Thread by @Ancient_Scripts

Carian language (1)

The #Carian language is attested between the 7th and 3rd centuries BC. in a region of southern #Anatolia located between #Lydia and #Lycia. Since the written documents unearthed are few in number, this language has still not been completely deciphered.

Carian language (2)

Carian is an Indo-European language belonging to the #Anatolian language family, like #Hittite, #Palaic and #Luwian during the 2nd millennium BC., the #Lycian, the #Lydian, the #Sidetic and the #Pisidian during the 1st millennium BC.

Carian language (3)

Most of the documents, around 150 graffiti and inscriptions, were discovered in Egypt where Carian mercenaries settled between the 7th and 4th centuries. Among these documents, about thirty inscriptions have been found in Caria, four of which are bilingual.

Carian language (4)

The texts found in Kaunos (in Caria) are particularly important because among them is a bilingual inscription (discovered in 1996, published in 1997 by Peter Frei and Christian Marek) in Greek and Carian, fundamental for deciphering the language.

Carian language (5)

The Carian script has affinities with the Greek and Phoenician alphabets, but we still do not know why symbols were adopted, to which, however, phonetic values were assigned totally different from those of the original alphabets.

Carian language (6)

The inscriptions found in Egypt are written from right to left while those found in Caria are oriented mainly from left to right. The Carian alphabet is made up of about thirty letters, with several geographical variants.

Carian language (7)

The Carian was probably a descendant of the Luwian language and related to Lydian. Ignacio J. Adiego and Diether Schürr managed to understand many phonetic values of graphic symbols, but the pronunciation of certain letters remains a mystery.