Evidence · Eteocretan and Eteocypriot

Duhoux's text-internal analysis finds a language that is neither Greek, Indo-European nor Semitic, and four decades of…

Duhoux's text-internal analysis finds a language that is neither Greek, Indo-European nor Semitic, and four decades of comparison since have produced no accepted reading.

Supported0

What it means

Key questionWhat language do the Eteocretan inscriptions of Praisos and Dreros record?

5 answers, none ahead yet

Openunchanged

Answer this evidence bears onEteocretan is an isolate or lost-family language, probably Minoan's descendant

Supports1 for, none against

Still possibleunchanged

Next steps 3

From the site's transliteration CSV (DAT0DEDYM8KKQV6), build letter and bigram frequency tables for the Eteocretan lines and compare them with Greek, Lycian, Etruscan and Phoenician samples of equal length, with a shuffled-text null, to measure whether 420 letters can discriminate between candidate languages at all.

~6 h

On: What language do the Eteocretan inscriptions of Praisos and Dreros record?

—not judged

Measure whether 420 letters can discriminate between candidate languages using frequency tables and a shuffled null.

~6 h

On: What language do the Eteocretan inscriptions of Praisos and Dreros record?

—not judged

List every recurring Eteocretan sequence of three or more letters (inai, irer, -mit-, komn, phraiso-) with line positions across all six stones, and check each published Anatolian, Semitic and Tyrrhenian proposal against the full list rather than the words it chose.

~4 h

On: What language do the Eteocretan inscriptions of Praisos and Dreros record?

—not judged

Ranked by how likely each is to move the key question, for the time it takes

Sources 2

L'Étéocrétois: les textes, la langue

Duhoux 1982

SRC

The Enigma of the Eteocretans: Language, Identity, and Politics in Ancient Crete

Zitelli 2024

SRC

Cite it

Mysteries Department. (2026). Duhoux's text-internal analysis finds a language that is neither Greek, Indo-European nor Semitic, and four decades of… [Evidence EVD0DEED410296C]. https://mysteriesdept.com/r/EVD0DEED410296C

@misc{mysteriesdept_evd0deed410296c,
  title     = {Duhoux's text-internal analysis finds a language that is neither Greek, Indo-European nor Semitic, and four decades of…},
  author    = {{Mysteries Department}},
  year      = {2026},
  note      = {Evidence, catalog key EVD0DEED410296C},
  url       = {https://mysteriesdept.com/r/EVD0DEED410296C}
}