The Carian alphabets are a number of regional scripts used to write the Carian language

Carian language

The Carian language is an extinct language of the Luwian subgroup of the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family. The Carian language was spoken in Caria, a region of western Anatolia between the ancient regions of Lycia and Lydia, by the Carians, a name possibly first mentioned in...

 of western Anatolia

Anatolia

Anatolia is a geographic and historical term denoting the westernmost protrusion of Asia, comprising the majority of the Republic of Turkey...

. They consisted of some 30 alphabet

Alphabet

An alphabet is a standard set of letters—basic written symbols or graphemes—each of which represents a phoneme in a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past. There are other systems, such as logographies, in which each character represents a word, morpheme, or semantic...

ic letters, with several geographic variants in Caria

Caria

Caria was a region of western Anatolia extending along the coast from mid-Ionia south to Lycia and east to Phrygia. The Ionian and Dorian Greeks colonized the west of it and joined the Carian population in forming Greek-dominated states there...

 and a homogeneous variant attested from the Nile

Nile

The Nile is a major north-flowing river in North Africa, generally regarded as the longest river in the world. It is long. It runs through the ten countries of Sudan, South Sudan, Burundi, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda and Egypt.The Nile has two major...

 delta, where Carian

Carians

The Carians were the ancient inhabitants of Caria in southwest Anatolia.-Historical accounts:It is not clear when the Carians enter into history. The definition is dependent on corresponding Caria and the Carians to the "Karkiya" or "Karkisa" mentioned in the Hittite records...

 mercenaries

Mercenary

A mercenary, is a person who takes part in an armed conflict based on the promise of material compensation rather than having a direct interest in, or a legal obligation to, the conflict itself. A non-conscript professional member of a regular army is not considered to be a mercenary although he...

 fought for the Egyptian pharaohs. They were written left-to-right in Caria (apart from the Carian–Lydian city of Tralleis) and right-to-left in Egypt. Carian was deciphered primarily through Egyptian–Carian bilingual tomb inscriptions, starting with John Ray in 1981; previously only a few sound values and the alphabetic nature of the script had been demonstrated. The readings of Ray and subsequent scholars were largely confirmed with a Carian–Greek bilingual inscription discovered in Kaunos

Kaunos

Kaunos was a city of ancient Caria and in Anatolia, a few km west of the modern town of Dalyan, Muğla Province, Turkey....

 in 1996, which for the first time verified personal names, but the identification of many letters remains provisional and debated, and a few are wholly unknown.

Scripts

There is a range of graphic variation between cities in Caria, some of which extreme enough to have separate Unicode characters. The Kaunos alphabet is thought to be complete. There may be other letters in Egyptian cities outside Memphis, but they need to be confirmed. The letters with identified values in the various cities are as follows:

