De Hattuša à Memphis. Jacques Freu in honorem.

Édité par Michel Mazoyer et Sydney Hervé Aufrère

Cahiers Kubaba, Paris, 2012, p. 193-199.
————————————————————————————————————————

THE AMATHUS BILINGUAL INSCRIPTION*

Fred C. WOUDHUIZEN

I consider it a great honor to be invited to contribute to the Festschift for

professor Jacques Freu, whose work on Hittite history, with its special
attention to the role of the Luwians in it, I greatly admire. I hope that this
modest paper may be considered worthy as a tribute to him.

In 1914 Ernst Sittig incidentally came across a black marble stone broken
in two with a bilingual and bigraphic inscription in Eteo-Cyprian and Greek
in an antique shop in Limassol (= in the district of ancient Amathus). After
his publication of this find with a photograph in the same year,1 the stone
monument has been lost, possibly, as suggested by Sittig in a communication
to Olivier Masson in 1952, during its transport to America.2 For the latest
edition of the Amathus bilingual text, see Masson’s reprinted and augmented
corpus of Cyprian syllabic inscriptions of 1983 (no. 196), on whose well-
referenced and informative treatment the following attempt at elucidation of
the initial section of the Eteo-Cyprian part is based.3
As far as the Greek text is concerned, the stone monument either served
as a pedestal for, or was associated with, a statue erected by the city of
Amathus in honor of an aristocrat named Ariston and further specified as the
son of Aristonax. To this comes that on the basis of the characteristic
features of the script, it can, according to Sittig, be assigned to the second
half of the 4th century BC.4 As noted by Terence B. Mitford, this dating can,
on account of the republican tone of the text, further be fine tuned to the

*
My thanks are due to Frans Wiggermann for presenting me at the event of my PhD an
otherwise unobtainable offprint of the publication by Ferdinand Bork on the topic.
1
SITTIG, “Ἀµαθοῦντος δίγλωσσος ἐπιγραφή,” 1–2, fig. 1a–b.
2
MASSON, “Inscriptions étéochypriotes I,” 84, note 2.
3
MASSON, Inscriptions chypriotes syllabiques, 206–209.
4
SITTIG, “Zur neue gefunden kyprischen Sprache,” 194.
 F. WOUDHUIZEN

years after the expulsion of the last king of Amathus, Androkles, which
event probably occurred in 312 or 311 BC.5
In sum, the Greek text, running in left-to-right direction of writing and
covering two lines placed below its Eteo-Cyprian counterpart (see Fig. 1),
reads as follows in transcription and translation (note with respect to the
latter in line with Ferdinand Bork that the verb [ἀνέθηκε] and the indication
of the object [ἀνδριάς] are implied only):6
GREEK
Ἡ πόλις ἡ Ἀµαθουσίων “The city of the Amathusians
Ἀρίστωνα Ἀριστώνακτος (has dedicated) the (statue of)
εὐπατρίδην Ariston, son of Aristonax, of
noble birth.”
The Eteo-Cyprian version of the text, which runs in two lines in
retrograde direction of writing in a smaller type of lettering than the Greek
version, is placed on top of its Greek counterpart (see Fig. 1). As it is
definitely longer than its Greek counterpart, we are not dealing with an exact
bilingual text, but only broadly corresponding versions of basically the same
message.
From the first attempts at elucidation of the Eteo-Cyprian version of the
text, but especially emphasized by Holger Pedersen, it was clear that the
personal name mentioned in the Greek inscription, Ἀρίστωνα
Ἀριστώνακτος, of which the first element or praenomen occurs here in the
accusative singular and the second element or patronymic in the genitive
singular, corresponds to Eteo-Cyprian a-ri-si-to-no-se a-ra-to-wa-na-ka-so-
ko-o-se, notwithstanding the fact that we would have expected *a-ri-si-to-
wa-na-ka-so-ko-o-se in case of the patronymic.7 In contrast to the Greek
version, however, both elements of this personal name are characterized by
one and the same ending, in -se, which, as I agree with Masson, is most
likely to be considered that of the nominative singular8 (note in this
connection that Piero Meriggi alternatively opted for the genitive singular,
which cannot be ruled out from an Indo-European point of view as
nominative and genitive singular may both end in -s among representatives

