KAPTAR (CRETE) REVISITED

 In the past, over many years, I have thought about the languages and writing systems of Crete and Cyprus (all the scripts belonged to a family, but there was a variety of tongues), and my musings have ended up as essays and tables on my websites (Cryptcracker and Collesseum). This one will be something like "Ancient Kaptar (Crete) revisited". The main reason for this return visit is that I have discovered, at long last, a mention of Kaptar (alias Keftiu and Kaphtor) in a Linear A inscription.

The name KAPTAR
Kaptar was a name applied to Crete in the Bronze Age; it was Kaphtor in the Bible (Kaphtorim were from Kaphtor, Deuteronomy 2:23; Philistines came from Kaphtor, Amos 9:7; ditto, Jeremiah 47:4);
Kptr in Ugaritic texts; and Keftiu in Egypt.
Kaptar is attested in the 18th Century BCE in a document of Zimri-Lim in the palace of Mari (on the Euphrates River): a measure of tin (in minas) "to the Kaptarian (a-na kap-ta-ra-i-im)", and also "to the interpreter (targaman, dragoman) of the chief merchant of the Kaptarians in Ugarit" (Davis, 182). Notice the need for an interpreter for the merchants of Kaptar in the West Semitic (Amorian, Amorite) kingdoms of Mari and Ugarit. So the Kaptarians might be Anatolian or Grecian (Danaian), according to the choices I see for the ethnic types in Bronze Age Crete, but others are possible.

 I have now turned my gaze towards the Keftiu incantation in the London Medical Papyrus (14th Century BCE); firstly because I wanted to look at the subject again; and secondly because I had I have experienced difficulties: getting copies of the incantations,

Resources from my own vast library (every room in the house has books, and the spacious garage has 15 bookcases, and an electric bike, but no car):
   Richard C. Steiner, Northwest Semitic incantations in an Egyptian medical papyrus of the fourteenth century B.C.E., Journal of Near Eastern Studies 51. 3 (1992) 191-200.
   Brent Davis,  Minoan stone vessels with Linear A inscriptions (2014) 182-189 (ancient sources of information on Minoan language).
  
The Keftiu incantation is embedded in a set of Northwest Semitic magical spells transcribed into Egyptian hieratic syllabic script ("group writing"), in the section numbered 27 to 33; modern scholarship has discovered their Semiticness.

No 32 is said to be in the language of Keftiu. One implication of this statement might be that even though Spell 32 is embedded in a series of Semitic utterances it is in a different language. On the other hand, it might mean that this spell is in the Cretan Semitic dialect. An assumption is sometimes made that the next spell in the series (33) is also Keftian, and it is clearly Semitic; but the scribe has not told us this, and so we should not assume it.
 
Richard Steiner has had extensive experience in reading Semitic texts written in Egyptian scripts, and he gives alphabetic transcriptions of these incantation texts, but passes over No 32, on the assumption that it would be non-Semitic (196).

As a prelude to our examination of No 32, we should perhaps look at some examples from the collection.
The first three (27-29) are fragmentary, but No 30 ("incantation against the fnt [snake]", a kind of worm?) is clear enough;  but it seems to have at least one error (a b omitted in the second  sbkn); Steiner's interpretation is:
   sbkn 'mr s(b)kn (twice) 'mrnu hrsn
   Leave us, I say, Leave us. We have said our incantation.
The verb sbk is taken as cognate with Aramaic ShBQ, as in the cry from the cross, "My God, why hast thou forsaken me? (sabakhthani in Greek transcription, Mark 15:34).  However, if we refrain from emending the skn, we might invoke ShKN, and hence "Submit" or "Settle" (take up your abode elsewhere); but the determinative "twice" demands that we repeat it as sbkn, "Leave us" (Begone from us). Further, hrsn needs to be modified metathetically to give us LHSh, "whispering", used in the Bible for snake-charming (Is 3:3, Jer 8:17, Qo/Eccl 10:11). As always, my epigraphic principle applies: Only the writer of the words knew their intended meaning, and in this case the Egyptian scribe may have had no idea what they meant; I also find myself groping about in the dark.
  
No 33 is against smun (disease), Akkadian samânu. Steiner interprets this portion of it:
   ... yd (walking legs) h.mktu (seated person) rpy (deity) ...
   ... let the strangulation demon(s) go out, my Healer ...

Brent  Davis (Fig. 110) provides a beautiful hieroglyphic transcription of Spell 32, but only an English translation of the introductory statement
"Spell for the Asiatic illness in the language of the Keftiu".
I would like to know whether "the" is with Keftiu in the Egyptian text; Davis (n. 1048) has it also as 'the "language of Keftiu"'. In another 14th C. inscription (mortuary temple of Amenhotep III) Crete is named k-f-ti-u, with the hill-country determinative for foreign land, although mainland Greece.is ta-na-yu without a determinative, for which Davis (182) proposes Danaoi.