Hyllarima	Euromos	Mylasa	Stratonicea	Sinuri–Kildara	Kaunos Kaunos Kaunos was a city of ancient Caria and in Anatolia, a few km west of the modern town of Dalyan, Muğla Province, Turkey....	Iasos Iasos Iasos or Iassos was a city in Caria located on the Gulf of Iasos , opposite the modern town of Güllük, Turkey. It was originally on an island, but is now connected to the mainland...	Memphis Memphis, Egypt Memphis was the ancient capital of Aneb-Hetch, the first nome of Lower Egypt. Its ruins are located near the town of Helwan, south of Cairo.According to legend related by Manetho, the city was founded by the pharaoh Menes around 3000 BC. Capital of Egypt during the Old Kingdom, it remained an...	transliteration	possible Greek origin
𐊠	𐊠	𐊠	𐊠	𐊠	𐊠	𐊠 𐌀	𐊠	a	Α
𐊡		« ?	𐋉		𐋌 𐋍	𐋌?	𐋌	β	Not a Greek value; perhaps a ligature of Carian 𐊬𐊬. 𐊡 directly from Greek Β.
𐊢 (<)	𐊢 (Ϲ)	𐊢 (<)	𐊢 (Ϲ)	𐊢 (Ϲ)	𐊢 (Ϲ)		𐊢 (< Ϲ)	d	Δ D
𐊣	𐊣	𐊣	𐊣	𐊣	𐊣	𐊣	𐊣	l	Λ
𐊤	𐊤	𐋐	𐊤	𐋈	𐊤	𐊤 𐋐?	𐊤 Ε	y	Not a Greek sound value; perhaps a modified Ϝ.
𐅝	𐅝	𐅝	𐅝	𐅝	𐊥	𐅝 𐊥	𐊥	r	Ρ
𐋎			𐊦	𐊦	𐋏	𐊦	𐊦	λ	Not a Greek value. 𐋎 from Λ plus diacritic, others not Greek
ʘ	ʘ	ʘ	ʘ	ʘ 𐊨?	𐊨	𐊨 ʘ	𐊨	q	Ϙ
Λ	Λ	Λ		Λ 𐊬	Γ	Λ	𐊬 Λ	b	𐅃
𐊪	𐊪	𐊪	𐊪	𐊪 𝈋	𝈋	𐊪	𐊪 𝈋	m	𐌌
𐊫	𐊫	𐊫	𐊫	𐊫	𐊫	𐊫	𐊫	o	Ο
𐊭	𐊭	𐊭	𐊭	𐊭	𐌓	𐊭	𐊭	t	Τ
𐤭	𐤭		𐤭	𐤭 𐌓	𐊯	𐤭 𐤧 𐌃	𐊮 Ϸ	š	Not a Greek value.
𐊰	𐊰	𐊰	𐊰	𐊰	𐊰	𐊰	𐊰	s	Ϻ San (letter) San was an archaic letter of the Greek alphabet. Its shape was similar to modern M, or to a modern Greek Sigma turned sideways, and it was used as an alternative to Sigma to denote the sound . Unlike Sigma, whose position in the alphabet is between Rho and Tau, San appeared between Pi and Qoppa...
			𐊱	𐊱	𐊱		𐊱	?
𐊲	𐊲	𐊲	𐊲	𐊲 V	𐊲	𐊲 V	V 𐊲	u	Υ /u/
𐊳			𐊳	𐊳	𐊳			ñ
	𐊴	𐊴	𐊛	𐊴	𐊴	𐊴 𐊛	𐊴 𐊛	k̂	Not a Greek value. Maybe a modification of Κ, Χ, or 𐊨.
𐊵	𐊵 𐊜	𐊵	𐊵	𐊵 𐊜	𐊵	𐊵	𐊜 𐊵	n	𐌍
𐊷		𐊷	𐊷	𐊷	𐊷	𐊷	𐊷	p	Β
𐊸	𐊸	𐊸	𐊸	𐊸	Θ	𐊸	𐊸 Θ	ś	Not a Greek value. Perhaps from Ͳ sampi Sampi Sampi is an archaic letter of the Greek alphabet. It was used in addition to the classical 24 letters of the alphabet to denote some type of a sibilant sound, probably or , in some eastern Ionic dialects of ancient Greek in the 6th and 5th centuries BC... ?
𝈣					𐊹	𐊹	𐊹	i	Ε, ΕΙ, or 𐌇
𐋏	𐋏	𐋏	𐊺	𐊺	𐊺	𐊺	𐊺	e	Η, 𐌇
𐊽	𐊼𐊽	𐊼	𐊽	𐊼	𐊼	𐊼	𐊼𐊽	k	Perhaps Ψ (locally /kʰ/) rather than Κ.
𐊾	𐊾	𐊾	𐊾	𐊾	𐊾	𐊾	𐊾	δ	Not a Greek value. Perhaps a ligature of ΔΔ.
					𐋁?	𐋁	𐋀	γ ?	Not a Greek value.
𐋃	𐋃	<>	𐋃	𐋃	𐋂		𐋂	z	Not a Greek value?
				𐋄	𐋄			ŋ?
							𐊻	ɥ	Not a Greek value; perhaps a modification of Carian 𐊺?
							𐊿 Ш	w	Ϝ /w/
							𐋅 𐊑	j	Perhaps related to Phrygian /j/, 𝈿 ~ 𐌔
					𐋆			?
							𐋉	ŕ	Used in Egypt for Greek ρρ.
𐋇					𐊶?		𐋇	τ	Not a Greek value. Perhaps from Ͳ sampi Sampi Sampi is an archaic letter of the Greek alphabet. It was used in addition to the classical 24 letters of the alphabet to denote some type of a sibilant sound, probably or , in some eastern Ionic dialects of ancient Greek in the 6th and 5th centuries BC... ?

