ErN 81, entry Dec 2008, rev. Oct 2010,
update Aug 2015, items 2 & 3 , June 2018
update Nestor's Cup Sept. 2022
Early literacy update Nestor's Cup Sept. 2022
There are 3 items on this
page:#1 (directly below)- #2. Kinds of
Writing
#3. the Alphabet in
Italy by R. Carpenter
1. Of Monkey-Men
and Nestor's Cup
Some time ago, M., a dear friend and art historian, wrote me:
"You probably know that the first instance of Greek language on an object was found in the Greek ruins in Ischia."
I didn't. Dear M. was
giving me way too much credit, but first things first. The
Greek name given to the island we now call Ischia was Pithecusa. That's pith, as in pithecoid and pithecanthropous—ape.
Island of the monkeys. Why would the Greeks settle on an
island full of monkeys, you ask? Good question. (And this
will be on the
midterm exam.)The Greeks settled on Ischia because everyone knows they just love islands, and this one had a nice, nostalgic Olympus-looking mountain on it (which turned out to be a volcano!) (oops...not so...see Pithecusa). Mainly, however, they wanted an island as a convenient place to trade with the Etruscans, the mainland power in the Italy of 700 b.c. (the presumptive date of the settling of Pithecusa) without encroaching on the mainland, itself. The area was not unknown to the Greeks. Many centuries earlier, Mycenaean Greeks had visited the same bay. (See "Uncovering the Bronze Age on Procida".)
There were, however, no monkeys. The pith- comes in because Greek mythology spoke of a race of thieving and mischievous little forest creatures called Cercopes that Zeus turned into monkeys and banished to various volcanic areas, one of which was our island out here in the bay. (I'm hazy on that. Cercopes means "-with a tail" in Greek and there is, indeed, a genus of monkey called cercopithecus; thus, I don't know if these little Greek proto-Leprechauns had tails before or after Zeus turned them into monkeys. Robert Graves in The Greek Myths (1955), section 136.c-d has "...[some say that Zeus] punished their fraudulence by changing them into apes with long yellow hair, and sending them to the Italian islands named Pithecusae." ["Islands" —plural—because the small island of Procida, next to Ischia, was included.] So, apparently, the settlers did not name the island when they settled. It was already Pithechusa and they had set out from Greece—Euboea, the second largest of the Greek islands—where things must have been dull, indeed, to sail to that volcanic island in Italy where Zeus had sent all the ape-men.
Nestor's cup and early Greek writing.
The Archaeological Museum of Pithecusa, open since 1999, is housed in the 18th-century Villa Arbusto in Lacco Ameno on Ischia. The jewel of the collection is "Nestor's cup" (top photo). That expression can be (1) a reference to Homer's Iliad and the golden cup belonging to Nestor, the wise, old advice-giver and king of Pylos; (2) a cup discovered at Mycenae by Heinrich Schliemann (the excavator of Troy) that he claimed was the Nestor's Cup of the Iliad; or (3) the cup on display at the museum on Ischia. The Pithecusa cup bears an inscription in an early Euboean form of the Greek alphabet. This forerunner of our modern alphabet was in existence in Greece by about 800 b.c., and there are enough samples from 700- 600 b.c. to show that writing was widespread enough in the Aegean by then to serve as a practical means of communication, for commerce and even early literature.
The cup in the museum was discovered in 1954 in a Greek tomb on Ischia and has been reliably dated to 750-700 b.c., making it at least one of (if not the) oldest sample of Greek writing found inscribed on an object. (The other candidate is the so-called "Diplyon inscription" a short text on an ancient Greek pottery vessel, found in 1871 at the ancient Dipylon Cemetery in Athens.) The cup on Ischia is more interesting since it actually makes the literary reference to Nestor's Cup. Translating the inscription on the cup, however, is many daunting steps up from "The pen of my duck is on the table" of your high school Italian class. This is Homeric Greek written in the oldest alphabet we have. Forms of letters have changed and the inscription, itself, is fragmented and has to be reconstructed. People who do this have lots of unfragmented letters after their names, and their discussions are replete with references to the Indo-European ablative and long vowel subjunctive and sentences such as "In Vedic Sanskrit, as in Homeric Greek (and contemporary Russian), the verb 'to drink' may take either an accusative or a partitive genitive of the liquid drunk, reflecting an inherited semantic opposition."* At least one plausible reading of the inscription, written in three lines, right-to-left, is:
"This is Nestor's cup, good to drink from. Whoever empties it will be seized by desire for Aphrodite, crowned with beauty."
