Phrygian language

The Phrygian epigraphical material is divided into two distinct subcorpora, Old Phrygian and New Phrygian, which attest different stages of the Phrygian language, are written with different alphabets and upon different materials, and have different geographical distribution.

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 (CIPPh) and its supplements[6] contain most known Old Phrygian inscriptions, though a few graffiti are not included.

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 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 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.[7]

• 
  The distribution of the Old, Middle and New Phrygian inscriptions.
• 
  6th century BCE inscription with the Phrygian alphabet from the Midas Tomb, Midas City: ΒΑΒΑ: ΜΕΜΕϜΑΙΣ: ΠΡΟΙΤΑϜΟΣ: ΚΦΙJΑΝΑϜΕJΟΣ: ΣΙΚΕΝΕΜΑΝ: ΕΔΑΕΣ (Baba, advisor, leader from Tyana, dedicated this niche).[9][10]

The last mentions of the language date to the 5th century CE, and it was likely extinct by the 7th century CE.[11]

Its structure, what can be recovered of it, was typically Indo-European, with nouns declined for case (at least four), gender (three), and number (singular and plural), while the verbs are conjugated for tense, voice, mood, person, and number. No single word is attested in all its inflectional forms.

Phrygian seems to exhibit an augment, like Greek, Indo-Iranian, and Armenian; cf. eberet, probably corresponding to Proto-Indo-European *e-bher-e-t (Greek: épʰere with loss of the final t, Sanskrit: ábharat), although comparison to examples like ios ... addaket 'who does ... to', which is not a past tense form (perhaps subjunctive), shows that -et may be from the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) primary ending *-eti.

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;[12] i.e., voicing of PIE aspirates, devoicing of PIE voiced stops and aspiration of voiceless stops. This hypothesis was rejected by Lejeune (1979) and Brixhe (1984)[13] but revived by Lubotsky (2004) and Woodhouse (2006), who argue that there is evidence of a partial shift of obstruent series; i.e., voicing of PIE aspirates (*bh > b) and devoicing of PIE voiced stops (*d > t).[14]

The affricates ts and dz developed from velars before front vowels.

The Midas inscription over the cornice of the Midas monument. It reads Ates.... Midai lavagtaei vanaktei edaes ("Ates.... has dedicated [this monument) to Midas, leader of the people and ruler").[15][16][17]

Phrygian is attested fragmentarily, known only from a comparatively small corpus of inscriptions. A few hundred Phrygian words are attested; however, the meaning and etymologies of many of these remain unknown.

A famous Phrygian word is bekos, meaning 'bread'. According to Herodotus (Histories 2.2) Pharaoh Psammetichus I wanted to determine the oldest nation and establish the world's original language. For this purpose, he ordered two children to be reared by a shepherd, forbidding him to let them hear a single word, and charging him to report the children's first utterance. After two years, the shepherd reported that on entering their chamber, the children came up to him, extending their hands, calling bekos. Upon enquiry, the pharaoh discovered that this was the Phrygian word for 'wheat bread', after which the Egyptians conceded that the Phrygian nation was older than theirs. The word bekos is also attested several times in Palaeo-Phrygian inscriptions on funerary stelae. It may be cognate to the English bake (PIE *bʰeh₃g-).[18] Hittite, Luwian (both also influenced Phrygian morphology), Galatian and Greek (which also exhibits a high amount of isoglosses with Phrygian) all influenced Phrygian vocabulary.[3][19]

According to Clement of Alexandria, the Phrygian word bedu (βέδυ) meaning 'water' (PIE *wed-) appeared in Orphic ritual.[20]

The Greek theonym Zeus appears in Phrygian with the stem Ti- (genitive Tios = Greek Dios, from earlier *Diwos; the nominative is unattested); perhaps with the general meaning 'god, deity'. It is possible that tiveya means 'goddess'. The shift of *d to t in Phrygian and the loss of *w before o appears to be regular. Stephanus Byzantius records that according to Demosthenes, Zeus was known as Tios in Bithynia.[21]

Another possible theonym is bago- (cf. Old Persian baga-, Proto-Slavic *bogъ "god"), attested as the accusative singular bag̣un in G-136.[22] Lejeune identified the term as *bʰagom, in the meaning 'a gift, dedication' (PIE *bʰag- 'to apportion, give a share'). But Hesychius of Alexandria mentions a Bagaios, Phrygian Zeus (Βαγαῖος Ζεὺς Φρύγιος) and interprets the name as δοτῆρ ἑάων 'giver of good things'. Mallory and Adams agree that the word Bagaios was an epithet to the Phrygian worship of Zeus that derived from the same root.[23]

• Paleo-Balkan languages
• Ancient Macedonian language
• Thracian language
• Dacian language#Anatolia
• Greek language
• Graeco-Phrygian
• Alphabets of Asia Minor

• Mallory, James P.; Adams, Douglas Q. (2006). The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-929668-2.

• Brixhe, Claude. "Du paléo- au néo-phrygien". In: Comptes rendus des séances de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 137ᵉ année, N. 2, 1993. pp. 323-344. doi:10.3406/crai.1993.15216
• Lamberterie, Charles de. "Grec, phrygien, arménien: des anciens aux modernes". In: Journal des savants, 2013, n°. 1. pp. 3-69. doi:10.3406/jds.2013.6300
• Lejeune, Michel. "Notes paléo-phrygiennes". In: Revue des Études Anciennes. Tome 71, 1969, n°3-4. pp. 287-300. doi:10.3406/rea.1969.3842
• Orsat Ligorio & Alexander Lubotsky. “Phrygian”, in Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics. Vol. 3. Eds. Jared Klein, Brian Joseph, & Matthias Fritz. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2018, pp. 1816–31.
• Woodhouse, Robert. “An overview of research on Phrygian from the nineteenth century to the present day”, Studia Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis 126 (2009): 167-188. DOI 10.2478/v10148-010-0013-x.
• OBRADOR CURSACH, Bartomeu. The Phrygian Language. Brill. 2020. ISBN 978-90-04-41999-5

• Corpus of Phrygian Inscriptions
• Lubotsky's Phrygian Etymological Database (Incomplete)
• Encyclopædia Britannica - Phrygian Language
• Linguistic Bibliography Online
• Palaeolexicon - Dictionary, History and Translations of the Phrygian Language
• Midas and the Mushki, by Miltiades E. Bolaris (2010)