According to Herodotus, the Greek writing system descents from the Phoenician one. He supposed that the letters were called Φοινικήια (Phoinikēia; Phoenician) or Καδμήια (Kadmēia; Cadmean) because the Phoenicians, and a certain Cadmus, had brought them from Phoenicia to Greece. We have seen why the letters were called Phoenician. Because they were invented by the potters, more precisely by the finishers (Phoenicians; /ˈfɪnɪʃ/-). The finishers were those in charge of painting, glazing, and finishing the pots, perhaps other products too. What about the Cadmean (Ionic Greek Καδμήια;
Kadmēia) letters? Where does the mythical Cadmus fit in this story? Cadmus is supposed to be the Phoenician prince, brother of Phoenix, Cilix, and
Europa. The brothers left Phoenicia to find their sister, abducted by Zeus, and
never returned. Cadmus finished in Boeotia, where he established the city of Thebes. All the derivatives of the name Cadmus are written with a capital
initial and are left untranslated as proper names, except one, καδμεία or καδμία
or καδμήα (kadmeia or kadmia or kadmēa),
all glossed as cadmia, calamine.
According to the Wiktionary,
the English and French calamine descend from Medieval Latin calamīna,
a corruption of Latin cadmī̆a, from Ancient Greek καδμεία (kadmeia),
after Κάδμος (Kadmos; Cadmus), the mythological founder of Thebes, of
Pre-Greek origin. Today, the name cadmia is used for an oxide of zinc that collects on the sides of furnaces where copper or brass is smelted. Calamine is a medical cream or lotion formulation of zinc
oxide used to treat mild itchiness, sunburns, and allergic reactions of the
skin. In French, it is also used for the residue of carbon deposited in the
cylinders of two-stroke engines.
I do not think that the ancients went into
such detail. They didn't know zinc oxide, ferric oxide, the therapeutic
potential of calamine, or anything about cadmium, a metal element of the
same family as zinc occurring in most zinc ores and produced as a byproduct of zinc
production. However, they must have noticed that a highly staining black
powdery dirt (soot) accumulates on the walls of all furnaces and that they
could use this for tracing, drawing, or writing. If you take some of this with
your finger, you can smear it and stain another surface. The first who had
noticed the commercial interest of soot could well have been the potters
(Phoenicians) since those people ran the most prolific industry using furnaces in
prehistory.
Besides, kadmia (cadmia) splits into
two easily recognized stems, kad-mia. The first means jar, container, or
vessel for water or wine, like in κάδος (kados), with -os
being a generic ending morpheme for masculine nouns or adjectives. The second
means stain, as in μιανῶ (mianō), to stain, sully, dye, μίασμα
(miasma), that which defiles, the taint of guilt, pollution,
μιαρός (miaros), stained, defiled with blood, etc. Thus, kad-mia
is deciphered as jar-stain, and it is black. Various types of carbon black have been used extensively as paint pigments since prehistoric times. All one needed for
precision drawing and writing with cadmia was to formulate it into ink or
paint by adding animal or plant glue (e.g., pine resin) and applying it
with a reed, quill, or brush. If Cadmus (Kadmos) has any etymological
relation to kadmia, it should be a material, tool, or method, not a
prince.
Letters do not fall from the sky, neither
do letter clusters! The middle cluster of ka-dm-ia (cadmia),
dm, start words such as δμῆσις (dmēsis), a taming,
δμητήρ (dmētēr), a tamer, δμώς (dmōs), an enslaved person taken in war, or δμώιος (dmōios), in a servile
condition. Taming takes a wild thing, commonly an animal, from its free
form and puts it in our service. Enslaving a person is essentially the same
concept applied to men. In this case, cadmia is the wild and annoying soot put to the service of the potter, the artist, and the writer.
The extended middle cluster from kadmia,
admi, is found in the English verb to admit,
primarily meaning to allow to enter – from an outside to an inside – like the
stain enters the pores of the pot, the ink enters a tubular quill, or the wild
becomes domestic. Even the English tame seems to be related to the
cluster dm. The early Middle English tame means in a state of
subjection, physically subdued, restrained in behavior (around 1200 AD); of
animals, domesticated, reclaimed from wildness; of persons, meek,
gentle-natured, compliant, intent on homely or domestic activities (mid-13th century). The Old English tom, or tam, meaning
domesticated, docile, would have derived from Proto-Germanic *tamaz
(compare Modern Greek damazō, to tame) would have ultimately derived from
PIE *deme-, to constrain, to force, to break (horses). The same root would be the source also of Sanskrit damayati, tames; Persian dam, a tame animal; Greek daman,
to tame, subdue, dmētos, tame; Latin domare, to tame, subdue; Old
Irish damnaim, to tie up, fasten, tame, subdue.