It is generally agreed upon that the inscription was meant to be humorous —a piece of clay claiming to be the fabled golden cup, indeed! (Ho-ho. Slap my thigh and call me Ajax.) Other than that, the jury is out and probably never coming back. It may be a classical reference to the Iliad (given the ample wiggle room on the presumptive date of the writing of that classic); on the other hand, whoever inscribed the cup may have known about Nestor from other sources (after all, Homer had to get it from somewhere). It is also slightly racy —"seized by desire"— so maybe the inscription was the result of a "drinking game", slightly tipsy potters in ancient Greece each inscribing a line. The Pithecusa cup was not manufactured on Ischia; it was made in Greece and brought to Italy by settlers.
notes:
*(above) from "Observations on the 'Nestor's Cup' Inscription" by Calvert Watkins, in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Vol. 80 (1976), pp. 25-40.
added Sept. 2022 - The cup now in the museum on Ischia was brought there from Greece, probably by some sailors just having a good time. However, they would have been well familiar with the story of Nestor and the cup. The story was very popular and, indeed, the Greek National Archaeological Museum in Athens has a picture of it (image, right), meaning "it" must have looked like the gold goblet discovered in 1876 by Heinrich Schliemann (the man who found ancient Troy). The goblet is 14.5 cm high and 14.5 cm across; it weighs 295.8 grams. It has a stem, a cup–shaped body, and two handles. Each handle is decorated with a golden bird, which Schliemann observed was reminiscent of the cup of Nestor described in the Iliad. In Greek mythology Nestor of Gerenia was a legendary king of Pylos. He is a prominent secondary character in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, where he appears as an elderly warrior who frequently offers long-winded advice to the other characters. Nestor's Cup is described in Book 11 of the Iliad, where Machaon, son of Asclepius, is injured by Paris, and taken back to the Greek camp by Nestor; a healing drink is prepared for him in the cup. The cup is thus described:
There was also a cup of rare workmanship which the old man had brought with him from home, studded with bosses of gold; it had four handles, on each of which there were two golden doves feeding, and it had two feet to stand on. Any one else would hardly have been able to lift it from the table when it was full, but Nestor could do so quite easily.Along with its description in the Iliad, the cup of Nestor may have appeared elsewhere in the so-called Epic Cycle,
—Translated by Samuel Butler, 1898
a pre-existing body of oral poetry which dealt with Homeric and non-Homerc explots having to do with the Troajan Was, including Nestor's exploits in his youth
2. (Nestor's Cup, cont.)
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added June 3, 2018 -
amended Aug 23, 2023
Kinds of Writing
|
The
terms "early Greek writing", "Greek language on an
object", "early forms of the Greek alphabet" and
"earliest form of Greek writing" require
clarification. Those phrases don't necessarily
mean the same thing. An alphabet, for example, is
a writing system where a symbol represents a
single phoneme (a meaningful sound), such as the p
in pin or tip. (The p is
"meaningful" because if you change the p to
another letter, you get a different word: tin,
sin, fin, etc.) In that sense, the
modern Greek alphabet shows up around 700 BC. It
developed originally from the Phoenician alphabet
(shown, right) the oldest verified alphabet
and the most influential one in Europe, spread by
this remarkable seafaring merchant culture
throughout the Mediterranean. The Greek, Roman,
and Cyrillic (Russian) all developed from
Phoenician (others did not: Arabic and Hebrew, for
example.)
The
earliest inscriptions in the Phoenician alphabet
appear around 1050 BC. But that date is not really
so old if you think that the ancient Chinese and
Sumerians were writing in some fashion as long ago
as 3000 BC. That's why we differentiate between
"early alphabet" and "early form of writing". All
those alphabets come from earlier forms of writing
that are conceptually different from an alphabet;
that is, they are some kind of "picture" writing.
