Carian
Inscription in Carian of the name𐊨𐊣𐊠𐊦𐊹𐊸,qlaλiś[1]
Script type	Alphabet
Time period	7th to 1st centuries BCE
Direction	Left-to-right,right-to-left script
Languages	Carian language
Related scripts
Parent systems	Egyptian hieroglyphs[2] Proto-Sinaitic Phoenician Greek alphabet ?[3][4][5] Carian
Sister systems	Lycian,Lydian,Phrygian
ISO 15924
ISO 15924	Cari(201), ​Carian
Unicode
Unicode alias	Carian
Unicode range	U+102A0–U+102DF
This article containsphonetic transcriptions in theInternational Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, seeHelp:IPA. For the distinction between[ ],/ / and ⟨ ⟩, seeIPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

TheCarian alphabets are a number of regional scripts used to write theCarian language of westernAnatolia. They consisted of some 30alphabetic letters, with several geographic variants inCaria and a homogeneous variant attested from theNile delta, whereCarianmercenaries fought for the Egyptian pharaohs. They were written left-to-right in Caria (apart from the Carian–Lydian city ofTralleis) 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 inKaunos in 1996, which for the first time verified personal names, but the identification of many letters remains provisional and debated, and a few letters are wholly unknown.

The Carian alphabet resembles the Greek alphabet, but the exact Greek variant from which it could have originated, has not yet been identified. The main reason for this is that some of the Greek letters have different sound values in Carian.^[5] Two hypotheses have been suggested to explain this. The first is that the Greek letters were randomly attributed to phonetic values; though some letters retained their Greek value. The second proposed by Adiego (2007), is "that the Carian alphabet underwent a strong process of cursivisation, dramatically changing the form of many letters. At a certain point this graphic system underwent a change to 'capital' letters, for which the Greek capital letters were used as models - but now only from a formal point of view, disregarding their phonetic values (...).".^[4]

There is a range of graphic variation between cities in Caria, some of which extreme enough to have separate Unicode characters.^[a] The Kaunos alphabet is thought to be complete. There may be other letters in Egyptian cities outside Memphis, but they need to be confirmed. There is considerable geographical variation in all letters, especially the representation of the lateral phonemesl andλ.^[6] The letters with identified values in the various cities are as follows:^[7]

