The regular use of syllable and vowel signs
Writing systems lay different stress upon their
different types of characters. For example Egyptian hieroglyphs, Sumerian,
Hittite hieroglyphs, and Chinese script were all a mixture of word and syllable
signs, but the use of syllabic script was not always characteristic of all of
them. The Sumerian eme-sal dialect used almost exclusively syllable signs.
Early Egyptian writing on pyramids used mainly syllable signs in contrast to
later Egyptian writing. Egyptian syllabic script had a narrow consonant
character set of 24 hieroglyphs, which made the Semitic type of script possible
(Kákosy/1979/13). Late Hittite script was so syllabifying that it completely
lacked word signs. When searching the relatives of Székely script, we should
take into consideration those of the above mentioned scripts which used mainly
syllabification.
Our methods should be similar when we look for the
relatives of vowel signs, as there are typical differences in their use, too.
The creation of the fully developed vowel system is generally attributed to the
Greeks. According to the widespread view, Greeks formed vowels from the
"weak vowels" that seem unnecessary in the Semitic scripts. Thus the
Semitic aleph sign, which denotes a
soft intake of breath, was changed to the vowel alpha, etc. The greatness of Greek writing lies therefore not in
the invention of a new system to mark vowels, but in a methodical application
of a device that was used only rarely and unsystematically by early Semites.
(Gelb/1952/181)
Vowels are also known from other early systems. E.g.
the old Babylonian one-consonant syllabic alphabet also contained
"a", "i", "e", "u" vowel characters,
just as classic Cypriot syllabic script used "a", "e",
"i", "o", "u" characters.
Character "a" in the latter script is
equivalent with Székely "ty" (atya = father) rune (Fig. 23), since
the word atya (cf. Hurrian atta) developed into "a" in Cypriot, and
"ty" in Székely through acrophony. These two characters are connected
by Hungarian mythology. Similarly to other many Eastern writing systems,
Old-Persian cuneiform script was also in the process of forming an alphabet,
and its character usage is very similar to the ancient Greek one, says Gelb.
For example, in writing the name of Darheus (I.
Darius, 529-485 BC) they marked the vowels "a", "e",
"u" (see: Polányi/1978/36).
As Székely seems to have connections with the origins
of Persian culture, we have to note that some elements of Old-Persian cuneiform
script are very similar to the corresponding solutions in Székely runic script.
The character set of the Old-Persian cuneiform script contains five ideograms ("king", "home", land", "Ahuramazda", "god"). One of them, the god Ahuramazda's name is a ligature. The 36 characters of the whole set contain 3 vowel letters ("a", "i", "u"), all the other characters can function both as consonant characters and syllable (syllable group) signs.
There are two "k" characters
("k/ka" and "uk/ku) in Old-Persian cuneiform script as well, the
equivalents of Székely "ak" and "ek".
Székely "ek" is found at the place of
"q" in the Latin-like character order. Its characteristic rhomboid
shape forms the turtle's head of the turtle-shaped Northern-Chinese world
model, and the chest of one of the Obi-Ugrian turuls reported by Chernecov.
This rune was considered a representation of a head both by Péter Simon and
István Szekeres (Simon/1993/49, Szekeres/1993/62).
The root of the Latin "q", Hungarian koponya (skull), kebel (breast) German kopf
(head), Turkish kobak (pumpkin,
head), is the Sumerian word gu whose
meaning covers these terms. The connection between Persian "k/ku",
Székely "ek", Latin "q" and Sumerian gu shows a very old genetic relationship.
Székely and Old-Persian scripts are related, although
the graphical forms of the two writing systems are entirely different, because
of the different writing technologies. Old-Persian cuneiform script seems to
have been developed by Mede scribes around the 7-6th century BC under the
influence of the Urartian script. Although examples of Mede writing have not
survived, this conclusion is supported by the fact that Urartian text
structuring and stylistic methods were used by later Persian scribes (cf.
Zhoukov/1962/I/585, Diringer/1963/225, Jensen/1969/100).
Western Semitic scripts were not revolutionarily new
compared to, for example, the Egyptian one. They just left out word signs (like
Székely "us") and signs containing several consonants (like Székely
"nt") and reduced the number of open syllabic characters (like
Székely "k" runes with back and front vowels).
This was no more significant than the appearance of Cypriot
syllabic script, which developed from Aegean word-syllable script by leaving
out word characters. However, the Cypriot system died out and did not leave any
direct descendants (Gelb 1976/300).
When studying the place of origin of Székely script,
we have to remember these views, as the idea of letter writing was known
everywhere from
In Mesopotamian cuneiform scripts from the
late-Assyrian age vowel length was marked by adding another vowel character to
the ending vowel sign of the previous syllable. This is similar to the practice
of vowel elision in early Székely script, in which long vowels were obligatory
to indicate, short vowels only rarely.
Fig. 22 Hunnish buckles from the 5th c. with Székely characters partly with jeweled cells, partly recessed in metal (one of them contains the horizontal hieroglyph ligature "õs ég"), pictures adapted from Bóna/1993 (top);
The flattened drawing of an Avar-Hunnish salt cellar from Sopronkõhida, 9th c. with a double Székely hieroglyph inscription (middle left);
Hieroglyphs "m" (magas = high), "us" (õs = progenitor), and "s" (sar, sarok = lord, corner) (bottom left)
Similar or even more telling examples exist in Hittite, Hurrian and Palai cuneiform syllable writing systems. They add an actually unnecessary "a" character to the syllable sign "wa" (which makes "a" readable, but unmarked in other cases). That phenomenon occurs in Székely, too. For example, the word egy (one, only) can be represented by only rune "gy" (which have to be read with an e according to the rules, see Fig. 14), or by the runes "egy" which unnecessarily contains character "e".
The highest developed form of this method was in Hurrian cuneiform script (2nd millennium BC), which also contained vowel characters. For example, if they added the vowel character "e" to syllable "li", it had to be read "le" instead of "li". In its most developed form, "i" was added even to "ni" unnecessarily.
In other words, a new system (similar to Székely) developed from Hurrian syllable script that demanded the systematic addition of vowel characters and therefore reduced syllable signs like "ni" to consonants, "n".
Contents
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History of the scientific views on the origins of Székely runic script | 10. |
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