Sumerian cuneiform wedge writing (shown, right)
from around 3000 BC was an example. Those systems
can be quite complicated, as were Egyptian
hieroglyphics, and it does not follow that they must
change and develop into alphabets. Chinese has
not changed (although it has often simplified the
characters). But they can change and
historically have usually done so. The Phoenician
alphabets descends from Egyptian hieroglyphics.
There
was yet another form of writing, a syllabary, used
by the Minoan civilization first on the island of
Crete around 2000 BC and then in Greece, itself,
after the Minoan culture was destroyed (according
to one theory) by the eruption of Santorini island
(called Thira in modern Greek, the Italian name
Santorini --from St. Irene-- was tacked on by the
Venetians) 200 km/120 mi SE of the Greek mainland
around 1700 BC and everyone picked up and moved to
the Greek islands and then the mainland further
north and became Mycenean Greeks. There were
really two writing systems. One was called Linear
A and the other Linear B. The second one, Linear B
(shown, right), has been partially deciphered. It
is a syllabary; that is, a symbol represents one
syllable, like writing the word hello with
two symbols. Linear B consisted of 87 signs, each
representing one syllable, and the Mycenaeans
appear to have used Linear B to record economic
matters of interest to the elite rulers but of
little interest to their subjects. There doesn't
appear to have been poetry or epic literature, at
least that we know of. That is a bit of a mystery.
Ancient civilizations could indeed produce
literature if they wanted, no matter what system
they used. There is nothing inferior about the
wedge-shaped Akkadian cuneiform writing used to
write the Epic of Gilgamesh in 2500 BC. The
Myceneans just didn't do it (again, that we know
of). Linear B also contains ideograms, pictures
with self-evident meaning. (A picture of a dog
with an X over it for "no dogs allowed" is such a
logogram in the modern world.) The other system,
Linear A, has still not been deciphered, so we
don't know what it is. An alphabet? - unlikely;
syllabary? - maybe, but it's not even certain if
it represents the same language as Linear B. Why
would they have two? It's also possible that
Linear A is related to the older hieroglyphic
system used by the ancient Egyptians.
No
one is certain of the age of the Palermo
Stone, but most researchers believe it was
written no later than the last entry, about
the Fifth Dynasty, which ended around 2300
BCE. Despite this lack of information, it
has been a vital source for the history of
Egypt’s Old Kingdom and is the only record
of several royal family members.
The Phaistos Disc
(also spelled Disk) is a disk of fired clay
from the Minoan palace of Phaistos on the
island of Crete, possibly dating to the middle
or late Minoan Bronze Age (second millennium
BC). The disk is about 15 cm (5.9 in) in
diameter and covered on both sides with a
spiral of stamped symbols. Its purpose and
place of manufacture remain disputed. It is
now on display at the archaeological museum of
Heraklion on Crete.
The disc
was discovered in 1908 by the Italian
archaeologist Luigi Pernier in the Minoan
palace-site of Phaistos, and features 242
tokens (little boxes), comprising 45 distinct
signs, which were apparently made by pressing
hieroglyphic "seals" into a disc of soft clay,
in a clockwise sequence spiralling from the
rim toward the center of the disk. Many of
these 45 signs represent objects easy to
identify, such as plants. Even I can the
spot the same sign used 4 times. ( A man's
head. If you're a man with a "Mohawk"
hair-cut, it looks like you! Note: If the scribe
imprinted that sign with a reusable "seal"
and saved and reused the seal later, that
amounts to the use of "moveable type",
"invented" by Gutenberg a few thousand years
later! ) The inscription is to be
read from the outside in toward the center.
