βεκος

See also: βέκος

Phrygian

Etymology

From Proto-Indo-European *bʰéh₃g-os ~ *bʰéh₃g-es-, from *bʰeh₃g- (“to bake”), Cognate with Ancient Greek φώγω (phṓgō, “roast”), Old English bacan (whence English bake).[1][2]

Noun

βεκος (bekos) n (accusative singular)

  1. bread
    • Monumenta Asiae Minoris Antiqua 7.xxviii:[3]
      με κε οι / τοτοσσειτι βας βεκος
      me ke oi / totosseiti bas bekos
      • 2020 translation by B. Obrador-Cursach
        And let Bas not give bread to him.

Notes

This word is used in a retelling by Herodotus of an experiment under Psammetichus to raise children without language. As those children were fed by sheep, they associated bleating with food and thus, when they wanted to ask the shepherd for some, they bleated as well, which was believed by the Pharao's courtesans to be phonetically and semantically close enough to βεκος (bekos), the Phrygian word for bread.

References

  1. ^ Orel, Vladimir (1997), The language of Phrygians, Delmar, New York: Caravan Books, page 419
  2. ^ Obrador-Cursach, Bartomeu (2020), The Phrygian Language (Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section 1 The Near and Middle East; 139), Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, →DOI, page 196
  3. ^ Obrador-Cursach, Bartomeu (2020), The Phrygian Language (Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section 1 The Near and Middle East; 139), Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, →DOI, page 533

Further reading

  • Obrador-Cursach, Bartomeu (2020), The Phrygian Language (Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section 1 The Near and Middle East; 139), Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, →DOI, page 196
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