Phrygian language
The Phrygian language was the Indo-European language of the Phrygians, spoken in Anatolia, during classical antiquity.
Phrygian ethno-linguistic homogeneity is debatable. Ancient Greek authors used "Phrygian" as an umbrella term to describe a vast ethno-cultural complex located mainly in the central areas of Anatolia rather than a name of a single "tribe" or "people". Plato observed that some Phrygian words resembled Greek ones.
Because of the fragmentary evidence of Phrygian, its exact position within the Indo-European language family is uncertain. Phrygian shares important features mainly with Greek, but also with Armenian and Albanian. Evidence of a Thraco-Armenian separation from Phrygian and other Paleo-Balkan languages at an early stage, Phrygian's classification as a centum language, and the high frequency of phonetic, morphological, and lexical isoglosses shared with Greek, have led to a current consensus which regards Greek as the closest relative of Phrygian.
Discovery and decipherment
Ancient authors like Herodotus and Hesychius have provided us with a few dozen words assumed to be Phrygian, so-called glosses. In modern times the first monument with a Phrygian text, found at Ortaköy, was described in 1752. In 1800 at Yazılıkaya two more inscriptions were discovered. On one of them the word ΜΙΔΑΙ, 'to Midas', could be read, which prompted the idea that they were part of a building, possibly the grave, of the legendary Phrygian king Midas. Later, when Western archeologists, historians and other scholars began to travel through Anatolia to become acquainted with the geographical background of Homer's world and the New Testament, more monuments were discovered. By 1862 sixteen Phrygian inscriptions were known, among them a few Greek-Phrygian bilinguals. This allowed German scholar Andreas David Mordtmann to undertake the first serious attempt to decipher the script, though he overstressed the parallels of Phrygian to Armenian, which led to some false conclusions. After 1880, the Scottish Bible scholar William Mitchell Ramsay discovered many more inscriptions. In the 20th century, the understanding of Phrygian has increased, due to a steady flow of new texts, more reliable transcriptions, and better knowledge of the Indo-European sound change laws. The alphabet is now well-known, though minor revisions of the rarer signs of the alphabet are still possible; one sign was only securely identified in 1969.Classification
Phrygian is a member of the Indo-European linguistic family, but because of the fragmentary evidence, its exact position within that family is uncertain. Phrygian is placed among the Palaeo-Balkan languages, either through areal contact or genetic relationship. Phrygian shares important features mainly with Greek, but also with Armenian and Albanian. Also Ancient Macedonian and Thracian, ancient languages of the Balkans, are often regarded as being closely related to Phrygian, however they are considered problematic sources for comparison due to their scarce attestation.Between the 19th and the first half of the 20th century, Phrygian was mostly considered a satem language, and thus closer to Armenian and Thracian, while today it is commonly considered to be a centum language and thus closer to Greek. The reason that in the past Phrygian had the guise of a satem language was due to two secondary processes that affected it. Namely, Phrygian merged the old labiovelar with the plain velar, and secondly, when in contact with palatal vowels /e/ and /i/, especially in initial position, some consonants became palatalized. Furthermore, Kortlandt presented common sound changes of Thracian and Armenian and their separation from Phrygian and the rest of the palaeo-Balkan languages from an early stage.
Modern consensus views Greek as the closest relative of Phrygian. Furthermore, out of 36 isoglosses collected by Obrador Cursach, Phrygian shared 34 with Greek, with 22 being exclusive between them. The last 50 years of Phrygian scholarship developed a hypothesis that proposes a proto-Graeco-Phrygian stage out of which Greek and Phrygian originated, and if Phrygian was more sufficiently attested, that stage could perhaps be reconstructed.
An alternative theory, suggested by Eric P. Hamp, is that Phrygian was most closely related to Italo-Celtic languages.
Inscriptions
The Phrygian epigraphical material is divided into two distinct subcorpora, Old Phrygian and New Phrygian. These attest different stages of the Phrygian language, are written with different alphabets and upon different materials, and have different geographical distributions.Old Phrygian is attested in 395 inscriptions in Anatolia and beyond. They were written in the Phrygian alphabet between 800 and 330 BCE. The Corpus des inscriptions paléo-phrygiennes and its supplements contain most known Old Phrygian inscriptions, though a few graffiti are not included. The oldest inscriptions—from the mid-8th century BCE—have been found on silver, bronze, and alabaster objects in tumuli at Gordion and Bayındır.
New Phrygian is attested in 117 funerary inscriptions, mostly curses against desecrators added after a Greek epitaph. New Phrygian was written in the Greek alphabet between the 1st and 3rd centuries CE and is restricted to the western part of ancient Phrygia, in central Anatolia. Most New Phrygian inscriptions have been lost, so they are only known through the testimony of the first compilers. New Phrygian inscriptions have been cataloged by William M. Ramsay and by Obrador-Cursach.