5
MITFORD, “Character of Ptolemaic Rule,” 87; cf. HILL, History of Cyprus I, 149, note 6;
159; 165; VESSBERG & WESTHOLM, Swedish Cyprus Expedition IV, 3, 320 ff.
6
BORK, Sprache von Alasija, 13.
7
PEDERSEN, “Inscription bilingue d’Amathonte,” 161–65. For comparative evidence of the
patronymic in -ko-o-, cf. Cypro-Minoan -ka-a- as attested for the Enkomi seal (inv. nr. 19.10),
see BEST & WOUDHUIZEN, Ancient Scripts, 127; WOUDHUIZEN, Language of the Sea Peoples, 96.
8
MASSON, Inscriptions chypriotes syllabiques, 207.

194
 THE AMATHUS BILINGUAL INSCRIPTION

of this language family, as it is the case in, for example, Luwian

hieroglyphic).9 As a corollary to this observation, the grammatically related
apposition ke-ra-ke-re-tu-lo-se—under due consideration of the fact that it
likewise renders a different case than its Greek counterpart—no doubt
corresponds to Greek εὐπατρίδην, as indeed suggested already by Sittig and
Bork.10
The suggestion that the personal name and its apposition in the Eteo-
Cyprian version of the text is in the nominative singular can be further
underlined by Michael Ventris’ penetrating analysis of the starting sequence
of this latter inscription. In the first place, namely, he compared the
combination a-na to Lycian e1ne1, which derives from Luwian anan
“under”11 and frequently characterizes dating-formulae—which latter
observation, however, as we will see, is not relevant to our present case.
Furthermore, he suggested that the second combination actually reads we-to-
ri instead of †ma-to-ri, which is epigraphically viable considering the
existence of a direct Cypro-Minoan forerunner (see Fig. 2)12 and thus opens
the way for comparison to Lycian wedr- “town”.13 Finally, he proposed to
distinguish the sequence u-mi-e-sa-i as the third combination and to analyze
this as a genitive plural in -ai as attested for Lycian in form of -ãi (> -e1), but
now also for Lydian in form of -ai1 and even Luwian hieroglyphic in form of
-aī,14 of the Eteo-Cyprian variant of the place-name Amathus, characterized
by a/u-vowel change and loss of the root consonant [t] (note that the
additional sibilant consists of an ethnic morpheme, related to Lycian -z- as in
the coin legend Pttaraze1 “of the Patarians”).15 In sum, then, the initial
section of the Eteo-Cyprian version of the text may, in line with the use of
Luwian anan in a Cretan hieroglyphic seal legend reading a-nú SASA “under

9
MERIGGI, “Primi testi ciprominoico,” 32; cf. WOUDHUIZEN, Selected Luwian hieroglyphic
Texts 1, 129.
10
SITTIG, “Zur neue gefunden kyprischen Sprache,” 199; BORK, Sprache von Alasija, 21.
11
WOUDHUIZEN, Selected Luwian Hieroglyphic Texts 1, 162.
12
See BEST & WOUDHUIZEN, Ancient Scripts, 125, Fig. 16 (for the Cypro-Minoan device of
an additional stroke or additional strokes to mark the e-series, see WOUDHUIZEN, Language of
the Sea Peoples, 126).
13
MELCHERT, Lycian Lexicon, s.v. wedre/i-; cf. WOUDHUIZEN, Language of the Sea Peoples,
93–94; 139.
14
WOUDHUIZEN, Selected Luwian Hieroglyphic Texts 2, 44; 143.
15
VENTRIS, “Notes,” 219. It is interesting to note in this connection that the Cyprian town
name Amathus is paralleled in a Luwian environment by North Syrian Hamath (= Luwian
hieroglyphic a-ma-tu). In view of Greek ἄµαθος “sand” (LIPIŃSKI, Itineraria Phoenicia, 49), it
probably originates from the presence of a sandy beach in both locations—if so, in the latter case
a riverine one.

