Introduction
Evangelos C. Papakitsos published an article on academia.edu titled Culturally important objects as signs of the Cretan protolinear script. In this, he presents seven "syllabaries" of the Cretan protolinear script, which contain consonant-vowel type syllabic signs. In the present article, I equate two of these Cretan syllabic signs with Székely runic letters and the word-signs of Hungarian hieroglyphic writing (1). The latter record the Hungarian common words Él, élő (Living) and Jó, javas (Good, healer/sorcerer). These Hungarian common words are attributes of the God of the Hungarians, and at the same time, names of God revered for millennia, belonging to the same word family as the names Allah/Elohim or Yahweh. We find these same two divine names in the names of the cities Aleppo ("Living tree") and Jaffa ("Good tree") as well.
These common signs of the Cretan and Hungarian sign inventories originate from the universally widespread sign set of the Stone Age ancient religion. They were preserved during the development of Cretan writing because the names of the gods enjoyed outstanding reverence. Due to their widespread familiarity, the Cretans could not abandon the use of these signs even when expanding the sign system became necessary driven by the emergence of the state and accounting needs.
The Hungarian parallels of the Cretan Él hieroglyph
If Evangelos C. Papakitsos considers the sign shown in Figure 1 to be the sign of the "l" sound, or of a syllable containing an "l" sound, then this can be excellently supported by Hungarian parallels.
Figure 1. The syllabary presented by E. C. Papakitsos belongs to the family of the Székely script's "l" (Él, élő) sign; the sign records the "l" sound.
The syllabary presents pictographs depicting rain, rivers, and water, thereby recording the divine name Él, the élő (living) attribute of God. Among the Cretan signs shown in Figure 1, two have Hungarian equivalents. The Cretan sign is related to Halaf signs, the Székely "l" runic letter, and the Hungarian hieroglyphic writing used since the Stone Age (Figures 2 and 3). This syllabary is a snapshot of a segment of a writing process spanning several millennia and valid over vast territories. The Cretan sign variants help us understand why the Hungarian Él hieroglyph and the Székely "l" letter have similar formal variations.
Figure 2. Top left: a ligature of the Halaf culture (British Museum); right: a Cretan protolinear sign (after E. C. Papakitsos); both signs are ligatures formed from the Székely "n" (nagy - great) and "l" (Él) signs seen in the bottom left corner, both reading as "Nagy Él" (Great Él).
Figure 3. A Cretan protolinear sign (after E. C. Papakitsos, left) and one form of the Székely "l" (Él, élő) runic letter (right).
Figure 4. Halaf idols equipped with the Él hieroglyph (after Stuart Campbell and Aurelie Daems) prove that Él was a goddess.
The Cretan jó "river" hieroglyph
Evangelos C. Papakitsos believes that the syllabary in Figure 5 depicts threshing floors: "It was the layout of a threshing floor, probably outlined to indicate the circular motion of animals as they threshed the harvested grain stalks." This might be true for the signs under d, e, f, ó, and g, but it is not true for the others on the left, which are not circular but winding in shape. That is, they depict a wave crest crashing toward the sky, thereby evoking the Milky Way identified with God (Figures 5 and 6). This winding line is related to the "j" letter of the Székely script, and in the predecessor of the Székely script, the Hungarian hieroglyphic writing, it is the hieroglyph for jó "river".
Figure 5 The syllabary presented by E. C. Papakitsos with many winding lines.
The images and sign parallels below reveal the pictorial content and meaning of the winding line (Figures 6–12). They make it obvious that this is an ancient religious hieroglyph, the name of the Jó (Good) god identified with the heavenly river.
Figure 6. The Great Wave off Kanagawa, woodblock print by Katsushika Hokusai; the winding wave is the image sign for jó "river", while the mountain is the image sign for sar "corner, lord" (sarok, úr).
The image shown in Figure 6 has deep spiritual and religious meaning, directly connected to Mount Fuji visible in the background, as well as contemporary Japanese religious beliefs. For the Japanese public and the artist, Katsushika Hokusai, the artwork told a story about the search for immortality.
