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David M. Goldstein, Stephanie W. Jamison, and Brent Vine (eds.). 2019. Proceedi

David M. Goldstein, Stephanie W. Jamison, and Brent Vine (eds.). 2019. Proceedings of the 30th Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference. Bremen: Hempen. 1–17. Greek and Phrygian Interactions in the Neo-Phrygian Inscriptions: A Pragmatic and Sociolinguistic Analysis* MILENA ANFOSSO Sorbonne University, Paris 1. Introduction Linguistic interactions between Greek and Phrygian are well known, even beyond the grammatical and lexical isoglosses showing that these two languages are closely related, having shared a common prehistory in the Balkans1 before Phryg- ian populations started migrating to Central Anatolia around the 12th century BCE. After many centuries of independent development, as evidenced by the Old Phrygian corpus2 written in an epichoric alphabet (9th/8th–4th centuries BCE), the Macedonian invasion of Anatolia (334–333 BCE) intensified interactions between Greek and Phrygian to the extent that the Phrygians abandoned their own alphabet and started using the Greek alphabet to write in Phrygian, as in the Dokimeion inscription (late 4th/early 3rd century BCE; Brixhe 2004:7–26) or the Prymnessos inscription (2nd century BCE; Brixhe and Drew-Bear 2010]). During the Roman Era (1st–3rd centuries CE), after many centuries of “silence,” a new set of inscriptions exhibits the final attested phase of the language: the Neo- Phrygian corpus3 consists of 130 inscriptions written in the Greek alphabet. More * This paper is related to Chapter 3 of my 2019 dissertation. First of all, I would like to thank Brent Vine and Stephanie Jamison for their useful comments. A preparatory paper on this top- ic was delivered at the international conference “Le Changement: Conceptions et Représenta- tions dans l’Antiquité Gréco-Romaine” (Paris, 2016). I am grateful to those who participated in the discussion on that occasion, as well as to the UCLA audience (in particular to Craig Melchert), as I benefited greatly from their observations. I would also like to thank Thomas Motter, Anahita Hoose, and Christopher Fleming for proofreading the paper at different stages. The responsibility for any remaining errors and infelicities is of course mine. 1 The so called “Balkan-Indo-European” phase, as discussed in de Lamberterie 2013:42–50. 2 Brixhe and Lejeune 1984, supplemented by Brixhe 2002b and 2004. 3 Most of the Neo-Phrygian corpus was published by Haas (1966:113–28), followed by independent publications of subsequent finds: Brixhe 1978:5–7; Brixhe and Waelkens 1981; Laminger-Pascher 1984:35; Brixhe and Neumann 1985; Mitchell 1993:186; Brixhe and Milena Anfosso 2 than half are Greek-Phrygian bilinguals, less than half are Phrygian monolingual texts, and some are ambiguous (i.e., it is impossible to state whether the language is Greek or Phrygian). The Neo-Phrygian inscriptions were found in a small area in Central Anato- lia, delimited by Lake Eğirdir, Lake Beyşehir, the northwestern tip of Lake Tuz, and the ancient cities Dorylaion (Eskişehir), Kotiaion (Kütahya), and Ikonion (Konya). The task of deciphering the Neo-Phrygian texts is complicated by seve- ral factors, not least of all our limited knowledge of Phrygian itself—a fragmenta- ry language whose attestations do not permit a coherent picture of its grammar and lexicon, as correctly stated by Matzinger (2006:190). In addition, there is the stonecutters’ confusion between the rounded letters as written in the Greek al- phabet of the time, and finally the segmentation difficulties connected to sandhi phenomena, namely assimilation and elision (Brixhe 1999:293–313). Yet despite the impossibility of arriving at a complete understanding of the Neo-Phrygian inscriptions, thanks to their Greek counterparts it is possible to state that all are fragments of funerary epitaphs, and almost all contain curses against potential desecrators of the grave. The formulaic character of the Neo-Phrygian curses, as well as the sudden “revival” of the language after the lack of attestations during the Hellenistic pe- riod,4 has recently led some scholars to question whether Phrygian was actually still spoken in Anatolia during the Roman Era, challenging the view supported already by Holl (1908) at the beginning of the 20th century, and more recently by Mitchell (1993:174), Brixhe (e.g., 2002a:253), Vassileva (2006:92), and Drew- Bear (2007:167). Matzinger (2006:191) compares the formulaic structure of these funerary inscriptions to the use of Latin r(equiescat) i(n) p(ace) in the Western world. Sowa (2016:177–8) thinks of the Phrygian formulae as a manifesto of lo- cal linguistic particularism, introduced into the inscriptions artificially. Similarly, Roller (2018) argues that the role of Phrygian language was limited to a “pro- grammatic revival” of Phrygian culture in the Roman Era through the action of elites belonging to this ethnic group. Tzitzilis (2013), taking a more extreme posi- tion, comes to the conclusion that Neo-Phrygian, as a language, does not even exist, being in reality “an archaic Achaean dialect.” Drew-Bear 1997; Drew-Bear, Lubotsky, and Üyümez 2008; Brixhe and Drew-Bear 2010; Avram 2015. 