Ax of Arkalochori
The ax of Arkalochori is a bronze double ax ( labrys ) with an engraved inscription, which probably dates from the 17th century BC. BC . It was discovered in 1934 during excavations by Spyridon Marinatos near Arkalochori on the Greek island of Crete . The archaeologist Louis Godart assumed the transition from the Minoan periods MM III B to SM I A for the manufacture of the ax . The Bronze Age find is now in the Archaeological Museum of Heraklion .
Find description
Coordinates of the place of discovery: 35 ° 8 ′ 38.7 ″ N , 25 ° 15 ′ 37 ″ E
The ax of Arkalochori was found with many other votive offerings in a 30 meter long cave, which was possibly buried by an earthquake at the end of the Minoan period SM I. The 1.60 meter high and 0.70 meter wide entrance of the already settled in the Stone Age and since about 2500 BC. "Holy Cave", used as a cult cave in BC, is about 400 meters above sea level near the village of Arkalochori (Αρκαλοχώρι; on Katharevousa Arkalochorion ) northeast of the Messara plain . It is located on the flat hill Agios Ilias (Άγιος Ηλίας) on the southwest side of the Profitis Ilias church (Προφήτης Ηλίας) on the western edge of Arkalochori in the direction of Zinda (Ζίντα).
As early as 1912, Joseph Chatzidakis discovered 53 bronze sword blades without handles and 19 votive double axes , one of which was silver, in archaeological excavations in the cave near Arkalochori . Votive double axes often appear on Minoan and Mycenaean images, for example three times on the sarcophagus of Agia Triada , which dates back to the 14th century BC. Is dated.
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Among the much richer finds by Spyridon Marinatos in Arkalochori when he examined the cave in 1934 there was also a larger bronze ax, the specialty of which is an inscription. On the head of the double ax about 30 centimeters wide from edge to edge are three columns with engraved characters below the eye . They were associated with both the linear script A and the stamp impressions on the Phaistos disc and have not yet been deciphered.
In addition to the ax described, Marinatos was able to recover hundreds of long swords, knives and double axes made of bronze, as consecration offerings as well as in usable form, as well as 25 small gold and 7 silver double axes. The latter included a golden and a silver votive ax ( AR Zf 1 and AR Zf 2 ), both only about 5 centimeters wide, which bore a similar linear A inscription of a word:
The phonetic transcription of these characters on the two small double axes is I. -DA-MA-TE , with a sound similarity with the goddess Demeter / Damater, the "Mother Da" or "Mother of the Earth". The first character represents a prefix with a meaning that cannot be determined with certainty. All four linear A characters resemble certain characters on the much larger bronze votive double ax with the columns of inscriptions. The first four characters of the first column there mean, according to Gareth Owens, I-DA-MA-NA , although he would equate with and with . Overall, the finds and other remains in the cave point to a former military sanctuary at this point.
The inscription
The inscription on the bronze ax of Arkalochori consists of 15 characters, which are arranged in three columns one below the other. Some of these signs are similar to each other, so that 10 to 12 different signs are assumed. The head appears in profile at the beginning of the 1st column also in the first and fourth position in the 2nd column, the head in frontal view in the third position of the 1st column almost identical in the fifth position of the 2nd column and the sign with three Points at the fourth position of the 1st column, slightly modified, also at position three of the 2nd column. Furthermore, the third character of the 3rd column is a mirrored representation of the second character of the 1st column, but this does not imply an equality or similarity of meaning.
Although there are similarities between characters on the ax of Arkalochori and characters in the Minoan linear script A, the text on the ax is too short to make a conclusive connection with this script. Because of their universality, some of the signs appear in other scripts that had no relation to the cultural area of Crete. Other characters have no equivalent in linear script, but are similar to the characters on the Phaistos disc. On the other hand, parallels were drawn with four characters both to the linear script A and to the Phaistos disc. In 1995, Louis Godart concluded from the arrangement of the signs that they represented nothing more than a pseudo-inscription by an illiterate person in incomprehensible imitation of the authentic linear A-signs on other similar axes. According to him, this did not prevent authors from attempting to decipher the inscription on the ax of Arkalochori.
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The most likely reading direction of the inscription on the ax of Arkalochori is top to bottom and left to right. This results in the following typeface of the inscription with underlying linear writing A, whereby the profile head, which resembles that on the Phaistos disc (D02), probably has no sound value, but rather identifies a subsequent person as a determinative :
D02 [*] D02 [*] D02 
Attempts to decipher
- Friedrich Dürr, 2000 (interpretation as Northwest Semitic syllabary)
literature
- Derk Ohlenroth: The Abaton of Lycean Zeus and the grove of Elaia: To the disc of Phaistos and to the early Greek writing culture . Niemeyer, Tübingen 1996, ISBN 3-484-80008-9 , The hieroglyphic inscription on a bronze double ax by Arkalochori, p. 437 ff . ( limited preview in Google Book search).
- Torsten Timm: The Phaistos Disc - Notes on Interpretation and Text Structure . In: Indo-European Research . tape 109 , 2004, ISSN 0019-7262 , comparison with the ax of Arkalochori, p. 224–226 ( digitized [PDF; 441 kB ; accessed on February 17, 2012]).