Hyllarima	Euromos	Mylasa	Stratonicea	Kildara	Sinuri	Kaunos	Iasos	Memphis	transl.[8]	IPA[9]	possible Greek origin
𐊠	𐊠	𐊠	𐊠	Ϡ	Ϡ	𐊠	𐊠 𐌀	𐊠	a	/a/	Α
𐊡		« ?	𐋉[b]			𐋌 𐋍	𐋊	𐋊	β	/ᵐb/	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)		𐊢 (< Ϲ)	d	/ð/?	Δ D
𐋃	𐋃	<>	𐊣	𐋃	𐊣	𐊣	𐊣	𐊣	l	/l~ɾ/?	Λ
𐊤	𐊤	𐋐	𐊤	𐋈	𐋈	𐊤	𐊤 𐋐?	𐊤 Ε	y	/y/	Perhaps a modified Ϝ.
						𐊥	𐊥	𐊥	r	/r/	Ρ
𐋎 𐊣	𐊣	𐊣	𐊦	𐊦	𐊦	𐋏	𐊦	𐊦	λ	/lː~ld/?	Not a Greek value. 𐋎 from Λ plus diacritic, others not Greek.
ʘ	ʘ	ʘ	ʘ	ʘ 𐊨?	ʘ 𐊨?	𐊨	𐊨 ʘ	𐊨	q	/kʷ/	Ϙ
Λ	Λ	Λ		Λ 𐊬	𐊩 𐊬	Γ	Λ	𐊬 Λ	b	/β/?	𐅃[c]
𐊪	𐊪	𐊪	𐊪	𐊪 Ͷ	𐊪 Ͷ	Ͷ	𐊪	𐊪 Ͷ	m	/m/	𐌌[d]
𐊫	𐊫	𐊫	𐊫	𐊫	𐊫	𐊫	𐊫	𐊫	o	/o/	Ο
𐊭	𐊭	𐊭	𐊭	𐊭	𐊭	𐌓	𐊭	𐊭	t	/t/	Τ
𐤭	𐤭		𐤭	𐤭 𐌓	𐤭 𐌓	𐊯	𐤭 𐤧 𐌃	𐊮 Ϸ	š	/ʃ/	Not a Greek value. Perhaps from Ͳsampi?
𐊰	𐊰	𐊰	𐊰	𐊰	𐊰	𐊰	𐊰	𐊰	s	/s/	Ϻ
			𐊱	𐊱	𐊱	𐊱		𐊱	?	?
𐊲	𐊲	𐊲	𐊲	𐊲 V	𐊲 V	𐊲	𐊲 V	V 𐊲	u	/u/	Υ/u/
𐊳			𐊳	𐊳	𐊳	𐊳			ñ	/n̩/
	𐊴	𐊴	𐊛	𐊴	𐊴	𐊴	𐊴 𐊛	𐊴 𐊛	k̂	/c/	Not a Greek value. Maybe a modification of Κ, Χ, or 𐊨.
𐊵	𐊵 𐊜	𐊵	𐊵	𐊵 𐊜	𐊵 𐊜	𐊵	𐊵	𐊜 𐊵	n	/n/	𐌍[e]
𐊷		𐊷	𐊷	𐊷	𐊷	𐊷	𐊷	𐊷	p	/p/	Β[f]
𐊸	𐊸	𐊸	𐊸	𐊸	𐊸	Θ	𐊸	𐊸 Θ	ś	/ç/?	Not a Greek value. Perhaps from Ͳsampi?
𝈣	𐊹-	⊲-	𐊮-	𐤧-	𐤧-	𐊹	𐊹	𐊹	i	/i/	Ε, ΕΙ, or 𐌇.[10]
𐋏	𐋏	𐋏	𐊺	𐊺	𐊺	𐊺	𐊺	𐊺	e	/e/	Η, 𐌇
𐊽	𐊼 𐊽	𐊼	𐊽	𐊼	𐊼	𐊼	𐊼	𐊼𐊽	k	/k/	Perhaps Ψ (locally/kʰ/) rather than Κ.
𐊾	𐊾	𐊾	𐊾	𐊾	𐊾	𐊾	𐊾	𐊾	δ	/ⁿd/	Not a Greek value. Perhaps a ligature of ΔΔ.
						𐋁?[g]	𐋁	𐋀	γ	/ᵑkʷ/?	Not a Greek value.
						𐋂		𐋂	z	/t͡s/ or/st/	Not a Greek value?
				𐋄	𐋄	𐋄			ŋ	/ᵑk/	Not a Greek value. Perhaps a ligature of ΓΓ?
								𐊻	ý	/ɥ/	Not a Greek value; perhaps a modification of Carian 𐊺?
								𐊿 Ш	w	/w/	Ϝ/w/
								𐋅 𐊑	j	/j/	Perhaps related to Phrygian/j/, 𝈿 ~ 𐌔
						𐋆			?
			𐋃					𐋉	ŕ, ĺ[6]	/rʲ/?	Used in Egypt for Greek ρρ.
𐋇						𐊶?[h]		𐋇	τ	/t͡ʃ/	Not a Greek value. Perhaps from Ͳsampi?

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 thealphabets of Asia Minor, 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 Ϻsan), and𐊲/u/ (Greek Υ) are as close to Greek as any Anatolian alphabet, and𐊷, which resembles Greek Β, has the similar sound/p/, which it shares with Greek-derivedLydian𐤡.

