MAX LEOPOLD WAGNER AND THE ARISTOTELIANISM.

To look for etymologies in archaic Sardinia means to go beyond the uncertain and unreliable bark of Greek and Latin evidence. Many linguists have put in evidence the Greeks’ bent on paretymology, and often they have been the only sources of information about ancient history and about the early colonizations. From them we have a few toponyms with Greek shape and meaning for Sardinia, as Olbia. But Olbia, if one looks closely, isn’t a paretymology, but the exact translation of akkadian Karallu ‘beatitude, bliss, jewel’, of which the Greeks understood the meaning. But when in the Greek’s pen we find the paretymology deception (or false etymology), it seems a little thing in comparison to that of the Latin writers. In the past, every writer needed to use current toponyms, and often the operation gave way to paretymology or popular etymology. Paretymology isn’t a deceit, it’s a phono-semantic law upon which anyone that doesn’t have talent or is unskilled in dealing with the language and the mystery of toponomastics, lays down. The Spanish, not afraid of hurting the Sardoes, translated Quartucciu into Quartocho (Quarto Tocho, that’s ‘Quartu lout’). They didn’t know that the real meaning of the toponym came from the Akkadic qart-ugû, ‘metro-polis’: as a matter of fact, Quartucciu in the past was a city.

The Romans deserve absolution, because of the respect they had for other people’s toponyms. For instance, concerning Karallu they didn’t use a paretymology, nor did they translate in Latin. They simply made a hypercorrection of the twin -ll-, since the Romans considered the shardanian double consonants as a phonetic thickening of the simple ones. So that Karallu at first became Karàlis, with simple -l- and Latin suffix -is; then the stress moved back according to the law of the Latin phonetic (Kàralis).

After this clarification, I’m now going to touch an uncovered nerve of the origins research, that is the text. The Sardinian scholars, as much as they matter in studying proto-history, feel they are trapped in the aporìa, troubled with a hostile demon which convinces them that they are useless and powerless because they don’t have the text. Orphaned and castaway on a desert island, damned to monodiet, they wander about in despair along the backwash, and now and again climb their own ancient heap of texts to scan the ocean of Proto-history, incapable of making the dugout canoe that could enable them to dominate the water and would link them to other lands. In a sea where the texts are lacking, they count for anything in the Italian, European or World academic sphere.

Only the archaeologist can in part escape the grief of missing text. His research method could open horizons to ancient history and to the linguistics scholar, too. But these don’t profit from the abundance of material culture, from which they could liberate themselves by freely interpreting the object, and sometimes could even go beyond the object; they don’t risk; they stall among the Greek and Latin informers: not all informers, of course, but only those who left very palpable and indisputable evidence. The Sardinian archaeologists, in front of the linguists’ and historians’ apathy, feel they are masters of the square, and they boast with arrogance ruling the protohistory field, so that they dare to do absurd raids in linguistics and toponomastics, and stamp about everywhere, setting themselves up as knowledge pontiffs. A grotesque situation.

In which ancient text do we trust in enquiring into Protohistory, since for it only myths and legends are written? Nevertheless everyone knows that in searching only the interpretation makes a distinction in the ability of estimating a multiplicity of values and cultural elements that no text can explain; as a matter of fact, when we discuss at length the universe of our most ancient forefathers a reality is postulated which often we can only reach by means of intuition.

A stifling squalor has prevailed up till now in searching toponomastics, and some living linguists still refuse, grotesquely, to accept the 700 phoenician-punic years in Sardinia as a profitable ground of inquiry. They refuse it as metahistoric land, a hiatus in the linguistic history of Sardinia, to which they affix the seal of “prelatin”, “mediterranean”, “protosardian” and other adjectives that make the blood run cold.

Max Leopold Wagner, the father of linguistics in Sardinia, deserved a monument, but the ipse dixit devoted to him are too much, have been going on from a while, for 70 years, and have blocked the current toponomastic searches. Many aristotelian academicians stay behind to repeat that there are seven toponyms of the Phoenicians and Punics in Sardinia which have taken root, exactly one for every 100 years of their influence.

I understand that my book Toponomastica Sarda is destabilizing. Nobody will accept to reorganize his own erudition, even less his own culture. Till now the researchers have failed mainly in the method, in considering the toponyms in the same manner as the language. The toponym isn’t the language that flows, it’s the word that runs aground and coagulates since it is devised; and should it not vanish by consumption, it remains as a sign (properly as a sign, no longer as a linguistic semanteme), exactly as an archeologic wreck, built up and then lying stationary for millenniums.

The analysis of the manufactured goods is up to archaeologists, the one of the toponyms is up to linguists. But not to the linguist who stares only at grammatical histories but to a linguist skilled in environmental geography, historic geography, in landscapes, geology, botany, besides ancient history. In the book Toponomastica Sarda I’ve shown which is the Shardana’s language, and here I reaffirm: it had the Akkadic language as a basis, dating back to 2350 b.C. The empire of Akkad became enlarged from the center of Mesopotamia and permeated roughly all the Near Orient and Anatolia. Afterwards the Akkadian stood near neo-Babylonians and neo-Assyrians. It was so authoritative that even the Pharaons dealt with foreign politics in that language, and also the pre-Phoenicians. Obviously the Land of Canaan too (Phoenicia included) was shaped by it. As far as the Aramaic language, supplanting the Akkadian as the chancery (official-administrative) language in the Persian Empire, it contained about a half of Akkadian language. So we talk of Phoenician and Hebraic languages.

If it’s true that Shardana was a profit-making people and warlike too, as they attempted to invade the Land of Pharaon, it’s obvious that they were never subdued, except by Pharaon. And if the Lydians (or Thyrrenians or Iolaenses, in accordance with the manner of naming them) came to Sardinia in 1250 b.C., they profited by the insediative vacuum, and the new arrivals, the Iolaenses, seized first of all the plains. The Sardinian or Shardana toponyms (I’m talking of the 38% solid foundation proven in my book) testify in most cases the Akkadian-Assyrian-Babylonian stratum, in the lower cases the Aramaic-Phoenician-Hebraic stratum. That the Jewish too came in Sardinia, doesn’t resound. They came in four waves, and the first happened together with the Phoenician wave.