In Shintoism and Buddhism, Fuji is not merely a mountain but the dwelling place of a deity, the axis connecting Earth with heaven. During the Edo period, a highly popular religious sect existed called Fujikō. Its members climbed the mountain as a sacred pilgrimage because they believed reaching the summit purifies the soul and brings one closer to the afterlife (the heavenly sphere).
In both a compositional and spiritual sense, the image alludes to the path leading to heaven. Hokusai created a visual corridor that guides the viewer's eye between the raging waves toward the distant peak of Fuji. While the fishing boats plunge helplessly into the trough of the waves, Fuji standing in the background is the symbol of immobility, eternity, and spiritual refuge. From earthly destruction and chaos (the wave), our gaze escapes through the mountain toward the peaceful, clear sky. Thus, the composition subtly conveys the Buddhist thought: behind worldly suffering and chaos lies the permanent, spiritual truth, the path leading to heaven.
Figure 7. Left: a La Tolita (Peru) world model; right: a world model from a painted chest of Velemér; both depict the four sacred rivers of Eden with winding lines, the Velemér version also showing the central source.
La Tolita is the name of a significant archaeological site and culture that flourished in the border region of Ecuador and Colombia from 500 BC to 500 AD, in northern Ecuador (Esmeraldas province) and on the island of Tumaco in Colombia. The masters of this culture produced stunning gold and platinum objects, masks, and breastplates. The match between the La Tolita and Velemér world models shown in Figure 7 proves that the Hungarian hieroglyphs forming the elements of the world models already existed and were widely known at least 12,000 years ago. Native Americans preserved the memory of the shared homeland 50,000 years earlier, the Eden around Ararat, along with the Hungarian ancient religious sign inventory already used there at that time.
Figure 8. Velemér earthenware vessel with an "Őrség winged sun-disk" pattern, depicting the central source and four sacred rivers of Eden; the bottom right part of the figure shows the Székely script's "j" (jó "river"), "d" (Dana "god"), and "ly" (lyuk, Lyukó "the name of the god") signs.
Figure 9. Saint Christopher fresco from Mártonhely (Martjanci, Slovenia); the river at the saint's feet is depicted with winding lines, jó "river" hieroglyphs.
Figure 10. The porch column of Gömör is the world pillar holding up the sky, fulfilling the role of the Milky Way in folk symbolism comparing the house and the cosmos; therefore, the jó "river" hieroglyph appears on the brace, the reading of the two signs being: Jó Üdő (the sun god identified with the river).
The radial sun symbol applied on the Gömör porch column (the word-sign Üdő "time") is related to the sign of the Sumerian Utu "time" sun god present in Hittite hieroglyphic writing, except six rays originate from it there. Its variant can also be found on the Okunev steles of the Scythians, which makes it understandable why the Scythian sun god was called Oitosyros. This Scythian Oitosyros is identical to the Sumerian-Akkadian Utu sar "Lord of Time" expression. Both the Sumerian and Scythian name variants are almost comprehensible in Hungarian.
Figure 11. The reverse of an ancient Greek coin shows that the swastika was originally composed of four independent jó "river" hieroglyphs, evoking the sacred rivers of Eden.
The swastika is a ligature formed from four Hungarian jó "river" hieroglyphs, the center of which forms a cross reading as Dana (a symbol of god) (Figure 11). This Hungarian Dana hieroglyph is a relative of the Sumerian dingir "god" sign, which also has a cross-shaped variant. The sentence Jó Dana "Good God" can be read four times from the swastika.
Figure 12. On the Scythian stag of Tápiószentmárton, we find the jó hieroglyph, because it is the zoomorphic form or representative of God identified with the heavenly river.
Figure 13 is a depiction of a god, on which the designation customarily appears: the name and title of the god. Just as we write Kossuth Lajos on the pedestal of a Kossuth statue, our ancestors living 6,000 years ago acted similarly when they inscribed the god's name and title on the idol. This is obvious proof that the winding line is the name of the Jó god.
The presented images sufficiently verify that the winding line depicts water, a wave crest crashing toward the sky, and can be identified with the path leading to heaven (the Milky Way identified with God). Based on the initial "j" sound preserved in the Székely script, this is the word-sign for jó, which once also meant "river" and is connected to the name of the god Jó, Yahweh. Due to its widespread distribution, it is a Stone Age sign, which was obviously known and used in Bronze Age Crete as well.