195
 F. WOUDHUIZEN
16
(the authority of) the seal”, be translated as “under (the authority of) the
town of the Amathusians”, from which it follows that the town of the
Amathusians, contrary to the Greek version of the text, is not the subject of
the phrase!
The line of interpretation followed thus far can be elaborated by the
identification of the sequence ta-ka following the personal name and its
apposition as the first person singular of the past tense in -ka, corresponding
to Luwian hieroglyphic -ḫa for the same function,17 of the verb ta- “to
dedicate”, corresponding to Luwian hieroglyphic tà- of the same meaning as
attested for phrases 7 and 19 of Karahöyük-Elbistan.18 If this identification is
correct, it necessarily follows that the text is conducted in the first person
singular and that hence the syllable mu following u-mi-e-sa-i must be
compared to the Luwian hieroglyphic pronoun of the first person singular,
(a)mu “I”. As a consequence, in its bare outlines the Eteo-Cyprian text runs
as follows: a-na we-to-ri u-mi-e-sa-i “under (the authority of) the town of
the Amathusians”, mu “I”, a-ri-si-to-no-se a-ra-to-wa-na-ka-so-ko-o-se ke-
ra-ke-re-tu-lo-se “Ariston, son of Aristonax, of noble birth”, ta-ka “have
dedicated”.
Provided that we are right in our interpretation thus far, the residual
sequence ku-la i-la-sa-na can only be interpreted as the object. Promising for
this line of reasoning seems the fact that the second element of this
combination appears to be characterized by the ending of the accusative
singular in -na, corresponding to Luwian hieroglyphic -na for the same
function.19 Now, the only comparanda traceable in Luwian hieroglyphic, i.e.
the parent language we appear to be confronted with up to this point, for the
given roots are furnished by the noun kula(na)- “army” and the verb īla- “to
(be) favored”,20 an offshoot of the latter of which is used for the indication of
a military victory in the Etruscan dialect according to the evidence of the
bilingual inscriptions on the Pyrgi gold tablets.21 Accordingly, I arrive at the
interpretation of ku-la i-la-sa-na as “(the memorial for) the victorious army”,
in which the morpheme -sa- distinguishable in the form i-la-sa-na denotes
an adjectival derivative in like manner as the Luwian adjectival suffix -ašši-

16
WOUDHUIZEN, Earliest Cretan Scripts [1], 83; 102 (# 255).
17
Probably under Lycian influences, where this ending occurs in form of -ka or -ga, Luwian
hieroglyphic once shows -ká instead of regular -ḫa for the first person singular of the past tense,
namely in Topada, phrase 10, see Woudhuizen, Selected Luwian Hieroglyphic Texts 2, 61.
18
WOUDHUIZEN, Luwian Hieroglyphic Monumental Rock and Stone Inscriptions, 147–48.
19
WOUDHUIZEN, Selected Luwian Hieroglyphic Texts 1, 129.
20
Ibid., EIA index s.v.
21
WOUDHUIZEN, Selected Luwian Hieroglyphic Texts 2, 158–59.

196
 THE AMATHUS BILINGUAL INSCRIPTION

and its derivatives in Luwian hieroglyphic (-asa-), Lycian (-(e)hi- or -(e)he-)

and Lydian (-si-).22 Evidently, the principal of the text had won a military
victory, which he commemorated with the erection of his statue under the
authority of the town of the Amathusians.
Unfortunately, the final section of the Eteo-Cyprian version of the text
cannot be elucidated in like manner as its preceding section because of the
uncertainty of the reading of two signs, but the ending in -ti of two forms in
this part of the text (na-?-?-so-ti and ka-i-li-po-ti) suggests a for inscriptions
in a Luwian dialect prolifically attested damnation formula, characterized by
verbs ending in the 3rd person singular of the present/future tense in -ti.
In sum, then, we arrive at the following interpretation of the first section
of the Eteo-Cyprian version of the bilingual inscription from Amathus:
ETEO-CYPRIAN
a-na/we-to-ri/u-mi-e-sa-i “Under (the authority of) the
mu ku-la i-la-sa-na/ town of the Amathusians, I,
a-ri-si-to-no-se Ariston, son of Aristonax, of
a-ra-to-wa-na-ka-so-ko-o-se noble birth, have dedicated
ke-ra-ke-re-tu-lo-se/ta-ka (the memorial for) the
na-?-?-so-ti/a-lo/ka-i-li-po-ti victorious army.”
(damnation formula
characterized by verbs in the
3rd person singular
of the present/future tense)
As a concluding remark, it may be emphasized that the apparently
Luwian nature of Eteo-Cyprian greatly enhances the Luwian interpretation
of the ancestral Cypro-Minoan (especially Linear C) texts as proposed,
amongst others, by the present author in earlier publications.23 In addition to
this, it may further be underlined by the small set of seals dating to the
period from the later part of the Middle Bronze Age to the end of the Late
Bronze Age bearing testimony of a local Cyprian variant of Luwian
hieroglyphic.24

22
Ibid., 142–43.
23
WOUDHUIZEN, Language of the Sea Peoples, Chapter two; WOUDHUIZEN, “Tablet RS
20.25 from Ugarit”; WOUDHUIZEN, Ethnicity of the Sea Peoples, section 5.
24
WOUDHUIZEN, Earliest Cretan Scripts 2, 213–16.