Origin

The Carian scripts, which have a common origin, have long puzzled scholars. Most of the letters resemble letters of the Greek alphabet, but their sound values are generally unrelated to the values of the Greek letters. This is unusual among the alphabets of Asia Minor

Alphabets of Asia Minor

Various alphabetic writing systems were in use in Iron Age Anatolia to record Anatolian dialects and the Phrygian language. Previously several of these languages had been written with logographic and syllabic systems....

, which generally approximate the Greek alphabet fairly well, both in sound and shape, apart from sounds which had no equivalent in Greek. However, the Carian sound values are not completely disconnected: 𐊠 /a/ (Greek Α), 𐊫 /o/ (Greek Ο), 𐊰 /s/ (Greek Ϻ san

San (letter)

San was an archaic letter of the Greek alphabet. Its shape was similar to modern M, or to a modern Greek Sigma turned sideways, and it was used as an alternative to Sigma to denote the sound . Unlike Sigma, whose position in the alphabet is between Rho and Tau, San appeared between Pi and Qoppa...

), and 𐊲 /u/ (Greek Υ) are as close to Greek as any Anatolian alphabet, and 𐊷, which resembles Greek Β, has the similar sound /p/, which it shares with Greek-derived Lydian

Lydian alphabet

Lydian script was used to write the Lydian language. That the language preceded the script is indicated by names in Lydian, which must have existed before they were written. Like other scripts of Anatolia in the Iron Age, the Lydian alphabet is a modification of the East Greek alphabet, but it has...

 𐤡.

Adiego (2007) therefore suggests that the original Carian script was adopted from cursive Greek, and that it was later restructured, perhaps for monumental inscription, by imitating the form of the most graphically similar Greek print letters without considering their phonetic values. Thus a /t/, which in its cursive form may have had a curved top, was modeled after Greek qoppa (Ϙ) rather than its ancestral tau (Τ) to become 𐊭. Carian /m/, from archaic Greek 𐌌, would have been simplified and was therefore closer in shape to Greek Ν than Μ when it was remodeled as 𐊪. Indeed, many of the regional variants of Carian letters parallel Greek variants: 𐊥 𐅝 are common graphic variants of digamma

Digamma

Digamma is an archaic letter of the Greek alphabet which originally stood for the sound /w/ and later remained in use only as a numeral symbol for the number "6"...

, 𐊨 ʘ of theta

Theta

Theta is the eighth letter of the Greek alphabet, derived from the Phoenician letter Teth...

, 𐊬 Λ of both gamma

Gamma

Gamma is the third letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 3. It was derived from the Phoenician letter Gimel . Letters that arose from Gamma include the Roman C and G and the Cyrillic letters Ge Г and Ghe Ґ.-Greek:In Ancient Greek, gamma represented a...

 and lambda

Lambda

Lambda is the 11th letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals lambda has a value of 30. Lambda is related to the Phoenician letter Lamed . Letters in other alphabets that stemmed from lambda include the Roman L and the Cyrillic letter El...

, 𐌓 𐊯 𐌃 of rho

Rho

Rho is the 17th letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 100. It is derived from Semitic resh "head"...

, 𐊵 𐊜 of phi

Phi

Phi may refer to:In language:*Phi, the Greek letter Φ,φ, the symbol for voiceless bilabial fricativeIn mathematics:*The Golden ratio*Euler's totient function*A statistical measure of association reported with the chi-squared test...