With the alternative Ancient Greek
spelling, the word καδμία (kadmia) becomes καδμήα (kadmēa), and
the letters of the alphabet are called καδμήια γράμματα (kadmēia grammata)
– in addition to φοινικήια γράμματα (phoinikēia grammata; potters' red
letters). The graphic evolution from I to H, kadmia to kadmēa, is
not erratic. The change of the central cluster from dmi to dmē
suggests a semantic transition from a stain in its wild state (kadmia;
soot) to a tamed stain for domestic use (kadmēa; ink). The kadmēia
(Cadmean; not Cadmian) epithet of the letters is, thus, quickly explained
as a plural neuter adjective of kadmēa (ink), ink-letters. These are
written on soft fibrous support (papyrus, paper) instead of glyphs engraved
on a hard solid material (clay, stone).
The ending morpheme of kadmēia,
-ēia is found as an independent word, ἤια (ēia), glossed as provisions
for a journey. A journey implies a route, way, course, distance. If we were to
represent a journey graphically, we would probably draw a line from one point
to another. If one needs provisions for a journey, the distance is probably
long. We can sense the sememes of length and line in the graphemes H (|-|) and
I (|), respectively. This cluster also starts the Homeric word ἤιος (ēios),
far-darting,
as well as ἠιών (ēiōn), sea-bank, shore, riverbank, all seen as long
curly lines. Ink (kadmēa) provides Cadmean (kadmēia) cursive
writing arranged in long, far-reaching, curly lines, in contrast with glyphs,
which must be composed of short, straight lines for practical reasons. The
notion of continuity in Cadmean writing is evident in the sequence admē. This is found in ἀδμής (admēs) or ἄδμητος (admētos),
both meaning unbroken, and ἀδμῆτις (admētis), virgin.
The word ἠιών (ēiōn; sea-bank,
riverbank, shore) consists of H (|--|) for length, I for line, Ω (lowercase ω;
Omega; Ō, ō) for curly, looping, and as always herein, N for movement (in this
case, the perpetual movement of the water). Instead, ἤιος (ēios; far-darting) ends in -os, an extremely common masculine ending morpheme denoting a circular or tubular (O) object, like the male reproductive organ. Again, the letter H is for
length (far), and ἰός (ios) means arrow, dart. The combination forms
H-IOS, far-darting. An arrow is a thin, linear (I) object with a circular (O)
cross-section. Like virtually any physical object, it can be thrown, but it
does not move independently. Its movement is not mentioned in its name.
The Greek letter A is used as a prefix, ἀ-
(a-), at an extremely high frequency from the times of Homer and Hesiod. As a prefix, it can have several distinct meanings. The privative a- expresses want or absence; σοφός (sophos) means wise,
ἄσοφος (asophos) means unwise. The copulative a-
contains the idea of union
like the a- of ἅπας (apas), quite all, the whole,
for πᾶς (pas), all. The prothetic a- is only euphonic, as in ἀστήρ
(astēr) for a star. The epitatic a-, also known in
English as intensive a- (Reece 2009), strengthens the force of the compound
word, as in ἀτενής (atenēs), stretched, strained, from τείνω
(teinō), to stretch or strain. A word like *ἀ-καδμήια (*a-kadmēia)
could mean without writing, unwritten, inkless, ink-free, or a great deal of
writing, extensive writing of Cadmean letters. Thus, *A-kadmēia could be
an educational institution based solely on oral dialog or a scripting factory.
If you try to fluently pronounce a-kadmēia
in Greek, you will say something very close to akadēmia
(academia). I believe that the metathesis of ē was purely phonetic. It
produced an aesthetic balance of vowels and consonants. The cluster dm
did not survive in Modern Greek. But I cannot exclude it also producing some
subtle semantic effect; evoking, for example, the notion of public (δήμιος; dēmios;
public, belonging to the public, or at public cost). The Attic Greek Ἀκαδήμεια
(Akadēmeia; Plato's Academy) uses an ε (e) to make up a
long diphthong (ei) and fill, thus, the left space void by the
metathesis of ē. This phenomenon is known in historical linguistics as compensatory
lengthening. That semantically unnecessary e is lost or converted to a
proper long vowel (a or ē) in most of the derivatives of Akadēmeia,
e.g., Ἀκαδημίηθεν (Akadēmiēthen; from the Academy), Ἀκαδημιακός (Akadēmiakos),
Ἀκαδημαϊκός (Akadēmaïkos), Ἀκαδημικός (Akadēmikos),
or Ἀκαδήμιος (Akadēmios), all meaning Academic. The lengthening
was eventually abandoned in Helenictic Common Greek Ἀκαδημία (Akadēmia;
Academy).
Plato founded his Academy gymnasium in an
olive grove outside Athens, where he taught his philosophy. He supposedly named
it after an obscure hero, or semi-god, called Academus. We know that Plato was
against writing 'for this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of
those who learn to use it' ,
although he used it a lot. We also know that his favorite philosopher and
master, Socrates, never wrote anything. His student and disciple
Aristotle founded a school of philosophy called peripatetic, the
'walking-around' school. We cannot write or keep notes when we walk under the olive trees or lecture while
walking on walkways. Paradoxically, Plato and
Aristotle were among the most prolific writers of their time. So, I cannot tell
if the initial A of Academia was privative or intensive.
