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GIA KVASHILAVA On Decipherment of the Inscriptions of Linear A In the Common Kartvelian Language
The object of this paper is the deciphering of Cretan Linear A (LA) inscriptions. The paper presents a brief background of the ancient population of the Peloponnese, Asia Minor and the Aegean islands before the Indo-European migrations. It is supposed that the indigenous inhabitants of this area were of non-Indo-European and non-Semitic origin, from the Proto-Kartvelian tribes. The study of the linguistic material and graphical qualities of LA, and the phonetic reading of Linear B (LB) script by M. Ventris, granted the correctness of my decipherment of LA inscriptions in the Common Kartvelian (CK). Some of the deciphered LA words are the following: 1. the words for the operations on numerals: (addition) ku-ro – “to bind, gather, collect, add”; (subtraction) ki-ro – “fault, defect; to subtract, lessen, diminish, cut off”, and po-to-ku-ro – “the general, whole sum, grand total”; 2. the toponyms and anthroponyms: ma-ka-ri-te – a. “the island of Macris / Euboea (Macrean or Macrones tribe) attested in later Greek texts”; b. “a Colchian person”; pa-i-to – “Phaistos” (mentioned in LB); ku-ku-da-ra – “a Colchian person”, and a-ja – “Aea” (also attested in LB); 3. the names of vessels for liquid – ka-ti (also attested in LB), ka-di, and qa-pa3. All words attested in LB are given by M. Ventris and J. Chadwick. The above stems also display regular phonological and semantic relations to Kartvelian material. Keywords: Linear A script, the Common Kartvelian language, comparative and inner reconstructions.
