logogram).

The original letters of the proto-alphabet (Canaanite logo-consonantary) could act as:

(1) an acrophonic consonantogram (picture of snake > nakhash > N)

(2) a complex consonantogram (N–Kh-Sh + T = “copper”)

(3) a logogram (snake > nakhash)


ALPHABET here defined as a minimal set of signs for writing a language (whether vowels are represented or not) BEC 1996 (Contributions) 69

It is an informal word, and technical terms need to be used or created for the various types. Peter Daniels has offered ABJAD and ABUGIDA, but I think these are not formal terms

Incidentally, just because a writing system is complex does not mean there will be low literacy in the land. The Babylonian logosyllabary had hundreds of signs but a writer could get by with less than a hundred.

The Japanese writing system, (syllabic and logographic) is extremely complicated, and yet Japan has a higher literacy rate than France. Then there is the English logographic orthography

(Seed cede, supersede or supercede?)

What was the original form of each letter?

Which of the original signs (logograms, consonantograms) have disappeared over time?
What happened to the fish (Samek), the wick (a double helix, a hank of thread, H), and the grape-vine (Gh)?

PHAISTOS DISK

This is a printed document, from around 1700 before the current era, 
long before printing was invented!

 Detailed photographs are available here.

The Phaistos disc was discovered in 1908 in a Bronze-Age building, 
at Phaistos (Festos) in SW Crete. It is indeed a 'provenanced' find, 
but it could have been 'planted' (deliberately inserted into the soil 
to be uncovered/discovered in situ the next day)?

Could the Phaistos disc be a forgery? 

   That would be a very elaborate hoax to perpetrate: making 45 little stamps
to imprint on clay, on both sides of the object, and printing 30 clusters of
signs (words or phrases ?) on one side and 31 on the other.
   I know personally two different scholars (out of a host of hopefuls) who have
published confident attempts at decipherment (both read it as Hellenic, but
produce entirely different transcriptions and translations).
    My observations on it, after looking at all the other scripts of Crete (and
Cyprus) is that it does not belong to the same family as Linear B (used for
Mycenean Greek texts).
    There is a line of development in Crete from a set of pictographs to
stylized Linear A characters (language arguably West Semitic) and even more stylized
Linear B; and on Cyprus a derived syllabic script from the same source
(through Linear A), used for a Hellenic dialect and other languages.

My judgement is that the Cretan pictographs and the Phaistos pictographs 

(in spite of similarities and apparent correspondences) do not belong to the
same system. And they are not Egyptian, Sumerian, Luwian, or Cana'anite
(neither the proto-alphabet, nor the logo-syllabary best-known from the
Byblos texts).

If the characters on the Phaistos Disc do not have any known counterparts,
what would be the purpose of such fakery? Our analogy cannot be with the
forgeries from Israel, which use scripts and languages that are known, and
can fetch a good price because of their pseudo-historical connections.

We must accept the Phaistos document on trust, hoping that a companion will
be found for it to aid in its elucidation. (Well now: there's a motive and a
project for a forger!)

Jerome M. Eisenberg, The Phaistos Disk: A 100-Year-Old Hoax? Minerva 19, 4 (2008)

However, a claim has been made that the object was forged by its discoverer, and 

Jerome Eisenberg, a specialist in fake ancient art, has pointed the finger at 

Luigi Pernier, the Italian archaeologist who found it in the Phaistos palace. 

A motive would possibly have been to compete with the remarkable discoveries 

being made at Knossos by Arthur Evans (whose drawing of the two sides of the disc 

is reproduced above).

Eisenberg sees the forger's error in creating a terracotta 'pancake' with a clean-cut 

edge and firing it. Cretan clay tablets (as evidenced at Knossos and Phaistos) were 

rough and ready, and not deliberately fired, though it could happen accidentally 

(when the buildings containing them were destroyed by fire). 

Perhaps so, but if the Phaistos Disc really is ancient, and if its maker considered it 

to be a significant or sacred object then it may well have been purposefully baked.

Eisenberg has given us nothing but speculation, so far, and his idea could be verified 

or falsified by thermoluminescence dating, but because of the risk involved (the

object could be damaged) his request has been refused by the Heraklion Museum. 

Actually this method of dating determines the latest time the object was fired,

and if it had been put in an oven to dry it out in 1908 or later , the original date 

would have been obliterated.

Eisenberg has given a quite a few suggestions for sources the forger could have 

used to copy various signs from, notably Linear A. My answer to that is to see two 

different but related writing systems on the island of Crete:

 the Knossos script (northern), a picto-phonetic syllabary > Linear A and B;
 the Phaistos script (southern), a picto-phonetic syllabary.

Looking at the 30 accountancy tablets from Phaistos (as distinct from adjacent
Hagia Triada, where the Linear A script was used, a stylized form of the northern 

picto-phonetic script), most seem to be Linear A, but some (PH 8, 9, 13, 15, 17, 26) 

have signs known from the Phaistos Disc, and notably PH 12:

PhD sign 14 (fetter, Greek pedé, Linear B PE), 
PhD 1 (striding man), 
PhD 22 (cuttlefish, Greek sépia, Linear B SA), 
PhD 27 ( hide, talent?).

PH 13 has a fish (Phaistos Disc sign 35), which is not found in the northern 

picto-syllabary or its descendant, Linear A. 

Thus the Phaistos script has its own set of signs, but some of them are shared 

with the Knossos  syllabary.

 The 45 characters on the Phaistos Disc (after Arthur Evans)

If this is a discovery I have made, it will still not help us read the Phaistos Disc! 
Or perhaps it will. If enough signs are common to both systems, and we substitute 

the known values from Linear B, then we are on our way with a flying start.

I could argue for at least 20 correspondences out of 45 (the number of separate 

signs on the Disc), and I will do that in another article. This was the approach of 

StevenFischer in his attempt at decipherment.

But the fact remains that the Phaistos script is represented on other documents from 

Phaistos, and  so the forgery hypothesis is unnecessary. 

We have other evidence to draw on. The comb sign (PD21 on the table above) was 

found on a lump of clay in the Phaistos palace (document HM 992). 

And the Arkalokhori Ax has 15 characters, some of them duplicates, with apparent 

connections to the Phaistos Disk set of signs, and/or to the Knossos inventory.

With regard to the general question of the scripts, languages, and ethnic groups 

of Crete in the Bronze Age, I would tentatively respond to  genetic evidence 
offered by Tristan Carter et al:

    Differential Y-chromosome Anatolian influences on the Greek and Cretan Neolithic’     Annals of Human Genetics 72(2) (2008): 1-10 (205-214).

They posit newcomers from Syria-Palestine and East Aegean/NW Anatolia.

This suggests Semitic-speaking people (let's call them Semites!), and Trojans or Etruscans (!), or even Hellenes. I am struck by the possibility that Greek words
fit with the syllabograms (two examples are given above: pedé, sépia).

 I surmise that the Semites went south to Phaistos (and Hagia Triada), where the accountancy documents use the term KU-RO for 'total', possibly Semitic kull (Cyrus Gordon). There are Semitic words and names on the Linear A tablets from the south (example: TINITA could be the West Semitic goddess).

Knossos, on the northern part of the island, would have been the home of the other  group, from the far north-east of the Aegean. They devised the picto-syllabic script that became Linear A, and then Linear B (used by Mycenean Greeks).

How the very ancient Phaistos Disc, with its picto-phonetic text, fits into this picture is a puzzle, but it might be Semitic rather than Anatolian or Hellenic.

It has a script that was inspired by the West Semitic logo-syllabary (23rd C BCE),
I presume, but it is not the same as the similar picto-phonetic syllabary found in the north of Crete (the ancestral script of Linear A and B, and of the Cyprus syllabary).

My hypothesis looks untidy, but I am arguing for two scripts in Bronze-Age Crete, invented by the two groups of settlers. The model they both used was not the Egyptian hieroglyphic consonantal script (no vowels represented, as in the original alphabet) but the acrophonic syllabary of Byblos (vowels built into the characters, based on the initial syllable of the word that goes with the picture).

For the moment, in the light of the new genetic evidence I am thinking once again that a Semitic approach should be taken to some, most, or all of the religious texts written in Linear A script on cultic objects. Cyrus Gordon and Jan Best have published studies on this possibility.

An East Semitic as well as a West Semitic test should be applied (Cyrus Gordon wavered between both), since Akkadian (Babylonian) was the international language in those times.

For an examination of the Phaistos script see Phaistos Syllabary.