Following Brent Davis (186) I would transcribe No 32 thus (V = vowel):
sa an ta ka pV pi wa ya 'a ya mV Vn ta r  ku ka ra

The term "Asiatic" in the introduction to the spell means Semitic, and looking at the text Semitically, kukara resembles kikkar (disc-shaped "talent", or round loaf of bread, kakkaru in Akkadian), and santaka conjures up "your (-ka) sleep", or "your hatred" (used for the supposed animosity of Yahweh towards his people Israel, Deuteronomy 1:27), or "your teeth"; but in each of my suggestions the first vowel is different from the Egyptian, though samânu is written s-mu-n in No 33, I notice.
   Next, p piwaya could be "in my mouth", and this invites "your teeth" and the "bread" to form a picture; -ntar might imply the root nt.r "guard, keep", or ntr "leap" or 'tear apart". Does the patient have difficulty in making his food stay in his stomach?
   Finally, 'ayam, and a word aya  appears in Linear A as possibly "indeed", or it is h.ayyam "alive" or "life" (Lekhayim! To Life!), and the problem is staying alive in defiance of this sickness.
(Maybe it will be clearer to me tomorrow morning, but a Semitic text seems possible here.)

Louise Hitchcock expressed the thought that we might expect a bit of Greek at this stage of Cretan history, with Akhaians (Mykenians) in control.

Some scholars would like it to be Anatolic, and I am ever on the lookout for something in an indigenous language of Crete; and so the Anatolian deities Sandas and Kubaba have been proposed for the opening sequence (reported in Davis n. 1052); this seems likely. Shanta is an Anatolian god in plague spells.

This interpretation of No 32 has been shared with me:
sa an ta ka pV pi wa ya 'a ya mV Vn ta r  ku ka ra
"Shanta, Kupapa come! Perform the mantillya anointing ritual"
The sequence sa-ta occurs on Hagia Triada tablet 117a.7;
and ku-pa-pa on HT 88.4; but there may not be any connection.

Brent Davis observes that No 32 has 9 of the 12 consonants in the Linear A inventory (q z d absent), and none of the "distinctively Afroasiatic consonants" (Davis, 186), as compared with No 33 (h.) and No 30 (h); this would appear to exclude Semitic, which would struggle to fit its more than two dozen consonants into a system that apparently catered only for a dozen.

However, as I have attempted to demonstrate heretofore in this forum, I am certain that most of the religious inscriptions written in Linear A (the stylized Knossos script) are West Semitic, and I am now about to add another one to my list, one which I had hoped was Anatolic or Hellenic, but is arguably Semitic, and apparently includes the name Kaptar.

Do you know the one I mean?

Knossos Zf 13 Gold Ring

A RE NE SI DI SO PI KE PA YA TA RI
I TE RI ME A YA U

If this is a Semitic inscription, we need to remind ourselves that more than two dozen consonants have to be accommodated in the Linear A inventory with one dozen consonants.
   Thus, R syllabograms cover R and L,  while S serves for a range of sibilant sounds (S S. Sh Th), and the gutturals have to be ignored in transcription; P includes B, K embraces G, and so on. Here am I trying to prove that most Linear A inscriptions are West Semitic,  and there are so many variables that my readings look illusory,  like confidence tricks. The words are not separated by spaces or marks, but here is an attempt to find some, and make a coherent statement out of them.
ARE  `al (The  `ayin guttural is ignored, the L is represented by R, and the final -e should be treated as a "dead" vowel) "upon, about, by"
NESI (Hebrew nasi') "prince, leader, ruler"
DI (WS d) "of"
SOPI (Hbr. s.aba') "host, army"
KEPAYATARI  (apparently lurking here is one of the names of Crete, that is, Kaptara, Egyptian Keftiu, Hebrew Kaphtor, named in the Bible as the previous home of the Philistians, and presumably also of the Kaptorians and Keretians; the YA in the middle is disconcerting; if it were misplaced from the end of the word it would produce an adjective, Kaptarian)

"By order of the leader of the army of Kaptar"

For the rest, ITE could be 'et "with" or "the". MEA might be "100".  RIME, perhaps from the root rwm, "be high". The final letter is probably U, though it may be AB34, which I transcribe as KRA, and here perhaps standing for QRA, the root  qr' "call, summon, decree". I would like to get something like "supreme command" out of all this. YAKRA
YAU could be a transcription of YAHU, a variant of YAHWEH, the name of the God of Israel. Life is full of surprises causing astonishment.
See now the additions made to this study of the gold ring, at the end of
http://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/2016/09/semitic-crete.html

The Anatolic language of Crete has been detected in personal names, and in inscriptions that I can not decipher (!). Who is working on them? Call up the hittitologists!

Shalom/ Shelama/ Salaam

Brian Edric Colless PhD ThD