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 Greekqoppa (Ϙ) rather than its ancestraltau (Τ) to become𐊭. 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 as𐊪. Indeed, many of the regional variants of Carian letters parallel Greek variants:𐊥 are common graphic variants ofdigamma,𐊨 ʘ oftheta,𐊬 Λ of bothgamma andlambda, 𐌓𐊯 𐌃 ofrho,𐊵 𐊜 ofphi,𐊴 𐊛 ofchi,𐊲 V ofupsilon, and𐋏 𐊺 parallel Η 𐌇eta. This could also explain why one of the rarest letters,𐊱, has the form of one of the most common Greek letters.^[11] 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 that𐊮/š/ and𐊭/t/ both came to resemble a Latin P, and so were distinguished with an extra line in one:𐌓/t/,𐊯/š/.

Numerous attempts at deciphering the Carian inscriptions were made during the 20th century. After World War II, most of the known Carian inscriptions were collected and published, which provided good basis for decipherment.

In the 1960s the Russian researcherVitaly Shevoroshkin showed that earlier assumptions that the script was asyllabic orsemisyllabic writing system was false. He devoted many years to his study, and used proper methodology. He made it clear that Carian was indeed alphabetically written, but made few significant advances in the understanding of the language. He took the values of letters resembling those of theGreek alphabet for granted, which proved to be unfounded.^[8]

Other researchers of Carian were H. Stoltenberg, O. Masson,Yuri Otkupshchikov, P. Meriggi (1966), and R. Gusmani (1975), but their work was not widely accepted.

Stoltenberg, like Shevoroshkin, and most others, generally attributed Greek values to Carian symbols.^[12]

In 1972, an Egyptologist K. Zauzich investigated bilingual texts in Carian and Egyptian (what became known as 'Egyptian approach'). This was an important step in decipherment, that produced good results.^[13]

This method was further developed by T. Kowalski in 1975, which was his only publication on the subject.^[14]

The British EgyptologistJohn D. Ray apparently worked independently from Kowalski; nevertheless he produced similar results (1981, 1983). He used Carian–Egyptianbilingual inscriptions that had been neglected until then. His big breakthrough was the reading of the namePsammetichus (Egyptian Pharaoh) in Carian.

The radically different values that Ray assigned to the letters initially met with scepticism.Ignasi-Xavier Adiego, along withDiether Schürr, started to contribute to the project in the early 1990s. In his 1993 bookStudia Carica, Adiego offered the decipherment values for letters that are now known as the ‘Ray-Schürr-Adiego system’. This system now gained wider acceptance. The discovery of a newbilingual inscription in 1996 (theKaunos Carian-Greek bilingual inscription) confirmed the essential validity of their decipherment.

Carian was added to theUnicode 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:

𐊡𐋊𐋋𐋌𐋍 are graphic variants, as are𐊤𐋈𐋐,𐋎𐊦𐋏,𐊺𐋏,𐊼𐊽,𐋂𐋃,𐋁𐋀, and possibly𐋇𐊶.

A Carian keyboard is available for use with Keyman.^[15]

• Alphabets of Asia Minor

Wikimedia Commons has media related toCarian alphabet.

• Adiego Lajara, I.J.The Carian Language. With an appendix byKoray Konuk. Leiden: Brill, 2007,ISBN 978-90-04-15281-6
• H. Craig Melchert, "Carian", in Woodward ed.The Ancient Languages of Asia Minor, 2008.
• Davies, Anna Morpurgo, "Decipherment" inInternational Encyclopedia of Linguistics, William J. Frawley, ed., 2nd ed. (Oxford, 2003)I:421.
• Everson, Michael (2006-01-12). "Proposal to encode the Carian script in the SMP of the UCS." Contains many useful illustrations and tables.
• Schürr, Diether, "Zur Bestimmung der Lautwerte des karischen Alphabets 1971-1991",Kadmos31:127-156 (1992).
• Swiggers & Jenniges, in: P.T. Daniels & W. Bright (eds.),The World's Writing Systems (New York/Oxford, 1996), pp. 285–286.
• Vidal M.C. "European Alphabets, Ancient Classical", inEncyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd ed., 2006.

• Obsolete writing systems
• Alphabets
• Carian language
• 7th-century BC establishments
• 1st-century BC disestablishments

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• Articles containing Carian-language text
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