Thracian language: Encyclopedia II - Thracian language - Sources

Thracian language - Sources

As an extinct language that has no literature left, there's little known about it, but some Thracian words can be found cited in ancient texts [1]. In addition there are many probable words extracted from names, toponyms, and names of rivers mentioned in ancient sources. A number of possible Thracian words are found in inscriptions (most of them written with Greek script) on buildings, coins, and other artifacts.

Only four Thracian insciptions have been found. One is a gold ring found in 1912 in the town of Ezerovo, Bulgaria. The ring was dated to the 5th century BC. On the ring is an inscription written in a Greek script which says:

The meaning of the inscription is not known, and it bears no resemblance to any known language. Thracologists such as Georgiev and Dechev have proposed various translations for the inscription but these are just guesses.

A second inscription was found in 1965 near the village of Kjolmen, Preslav district, dating to the 6th century BC. It consists of 56 letters of the Greek alphabet, probably a tomb stele inscription similar to the Phrygian ones:

A third inscription is again on a ring, found in Duvanli, Plovdiv district, next to the left hand of a skeleton. It dates to the 5th century BC. The ring has the image of a horseman with the inscription surrounding the image. It is only partly legible (16 out of the initial 21)

ΜΕΖΗΝΑΙ likely corresponds to Menzana, the Messapian "horse deity" to which horses were sacrificed, compared also to Albanian mes, mezi and Romanian mânz "colt", derived from PIE *mend(i)- "horse".

These are the longest inscriptions preserved. The remaining ones are mostly single words or names on vessels and other artefacts.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Sources", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki