geoffreycaveney's Judaeo-Greek theory

[geoffreycaveney]

This post is to answer a question Linda asked me in the "From decryption to translation" thread, which David asked me to move to a new thread.

I had provided my quasi-Judaeo-Greek readings and interpretations of the likely "Europe" and "Africa" parts of the three-part T-O map (medieval map of the known world) on folio page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. 3:

Europe: [opcholdg]

my reading: "Apheonus"

interpretation: "Japhe-(g)onous"

meaning: "Japheth-born" or "the descendants of Japheth"


Africa: [otodol]

my reading: "AkhAbon"

Here I must extend the interpretation of [d] to include the other labial sound "m",
to allow the interpretation "Kham-(g)on",
an abbreviation of "the descendants of Ham"

=====

Now the Asia part is more complicated, because it is not just one word like the other two parts; rather it is three whole lines of text.

At this stage I can give a provisional reading and interpretation for the first line of this text:

ms text: [d?oar  ykeol  [SPACE]  darol  daly]

reading: "poal  stheAm  [SPACE]  paron  pans"

interpr.: "pol[i]  S(t)hem  [SPACE]  paron pan[to]s"

meaning: "city/nation [of] Shem  [SPACE]  present everywhere"

Comments on the Greek interpretation: 

"poli" is the modern Greek form of the well-known Greek word "polis" meaning "city", "state", "nation", "country", "community", etc. This word is familiar to everyone.

As I discussed in the other thread, I cannot fully explain the presence of the letter "t" in the word I interpret as "Shem" here. Perhaps the author, knowing Hebrew, knew the actual name began with the sound "sh", which Hebrew has as a phoneme distinct from "s", but Greek does not. Perhaps he did not have a natural way to express "sh" in his script for Greek, and resorted here to [yk] as a way to do so for this Hebrew proper name.

There is a large space in the middle of the line.

Then the other side of the line I read as "paron pans".

"paron" is the Greek word meaning "present", "located in the vicinity".

"pans" I must read as if the final glyph [-y] is an abbreviation of the suffix of the word at the end of the line.
Thus it may be "pan[to]s", genitive case of "pan", so meaning "of the universe, of everything".

For example, a related idiomatic Greek phrase is "pantakhou paron", meaning "omnipresent, ubiquitous".

It seems to me that this "paron pan[to]s", whatever the full suffix is, may well be an idiomatic phrase very similar in meaning to "pantakhou paron".

Thus I read the entire line as meaning more or less "Nation of Shem, present everywhere".

Geoffrey