The Phrygian language (/ˈfrɪdʒiən/) was the Indo-European language of the Phrygians, spoken in Anatolia (modern Turkey), during classical antiquity (c. 8th century BC to 5th century AD).
Plato observed that some Phrygian words resembled Greek ones. Modern consensus views Phrygian to be closely related to Greek.
Classification
Phrygian is a member of the Indo-European linguistic family, but because of the fragmentary evidence, its exact position within that family is uncertain. Phrygian shares important features with Greek and Armenian. Between the 19th and the first half of the 20th century Phrygian was mostly considered a satəm language, and thus closer to Armenian and Thracian, while today it is commonly considered to be a centum language and thus closer to Greek. The reason that in the past Phrygian had the guise of a satəm language was due to two secondary processes that affected it. Namely, Phrygian merged the old labiovelar with the plain velar, and secondly, when in contact with palatal vowels /e/ and /i/, especially in initial position, some consonants became palatalized. Furthermore, Kortlandt (1988) presented common sound changes of Thracian and Armenian and their separation from Phrygian and the rest of the palaeo-Balkan languages from an early stage.
Modern consensus views Greek as the closest relative of Phrygian, a position that is supported by Brixhe, Neumann, Matzinger, Woodhouse, Ligorio, Lubotsky, and Obrador-Cursach. Furthermore, 34 out of the 36 Phrygian isoglosses that are recorded are shared with Greek, with 22 being exclusive between them. The last 50 years of Phrygian scholarship developed a hypothesis that proposes a proto-Graeco-Phrygian stage out of which Greek and Phrygian originated, and if Phrygian was more sufficiently attested, that stage could perhaps be reconstructed.
An alternative theory, suggested by Eric P. Hamp, is that Phrygian was most closely related to Italo-Celtic languages.
Inscriptions
The Phrygian epigraphical material is divided into two distinct subcorpora, Old Phrygian and New Phrygian, which attest different stages of the Phrygian language, are written with different alphabets and upon different materials, and have different geographical distribution.
Old Phrygian is attested in 395 inscriptions in Anatolia and beyond. They were written in the Phrygian alphabet between 800 and 330 BCE. The Corpus des inscriptions paléo-phrygiennes (CIPPh) and its supplements contain most known Old Phrygian inscriptions, though a few graffiti are not included.
New Phrygian is attested in 117 funerary inscriptions, mostly curses against desecrators added after a Greek epitaph. New Phrygian was written in the Greek alphabet between the 1st and 3rd centuries CE and is restricted the western part of ancient Phrygia, in central Anatolia. Most New Phrygian inscriptions have been lost, so they are only known through the testimony of the first compilers. New Phrygian inscriptions have been cataloged by Ramsay and by Obrador-Cursach.
Some scholars identify a third division, Middle Phrygian, which is represented by a single inscription from Dokimeion. It is a Phrygian epitaph consisting of six hexametric verses written in eight lines, and dated to the end of the 4th century BCE, following the Macedonian conquest. It is considered the first Phrygian text to be inscribed with the Greek alphabet. Its phraseology has some echoes of an Old Phrygian epitaph from Bithynia, but it anticipates phonetic and spelling features found in New Phrygian. Three graffiti from Gordion, from the 4th to the 2nd centuries BCE, are ambiguous in terms of the alphabet used as well as their linguistic stage, and might also be considered Middle Phrygian.
| Features | Old Phrygian | New Phrygian |
|---|---|---|
| Number of inscriptions | 395 | 117 |
| Dating | ca. 800-330 BCE | Late 1st-3rd c. CE |
| Alphabet | Phrygian | Greek |
| Writing material | Varied | Stone |
| Contents | Varied | Funerary |
| Area | Across Anatolia (and beyond) | Only central Anatolia |
| Archaeological context | Mainly yes | Never |
| Preserved | Mainly yes | Mainly no |
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The distribution of the Old, Middle and New Phrygian inscriptions.
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6th century BCE inscription with the Phrygian alphabet from the Midas Tomb, Midas City: ΒΑΒΑ: ΜΕΜΕϜΑΙΣ: ΠΡΟΙΤΑϜΟΣ: ΚΦΙJΑΝΑϜΕJΟΣ: ΣΙΚΕΝΕΜΑΝ: ΕΔΑΕΣ (Baba, advisor, leader from Tyana, dedicated this niche).
The last mentions of the language date to the 5th century CE, and it was likely extinct by the 7th century CE.
Grammar
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Its structure, what can be recovered of it, was typically Indo-European, with nouns declined for case (at least four), gender (three), and number (singular and plural), while the verbs are conjugated for tense, voice, mood, person, and number. No single word is attested in all its inflectional forms.
Phrygian seems to exhibit an augment, like Greek, Indo-Iranian, and Armenian; cf. eberet, probably corresponding to Proto-Indo-European *e-bher-e-t (Greek: épʰere with loss of the final t, Sanskrit: ábharat), although comparison to examples like ios … addaket ‘who does … to’, which is not a past tense form (perhaps subjunctive), shows that -et may be from the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) primary ending *-eti.
Phonology
| Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | |||
| Stop | p b | t d | k ɡ | ||
| Fricative | s | ||||
| Affricate | ts dz | ||||
| Approximant | w | l | j | ||
| Trill | r |
It has long been claimed that Phrygian exhibits a sound change of stop consonants, similar to Grimm’s Law in Germanic and, more to the point, sound laws found in Proto-Armenian; i.e., voicing of PIE aspirates, devoicing of PIE voiced stops and aspiration of voiceless stops. This hypothesis was rejected by Lejeune (1979) and Brixhe (1984) but revived by Lubotsky (2004) and Woodhouse (2006), who argue that there is evidence of a partial shift of obstruent series; i.e., voicing of PIE aspirates (*bh > b) and devoicing of PIE voiced stops (*d > t).
The affricates ts and dz developed from velars before front vowels.
Vocabulary
The Midas inscription over the cornice of the Midas monument. It reads Ates…. Midai lavagtaei vanaktei edaes(“Ates…. has dedicated
Phrygian is attested fragmentarily, known only from a comparatively small corpus of inscriptions. A few hundred Phrygian words are attested; however, the meaning and etymologies of many of these remain unknown.
A famous Phrygian word is bekos, meaning ‘bread’. According to Herodotus (Histories 2.2) Pharaoh Psammetichus Iwanted to determine the oldest nation and establish the world’s original language. For this purpose, he ordered two children to be reared by a shepherd, forbidding him to let them hear a single word, and charging him to report the children’s first utterance. After two years, the shepherd reported that on entering their chamber, the children came up to him, extending their hands, calling bekos. Upon enquiry, the pharaoh discovered that this was the Phrygian word for ‘wheat bread’, after which the Egyptians conceded that the Phrygian nation was older than theirs. The word bekos is also attested several times in Palaeo-Phrygian inscriptions on funerary stelae. It may be cognate to the English bake(PIE *bʰeh₃g-). Hittite, Luwian (both also influenced Phrygian morphology), Galatian and Greek (which also exhibits a high amount of isoglosses with Phrygian) all influenced Phrygian vocabulary.
According to Clement of Alexandria, the Phrygian word bedu (βέδυ) meaning ‘water’ (PIE *wed-) appeared in Orphic ritual.
The Greek theonym Zeus appears in Phrygian with the stem Ti- (genitive Tios = Greek Dios, from earlier *Diwos; the nominative is unattested); perhaps with the general meaning ‘god, deity’. It is possible that tiveya means ‘goddess’. The shift of *d to t in Phrygian and the loss of *w before o appears to be regular. Stephanus Byzantius records that according to Demosthenes, Zeus was known as Tios in Bithynia.
Another possible theonym is bago- (cf. Old Persian baga-, Proto-Slavic *bogъ “god”), attested as the accusative singular bag̣un in G-136. Lejeune identified the term as *bʰagom, in the meaning ‘a gift, dedication’ (PIE *bʰag- ‘to apportion, give a share’). But Hesychius of Alexandria mentions a Bagaios, Phrygian Zeus (Βαγαῖος Ζεὺς Φρύγιος) and interprets the name as δοτῆρ ἑάων ‘giver of good things’. Mallory and Adams agree that the word Bagaios was an epithet to the Phrygian worship of Zeus that derived from the same root.
Isoglosses
| Phrygian features | Greek | Armenian | Albanian | Indo-Iranian | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Phonetic | “prothetic vowels” | + | + | + | – |
| *CRh₃C > *CRōC | + | – | – | – | |
| Loss of /s/ | + | + | + | – | |
| Centum treatment | + | – | – | – | |
| *-ih₂ > -iya | + | – | + | – | |
| *ki̯- > s- | + | – | – | – | |
| *-m > -n | + | + | ? | – | |
| *M > T | – | + | – | – | |
| Morphological | *meh₁ | + | + | + | + |
| ni(y)/νι | + | – | – | – | |
| Conditional ai | + | – | – | – | |
| *-dhn̥ | + | – | – | – | |
| e-demonstrative | + | – | – | – | |
| *h₂eu̯-to- | + | – | + | – | |
| *dhh₁s-ó- | + | – | – | – | |
| *-eh₂-s masc. | + | – | – | – | |
| *méǵh₂-s | + | – | – | – | |
| *-eu̯-/*-ēu̯- | + | – | – | – | |
| *gu̯neh₂-ik- | + | + | – | – | |
| *gu̯her-mo- | + | + | + | – | |
| *h₃nh₃-mn- | + | + | – | – | |
| t-enlargement | + | – | – | – | |
| e-augment | + | + | + | + | |
| *-mh₁no- | + | – | – | – | |
| -toy/-τοι | + | – | – | + | |
| *-(t)or | – | ? | – | – | |
| verbs in -o-yo- | + | – | – | – | |
| verbs in -e-yo- | + | – | – | – | |
| Lexical | *bhoh₂-t-/*bheh₂-t- | + | – | – | – |
| *(h₁)en-mén- | + | – | – | – | |
| *ǵhl̥h₃-ró- | + | – | – | – | |
| kako- | + | – | – | – | |
| ken- | + | + | – | – | |
| *koru̯- | + | – | – | – | |
| *mōro- | + | – | – | – | |
| *sleh₂gu̯– | + | – | – | – |
- ^ Highlighted text indicates that borrowing cannot be totally ruled out.