- Thomas Berres: The Phaistos Disc. Basics of its decipherment . Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 2017, ISBN 978-3-465-03977-8 , The ax of Arkalochori, p. 215-230 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Gareth Owens : The "Cretan Hieroglyphic" inscription from Arkalochori. www.teicrete.gr, accessed on February 18, 2012 (English).
- ^ Ivo Hajnal: The Mycenaean script - The pre-alphabetical scripts in Crete and Cyprus, The Minoan scripts of Crete (and mainland Greece): Typology and chronology. (PDF; 1.09 MB) (No longer available online.) Www.uibk.ac.at, May 20, 2007, p. 7 , archived from the original on July 10, 2012 ; Retrieved February 22, 2012 .
- ↑ a b c d e Dieter Rumpel: The Arkalokhori Ax Inscription in Relation to the Diskos of Phaistos Text. (PDF; 925 kB) www.anistor.gr, April 15, 2009, accessed on February 17, 2012 (English).
- ^ Günther Kehnscherper : Crete, Mycenae, Santorin . 6th edition. Urania, Leipzig, Jena, Berlin 1986, The Beginnings, p. 22 .
- ↑ a b The Cave. www.interkriti.org, accessed on February 21, 2012 (English).
- ↑ Spyridon Marinatos : On the question of the cave of Arkalochori . In: Kadmos - magazine for pre- and early Greek epigraphy . No. 1 (2) . de Gruyter, 1962 ( online [accessed February 21, 2012]).
- ↑ Jerome M. Eisenberg: The Phaistos Disk: A one hundred-year-old hoax? (PDF) (No longer available online.) Www.utexas.edu, p. 14 (6) , archived from the original on August 17, 2014 ; accessed on February 14, 2012 (English).
- ^ A b Gareth Alun Owens: The Linear A Inscription from Arkalochori. www.teicrete.gr, accessed on February 21, 2012 (English).
- ^ Herbert Jennings Rose, Anna Elisabeth Berve-Glauning: Greek Mythology . A manual (= Beck series ). 2nd Edition. CH Beck, Munich 2003, ISBN 978-3-406-49458-1 , The children of Kronos I, p. 63 ( limited preview in Google Book Search - English: A Handbook of Greek Mythology .).
- ↑ Stella Kalogeraki: Greek Mythology . Mediterraneo Editions, Rethymno 2005, ISBN 960-8227-32-1 , Demeter, p. 30 .
- ↑ Thomas Berres: The Phaistos Disc. Basics of its decipherment . Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 2017, ISBN 978-3-465-03977-8 , The ax of Arkalochori, p. 229 .
- ↑ Gareth Owens & the secrets of the Disk of Phaistos. Cretazine, 2012, accessed October 20, 2015 .
- ^ Gareth Owens: The Phaistos Disk: The Enigma of the Minoan Script . In: Labyrinth: Scripts and Languages of Minoan and Mycenaean Crete . Center for Cretan Literature with the support of Heraklion Prefecture, Iraklio 2007, ISBN 978-960-86847-5-1 , p. 195 ( digitized version [PDF; 635 kB ; accessed on October 20, 2015]).
- ↑ Torsten Timm: The inscription on the ax of Arkalochori. www.kereti.de, January 1, 2005, accessed on February 17, 2012 .
- ↑ Glanville Price (Ed.): Encyclopedia of the languages of Europe . Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford / Malden 2000, ISBN 0-631-19286-7 , Phaistos disc, pp. 354 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
- ↑ Torsten Timm: The disc of Phaistos - Notes on the interpretation and text structure. (PDF; 441 kB) kereti.de, December 2, 2006, pp. 224–226 , accessed on August 3, 2012 .
- ↑ Thomas Berres: The Phaistos Disc. Basics of its decipherment . Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 2017, ISBN 978-3-465-03977-8 , The ax of Arkalochori, p. 217-225 .
- ↑ Thomas Berres: The Phaistos Disc. Basics of its decipherment . Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 2017, ISBN 978-3-465-03977-8 , The ax of Arkalochori, p. 219 .
- ^ Friedrich Dürr: The writing as a Semitic morning gift to Athens and Rome . Gublitic / Cypriot / Cretan and Etruscan in the light of new decipherments. Books on Demand, 2000, ISBN 3-8311-0004-7 , The text on the discus, p. 134 ff . ( limited preview in Google Book search).
Web links
- Gareth Alun Owens: The "Cretan Hieroglyphic" inscription from Arkalochori. teicrete.gr, 2008, accessed on February 21, 2012 ( also here ).
- Gareth Alun Owens: Labyrinth = The place of the double ax = The Cave of Arkalochori? teicrete.gr, accessed November 28, 2012 (English).
- John Younger: The Phaistos Disc / Arkalokhori Ax / CMS II 5 no. 246. 2005, accessed on October 20, 2015 (English).
- Thomas M. Waldmann: A fourth place is believed to be the possible labyrinth of the Minotaur: the Arkolohori cave. labyrinthos.ch, April 5, 2010, accessed on November 28, 2012 .
- Thomas M. Waldmann: Photos from the Arkolohori cave. labyrinthos.ch, March 18, 2010, accessed on November 28, 2012 .