Editing Phrygian language (section)

== Discovery and decipherment ==
Ancient authors like [[Herodotus]] and [[Hesychius of Alexandria|Hesychius]] have provided us with a few dozen words assumed to be Phrygian, so-called [[gloss (annotation)|glosses]].<ref>Obrador Cursach (2018), pp. 337–344</ref> In modern times the first monument with a Phrygian text, found at [[Ortaköy, Aksaray|Ortaköy]] (classical [[Orcistus]]), was described in 1752.<ref>Obrador Cursach (2018), pp. 428</ref> In 1800 at [[Yazılıkaya, Eskişehir|Yazılıkaya]] (classical [[Nakoleia]]) two more inscriptions were discovered.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Osann |first1=Friedrich |title=Midas oder Erklärungsversuch der erweislich ältesten griechischen Inschrift ({{nbsp}}...) |date=1830 |publisher=Carl Wilhelm Leske |location=Leipzig, Darmstadt |url=https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/de/view/bsb10221742?page=5 |access-date=2021-07-17 |ref=Osann}} ("Midas, or an attempt to clarify the apparently oldest Greek inscription ({{nbsp}}...)"; in German.)</ref><ref>M-01a and M-01b in Obrador Cursach (2018), p. 349.</ref> On one of them the word ΜΙΔΑΙ (''Midai''), 'to Midas', could be read, which prompted the idea that they were part of a building, possibly the grave, of the legendary Phrygian king [[Midas]]. Later, when Western archeologists, historians and other scholars began to travel through Anatolia to become acquainted with the geographical background of [[Homer]]'s world and the [[New Testament]], more monuments were discovered. By 1862 sixteen Phrygian inscriptions were known, among them a few Greek-Phrygian [[bilingual inscription|bilinguals]]. This allowed German scholar [[Andreas David Mordtmann]] to undertake the first serious attempt to decipher the script, though he overstressed the parallels of Phrygian to [[Armenian language|Armenian]], which led to some false conclusions.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Mordtmann |first1=Andreas David |title=Über die altphrygische Sprache (mit zwei Inschriftentafeln) |journal=Sitzungsberichte der bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu München. Philosophisch-philologische classe |date=1862 |issue=1 |pages=12–38, and between 88 and 89 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YctBAAAAcAAJ&q=Bayerische..20Akademie..20der..20Wissenschaften..201862 |access-date=2021-07-17}} ("On the Old-Phrygian language, with two figures showing the inscriptions"; in German.)</ref> After 1880, the Scottish Bible scholar [[William Mitchell Ramsay]] discovered many more inscriptions. In the 20th century, the understanding of Phrygian has increased, due to a steady flow of new texts, more reliable transcriptions, and better knowledge of the [[Indo-European studies|Indo-European]] [[sound change]] laws. The alphabet is now well-known, though minor revisions of the rarer signs of the alphabet are still possible, one sign ([[File:PhrygianYodL2R.png|12px]] = /j/, transcribed ''y'') was only securely identified in 1969.<ref>Obrador Cursach (2018), p. 35.</ref>