Most linguists assume it's a syllabary, based
on the proportion of 45 symbols in a text of
241 tokens typical for that type of script;
some assume a syllabary with interspersed
logographic symbols, a property of every known
syllabary of the Ancient Near East (Linear B
as well as cuneiform and hieroglyphic
writing). Most scholars say the Phaistos
Disc disc was made on Crete. A few other
similar items with similar markings, such as
the Arkalochori Axe, have also been found on
Crete.Nestor's Cup 3. added June 12, 2018
THE ALPHABET IN ITALY
To judge from the contents of the Etruscan tombs, it was not until the seventh century B.C. that Etruria became an open market for Greek commerce. The latest student of the material, Edith Hall Dohan, in her extremely competent and valuable study of Italic Tomb-Groups in the University Museum, came to the conclusion that it was during the period 680-650 B.C. that "foreign influence penetrated deeply into Central Italy." This should be the period to which Herodotus was referring when he asserted that the Phocaeans of Asia Minor
...were the first among the Greeks to undertake long voyages; and it was they who disclosed Adria and Etruria and Spain and Tartessos, traveling not in merchant-tubs but in fifty-oared ships.
For nearly a century and a half thereafter, Greek-Etruscan trade flourished without recorded interruption or hostility. Then, in 535 B.C., after many of the Phocaeans had abandoned their Asia Minor home through fear of their new Median overlord and migrated to their twenty-year-old colony of Alalia in Corsica, the Greek infiltration close to the Elba mines and the passage between the Tyrrhenian and Ligurian Sea, aggravated by hybris toward the natives, brought an Etruscan-Carthaginian alliance against them with a navy which the Alalians were able to defeat only at cost of their own men-of-war. The Etruscans conveyed their Greek captives from this engagement to their port-of Agylla below Caere and there stoned them to death; while the doubtfully victorious Phocaeans, correctly appraising the situation, withdrew from Corsicato southern Italy with their families and all the possessions which they could load on their few remaining ships, and founded Velia. Thus ended the Phocaean chapter in the Greek exploitation of the West.
Etruscan ill-will, once kindled against the Greeks, spread to Cumae outside the Gulf of Naples, now the northernmost outpost of Greek trade in the Tyrrhenian Sea. In 524 the Etruscans of Capua, taking with them Dauni and Aurunci tribesmen, made an unsuccessful assault on Cumae, which in turn proceeded to ally itself with the Latin League to defeat the Etruscans at Aricia and break their hold on Rome. Previously, Cumaean contacts had been more with the interior of Campania and extended across to eastern Italy on the Adriatic. It is not until these events of the last quarter of the sixth century that we are entitled to postulate any very direct or very intimate cultural relations between Greeks and Latins.
But Greek trade with Etruria survived these vicissitudes. Continued importation of Attic ware is attested by the contents of the Etruscan tombs; and the strong formative influence of Attic art on Etruscan wall-painting proves how close the contact must have been. The final cessation of relations came with the Persian War and its concomitant Punic-Etruscan alliance against the Greek towns of Sicily, culminating in the crucial naval battle off Cumae in 474 B.C. Thereafter, to its own cultural detriment, the failing Etruscan empire looked north and sought to compensate itself beyond the Apennines, while on the south it wholly abandoned Greece in favor of Carthage which by now completely controlled the Spanish and Atlantic trade. Commercial relations between Etruria and Greece had thus lasted almost precisely two centuries, from ca. 680 to 474 B.C. Early in that span of years the Etruscans had learned the Greek alphabetic signs. Attic influence had come too late to count in this regard. The Phocaeans had arrived early enough; but it was not they who taught the Etruscans their letters. At the start, it was Corinthian pottery which bulked largest in the Etruscan importation of Greek wares (...) Etruscan imitations of Protocorinthian and especially Corinthian are innumerable. Though Greek Protocorinthian almost never carried any written legend, imported Corinthian was copiously adorned with writing. And it is precisely at the turn from Protocorinthian to Corinthian, around the middle of the seventh century, that Etruscan familiarity with alphabetic writing is first attested by the tomb-finds.
[ed. note on the Phocaens:
Phocaea is modern-day Foça on the western coast of Turkey. In ancient times it was an Ionian Greek city. Greek historian Herodotus says the Phocaeans were the first Greeks to make long sea-voyages They founded the modern-day cities of Marseille, in France, Empúries, in Catalonia, and Velia, in Italy. - jm]
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