The Cretan protolinear script
According to the introduction of his article, Evangelos C. Papakitsos follows the theory of Cretan protolinear (CP) script. According to this, all Aegean scripts evolved from this writing, including Linear A, Cretan hieroglyphs, and Linear B. The seven syllabaries of this set, according to the author, depict inanimate objects or structures that were very common or important in daily life, economy, and religion. He also demonstrates that the phonetic value of each syllabary corresponds to the Sumerian name of the object depicted by the syllabary in a conservative dialect. Thus, more light is shed on the linguistic origins of Aegean scripts, the practices followed during their creation, and indirectly, certain cultural aspects of the Minoan civilization.
For us, this article is interesting due to two circumstances.
- One is that among the signs on the syllabaries presented by the author, two can be identified with the signs of Hungarian hieroglyphic writing.
- The other circumstance is that Simo Parpola classified Sumerian among the Uralic languages, defining it as a relative of Hungarian. (2)
The theory of Cretan protolinear script is a scientific hypothesis explaining the development of Aegean Bronze Age writing systems. The core of the theory is that between the early Minoan pictographic writing (Cretan hieroglyphs) and the later, well-known linear Linear A script, there existed a transitional phase called proto-linear.
Based on his Cretan excavations, British archaeologist Arthur Evans divided the development of literacy into three successive stages:
- Cretan hieroglyphs (approx. 2000–1650 BC): Strongly pictographic, image-like symbols.
- Proto-linear and Linear A script (approx. 1800–1450 BC): The image-like signs were simplified into abstract lines (linear) that could be written faster.
- Linear B script (approx. 1400–1200 BC): A syllabary adapted from Linear A by Mycenaean Greeks for their own language.
According to the protolinear theory, the shift from complex pictographic writing to linear writing did not happen abruptly. The administrative needs of the palace economies (fast accounting, inventorying) demanded the rapid writing of signs. In the transitional phase, the signs still preserved their original pictorial contours but became more cursive, "running-hand-like." The signs of the Cretan protolinear script were simultaneously pictographic and linear. Each sign was a sketch based on which everyone easily recognized a familiar object, named by the phonetic value of the sign. All sign names were identified as monosyllabic.
Although early theories suggested that Linear A evolved directly from the hieroglyphs, modern research refines this picture. The two writing systems coexisted for a time in Crete (hieroglyphs were mainly used on seals, early linear forms on clay tablets). There are also scholarly opinions suggesting that the protolinear form did not stem from a single root but was part of a regional experiment in script development. Since the language of Linear A (and thus the protolinear stage) remains undeciphered to this day, the precise details of the theory and the exact phonetic values of the signs remain subjects of linguistic debate.
In this debate, a new argument is presented by Hungarian hieroglyphic writing, which I brought to the public eye in 2017 as a result of my nearly 50 years of research. This writing served as the sign system of the Stone Age ancient religion. Its 40 hieroglyphs known so far made it suitable—in accordance with its task—only for writing brief ancient religious prayers. Based on the readings, these hieroglyphs recorded words and sentences from the very beginning. Their form was also much more modern (more linear) than what would be expected based on common "scholarly" explanations, which is well illustrated by the 15,000-year-old Mas d'Azil signs. The more pictographic and the more linear sign forms coexisted from the beginning and still coexist today, because either one or the other was applied depending on the purpose. Hungarian hieroglyphic writing already spread in the Paleolithic from the Pyrenees to America. Based on the distribution of the szabír ős (Sabir ancestor) sentence-sign, these hieroglyphs were used by those Sabir/Hurrian peoples who developed the achievements of the Neolithic revolution and spread them over long millennia. This is why the Sabir ethnonym recorded with the hieroglyph appears in Göbekli Tepe, Egypt, the Indus Valley, the Carpathian-Balkan region, Etruria, and the steppe as well. (3)
Notes
(1) The Székely script is a mixed sign system (containing word-, syllable-, and sentence-signs, as well as letters, but used mostly alphabetically). It is still in use today in Hungary. It originally served as the sign inventory of the Stone Age ancient religion and came down to us from it, which is why its signs, almost without exception, record the components of the word Isten (God), or further names and attributes of God. These divine names and attributes are still known today across Eurasia and America. I presented the earlier version of the writing system applying word- and sentence-signs, the Hungarian hieroglyphic writing, in 2017. Folk art still uses its word-signs and short texts on painted eggs or pottery, but we also find them among the elements of heraldry, e.g., the Hungarian state coat of arms, as well as in religious sign usage.