Some scholars identify a third division, Middle Phrygian, which is represented by a single inscription from Dokimeion. It is a Phrygian epitaph consisting of six hexametric verses written in eight lines, and dated to the end of the 4th century BCE, following the Macedonian conquest. It is considered the first Phrygian text to be inscribed with the Greek alphabet. Its phraseology has some echoes of an Old Phrygian epitaph from Bithynia, but it anticipates phonetic and spelling features found in New Phrygian. Three graffiti from Gordion, from the 4th to the 2nd centuries BCE, are ambiguous in terms of the alphabet used as well as their linguistic stage, and might also be considered Middle Phrygian.
| Features | Old Phrygian | New Phrygian |
| Number of inscriptions | 395 | 117 |
| Dating | ca. 800–330 BCE | Late 1st–3rd c. CE |
| Alphabet | Phrygian | Greek |
| Word dividers | sometimes | never |
| Writing material | Varied | Stone |
| Contents | Varied | Funerary |
| Area | Across Anatolia | Only central Anatolia |
| Archaeological context | Mainly yes | Never |
| Preserved | Mainly yes | Mainly no |
The last mentions of the language date to the 5th century CE, and it was likely extinct by the 7th century CE.
Alphabet
From ca. 800 till 300 BCE, Phrygians used the Old-Phrygian alphabet of nineteen letters derived from the Phoenician alphabet. This script was usually written from left to right. The signs of this script are:| sign | B | Γ | Δ | E | F | I | K | O | P | T | |||||||||
| variants | 8 | Λ | ,, ?, | ,, | X | Φ,, | |||||||||||||
| transcription | a | b | g | d | e | v | i | k | l | m | n | o | p | r | s | t | u | y | |
| phoneme | /a/, /a:/ | /b/ | /g/ | /d/ | /e/, /e:/ | /w/ | /i/, /i:/ | /k/ | /l/ | /m/ | /n/ | /o/, /o:/ | /p/ | /r/ | /s/ | /t/ | /u/, /u:/ | /j/ | /z/ /zd/? |
About 15 percent of the inscriptions are written from right to left, like Phoenician; in those cases, the signs are drawn mirrored:... etc. instead of BΓ.... A few dozen inscriptions are written in alternating directions.
From ca. 300 BCE, this script was replaced by the Greek alphabet. A single inscription dates from ca. 300 BCE, all other texts are much later, from the 1st till 3rd centuries CE. The Greek letters Θ, Ξ, Φ, Χ, and Ψ were rarely used—mainly for Greek names and loanwords.
Phonology
It has long been claimed that Phrygian exhibits a sound change of stop consonants, similar to Grimm's Law in Germanic and, more to the point, sound laws found in Proto-Armenian; i.e., loss of aspiration in PIE aspirates, devoicing of PIE voiced stops and aspiration of voiceless stops. This hypothesis was rejected by Lejeune and Brixhe but revived by Lubotsky and Woodhouse, who argue that there is evidence of a partial shift of obstruent series; i.e., loss of aspiration in PIE aspirates and devoicing of PIE voiced stops.The affricates ts and dz may have developed from velars before front vowels.
Grammar
What can be recovered of the grammatical structure of Phrygian was typically Indo-European. Declensions and conjugations are strikingly similar to ancient Greek.Nouns
Phrygian nouns belong to three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter. Forms are singular or plural; dual forms are not known. Four cases are known: nominative, accusative, genitive, and dative.Substantives
Nouns belong to three stem groups: o-stems, a-stems, and consonant stems ; the latter group also includes i- and u-stems. In addition there is a group of personal names with an e-stem.The paradigm for nouns is as follows :
Examples:
- a-stem: μανκα : Nom. μανκα ; Acc. μανκαν ; Dat. μανκαι , μανκα, μανκης, μανκε.
- o-stem: devos : Nom. devos; Acc. devun; Pl. Dat. δεως , διως, δεος, δδεω, διος, δυως.
- C- stem: daker : Nom. daker, δακαρ; Acc. dakeran; Pl. Nom. δακερης ; Pl. Acc. dakerais.
- C- stem: ορουαν : Nom. ορουεναν ; Acc. ορουαν ; Gen. ορουενος .
- C- stem: knays : Nom. knays, knais; Acc. κναικαν ; Gen. κναικος ; Pl. Nom. knaykes.
- i-stem: *Tis : Acc. Τιαν ; Dat. Τιε , Τι, Τιη, Tiei; Gen. Τιος .
- e-stem: Manes : Nom. Manes, Mane, Μανεις; Acc. Manin; Gen. Manitos.