Have you ever heard of John Chadwick and Michael Ventris ? Two British gentlemen exercise the "job" of philologist. Ventris was an architect actually lent to the Philology with a great passion for the proto-civilization of the Aegean Bronze Age. I refer to the palatial civilization, known by the name of Cretan or Minoan Civilization Mycenaean civilization and . The Minoan civilization flourished on Crete during the second millennium before Christ. It's called palatial civilization because the political, administrative and religious was building a complex structure and rational at once. Copies of the Minoan Palaces, can be visited in Crete, in the ruins of Knossos, Phaistos, Mallia and Haghia Triada. What is known as the Palace of Knossos Minos as well as "Labyrinth". The Labyrinth of Knossos evokes the myth of the architect Daedalus, the Minotaur and Theseus and Ariadne. Yet the term "Labyrinth" has the greek etymology of the word "λάβρυς" ("labrys") or the ax, holy symbol repeatedly drawn on the walls of the palace of Knossos. Moreover, the term "λαβύρινθος" ("Labyrinthos") is also found in the tablets in Linear B in the form "da-pu-ri-to". As is plain to see from the word "da-pu-ri-to" transliterated in our alphabet, the Linear B is a syllabic script that just Michael Ventris and John Chadwick deciphered in the fifties of last century and found that it concealed a greek dialect preomerico is the language of the Mycenaeans Achaeans, and, therefore, the legendary Atreus, which , roughly a century before, in the ruins of the Peloponnesian Mycenae, Schliemann Einrich had discovered the graves and the golden funeral masks .
Linear B Writing the Indo-European Achaeans had learned from contacts with the Mediterranean Minoan people. In fact, in the archives of the Palaces Minoans were found myriads of clay tablets drawn from a script called Linear A, which is still not deciphered, which conceals an unknown language.
Ventris and Chadwick managed to decipher Linear B assuming that it was concealed in a greek dialect. They were right! And so, thanks to them, the language of Homer was lit on the lexical and morphological history, revealing himself as an extraordinary voice continues, eco admirable that crossed the dark ages of medieval Hellenic, as a musical bridge between the men of Agamemnon and the citizens rising of the poleis on the coast of Asia Minor.
is good to know at this point that the tablets contain only linear writing lists things and people and is, therefore, a record of administrative buildings. I repeat that, thanks to the two above mentioned linguists, we are able to read only texts written in Linear B, ie those attributable to the scribes of aggressive Mycenaean palaces. The alphabet is syllabic Linear B writing. Is a syllabic alphabet whose signs do not refer to a sound simple, but a syllabic sound. This means that, necessarily, the records consist of many signs are linear, about eighty in the case of Linear B We understand, therefore, how important was the invention of the facilitating alphabet of twenty-four letters, around the ninth century BC, the Greeks of Asia borrowed by the Phoenicians, improved with the addition of the vowels. In this alphabet, discovered later by the Romans, through the mediation Etruscan, dating all the records in Europe.
As I write from the buttons on the computer I am amazed by this story that tries to cross an essential trace the thousand-year history of writing. It makes me wonder above all the patient work of philologists who devoted their lives to research and study of texts. The philologists are echoing the voice of the past. The decipherment of Linear B allows us to give life to old words that, with slight phonetic changes, are attested in the Homeric poems . For example, the tablets of Knossos and Mycenaean sites of the palaces of the Peloponnese to the word "Wa-na-ka" (this is the transliteration of the written word attested in the Linear B tablets). Wa-na-ka designates the character at the top of the management hierarchy of Mycenaean society. It is the king par excellence, than he who is called in the poems of Homer the greek word corresponding "ἂναξ" (Anax) [recall that Agamemnon with an expression to make is that "ἂναξ ἀνδρῶν" ( " Anax hall ")," lord of men], and at the same "βασιλεύς" (Basileus), the term that Homer means "king."
My notes may not be exhaustive on the subject of Mycenaean Philology. In this respect the readers, if they so choose, they can gather information from the seminal article titled "Evidence for Greek Dialect in the Mycenaean Archives" of Michael Ventris and John Chadwick .
Rather, having awakened the memory of philological work dedicated to the discovery of ancient civilizations, I stop to consider how the Serbs write the sounds in time. The track sounds conventional signs and hidden meaning. philology and science texts is the art of interpreting with rigor, humility and loving care for the texts of the past to return the authentic sound of words. The philologist
gets into the path of history from those signs that understood and interpreted. Therefore, it seems to me that the sound waves move Philology etched in time. The Flologia is a science of the "sacred." And in that regard, I remember the sacred value of the first records and the exceptional importance of the scribes in the ancient world. It seems to me the sacred word itself: " Philology", or "love of the word" equivalent to love of humanity.
wandering thoughts lead back in the hope that many who devote to this science, spreading the desire among the younger generation.
Let the sacred words of a poet final the epigraph of my text!
A Word made Flesh is seldom And tremblingly
shared
Nor then perhaps reported But I shall not therefore wrong
Each of us has tasted With ecstasies
secret
On that discussed food
According to our specific strength - A Word
shared
Nor then perhaps reported But I shall not therefore wrong
Each of us has tasted With ecstasies
secret
On that discussed food
According to our specific strength - A Word
breathing
clearly has no power to die Cohesive as the Spirit
may expire if He -
"made flesh and lived among us"
Fosse condescension
Like this consent of language
this beloved Philology
(Emily Dickinson, Complete Poems, Mondadori, Milano 1997, 2005, p. 1666)