, 𐊴 𐊛 of chi

Chi

Chi may refer to:Chinese chi is an energy or form of life*Chi , a traditional Chinese unit of length , approximately 1/3 of a meter*Chi , a dragon in Chinese mythology...

, 𐊲 V of upsilon

Upsilon

Upsilon is the 20th letter of the Greek alphabet.  In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 400. It is derived from the Phoenician waw. The name of the letter is pronounced in Modern Greek, and in English , , or...

, and 𐋏 𐊺 parallel Η 𐌇 eta

ETA

ETA , an acronym for Euskadi Ta Askatasuna is an armed Basque nationalist and separatist organization. The group was founded in 1959 and has since evolved from a group promoting traditional Basque culture to a paramilitary group with the goal of gaining independence for the Greater Basque Country...

. (See those articles.) This could also explain why one of the rarest letters, 𐊱, has the form of one of the most common Greek letters. However, no such proto-Carian cursive script is attested, so these etymologies are speculative.

Further developments occurred within each script; in Kaunos, for example, it would seem that 𐊮 /š/ and 𐊭 /t/ both came to resemble a Latin P, and so were distinguished with an extra line in one: 𐌓 /t/, 𐊯 /š/.

Decipherment

Numerous attempts at deciphering the Carian inscriptions were made during the 20th century. In the 1960s the Russian researcher Vitaly Shevoroshkin

Vitaly Shevoroshkin

Vitaly Victorovich Shevoroshkin, Russ. Виталий Викторович Шеворошкин, is an American linguist of Russian origin, specializing in the study of ancient Mediterranean languages. In the 1960s he tried to decipher Carian inscriptions and proved that their language belonged to Anatolian languages. In...

 showed that earlier assumptions that the script was a syllabic

Syllabary

A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent syllables, which make up words. In a syllabary, there is no systematic similarity between the symbols which represent syllables with the same consonant or vowel...

 or semisyllabic

Semi-syllabary

A semi-syllabary is a writing system that behaves partly as an alphabet and partly as a syllabary. The term has traditionally been extended to abugidas, but for the purposes of this article it will be restricted to scripts where some letters are alphabetic and others are syllabic.-Iberian...

 writing system was false. However, he failed to decipher the script because he took the values of letters resembling those of the Greek alphabet

Greek alphabet

The Greek alphabet is the script that has been used to write the Greek language since at least 730 BC . The alphabet in its classical and modern form consists of 24 letters ordered in sequence from alpha to omega...

 for granted.

The script was finally deciphered in the 1980s by Egyptologist John D. Ray

John D. Ray

Professor John D. Ray is the current Sir Herbert Thompson Professor of Egyptology at the University of Cambridge. His principal field of interest covers the Late and Hellenistic periods of Egypt, with special reference to documents in the demotic script, and he is also known for deciphering the...

, who used Carian–Egyptian bilingual inscription

Bilingual inscription

In epigraphy, a bilingual is an inscription that is extant in two languages . Bilinguals are important for the decipherment of ancient writing systems.Important bilinguals include:...

s that had been neglected until then. The radically different values he assigned to the letters met with scepticism, but after refinements by Ignasi-Xavier Adiego and Diether Schürr in the early 1990s the readings gained acceptance. The discovery of a new bilingual inscription

Bilingual inscription

In epigraphy, a bilingual is an inscription that is extant in two languages . Bilinguals are important for the decipherment of ancient writing systems.Important bilinguals include:...

 in 1996 confirmed the essential validity of their decipherment.

Unicode

Carian was added to the Unicode

Unicode

Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...

 Standard in April, 2008 with the release of version 5.1.
It is encoded in Plane 1 (Supplementary Multilingual Plane).

The Unicode block for Carian is U+102A0 ... U+102DF. Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points:
𐊡𐋊𐋋𐋌𐋍 are graphic variants, as are 𐊤𐋈𐋐, 𐋎𐊦𐋏, 𐊺𐋏, 𐊼𐊽, 𐋂𐋃, 𐋁𐋀, and possibly 𐋇𐊶.