4 The epitaph found at Dokimeion (W-11, late 4th/early 3rd century BCE; Brixhe 2004:7–26) and the funerary curse uncovered at Prymnessos (2nd century BCE; Brixhe and Drew-Bear 2010) are only beginning to fill the gap between Old Phrygian and Neo-Phrygian inscriptions. Greek and Phrygian Interactions in the Neo-Phrygian Inscriptions 3 As correctly noted by Mitchell (1993:172), the abundance of Greek inscrip- tions in Anatolia provides evidence for a Greek cultural overlay that may obscure some or all of the non-Greek native cultures. The aim of this paper is to demon- strate the status of Neo-Phrygian as a living language in the Roman Era, based on sociolinguistic and pragmatic considerations. I will first contextualize the Neo- Phrygian funerary imprecations within the wider Near Eastern tradition to which they belong. Then, I will explain the speech act value of the curses in the Neo- Phrygian funerary imprecations in terms of ritual speech and Levinson’s (1992) notion of activity type, in order to account for the conscious usage of Neo- Phrygian in the curse. Finally, I will review the inscriptions of the Neo-Phrygian epigraphic corpus with a view to isolating interesting phenomena that may point in the direction of Phrygian as a living language. 2. Historical data The economic situation of Anatolia during the Hellenistic Period was miserable, as the area was troubled by many wars. The overall number of inscriptions bear- ing funerary imprecations regardless of the language was extremely small during the Hellenistic Period (Strubbe 1991:51), so this cannot be used as an argument that Phrygian was already a dead language at that time. According to Waelkens (1980:3), the custom of burying the dead in a Toten- haus, i.e., a ‘grave house’, is already attested in Anatolia in the late 3rd millen- nium BCE for the Hatti dynasts of Alacahüyük and Gedikli. But the Phrygians were the first civilization in Anatolia to give the Totenhaus concept a wide distri- bution in terms of time and space (Waelkens 1980:4), reaching its peak in the Roman Era, when the practice gave rise to the so-called doorstone steles (Wael- kens 1986), which mimic the entrance to a building. In Waelkens’ monograph on this kind of stele (1986), 687 (nos. 22–709) out of 807 entries in his list come from Central Phrygia, and the others from neighboring regions. As Waelkens sta- tes (1979:105), this type of monument is attested in Asia Minor only in areas in- habited by a Phrygian population, or by a mixed population composed, among others, of Phrygian elements. One third of the bilingual Greek-Neo-Phrygian in- scriptions are engraved on this type of monument. In Strubbe’s (1997) collection of 404 funerary imprecations in Greek from Asia Minor, the inscriptions coming from Central Phrygia (141) and from neighboring regions under Phrygian cultural influence constitute almost half of the total entries; among these, 50 also bear a Neo-Phrygian curse. Combining these two sets of data, it is possible to state that the area of the textual attestation Milena Anfosso 4 of Neo-Phrygian is very small compared to the areas of actual Phrygian cultural influence. The area of textual attestation of the Neo-Phrygian inscriptions can be loca- ted in the core of Central Anatolia, i.e., in the isolated uplands of Lydia and we- stern Phrygia between the Hermus and the Maeander rivers. According to Strabo (12.8.12–21), this was mostly a rural area, among the least urbanized in the 1st century CE. The two largest cities were Laodikeia on the Lykos and Apameia. Roman colonies were not numerous and those that existed were located on the periphery of the region (Germa in northern Galatia, Antioch of Pisidia in the sou- thwest, and Laodikeia Katakekaumene in the southeast). Throughout the region, there were only small villages, very poorly connected to each other because of an inadequate road system (Mitchell 1993:124–32, 170). The local deities, invoked through numerous epicleses accompanying generic names such as Mēn, Mētēr, and Zeus, were worshipped in order to assure good health for the livestock and a good harvest (Drew-Bear and Naour 1990:1914). Apart from rare exceptions (women: nos. 5, 10, 36, 61, 73, 98), the commis- sioners of the Neo-Phrygian funerary imprecations were adult men, whose social position was not particularly distinguished, but who had enough money to build a tomb for their deceased relatives: villagers with small landholdings, livestock farmers (Gnoli and Thornton 1997:159–62), a carpenter (no. 33), a military hor- seman (no. 12), a freedman (no. 67). Access to stones uploads/Litterature/ anfosso-milena-2019-quot-greek-and-phrygian-interactions-in-the-neo-phrygian-inscriptions-a-pragmatic-and-sociolinguistic-analysis-quot.pdf