Phrygian Language

The Phrygian Language is an extinct Indo-European language used by the ancient Phrygians, an Iron Age kingdom established about 1200 BCE in Anatolia in modern-day Turkey.

Surviving examples of the Phrygian language are rare, with most dating from two distinct time periods separated by hundreds of years. Much of what has been discovered has yet to be fully understood. The Phrygian alphabet consists of twenty-two characters and originated about the eighth century B.C.E. It was read in an alternating right-to-left, left-to-right style, a method known as boustrophedon, or "ox-turning" in Greek. One of the few known Phrygian words, bekos (bread), comes from an ancient Greek tale on the origins of humanity.

While little is known about the language, Phrygian culture left a mark on the legends of ancient Greece. Its most famous king, Midas, was immortalized in Greek myth as being able to turn objects into gold by touch.

History and Classification

Phrygian has its roots in Indo-European languages, a common ancestor of many modern languages that originated about 4000 BCE. It belongs to the Paleo-Balkan language branch, a line originating in what is now the Balkan Peninsula in southeastern Europe and is related to the languages spoken by the Dacian and Thracian tribes that inhabited that region.

Greek historians say the Phrygian people were originally called Bryges and are believed to have migrated to Anatolia from the Balkans around 1200 BCE after the fall of the Hittite empire. They founded a kingdom in the region and established their capital at Gordium. By the eighth century BCE, the Phrygians were the dominant power in the Anatolian Peninsula. They began to colonize the region, encountering other people and adopting their cultures and religious beliefs. In the seventh century BCE, the Phrygians were ruled by King Midas, who found fame in the myths of the neighboring Greeks. It was during the reign of Midas that the Phrygian empire was conquered by a people known as the Cimmerians, and its capital was destroyed. The Phrygians lived under foreign rule for centuries, as the Persians, Greeks, and Romans conquered the region. Eventually, they were assimilated into surrounding cultures.

The earliest known form of the Phrygian language was called Paleo-Phrygian and dates from the height of their empire about the eighth century BCE. It was written in an alphabet based on the Phoenician system, a seminal alphabet that influenced later Greek and Latin writing. Only a few hundred examples of Phrygian have been discovered, with most inscriptions found on stone tablets, pottery shards, and silver vessels. The fragmented nature of the writing makes deciphering its context difficult, but most examples seem to consist of ritual incantations, government proclamations, graffiti, and decrees of ownership.

While it developed about the same time as Ancient Greek, Phrygian was considered an older language by the Greeks of the era. In his work Histories, Greek historian Herodotus, who lived in the fifth century BCE, tells the myth of an Egyptian pharaoh who wanted to discover the origin of humanity. The pharaoh instructed a shepherd to raise two newborns without allowing them to hear a word of human speech. The pharaoh reasoned the first words the children spoke would be from humanity's first language. After two years, the children had grown enough to speak and approached the shepherd saying "bekos," the Phrygian word for bread. According to Herodotus, this indicated the Phrygians must be an older culture than the Egyptians, and their language the first spoken by man.

Examples of Phrygian writing almost vanish after the eighth century BCE, with only one text discovered from about the fourth century BCE. This text is on a grave tablet and hints at the possibility of a Middle-Phrygian language period.

It is not until the first to third centuries CE that archeologists find further examples of the Phrygian language. These are called Neo-Phrygian and were written in a variation of the Greek alphabet. Most were found near burial sites and consist of epitaphs for the dead and warnings not to disturb the contents of the tomb.

No further examples of Phrygian were found after this period, but ancient texts mention the use of the language as late as the fifth century CE. Some historians believe it may have been spoken until the seventh century CE before it became extinct. A language is classified as extinct when it has no native speakers.

While Phrygian shares some linguistic characteristics with Latin—the use of the prefix ad-, for instance—it is most closely related to Greek. For example the Phrygian word brater can be seen in the Greek phrater, which means brother in English. The Phrygian onoman, is translated onoma, in Greek, and name in English; matar in Phrygian translates as mater in Greek, and as mother in English. Phrygian also shares several grammar styles, tenses, and inflections with Greek.

Geographic Distribution and Modern Usage

Phrygian is not spoken in the twenty-first century. It would have been used in the Anatolian Peninsula, a land bridge in modern-day Turkey bordered by the Mediterranean Sea on one side and the Black Sea on the other. In the Neo-Phrygian period, many people who spoke Phrygian also spoke Greek, and inscriptions were often bilingual.

Phrygian words can be deciphered, but the few existing writing samples do not provide enough context for a complete understanding of the language.

Bibliography

Barnett, R.D. Phrygia and the Peoples of Anatolia in the Iron Age. London: Cambridge University Press, 1967. Print.

"Herodotus Testing the Origin of Language." Iowa State University. Jean Goodwin. 2005. Web. 11 Sept. 2015. http://www.public.iastate.edu/~goodwin/spcom305/herodotus.html

"Phrygia." Ancient History Encyclopedia. Ancient History Encyclopedia. Web. 11 Sept. 2015.http://www.ancient.eu/phrygia/

"Phrygian." Omniglot: The Online Encyclopedia of Writing Systems & Languages. Simon Ager. 2015. Web. 11 Sept. 2015. http://www.omniglot.com/writing/phrygian.htm

"The Phrygian Language." Palaeolexicon: Word Study tool for Ancient Languages. Palaeolexicon. Web. 11 Sept. 2015. http://www.palaeolexicon.com/Phrygian

Woodard, Roger D. The Ancient Languages of Asia Minor. London: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Print.