What language do the Byblos pseudo-hieroglyphic inscriptions record?
Six answers, none aheadNone is ahead yet. See what would settle it.
Where it stands
Six answers have been proposed. None is ahead on the evidence yet. Six are still possible. Of the one narrower question under it, none is answered yet.
Why it matters
The inventory of about 100 signs shows the script is syllabic, and Byblos was a Canaanite-speaking city with Egyptian ties, but no sign has an agreed sound value and the corpus of about 1,000 signs has no bilingual[1][2]. Dhorme read Phoenician, Mendenhall an archaic West Semitic, Best a Semitic text with Akkadian and Hurrian words, and each produced translations the others rejected[3][4][5][6].
Answers 6
Next steps 3
1
Obtain an export of the GEAS Online Corpus of Byblos Inscriptions ([email protected]) or transcribe tablets c and d from Dunand's plates against the van Deukeren sign key, and build a sign-frequency and positional table (initial, medial, final) for the whole corpus.
~12 h
—not judged
2
Apply Dhorme's, Mendenhall's and Best's published sign values to the Akhenaten-daughters seal as transcribed by Mäder and record for each whether Meritaten, Meketaten and Ankhesenpaaten come out; publish the three result tables as a run.
~8 h
—not judged
3
Compare the sign-count and repetition statistics of tablets c and d (about 100 signs, 1,046 tokens) with same-length samples of Linear B, Cypro-Minoan and Ugaritic syllabic or alphabetic text to test whether a consonant-vowel syllabary with a third of logograms is the best structural match.
~10 h
—not judged
Ranked by how likely each is to move the key question, for the time it takes
History
- Édouard Dhorme: dhorme's values for about 75 signs did not yield coherent Phoenician texts beyond the starting formula, and no…Against: The Byblos inscriptions record Phoenician or a closely related Canaanite dialect.
- Harvey Sobelman: sequence analysis of the Unicode-transcribed corpus recovers morphemes and word boundaries without sound values…For: Undetermined: the texts cannot yet be assigned to a language
- Giovanni Garbini: garbini's review found Mendenhall's translations cryptic and his method unconstrained, and the reading was set aside…Against: An archaic West Semitic language (Mendenhall, Colless)
- Peter T. Daniels: dhorme's values for about 75 signs did not yield coherent Phoenician texts beyond the starting formula, and no…Against: The Byblos inscriptions record Phoenician or a closely related Canaanite dialect.
- Peter T. Daniels: the current specialist overviews conclude that the script remains undeciphered and that no proposal since 1946 has…For: Undetermined: the texts cannot yet be assigned to a language
- Brian E. Colless: colless reports that 18 of 22 Phoenician letters have a shape ancestor in the syllabary and that his own values…For: An archaic West Semitic language (Mendenhall, Colless)
- Paolo Merlo: dhorme's values for about 75 signs did not yield coherent Phoenician texts beyond the starting formula, and no…Against: The Byblos inscriptions record Phoenician or a closely related Canaanite dialect.
- Paolo Merlo: garbini's review found Mendenhall's translations cryptic and his method unconstrained, and the reading was set aside…Against: An archaic West Semitic language (Mendenhall, Colless)
- Paolo Merlo: best himself rejected Woudhuizen's revision of the reading, and Vita and Zamora judge Woudhuizen's correspondences…Against: Northwest Semitic with Akkadian and Hurrian elements (Best, Woudhuizen)
- Paolo Merlo: the current specialist overviews conclude that the script remains undeciphered and that no proposal since 1946 has…For: Undetermined: the texts cannot yet be assigned to a language
- Michael Mäder: sequence analysis of the Unicode-transcribed corpus recovers morphemes and word boundaries without sound values…For: Undetermined: the texts cannot yet be assigned to a language
- Elisabeth Schmutz: tested against the Akhenaten-daughters seal and a phonetisation statistic, the Best and Woudhuizen values fail to…Against: Northwest Semitic with Akkadian and Hurrian elements (Best, Woudhuizen)
- Session 1: raised the question, proposed six answers, found nine results bearing on its answers and worked on one of its sub-questions