Hiya Greeks. I need this for a painting I’m doing.
As you will recall, an apple of pure Hesperian gold was thrown down by Eris, when all the full-faced presence of the gods ranged in the halls of Peleus; the gleaming rind of which was inscribed with the words For the most fair. A feud thereupon arose, with question unto whom it were due, Herè, Aphrodite and Pallas each claiming this meed of fairest. And you know the rest.
I have not a word of Greek, and fain would know from you how this phrase For the most fair is written in that language, especially how it is worded in ancient sources. (Though I’m not sure that the phrase itself does appear in ancient sources. Judging from the small amount of research I’ve done, the inscription might be just referred to rather than spelled out.)
images.google.com showed that at least 1 person has had the same idea parthenophilos:
“golden apple” gives others. by the way the “l” on this picture isn’t wrong, it (like other greek letters) was just written differently in different parts of greece and at different times
I just finished reading “The Decipherment of Linear B” by John Chadwick. It’s a short book which does an excellent job of explaining the process of decipherment by Michael Ventris (an architect and amateur linguist/cryptographer) for people without any knowledge of Linear B, or even Greek for that matter—although it’s probably more interesting if you know some Greek. I thought it was an exciting read.
Here is a chapter from “The Prehistoric Archaeology of the Aegean” on the Dartmouth website, which deals briefly with Linear B:
There’s also a site (www.ancientscripts.com) which gives a list of the syllabic characters, and I think some translated words, but it wasn’t working just now…hopefully it’ll be functional again later.
Apparently there are still some people who question the decipherment because they find many of the interpretations too subjective, but from Chadwick’s book I get the impression that it’s proven beyond a reasonable doubt, if not finalized. But the example you give illustrates the flexibility of an alphabetic script compared to a syllabic script.
I’d like to ask, why is the inscription often given as [size=134]καλλιστι[/size], as in the picture above? wasn’t it supposed to be [size=134]καλλιστηι[/size], as also stated above?
Is this just lack of knowledge of Greek on the part of painters, or there’s a more deep reason for that? I’ve seen a lot of images with the I-spelling.
In the example found by mingshey it says ΤΗΙ ΚΑΛΛΙΣΤΗΙ. How does this differ in meaning from just ΚΑΛΛΙΣΤΗΙ? I am ignorant of Greek (however I make up for it by being able to run very fast.)
Swiftnicholas has given a nice reference. I only refered to http://www.omniglot.com/writing/linearb.htm and some other site I forgot for the construction of ka-ri-te.
Linear B is said not to be a proper writing system for Greek. It is rather like Japanese Kana system and you cannot discern between L and R and often closing consonants are omitted, or written with a superfluous vowel element. It’s like English words transcribed in Japanese Kana(or less like in Korean Hangul), if you happen to know what it is like. You can never be sure if it represents the original English pronunciation. You only recognise them by your prior knowledge of English, and the context it appears. The words written in linear B are names of goods and numbers for trade records, etc. No literary work or grammatical elements is said to be written in linear B.
If we are to choose the second option, I would suggest ka-ri-si-ta, since it is usual in LInear B to repeat the vowel of the preceding syllable in case of two-consonant cluster.
But, still, I think ka-ri-ta is preferable. Oh, and it can be transcribed also as [size=134]χάριτας[/size]
For the purposes of Parthenophilus’ painting, I wonder if it would be better to ask, not what script the goddess Eris would have used at the time of the Trojan war, but what script the first people who told this story would have imagined inscribed on the Apple. Since Linear B was used for accounting rather than literary purposes, I don’t think either Eris or the poets would have used it.
Thanks for the links swiftnicholas, mingshey and eureka. I got to look at the ancient scripts site this morning. The prehistoric archaeology of the aegean site is great to find too. I’ll look at the other sites later. (There’s a lot to absorb here). I realized this morning too that I misread the capital sigma in kallistei as a capital epsilon. Now you can see just how new to Greek I am. In my defence, I’ve been working with White’s book, and so far haven’t used capital letters much.
For the purposes of Parthenophilus’ painting, I wonder if it would be better to ask, not what script the goddess Eris would have used at the time of the Trojan war, but what script the first people who told this story would have imagined inscribed on the Apple. Since Linear B was used for accounting rather than literary purposes, I don’t think either Eris or the poets would have used it.
The story probably emanated from the dark-age during which Homer lived. Therefore, the storytellers had no alphabet of their own.
And when I think about it, Eris may have had to be far more phonetic in her spelling than the Achaean bureaucrats, because the apple’s readers would not have been able to figure out what the apple said from the context.
So we probably require:
ka-ri-sa-ta-i
(If we didn’t have the i on the end, the word would be in the nominative, and so it would probably imply that the apple is the fairest apple.)
Now you can see just how new to Greek I am. In my defence, I’ve been working with White’s book, and so far haven’t used capital letters much.