The 'prince' Kadmos (Cadmus) is
probably also a tubular object as its -os ending suggests. A tubular
object related to the ink (kadmēa) by the stem kadm- may
well be the pen. K (cursive ϰ) replaced the
Archaic Greek Koppa (Ϙ, Q). The more recent letter is called Kappa
(featuring an A in place of O), probably because it is an angular rather
than circular letter. Q was called Koppa (or Qoppa) probably
because it was round. Both letters represent a narrowing, constriction,
stenosis (without the 'abnormal' connotation that the term has now taken in
English). The cursive form ϰ renders the concept of a neck, )(, better. Q is
like a wedding ring. It allows objects to pass through it. K may allow small objects to pass through it, but it retains larger objects. We will
see many K-objects, Q-objects, I-objects, H-objects, A-objects, and objects
represented by every letter throughout this quest.
The tubular K-objects of interest are, for
the moment, the pen for Kadmos (Cadmus) and the chimney of the furnace
for Kadmia (cadmia). Kadmos could also refer to the
furnace with its characteristic constriction at its outlet. In that case, Kadmia
could still represent the powdery black matter accumulating in Kadmos,
the chimney. The reason I prefer the pen interpretation of Kadmos is
dual. Firstly, K is followed by an A. A frequently indicates a fillable object with a bottom and finite capacity. Secondly, the ending -mos is easier to defend at this stage of
the argument. Words starting with mos- are wooden objects, particularly
suckers, and wood is iconic of capillary action. For example, μόσχος (moschos) is a young shoot or twig, osier, stalk, petiole, and μοσχίον (moschion), a young calf, which sucks its mother's milk. Consequently, μοσχεύω (moscheyō), means to plant a sucker, μεταμοσχεύω (metamoscheyō) to transplant. Finally, μόσυλον (mosylon) is the cinnamon which forms quills in a pretty iconic fashion.
Reed pens existed in Egypt from 1550
- 1069 BC (Bridonneau n.d.). Some suggest that they may
have been around as early as 3000 BC (Mansour 2018). Quills are thought to have
been invented around the 5th century AD (Ruud and George 2015). The English quill is a
cognate of the Middle English quil and Middle High German kil, meaning large feather, quill. Note that in Turkish, kil means clay,
but this is thought to be of a different origin (Persian گل, gel). Could
the Germanic kil, quil, and cil, from Latin pencillus
(painter's brush) and English pencil, be related to kilix
(Greek Κίλιξ; Cilix),
the brother of kadmos (Cadmus), phoinix (Phoenix) and Europa? If
so, the invention of the writing quill would date not to the 5th century AD but be, at the latest, contemporaneous to the appearance of Cilix in
the literature by Pherecydes of Athens, circa 465 BC (Fowler 1999), and Herodotus
(c. 484 – c. 425 BC), i.e., one millennium earlier. Hesychius of Alexandria, a
Greek grammarian of the 5th or 6th century AD (Dickey 2007), glosses the ancient word κιλίας
(kilias) as στρουθὸς ἄρσην, i.e., a big male bird, referring
to mighty, male birds that walk rather than fly. Such birds, like the ostrich,
turkey, rooster, peacock, etc., provide good quills for
traditional calligraphy. Birds that do not fly are easier to catch and take
their quills. Moreover, quills must have a specific size and robustness.
There is a different possible
interpretation of Cilix that must be kept in mind. Variant spellings or transliterations include Old English cyln and cylen (kiln, oven, furnace for drying or baking), Latin culina (kitchen, cooking stove), and Old Norse kylna (stove). The stem kil also survives in the English kiln. As it will be
exemplified extensively later (see section
Q, QY, QYL, and QAL), the stem QYL designates a hollow, traverse object
like a cylinder or a tube. QYL is a cylindroid object without a bottom and with infinite capacity. It may phonetically or graphically evolve
into KYL, KUL, CYL, or CUL. The KIL version iconically differs from KUL in that
it emphasizes the linearity and thinness (I) of the signified object and its small diameter
relative to its length (iL; compare capillary). Nevertheless, a kiln (Cilix) with soot
(Cadmus) would make a perfect semantic association (brothers). From the soot,
Cadmus, we would get the soot-stain, cadmia, in the chimney.
Claims
H = significant distance, far, long, wide
Cadmus = writing tool or material, soot, black ink, reed-pen, pencil
Cilix = writing tool, quill, pencil
Academia = intensive writing, or writing-free, public school.
Oppositions
HIOS/IOS, H/I
References
Bridonneau, Catherine. n.d. "Scribe's
Palette." Musée Du Louvre. Accessed February 3, 2021.
Dickey, Eleanor. 2007. Ancient Greek Scholarship. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Mansour, Nassar. 2018. How to Make a Reed Pen. The Prince's
Foundation School of Traditional Arts.
Reece, Steve. 2009. Homer's Winged Words: The Evolution of Early
Greek Epic Diction in the Light of Oral Theory. Leiden: Brill.