(2) Simo Parpola's position is supported by the fact that among the earliest Sumerian signs scratched into clay, more than twenty can be identified with the signs of Hungarian hieroglyphic writing (Figure 14). Not only their form, but in several cases their meaning and phonetic shape are also identical or related to their Hungarian equivalents. According to Simo Parpola, the Sumerians are descendants of the population of the Halaf (and Ubaid) culture. This can also be supported by script-historical data, as all 32 Halaf signs known so far can be identified with Hungarian hieroglyphs (Figure 15).
Hungarian hieroglyphic writing was the sign system of the Stone Age ancient religion, which already spread in the Stone Age from the Pyrenees to America. From this was preserved, among others, the sign inventory or a few signs of the Halaf, Sumerian, and Cretan protolinear sign systems. The series of similar systems (containing Hungarian hieroglyphs) can be supplemented with Hittite (Luvian), Tepe Yahya, Indus Valley, Egyptian, Danube (Tordos-Vinca), and other scripts as well. That is, it is not necessary to derive the Cretan protolinear signs from Sumerian, because this is not the only possible path. The Sumerian-identical phonetic shapes and meanings appearing in Crete are important, but they may also originate from the ancestor of Sumerian, from Halaf words.
Figure 14. Correspondences between the earliest Sumerian signs and the Hungarian sign inventory.
Figure 15. Among the similar signs of the Halaf culture and the Hungarian sign inventory, the Árpád stripes, the triple mount, and the double cross can still be seen today in the Hungarian state coat of arms.
The Uralic languages developed only after Sumerian, from new mixed languages born along the settlements of the Seima-Turbino culture, a metal-prospecting and metal-trade route. The Seima-Turbino culture dates to the end of the Early Bronze Age, between 2200 and 1900 BC. The organizers and maintainers of this trade route were the Sabir-Hurrian peoples.
(3) According to the Byzantine Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, Sabir (in his work, savartü aszfalü) is the old name of the Hungarians. Therefore, it is understandable why the Hungarian hieroglyphic writing used by the peoples of the Neolithic revolution remained preserved in its most faithful form among the Hungarians. Such a script-historical tradition was preserved by the Székely script, as well as folk (e.g., painted eggs), regnal (e.g., Hungarian state coat of arms), and religious sign usage (e.g., frescoes of Árpád-era churches). Examples of this hieroglyphic sign usage emerge by the hundreds on archaeological artifacts from the Stone Age to the present day (e.g., the Tordos-Vinca culture, and the script relics of the Huns and Avars).
These are known connections that nevertheless sound novel in international scientific literature. According to Hungarian historical tradition, the Hungarians are descendants of the Scythians and the Huns. Jordanes identified the Sabirs with the real Huns. Therefore, traditional assessments rightly called our writing a Hun-Scythian script. To which today we only need to add, based on the above, for example, that the steppe writing culture is tied by a thousand threads to the sign usage of the Neolithic revolution, the early Sabirs, and their environment. After the surrender at Világos, however, the academic "science" that blended into the landscape overwrote the Hun-Scythian tradition and for about a hundred and fifty years—defying the facts present on Scythian, Hun, and Avar archaeological artifacts—attempted to derive the Székely script from the Old Turkic script. They never succeeded in this, but the monopoly on book publishing prevented the appearance of criticism and the public exposure of the preconception's bankruptcy. Thanks to this, a false picture of the Székely script appeared and became widespread in the international scientific world. However, learning the facts can help the best researchers overcome this trap.
Figure 16. Out of the 210 signs of the Tordos-Vinca culture published by Winn, 49 match the signs of the Hungarian sign set (in terms of their form).
Literature
The complete list of literature references by Evangelos C. Papakitsos, Marija Gimbutas, Stuart Campbell, Aurelie Daems, Simo Parpola, and Géza Varga can be found in the referenced web document.
Géza Varga
