Writing of unknown origin

It seems that there are still writing systems to discover and decipher out there!

Recently I spotted out two really weird writings at a museum in Greece. Initially I believed there was some kind of Carian writing, since Carian inscriptions are expected to be found all around Greece. I returned home and try to figure out what was written, when I discovered the alphabet used was a rather mutated version of Carian. Then I noticed that there were extra characters that should not be present in Carian texts.




I send the images to Proff. Ignacio Adiego, the person who finalized the decipherment of Carian that Proff. D. Ray started in 1982. He was clear that the alphabet is obviously a Greek/Phoenician derived alphabet, looking "very Carian". However, there are many characters that are not present in Carian. As a whole the alphabet is not Greek, Phoenician, Lydian, Phrygian, Carian, Etruscan nor Lycian.



The museum reports that the fragments were found amongst objects related to the Persian invasion of Greece and that they belong to some enslaved nation of the Persian empire. Obviously, the figure on both fragments look like a Persian officer or leader. Most probably, whatever nation wrote this was not far from the eastern Mediterranean coast.

There are recognisable characters that are a blend of alphabetic and linear symbols. I haven't had yet a good look on it, but I believe any reading would result something impossible to classify (e.g IE or Semitic).

So, have you ever seen anything similar to this before? Does it possibly ring any bell?

PS: Make a wild guess why I put a watermarked text on the images...

Thank you Panther for the good words!
Lets hope we're gonna find more writings like this in the future. Maybe it is an early attempt of writing of some of the already known people of the West Asia. For example Sidetic (anatolian IE), Mysian (mixed anatolian - palaeobalkanic ?) and Pisidian (Anatolian IE) are languages we know existed but they left almost no inscriptions except some counted in one hand, written in Greek characters. However, it might also be a minority population within the Persian empire that adopted alphabetic writing and that we know nothing about. The language could be anything from IE, Semitic, Caucasian to a language isolate.


Edited by Flipper - 23 Sep 2011 at 07:33

Zagros wrote: The first image looks like graffiti and and the only thing that could be related to the Persians about it is the hat on the figure which is the Medean standard.  If it is not graffiti then it must be a lot older than 25 hundred years; I am sure official scribes and masons could achieve a much better standard in quality by then.

Yes the hat is revealing in this case. Since you mentioned Medean standard, I was thinking it could also be a Cimmerian leftover? I am pretty sure Cimmerians were not annihilated from the region completely. Considering their hostile relations to the other people (Lydians, Phrygians and Greeks) they could be one of the loyal subjects of the empire.

On the dating: Less literate societies did not achieve good results in writing. Even many Greek potteries from the same era are not that beautiful. The thrower might not have been that stylish or even literate to write down his clients request. In the same museum I saw pots from northern Greece dated to the 6th century BC. A nice expensive looking amphora had names written on it with perfectly round letters. Cheap pottery for everyday usage (e.g water urns) had letters drawn in a clumsy way, either as graffiti either as painted writing. Interesting is that in one of them the owner was probably not literate and just draw some letters on it Α Β Γ Δ Ε Ι.


Edited by Flipper - 21 Sep 2011 at 01:36

So do you think this could be an previously unknown Medean alphabetic writing?

Flipper wrote: So do you think this could be an previously unknown Medean alphabetic writing?

It can be. I haven't seen any Median alphabet up to now.

I can't tell you how relieved I am.