The Ethnicity of the Sea Peoples - RePub - Erasmus Universiteit ...

dress of Aphrodite), to (pre-)Greek Huttnia “Tetrapolis”,
ndus “entrails”, opui “to take as wife”, prutanis “ruler”,
and turannos “tyrant”, respectively. 442 On the basis of this
evidence, then, it may safely be concluded that the Tyrrhenian
or Pelasgian ancestors of the later Etruscans, although
basically speaking a Luwian vernacular at least since the
time of their move to western Anatolia, 443 had a long history
of contact with (pre-)Greek, which can only be accounted
for if the literary tradition about the original
habitat of the Tyrrheno-Pelasgians in Attica is historically
valid. 444
What remains to be discussed is the language of the
Pelasgians whom we have seen reason to identify as (a
component of) the Late Bronze Age population of the Mesara
plain in Crete. Now, there are three types of script recorded
for Crete: hieroglyphic, Linear A, and Linear B. Of
these, Linear B is either introduced from the Greek
mainland or developed at Knossos after the period of the
desastrous Santorini-eruption at the end of Late Minoan IB
(c. 1450 BC), which marks the end of the Minoan thalassocracy
and presents the Mycenaean Greeks the opportunity
to take over control of the weakened island. It is found
mainly in the palace of Knossos, but also at Khania. 445
Since its decipherment by the British architect Michael
Ventris in 1952, we know that it is used to write an early
form of the Greek language, the so-called Mycenaean
Greek. 446 Simultaneously with the Linear B archives at
Knossos, which date to the period of Late Minoan II to
Late Minoan IIIA1/2 ( c. 1450-1350 BC), modest Linear A
archives of about 150 tablets in sum are found in Hagia
Triada – the harbor town of the palace of Phaistos in the
Mesara. 447 This latter script is recorded for Phaistos from
the Middle Minoan II period (c. 1800-1700 BC) on-
442 Schachermeyr 1929: 248; van der Meer 1992: 68; see further
appendix II.
443 See section 10 on Etruscan origins above.
444 Note that if the story of the building of the wall on the Athenian
acropolis by the Pelasgians (Herodotos, Histories VI, 137-40)
is correct, their presence in Attica can even be dated archaeologically
to the period of the 15th to 13th century BC, see Broneer
1956: 12-3.
445 Hallager 1992.
446 Ventris & Chadwick 1973.
447 Best 1981b: 37-45; Achterberg, Best, Enzler, Rietveld &
Woudhuizen 2004, section 3. For the Hagia Triada tablets, see
Meijer 1982.
101
wards, 448 but in the course of time spread all over the island
and, in the time of the Minoan thalassocracy, even
beyond to the islands in the Aegean, Ayios Stephanos in
mainland Greece, and Miletos and Troy in western Asia
Minor. 449 As first suggested by Cyrus Gordon, Linear A is
used to write a Semitic language. Thus, Gordon pointed
out that the Linear A equivalent in the Hagia Triada (=
HT) corpus of Linear B to-so “total”, in his reading with
Linear B values ku-ro, corresponds to Hebrew kull “all”.
Furthermore, he convincingly identified pot names, which
appear in direct association with their image on tablet HT
31, with Semitic counterparts. 450 This work was supplemented
by Jan Best, who, amongst others, showed that the
Linear A equivalents in the HT corpus of Linear B a-pudo-si
“delivery” and o-pe-ro “deficit” read, with their
original Linear A values, te-l and ki-l, which forms recall
Akkadian tlû “Einkünfte, Ertrag” and kalû(m) as in
eqla kalû(m) “Pachtabgabe schuldig bleiben”, respectively.
451 In addition to this, he compared the transaction
term pu-k in HT 31 to Akkadian p®u “exchange” and
the element p-t, which is used in association with ku-l
on the back side of tablet HT 122 in a similar way as Linear
B pa with to-so for to-so-pa “grand total”, to Akkadian
ptu “front side”, leading to the interpretation of p-tu-kul
as “total with the front side included”. 452 Definite proof,
however, of the west-Semitic nature of the language of
Linear A came with Best’s unravelling of the libation formula
frequently attested for wash-hand stone-basins from
peak-sanctuaries destroyed at the end of Middle Minoan III
(c. 1600 BC), which presents a full phrase and reads
(y)a-ta-n-t wa/u-ya (y)a-d ®i-te-te (y)a-sa-sa-rama/e
“I have given (Ugaritic ytn/’tn, -t) and (Ugaritic w/u, -
y) my hand (Ugaritic yd/d, -) has made an expiatory
offering (Ugaritic ®t,-t), Oh Assara (Hebrew GN
448 Vandenabeele 1985: 18.
449 Vandenabeele 1985: 18 (Kea, Melos, Thera, Kythera); Niemeier
1996 (Miletos); Godart 1994 and Faure 1996 (Troy).
450 Gordon 1957; Best & Woudhuizen 1989: 1-7.
451 Best 1973: 54-5.
452 Best 2000: 29, note 8. For the identification of the transaction
on HT 31 as an exchange of tens of vessels for silver and hundreds
and thousands of vessels for gold, respectively, see Best & Woudhuizen
1989: 1-7.