Mysians on the Borders of Lydia: The ‘Old-Phrygian’ Inscription on the Spindle-Whorl from the Thyateira Region (HP-101) Revisited

Abstract

This article is dedicated to the Archaic (late 7^th or early 6^th c. BC) inscription on a spindle whorl coming from the Lydian-Mysian borderland, presenting a new interpretation of the text and arguing for its connection with the Mysian inhabitants of the region. After an introduction outlining the status quaestionis and addressing recent evidence concerning the ethnolinguistic identity of Mysians (§ 1), the paper presents a detailed analysis of the alphabet of the graffito (§ 2) and observations on its possible pragmatic and sociolinguistic context (§ 3), which are followed by three linguistic studies of the words identifiable in the text: the preposition per, likely a dialectal variant of the Phrygian por (§ 4), and two personal names, a masculine Dages (§ 5) and a feminine *Bastes (§ 6).