Monday, February 28, 2011

Luvian (Luwian viz. Hieroglyphic Hittite) Syllabograms (also some Logograms) Added to Minoan Aegean Sign Concordance (MinAegCon)

I have now added 
the Luvian (also spelled Luwian, formerly called Hieroglyphic Hittite) syllabograms (plus a few logograms)
to the syllabic grid of the Minoan Aegean Sign Concordance (MinAegCon)
which I recently published in a series of postings for Mycenaean Greek Linear B Script, the Cypriot Syllabary, the Phaistos Disk, two Old Elamite Scripts, the Inscription on the Axe of Arkalochori, and comparable signs in Sumerian pictographs & Egyptian hieroglyphs.

The revised syllabic grid will be forthcoming in the coming days, although I will try to reduce the number of posts by making scans of entire consonants and their respective vowels per posting.

Luvian is a convincing additional piece of evidence for the general correctness of the MinAegCon syllabic grid.

For a nice Hieroglyphic Luvian inscription see e.g. Mnamon.

Below is an image from Crystal Links:




Hieroglyphic Luvian Stele from Carchemish
(Ashmolean Museum, Oxford)

Luvian is said to be an Indo-European language and the ease with which many of its syllabic signs can be included in the MinAegCon syllabic grid adds substantial linguistic power to the overall analysis which led to the creation of that grid in the first place, showing that all of these different syllabic sign systems had a common origin and that many of the signs in the various systems not only had common syllabic values to begin with, but also retained these or similar syllabic values in later evolvement, either in their original or related sign forms.

The symbols and values that I use for Luvian come from several sources and not all of them agree either in the depiction of the symbols nor in the syllabic values assigned, but there is general agreement for most signs.

By my analysis, current syllabic values for Luvian contain possibly more errors than those already acknowledged by the scholars for previous phases of Luvian scholarship, but it is not my intent here to discuss my theories about that. I can only suggest to scholars of Luvian and Hittite that they take a close look at the MinAegCon grid for assistance and especially to Sumerian signs and syllabic values for general guidance.

The sources for the Luvian glyphs and the values assigned to them (or other related information) are:

1) Gunter Anders, the LUHWITTA and LUHWITTB ttf fonts, Luwisch-Hethitische Hieroglyphen Fonts für Macintosh und Windows, together with a list of the fonts and accompanying text, all found at the website of Hethitologie Portal Mainz (The Hittite Portal Mainz). These are the fonts used for the most part to represent Luvian glyphs on the syllabic grid.

2) The syllabic grid for Hieroglyphic Hittite found at page 238 of Harald Haarmann, Universalgeschichte der Schrift, Campus Verlag, Frankfurt/New York, 2nd ed. 1991, Sonderausgabe 1998 Parkland Verlag, Köln (Cologne).

3) Luwian Hieroglyphics at http://indoeuro.bizland.com/project/script/luwia2.html, apparently from the Nostratic website at Nostratic.ru

4) Ancient Scripts : Luwian from ancientscripts.com, by Lawrence Lo

5) Generally, The Luwians, H. Craig Melchert (Paul Debreczeny Distinguished Professor of Linguistics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Brill, Leiden/Boston, 2003, and specifically, H. Craig Melchert, Cuneiform Luvian Lexicon, at LUVLEX.pdf, Lexica Anatolica, Volume 2, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1993.

6) John David Hawkins (author) and Halet Cambel (editor), Corpus of Hieroglyphic Luwian Inscriptions: Inscriptions of the Iron Age, Volume 1 (Untersuchungen zur Indogermanischen Sprach- und Kulturwissenschaft), Berlin & New York, Walter de Gruyter, 1999.

7) Halet Cambel (Author), Corpus of Hieroglyphic Luwian Inscriptions: Karatepe-Aslantas, Volume 2 (Untersuchungen zur Indogermanischen Sprach- und Kulturwissenschaft),  Berlin & New York, Walter de Gruyter, 1999.

8) Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI), UCLA, Los Angeles, California, USA, Objects in the Collections of the Department of Antiquities, Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, University of Oxford, Oxford, England, UK.