This is the first translation of the two graffiti texts found at the exit of Wadi el-Ḥôl (“Wadi of Terror”) in the Qena bend area of Egypt. Their signs represent a transitional stage between Minoan Phaistos Disk and Linear A. These texts were found by John and Deborah Darnell during their 1993-94 excavation season (Darnell, and all 2005). Th…[Read more]

This article analyses orthographic variation in the Linear B tablets from the Mycenaean palace of Pylos. Despite the general consistency in spelling found in Linear B texts from all sites, variation was in certain cases both permissible and entirely normal, even within the work of a single writer. Examining the patterns of orthographic variation…[Read more]

The text on Nestor’s Cup (750-700 BCE) is not Greek as many claim but is actually Alphabetic Akkadian. Its three-line text is a debate about the cause of a drought. The first line blames the life network goddess Ayu and her eagle vultures while the second line blames emotion magic with its owls (like the Athenian owl). Alphabetic Akkadian was t…[Read more]

Troy has long captured the human imagination. The story of its fall and the tales of both its inhabitants and besiegers have caught the attention of artists and their audiences from antiquity to post-modernity. It seems we are drawn to the struggle that is Troy and the Trojan War, to the paragons of virtue, and the archetypes of other, less noble…[Read more]

This course considers the archaeology and settlement history of the Mediterranean basin from the later ninth century B.C. to the middle of the fifth century B.C. in order to study, in a contextualized way, the interconnectedness of cultures and economies in this region. The interchange and exchange that occurred in the archaic Mediterranean world…[Read more]

This course offers a survey of the archaeology of settled landscapes in the ancient Mediterranean world, including both the ancient Near East and the Mediterranean basin. In particular, the course will focus on city-country dichotomies in order to study the patterns of development, demography, and land use in selected case study areas. While the…[Read more]

n this book the much-debated problem of political organization in Mycenaean Greece (ca. 1400-1200 BC) is analysed and contextualised through the prism of archaeology and contemporary textual (Linear B, Egyptian and Hittite) evidence.

From the early 14th century BC onwards, Hittite texts refer to a land Ahhiya(wa). The exact geographic position…[Read more]

The aim of this paper is twofold. First, it argues that the Mycenaean Greek world served as a nexus for international trade between the Near East and Europe during the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1600 to 1100 BCE). Rather than a barbarian periphery, Europe – and in particular regions such as the Carpathian basin and the southern Baltic (Denmark and S…[Read more]

The commercial level trading which emerged at the start of the Bronze Age was made possible by a common written language. That language was Akkadian in its syllabic (cuneiform) form, its phonetic form (Phaistos Disk and these Minoan Linear A tablets) and all the early alphabetic texts prior to the rise of Greek and Latin. These translated Minoan…[Read more]

The Late Bronze Age is renowned for heightened interregional interaction in the entire Near East and Eastern Mediterranean as wealthy states like Egypt and Hatti jostled with each other in the pursuit of valuable commodities, technologies and materials. This increased political and economic interaction is credited in relatively recent scholarship…[Read more]

The Phaistos Disk is the missing link connecting Mesopotamian cuneiform Akkadian with its Mediterranean alphabetic forms. As such it is a hybrid phonetic and alphabetic text dating to about 1800 BCE. It is a philosophical/religious debate about the cause of a recent drought, the first written debate in history. The key to its translation was its…[Read more]

Accurate knowledge of ancient Pagan culture has been lost because it was superseded by the Lordified, Revealed, Dualist (LRD) religious paradigm of the modern and classical eras. This lack of cultural understanding has corrupted archeological interpretation and prevented until recently the translation of the earliest alphabetic texts around the…[Read more]

The early claim that these two cippi are bilingual in Greek and Phoenician is shown to be false. Therefore, these texts cannot be used as the basis to understand the non-attested language of Phoenician. This historical fraud originated with Jacques Barthélemy (1716-1795). Phoenician is a letter style of Alphabetic Akkadian and not a language.…[Read more]

These seven alphabetic gravestone texts and one-coin texts from Sidon date to the Hellenistic era based upon their religious themes and their Greek Island letter styles. In contrast, one earlier coin style from Sidon from the Persian period has the Phoenician letter style. Their underlying language is Akkadian which was the empire language of…[Read more]

This paper provides evidence that Alphabetic Akkadian was being used in the Greek sphere of influence as an ancient authority temple language (like Latin in near modern Europe) prior to the mid-400’s BCE when the nationalistic fervor surrounding their war with the Persian empire replace it with Greek. Its Greek use is also evidenced by the 499 B…[Read more]

As revealed by later Greek records, the Naxos revolt was a socio-economic conflict between rural interests and commercial trading interests which led to the much larger Greek/Persian wars. While the socio-economic component is true, these three archaeological texts also show that the revolt was triggered by a drought and sustained by religious…[Read more]

The text on this large stone stele is a defense of Phoenician temple activity. Consequently, it was likely placed outside the main temple in the Phoenician trading port of Nora on the southern coast of Sardinia. Its theme is also Phoenician in that it is promoting emotion magic to overcome a drought. This drought is most likely the drought of 730…[Read more]

Three texts inscribed on gold foil were found in a holy relic repository located in a side room to a Pagan temple near Pygi, Italy. Their language is Alphabetic Akkadian yet their text styles are Phoenician and Etruscan. They are a philosophical debate about the cause and cure for a recent drought. The Phoenician text argues that emotion magic…[Read more]

Three previously untranslated Philistine (Sea Peoples) texts are translated in the empire language of Alphabetic Akkadian/Aramaic. Their script style is in the Minoan lineage which began with the Phaistos Disk and continued on with Linear A. Unlike those texts these texts are now fully alphabetic meaning their inner word signs are consonants…[Read more]

Two early and still readable linear texts were found carved on the walls of turquoise mine L at Serabit el-Khadim in the Sinai of Egypt by William Petrie in 1906. They were never properly translated. These texts were inscribed within bas-relief steles indicating they were officially sanctioned texts. These texts reference a dimmed sun which would…[Read more]