197
 F. WOUDHUIZEN

BIBLIOGRAPHY
BEST, Jan, & Fred WOUDHUIZEN. Ancient Scripts from Crete and Cyprus (PHFF 9). Leiden-
New York – København – Köln 1988.
BORK, Ferdinand. Die Sprache von Alasija (MAOG, V. Bd. – Heft 1). Leipzig 1930.
HILL, Sir George F. A History of Cyprus I: To the Conquest by Richard Lion Heart.
Cambridge 1940.
LIPIŃSKI, Edward. Itineraria Phoenicia, Studia Phoenicia XVIII (OLA 127). Leuven – Paris –
Dudley, MA: Peeters, 2004.
MASSON, Olivier “Les inscriptions étéochypriotes I.” Syria 30 (1953): 83–88.
———. Les inscriptions chypriotes syllabiques. Recueil critique et commenté. Réimpression
augmentée. Paris 1983.
MELCHERT, H. Craig. Lycian Lexicon. 2nd fully revised edition (Lexica Anatolica 1). Chapel
Hill, N.C., 1993.
MERIGGI, Piero. “I primi testi ciprominoico e l’eteociprio.” Athenaeum 34 (1956): 3–38.
MITFORD, Terence B. “The Character of Ptolemaic Rule in Cyprus.” Aegyptus 33 (1953): 80–
90.
PEDERSEN, Holger. “Les noms grecs de l’inscription bilingue d’Amathonte.” In Mélanges
Émile Boisacq II (AIPHOS VI). Bruxelles: Secrétariat des Éditions de l’Institut, 1938,
161–165.
SITTIG, Ernst. “Ἀµαθοῦντος δίγλωσσος ἐπιγραφή.” Αρχαιολογοκη Εφµερις (1914): 1–2.
———. “Zur neu gefunden kyprischen Sprache.” ZVS 52 (1924): 194–202.
VENTRIS, Michael. “Notes on the Position of the »Eteo-« Languages.” JKF II (1952-3): 218–
223.
VESSBERG, Olof, & Alfred WESTHOLM. The Swedish Cyprus Expedition IV, 3: The Hellenistic
and Roman Periods in Cyprus. Stockholm: The Swedish Cyprus Expedition, 1956.
WOUDHUIZEN, Fred C. The Language of the Sea Peoples. With a foreword by Jan Best.
(PHFF 12). Amsterdam 1992.
———. “Tablet RS 20.25 from Ugarit, Evidence of Maritime Trade in the Final Years of the
Bronze Age.” UgF 26 (1994): 509–538.
———. Luwian Hieroglyphic Monumental Rock and Stone Inscriptions from the Hittite
Empire Period (IBKS 116). Innsbruck: Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft,
2004.
———. Selected Luwian Hieroglyphic Texts [1]. (IBKS 120). Innsbruck: Innsbrucker
Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft, 2004.
———. Selected Luwian Hieroglyphic Texts 2. (IBKS 124). Innsbruck: Innsbrucker Beiträge
zur Kulturwissenschaft, 2005.
———. The Ethnicity of the Sea Peoples (dissertation). s.l. 2006.
———. The Earliest Cretan Scripts [1] (IBKS 125). Innsbruck: Innsbrucker Beiträge zur
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———. The Earliest Cretan Scripts 2 (IBKS 129). Innsbruck: Innsbrucker Beiträge zur
Kulturwissenschaft, 2009.

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Fig. 1. The bilingual inscription from Amathus (from MASSON, Les inscriptions
chypriotes syllabiques, p. 208, Fig. 57).

Fig. 2. The 3rd sign of the Eteo-Cyprian version of the text with its
Cypro-Minoan forerunner (after BEST & WOUDHUIZEN, Ancient Scripts from Crete and
Cyprus, p. 125, Fig. 16).

199