Quarry, Setting and Team Marks: The Carian Connection

In this paper, the author proposes some specific attributions for signs deriving from the Carian or another West-Anatolian script found on in situ blocks from standing walls: quarry, block positioning, or team marks. The proposals are based on data from three distant yet related sites where such marks have been preserved, among which the Khnum temple terrace on Elephantine. In time, however, the quarry marks at Elephantine do not correspond with the other two sites. Therefore, the author proposes that the terrace was built several hundred years earlier than the Graeco-Roman Period to which the terrace is usually dated, or a select group of Carian masons lingered in the area for several hundred years, with no other evidence for them than leaving these marks.

another GGG topic that is related:

Inscription in Carian and Greek
Anistoriton ^ | 27 Dec. 1997 | (editors)
Posted on 07/17/2004 6:20:07 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
On 8/9 November 1997 the Swiss newspaper Neue Zurcher Zeitung reported that German and Turks archaeologists, who conducted excavations at the ancient site of Kaunos on Asia Minor coast just across the Greek island of Rhodes, unearthed an inscription in two scripts. The top part is inscribed in the Carian language and the same text is repeated in the lower part in classical Greek. The inscription is a resolution of the city of Kaunos to honor two Athenians, one of whom is Nikokles of Lycekleous a fairly know person and contemporary of Demosthenes. Thus, the stone was safely dated to the second half of the 4th c. BCE.

Looks like the late 1990s were a second springtime for the long-gone Carians.

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bttt with a few related GGG / FR topics:

Amazon Warrior Women
PBS ^ | Current | PBS
Posted on 08/04/2004 8:51:53 PM PDT by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1185293/posts

The Argonaut Epos and Bronze Age Economic History
Economics Department, City College of New York
Revised May 14, 1999 | Morris Silver
Posted on 08/25/2004 10:30:51 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1199756/posts

Non-Attic Characters
University of California, Irvine, Thesaurus Linguae Graecae
September 7 2003 (rev 9-28-2003) | Nick Nicholas
Posted on 07/18/2004 6:43:19 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1173901/posts

So Who Is Buried in Midas's Tomb?
NYT ^ | 12/25/2001 | JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Posted on 12/24/2001 10:12:01 PM PST by a_Turk
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/596541/posts

The Truth About An Epic Tale Of Love, War And Greed (Troy)
The Telegraph (UK) ^ | 3-24-2004
Posted on 03/25/2004 12:03:11 PM PST by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1105131/posts

Was There a Trojan War?
Archaeology ^ | May/June 2004 | Manfred Korfmann
Posted on 07/29/2004 11:43:38 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1181498/posts?page=3#3

The de Selincourt translation has "pointed to his private parts" instead of "unseemly gesture".

The Histories
by Herodotus
Book II -- Euterpe
tr by George Rawlinson
These Deserters are Egyptians of the warrior caste, who, to the number of two hundred and forty thousand, went over to the Ethiopians in the reign of king Psammetichus. The cause of their desertion was the following: Three garrisons were maintained in Egypt at that time, one in the city of Elephantine against the Ethiopians, another in the Pelusiac Daphnae, against the Syrians and Arabians, and a third, against the Libyans, in Marea. (The very same posts are to this day occupied by the Persians, whose forces are in garrison both in Daphnae and in Elephantine.) Now it happened, that on one occasion the garrisons were not relieved during the space of three years; the soldiers, therefore, at the end of that time, consulted together, and having determined by common consent to revolt, marched away towards Ethiopia. Psammetichus, informed of the movement, set out in pursuit, and coming up with them, besought them with many words not to desert the gods of their country, nor abandon their wives and children. "Nay, but," said one of the deserters with an unseemly gesture, "wherever we go, we are sure enough of finding wives and children." Arrived in Ethiopia, they placed themselves at the disposal of the king. In return, he made them a present of a tract of land which belonged to certain Ethiopians with whom he was at feud, bidding them expel the inhabitants and take possession of their territory. From the time that this settlement was formed, their acquaintance with Egyptian manners has tended to civilise the Ethiopians.
The Histories
by Herodotus
Book VIII -- Urania
tr by George Rawlinson
One thing which the Thebans declare to have happened at this time is to me very surprising. Mys, the European, they say, after he had gone about to all the oracles, came at last to the sacred precinct of Apollo Ptous. The place itself bears the name of Ptoum; it is in the country of the Thebans, and is situated on the mountain side overlooking Lake Copais, only a very little way from the town called Acraephia. Here Mys arrived, and entered the temple, followed by three Theban citizens -- picked men whom the state had appointed to take down whatever answer the god might give. No sooner was he entered than the prophet delivered him an oracle, but in a foreign tongue; so that his Theban attendants were astonished, hearing a strange language when they expected Greek, and did not know what to do. Mys, however, the European, snatched from their hands the tablet which they had brought with them, and wrote down what the prophet uttered. The reply, he told them, was in the Carian dialect. After this, Mys departed and returned to Thessaly.

Anatolia: Carians
by Jerome T. Shaw
The Carian language remains undeciphered although the script is Greek in origin. Only about three dozen inscriptions have been found in both the language and script, many of them short and fragmentary. Herodotus reports that the Carians were Lelegians according to Cretan legend and had lived in the islands in prehistoric times; later when the Dorians and Ionians had spread to the islands they expelled the Carians to the coast of Asia. Strabo relates a similar account; however the Carians themselves disagreed with this view maintaning that they were indiginous to the region. Thucydides agrees that they were islanders and says that they practised piracy... They seem to have been closely related to the Lelegians who like the 'Pelasgians' were often mentioned in ancient literature with few details or facts included. Indeed at one time the name of Miletus had been 'Lelegeis'. The Lelegians finally settled in the region around Halicarnassus founding eight cities there, of which extant remains exist throughout the Bodrum peninsula. The Lelegians seem to have been somewhat subordinate to the Carians. No Lelegian inscriptions have been found.
Ancient Caria
Caria is one of those regions whose origins are unsure with conflicting evidence and ancient commentaries giving no definitive answer. Herodotus (484-425 BC) tells us that the Carians were originally from the Greek Islands, subjects of King Minos of Crete, that they were great seafarers and fighters who manned the Minoan fleets. They were then called Leiagians and when the Dorian and Ionian Greeks spread from mainland Greece down through the islands, the Leiagians were forced across to the coast of Asia Minor, Thucydides, the Athenian historian (460-396 BC), gives a variation of Herodotus' story. He claims the Carians were pirates throughout the Greek islands and that King Minos expelled them when their piracy got out of hand. Pausanias, that intrepid travel writer of the 2nd century AD, says that the Carians were a native race of Anatolia and that colonists from Crete had mixed with them and adopted their name... The brief mention Homer makes of the Carians in the 8th century BC is that they were 'barbarous of speech' and it is interesting that today the harshest dialect in western Turkey is still found in this region.

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